Book Review: Funny Boy

The controversy surrounding the release of Deepa Mehta’s film, Funny Boy, a cinematic adaptation of the original 1994 novel written by Shyam Selvadurai, prompted me to read the original book. Funny Boy is a coming-of-age story centered on Arjun Chelvaratnam, chronicling his life in the form of six short stories linked by his self-discovery in a world shaped by cultural rigidness and political turmoil.

Arjun Chelvaratnam, affectionately called Arjie, comes from an upper-crust Tamil family residing in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He and his two siblings, Varuna (nicknamed Diggy) and Sonali, luxuriate in a life far more privileged than most children on the island-nation. And yet, because of their ethnic background, they’re taught from an early age to tread carefully.

In the first of six stories, Arjie is a eight-year-old child in 1970’s Sri Lanka. Twenty years had passed since the infamous ’58 riots, in which a pogram targeted Tamils, killing hundreds of people, including Arjie’s paternal grandmother’s father, leaving Arjie’s grandmother, whom he called Ammachi, with a deep-seated hatred for the Sinhalese. Arjie’s father, Chelva, was also affected but he took a different approach. Chelva reasoned that Sinhala was the future of the island. He enrolled his children in Sinhala classes and even declined to speak to them in Tamil. Thus, Arjie practically grew up removed from his Tamil heritage, and yet his Tamilness differentiated him like the Mark of Cain throughout his upbringing on the island-nation.

It wasn’t just Arjie’s Tamilness that would set him apart from his peers. The first story, “Because Pigs Can’t Fly”, begins with a game of bride-bride. The female cousins of the extended family would reenact a wedding, each of them playing different roles. The least-coveted role was the groom, perceived by the girls as boring but necessary in a wedding. However, in the opening passages of “Because Pigs Can’t Fly”, the bride is played by none other than Arjie. While the other boys, along with the presumably tomboy Meena, would play cricket, Arjie would join Sonali and the other girls and play games like bride-bride. As the bride, Arjie reveled in dressing himself up in an embroidered sari, and decorating his face with red lipstick and mascara. Arjie may not have been transgender but he clearly enjoyed defying gender expectations.

Unsurprisingly, Arjie’s parents, along with other relatives, didn’t see it the same way. After a fight with a disgruntled cousin name Tanuja, whom he and the others cruelly called “Fatty”, Arjie, clad in his bridal wear, was brought by his aunt, Tanuja’s mother, to be shamefully paraded before his aunts, uncles, grandparents and, embarrassingly, his parents.

“Hey, Chelva! You got a funny one, here”, Arjie’s uncle, Cyril, teases. However, Arjie’s father would not even look at his dressed-up son, presumably out of horror and humiliation. Throughout the novel, Chelva constantly worries about his son’s “masculinity”. He’s petrified over the thought of his son turning out “funny”, similar to one of their neighbor’s sons. So he diligently does all he can to instill traditional masculine sensibilities in his younger son. However, it’s evident that nature has the bigger stick in this fight.

Throughout his upbringing, Arjie identifies more with his female family members and relatives than his male relatives. For example, while he and Diggy have a somewhat terse relationship, due to having nothing in common, Arjie is intimately close with his sister, Sonali. While he and his father don’t see eye-to-eye, Arjie gets more sympathy from his mother, Nalini. In fact, despite the fact that she has a daughter, Nalini only allows Arjie to watch her as she dresses up in her sari ( at least, before Arjie was reprimanded by his father for playing bride-bride). And while Arjie isn’t close with any of his uncles, he develops a very intimate relationship with his father’s youngest sister, Radha.

Remarkably, at a young age, Arjie is twice-recruited as an accomplice in the clandestine dalliances of his female family members. The first time involves his Radha Aunty, who’s engaged to a Tamil engineer residing in Canada but falls in love with a young Sinhalese stage actor whom she and Arjie met while performing for a play. The second time, startlingly, involves his own mother. Although she doesn’t spell it out for her son, Nalini engages in a brief affair with a childhood friend, whom she was barred from marrying due to their differing ethnic backgrounds. She uses her son’s temporary illness as a scapegoat to carry out the fling in the central hills of Sri Lanka, away from the city. That affair ends in tragedy and reshapes Nalini’s perspective on the emerging Tamil insurgency and Sri Lanka’s political strife.

Both secret affairs illustrate the clash between the personal and the political. Similar to novels such as Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Funny Boy highlights the futility of forbidden love and how quickly it’s usually stifled by unwritten social codes, boldened by political conflicts. It demonstrates how the individual pursuit of personal fulfillment and happiness is often extinguished by social forces beyond one’s control. The anticipated termination of both affairs foreshadows Arjie’s own clandestine encounter.

The fifth short story, “The Best School of All”, centers on Arjie’s enrollment at Victoria Academy, a British-style, all-boys prep school. Chelva forces Arjie to attend Victoria Academy in hopes that that it would quench his lingering “funny-boy” tendencies. Ironically, Victoria Academy is where Arjie comes to terms with his homosexuality and engages in a secret fling with another male student named Shehan. So, for Chelva, that was a major swing-and-a-miss!

Victoria Academy is administered by a strict principal who is only referred to as “Black Tie”. Black Tie is an iron-fisted, traditionalist overseer of the campus community. He makes it his objective to ensure that his students are well-disciplined and properly-attired, according to his standards. For example, he shows no tolerance for Shehan’s long hair and often calls him and the other “miscreants” as  “future ills and burdens of Sri Lanka.” Any schoolboy with freeze in fear of Black Tie’s presence and relentlessly curse him once he is out of the room.

And yet, the narrative forces you to sympathize with Black Tie. As principal, Black Tie has a acrimonious working relationship with the school’s vice-principal, Mr. Lokubandara. Lokubandara is an ambitious Sinhalese man who’s politically well-connected. His aspiration is to take over Black Tie’s position as principal and transform the school into a Sinhalese Buddhist institution, cutting ties from its British colonial and multiethnic roots. Although he is often mild-mannered, he unhesistantly gives preferential treatment to the Sinhalese students. In contrast, despite Black Tie’s unpleasantness, his goal is to maintain Victoria Academy’s multiethnic makeup and ensure that all students, regardless of ethnic background, are treated fairly.

The conflict between Black Tie and Lokubandara symbolize the cultural clash that emerged after the British left the island. One side wanted to maintain the national identity of a multiethnic island-nation. The other side wanted to enforce a Sinhalese-dominant national identity. In the narrative, as in the real world, one side had eventually won.

Arjie is caught in the middle of conflicting interests. He is recruited by Black Tie to recite two poems for a ceremony featuring a prominent politician. Black Tie stresses that his competence in reciting the poems will determine whether Black Tie can keep his job and ensure that Victoria Academy remains a multiethnic community. As a Tamil student frequently bullied by the Sinhalese students in the school, Arjie undoubtedly sympathizes with that cause. However, Black Tie had also been the bane of Arjie’s existence, mostly because of his tortuous treatment of his lover, Sheheen. So, Arjie once again finds himself in the fissures of the personal and the political.

Funny Boy is a gripping yet extremely heartbreaking novel. As aforementioned, the narratives highlight the futility of forbidden love in addition to the dire inevitability of ethnic violence. The recent cinematic adaptation of the novel did not do justice to the themes conveyed by the short stories. The movie depicts the ethnic conflict as a tit-for-tat battle between the Tamils and the Sinhalese. However, the novel reveals that the persecution of the Tamils was systemic endeavor undertaken by the Sinhalese-dominated state apparatus. The erroneous framing of the conflict in the movie undermines the reasons why thousands of Tamils left their homeland.

Funny Boy was published in 1994, a time when homosexuality was recognizable in mainstream society, but gay people were still derided. The author, Shyam Selvadurai, is a gay man himself who grew up in Sri Lanka during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Although the novel is not autobiographical, the experiences and inner turmoil of Arjie is undoubtedly a (partial) reflection of Selvadurai’s own experiences. Our society has come a long way since that era. We’ve become more accepting and compassionate. However, even today, there are teenagers, like Arjie, who struggle to grasp their sexual identities.

Book Review:From the Ice to the Fire

I find it incredible how the Italian-Americans went from being a heavily stigmatized immigrant community to an unquestioned part of the American cultural fabric. The story of Paulo Lomeo is a unique, personal story. And yet, it is also the story of the millions of Italian immigrants who ventured into the New World and had to navigate and survive with nothing but their steadfast grit and acute wit.

Paulo was born in a small town in Sicily during the 1890’s. After fighting in the first World War, he returned home only to find his father deceased. However, that gave him the motivation to fulfill his father’s lifelong yearning–to immigrate to the United States.

Since arriving in the New Country, Paulo Lomeo’s life was filled with happiness and productivity. After a few weeks in the United States, he serendipitously met his future bride while buying a sandwich with whatever loose change he had in his pocket. His marriage to Rosalia, an American-born Italian woman, proved to be the rock in his life, as Rosalia continuously provided unconditional support for her husband in whatever tumultuous circumstances in which they found themselves. After settling in the Mckeesport, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Paulo adopted the American entrepreneurial spirit by starting his own business, Roma’s Fruit Market. While Paolo’s business didn’t elevate him to the corporate elite class, he managed to earn a respectable livelihood for himself and his family. All in all, Paulo had achieved the American Dream.

Prior to arriving in the United States, Paolo nurtured lofty dreams for himself as an American. He held an aspiring fantastical ideas about American life that contrasted with the poverty and widespread corruption of his Sicilian homeland. However, upon setting foot on American shores, Paolo discovered that the American Dream was akin to an exaggerated marketing gimmick.

While Paolo managed to achieve relative success in the United States, he had underestimated the hurdles and obstacles that he would have to overcome as an immigrant. He was an illiterate young man who barely spoke English. If it wasn’t for the aid of Rosalia, Paolo would not have been able to start his own business. He saw so many of his fellow paisan struggle to learn a decent living for themselves as lowly laborers and that without skills and social networks, immigrants were at a disadvantage in their adopted country.

In addition, Paulo discovered that the American Dream had a dark undercurrent. The Lomeo’s town of Mckeesport was situated in Western Pennsylvania, which was known “union country” during the mid-20th century. The Teamsters were among the most prominant and political active labor unions in the region. As a working man himself, Paulo sympathized with the overall goals of union activism. However, he was aware that the dirty politics that inundated labor unions in the US, many of whom favor some workers over others. He was also aware of frequent collusion between the labor unions, mafia organization and even the business owners themselves. In addition, Paulo had no need for union advocacy for himself. He was the owner of a family-owned store with no employees. He had no reason to associate with any labor union.

However, when the Teamsters started to coerce independent business owners to join their ranks, Paulo was one of the targets. His long battle with teamsters and his navigation through the union politics of Western Pennsylvania forms the rest of the story.

From the Ice to the Fire was authored by James Lomeo, a lawyer who once served as mayor of Monroeville, Pennsylvania. The protagonist of his novel is based on his immigrant grandfather, who, like his fictional counterpart, had actually ran a store called Roma’s Fruit Market and stood up to the Teamsters when they were at the peak of political influence in Western Pennsylvania. During a panal discussion for an event hosted by the McKeesport Regional History & Heritage Center, James Lomeo recalled how he’d originally sought to “write a feature study showing how the public doesn’t have faith in elected officials”. However, when he encountered articles about his grandfather, Lomeo decided to switch gears an write a fictional account based on his grandfather’s battle with the Teamster that expanded on his ideas on the public mistrust of politicians.

Cynicism of politics is a recurring theme of the story. The novel opens with scathing criticisms of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the venerated trailblazer for Italian reunification. Through Paulo’s father, the novel takes an contrarian perspective on Garibaldi and asserts that he only used his supporters, particularly those in Southern Italy, for his own ambitions and self-aggrandizement. The narration points out that Southern Italians have been socially and economically marginalized since reunification and the central government in Rome had done very little to address the plight affecting Sicilians and residents of the southern mainland regions.

The novel’s indictment of the political world is amplified by its exposure of the inner corruption of the Teamsters and their collusion with mafiosos and local politicians. Lomeo’s narration highlights how the supposed advocates of the downtrodden and marginalized are secretly driven by their own ambitions and self-gratification and that many of societal ills are rooted in public investment in utopian ideals. Although union activism had opened the doors to worker’s rights, there was (and currently is) a dark undercurrent to this movement, which had given rise to many other issues.

From the Ice to the Fire averts the romanticization of the mafia found in many stories revolving around Italian immigrants. From The Ice to the Fire depicts mafiosos as cruel, ruthless criminals who use their political influences to threaten the lives of hard-working, law-abiding Italian immigrants. They were not the “men of honor” as put by Joseph Bonnano (who, himself, was a prominent mafia don). In fact, the tragedies that befall the Lomeo family from mafia activities solidifies Paulo’s hostility towards mafiosos and anyone associated with them.

From the Ice to the Fire is a remarkable tale of an immigrant’s quest to survive and prosper in a new country, and the various stumbling blocks he’s jumps over as he struggles to live his life. The novel is outstandingly meticulous in his coverage of late 19th/ early 20th century Italian politics and mid-20th union politics in Pennsylvania and has aptly articulated the reasons for public mistrust of politicians and political institutions. The simple story of an immigrant has proven itself to be informative and enlightening.

 

 

 

Book Review: The Vanishing Generations

Some of my favorites novels have been family sagas. Books like Middlesex, Roots, The Immigrants, and One Hundred Years of Solitude have profoundly illuminated the passage of time through the intimate stories of families. Since grade school, we’ve grown accustomed to associating history with dry, old textbooks, from which we’ve forced to memorize dates and be tested on our abilities to mindlessly regurgitate the names of places and so-called important historical figures. In contrast, family sagas allow us to look at history through the lens of ordinary people leading ordinary lives. We get to know these characters intimately, immerse ourselves in their privates thoughts and personal struggles, and watch how their lives interwoven with the events we’ve learned about in history class. We learn how the lines between the personal and political are often blurred, and rather than being some abstract, ethereal thing, how political circumstances impacts the personal lives of our lead characters.

The Vanishing Generations is the English translation of the Malayalam novel, Manjupokunna Thalamurakal, written by T.V. Varkey. It’s a multigenerational tale that centers on the Paalat family, a Malayali Syrian Catholic clan. The novel opens in Kudumon, a small village situated on the Malabar Coast, during the 1850’s. Our first lead character, Kunjilona, of the Cholkunnu house, is arranged to marry Mariamma, the only daughter of a widow named Thandamma. Mariamma is from the Paalat house, a clan notorious for an alleged curse resulting in the deaths of its sons-in-law. In the Malayali Syrian Christian community during the 19th century, it was customary for families without male children to adopt the husbands of their daughters. Therefore, following his marriage to Mariamma, Kunjilona left the Cholkkunu house and formally joined the Paalat clan. Despite anticipation of an untimely death from marrying into the Paalat House, Kunjilona manages to live long enough to start his own business and raise a family of his own. Kunjilona’s success raises the status of the Paalat House to a level of respectability and prestige.

Kunjilona and Mariamma have two sons, Kunchacko and Abraham. Kunchacko is celebrated for his cleverness and intellectual interests, which he eventually channels into his life as a Catholic priest. In the late 19th century, parish priests are often the most learned men of the village, and Kunchacko uses his role as a priest to advocate and inspire social change both within the church and the broader community. Abraham, on the other hand, is less intellectually-inclined. Unlike his brother, Abraham eschews scholarly pursuits and social activism and chases after materialistic endeavors, investing in tea and rubber plantations in the high ranges and reaping its profits. In addition, he’s an hedonist who pursues servant girls to satisfy his insatiable carnal thirst, even with the quiet acknowledgement of his silently-suffering wife, Claramma.

Being a Catholic priest, Kunchacko forgoes family life to tread the path of priestly celibacy. On the other hand, Abraham, if you were to ignore the possible illegitimate offsprings he may have sprung from his many dalliances, has two children with Claramma, Francis and Susannah. While, Susannah resolutely pursues a life of celibacy as a Catholic nun, Francis marries a girl named Agnes and they have two sons, John Paul and Mathew. While Mathew renounces family life to dedicate himself to revolutionary causes, John Paul marries a girl named Philomena and they have two children, Jesus (yes, that’s his real name) and Joan. The family saga concludes with Joan and her daughter, Annie, being the sole occupants of the Paalat house.

The advent of modernity is the central theme of this saga. As the story progresses, we, the readers, witness Kudumon transform from the bucolic, yet backward village without even a single paved road, to a respectable intellectual hub with its own printing press. The hegemony of the iron-fitted upper-caste Hindu elite crumples in the face of western education, springing forth progressive values and modern sensibilities. The lead characters marvel at the speed of changes that occur in their humble town.

Accompanying the advent of modernity is the gale of creative destruction. Just as the processes of industrial mutation revolutionizes economic structures, destroying the old in favor of the new, the same applies to cultural institutions. In the opening pages of the novel, the local parish is the pillar of the village. During the mid-to-late 19th century, magisterial authority was often vested with the parish priest. The lives of the Christian villagers revolved around their local parish, and the broader Roman Catholic Church.

However, the succeeding generations of the Paalat clan gradually start to regard the church and Christian doctrine with varying degrees of skepticism. Abraham declines to step foot in the parish whenever Qurbana is in progress. Francis, while maintaining his identity as a Catholic, adores the advancements of science, regarding it as more relevant and useful to the lives of ordinary people than ancient religious doctrines. And John Paul flat-out rejects religious dogma, and unabashedly voices “blasphemous” remarks to the ire of his colleagues and supervisors at the Catholic-run college where he teaches.

The Hindu residents of Kudomon similarly fall victim to the sword of modernity. The matrililial joint-family tharavad system is overthrown in favor of male-led neutral families. The prestige of the once-elite Brahmins decline as they’d proven unable to maintain pace with the ever-changing times. In contrast, the so-called untouchable castes become educated and politically-conscious, motivating them to strives for equal rights and dignity. By the turn of the century, the rise of nationalism pose a threat to ancient, supposedly divine-ordained hierarchies. The frequent political agitations signal the revamping of an entire culture, forcing the vanquishing of old traditions.

T.K Varkey

T.K.Varkey integrates the many stories of the Paalat family with the history of the Syriac-rite Catholic community. As readers, we’re introduced to a myriad of characters who are clearly allusions to well-known historical figures. Our protagonists are active actors in the crucial events that impact the Syriac-rite Catholic community. For example, Kunchacko is fictionalized blend of Kuriakose Elias Chavara and Nidhiri Mani Kathanar. He fights tirelessly for the dignity and self-respect of his Syriac-rite community against the goliath that is the European-dominated Latin-rite hierarchy. Francis is a loose allusion to Kandathil Varghese Mappilai, the celebrated founder of Malayala Manorama. The various historical events that are referenced in this epic story include the Rokos schism, the Malayala Memorial, the formation of the Syro-Malabar Catholic hierarchy, the two World Wars, the Indian independence movement, the advent of communism, the formation of the state of Kerala, and the Vimochana Samaram that was followed by the dismissal of the state government by Delhi.

I’m a major history buff. However, as much as I appreciated all the historical references, there were a number of passages of the story that annoyingly read like a wikipedia article. It seemed that I was getting more information about a particular historical event, at the expense of the plot and basic character development. In fact, the lead characters themselves, were superficially-written, based on a handful of archetypes. The characters seemed to be conceptualized as carbon copies of their relatives before them. For example, Francis was the spitting image of his uncle, Kuriakose, being intelligent, erudite, and passionate about social activism. Similarly, John Paul seemed to be molded from that same clay. In fact, whenever a couple has two children, one child is always written to be conspicuously more intelligent and academically-driven than the other. Undoubtedly, it’s common for relatives to share similar traits, however, I rarely got a sense of the lead characters as actual people. They seemed too archetypal and one-dimensional, some of them (i.e Kuriakose, Francis) being nothing more than “gary-stus”, perhaps a projection of the author’s own sensibilities.

I read a review of this novel by Latha Anantharaman (herself, a novelist). She was harshly critical of the female characters being “not worth mentioning. They alternately weep and hang about the house being curvaceous”. While I don’t exactly echo her critique, it is evident that the story is intensely male-driven. To be fair, the Syrian Christian community has historically been staunchly patriarchal and the author is a elderly man (whose predilections for voluptuous women are made quite obvious!), so male characters will undoubtedly play a greater role. However, the female characters of later generations project a more visible presence compared to their foremothers. To complement the idealistic and head-in-the-clouds John Paul, Philomena is written as a grounded, practical woman who efficiently runs the household and manages the family budget.  Their daughter, Joan, is paid special attention through the last few chapters of the novel. In fact, Joan is probably the most evolved character of the entire story, whose wide spectrum of emotions and inner conflicts are thoroughly explored and contemplated. As we approach the conclusion of the story, we, the readers, take on her lens and view the world through her eyes.

Throughout the novel, modernity, social activism, and political agitations are viewed through optimistic lens. They symbolized hope for progress and enlightenment for the forward-minded and educated. However, as we approach the concluding chapters, the writing takes a darker tone. This becomes apparent when Mathew, the firebrand revolutionary, returns home, disillusioned by the prospects of the so-called revolution. John Paul, who held similar convictions but approached them through a literary/artistic angle rather than political methods, joins him in decrying the infighting and internal corruption rampant in the leftist movement.

John Paul poignantly points out how “man’s nature is more fickle than the seas and oceans”, and cynically asserts that a person’s professed beliefs may change once he acquires an ounce of power. However, despite his urge, John Paul holds back from telling his brother in a paternal manner, “A revolution of the kind you envision will not happen in this land, my child. The darkness of centuries reigns here. The spirits of men are lost in murkiness. Gloom girds the soul and marrows of even those who preaches revolution. We cannot see such an awful contradiction among any other people in this world“. In this passage, Varkey makes it abundantly clear that despite the strides Kerala has made through social and economic progress, the residual sentiments of its repressive, caste-ridden past continue to live in its current generations. Misogyny and castism continues to thrive among Malayalis, just in a more subtle form.

Death is another recurring theme in the story. Like every sentences ends with a period, a person’s life must also end. Throughout the saga of the Paalat clan, death emerges as a poignant, somber conclusion to a life well-lived. However, in many cases, death strikes from behind, blindsiding its witnesses until they’re at a lost for words. John Paul, a man who had lived through two World Wars, gloomily comments how death shed light to the fact that life is fleeting. Within the vastness of the universe, human life is ephemeral and meaningless, as we are merely sparks of dust. Ironically, despite his stance on religion, it is this realization that causes him to sympathize with the priests, with whom he engaged in many wars of words.

Death also alludes to the very title, “the Vanishing Generations”. Every death marks an end of an era. People cease to live, and their memories vanish away, completely forgotten by succeeding generations. In a passage, Joan alludes to “the soft footprints of time, none of which contained any trace of the history or memories of this ancient house”. The final paragraph poignantly marks the relinquishing of cherished memories.

T.V Varkey’s The Vanishing Generations would appeal to a certain readership. I’d recommand this novel to hardcore history buffs. While the novel lacks developed, flesh-out characters, its philosophical musings and meticulous historical analysis makes it worth reading. Most Syro-Malabar Catholics are unaware of their own history and how our religion was actually practiced by our ancestors. Modern-day Malayali Syrian Christians, would gasp at the thought of consulting Hindu astrologers for our horoscopes, yet, like Kunjilona and Mariamma, that’s exactly what our great-great-grandparents did. This highlights how the passage of time evaporates old customs and rituals, and the memories of those practices have simply vanished.

Literary C haracter Analysis: Beneatha from Raisin in the Sun

I’ve been wanting to write a review for Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun. After all, despite being a mere debut by a then-unknown aspiring playwright, the play has had such a lasting impact on the American literary scene. Professional critics, who are far more analytical and insightful than I, have highlighted the myriad of universal themes touched by this play. I highly doubt  my review will provide any novel contribution to literary criticism.

However, as someone who was first introduced to Hansberry’s work through a 2008 made-for-TV adaptation staring P.Diddy (or whatever the hell he calls himself nowadays) and Phylicia Rashad, I thought I’d offer my perspective, detailing what the play meant to me.

Raisin in the Sun is a beautiful, sentimental story about a family living in a dilapidated apartment in Chicago’s South Side. In the opening scene, Lena, the matriarch of the family, awaits a life insurance of ten thousand dollars, following the death of her husband. Lena’s son, Walter, married to Ruth with a son, seeks to invest the money in a liquor business and reap the profits. However, being a fervently religious woman, Lena strongly objects. She’d rather fulfill her life-long dream by using the money as a down-payment for a new house.

Lena’s daughter, Beneatha, also wants a share of the money to finance her dream of becoming a medical doctor. Although Lena and Walter are fascinating characters worth exploring, for this review, I’d rather focus on Beneatha.

Throughout the play, Beneatha definitely sticks out as the oddball of the family. She’s an ambitious college student in a working poor Black family. As a college student, Beneatha absorbs the values echoed by the fellow classmates and professors.

Beneatha’s worldview conflicts with the outlooks held by her less-educated family members. In one scene, Lena mocks Beneatha’s fickleness, as she swiftly changes from one hobby to another. Beneatha argues that she is exploring herself, attempting to find a means towards self-expression. However, Lena dismisses her claim as a sheer lack of commitment and practically scoffs as the mere mention of self-expression.

Individualism, self-expression and self-introspection are hallmarks of the American (upper-)middle class value system. At some point, every college student has written a diary entry on his/her existential angst and the need to “find myself”, despite their privileged backgrounds.

Working class folks are not immune to existential angst. Whether it be a waitress, a factory worker or a taxi driver, minimum-wage slaves also seek self-fulfillment. However, their means to achieve that goal differ from their affluent counterparts. The working poor are driven by survival instincts. As they struggle to live paycheck to paycheck, financial stability takes precedence over their desire for self-expression. Lena  looks to Beneatha’s jumping from one hobby to another as a waste of time. And to quote Benjamin Franklin, “time is money”.

There’s one particular scene that could trigger the attention of anyone with a religious upbringing. When Lena assures her daughter that she will ” become a doctor, God-willing”, Beneatha retorts “God hasn’t got a thing to do with it”.

Despite her mother’s rebukes, Beneatha continues:

“I mean it! I’m just tired of hearing about God all the time. What has He got to do with anything? Does He pay tuition?….I mean it! I’m just tired of hearing about God all the time…..Mama, you don’t understand. It’s all a matter of ideas, and God is just one idea I don’t accept. It’s not important. I am not going out and be immoral or commit crimes because I don’t believe in God. I don’t even think about it. It’s just that I get tired of Him getting credit for all the things the human race achieves through its own stubborn effort. There simple is no blasted God — there is only man and it is he who makes miracles!”

Of course, anyone who’s seen this play remembers how Lena, after slowly absorbing her daughter’s words with an insurmountable amount of fury, delivers an abrupt, painful slap across Beneatha’s face, coercing her to repeat “In my mother’s house, there is still God”.

Now, Lena is not some bigoted religious fanatic. In fact, throughout the play, Lena is portrayed as a wise and nurturing woman. And being an atheist herself, Lorraine Hansberry certainly does not endorse Lena’s response to Beneatha’s outburst.

The scene merely illustrates the differing perspectives held by Beneatha and her mother, respectively. As a college student, Beneatha has, undoubtedly, been exposed to plethora of ideas. Throughout her courses, she was probably introduced to a number of philosophers who held views that contradicted the values of her Christian upbringing. In asserting that “it’s all a matter of ideas”, Beneatha had objectively weighed out the Christian doctrines with the atheistic counterarguments and concluded the latter made more sense. Therefore, the idea of God is simply an idea that she doesn’t accept.

However, for Lena, it’s not about logic and reason. As a poor woman who endured endless hardships, God is more than an “idea”. Lena’s faith is the engine of hope that propels her optimistic spirit. As a woman who was denied opportunities to pursue an education, the Bible was her only resource for wisdom and guidance. Lena’s religious belief defined her entire being. Therefore, for Lena, denial of God’s existence is a negation of herself.

Beneatha fails to look at religion from her mother’s perspective. She’s so wrapped up in her own convictions and ideals that she prevents herself from empathizing and understanding her mother and her mother’s convictions. Not only does this conflict symbolize a generation gap, but it also illustrates the gap between dreamers and the general public.

Raisin in the Sun is an intellectual descendant of the Harlem Renaissance, a literary and artistic movement centered in Harlem, New York during the 1920s. In fact, the title “Raisin in the Sun” is a line from Langston Hughes’ poem A Dream Deferred.

During this period, Black artists and intellectuals were struggling to define their cultural identity as Black people in America. The idea of “the New Negro” was conceptualized. Through his pursuit of literature, art and culture, the metaphorical “New Negro” would challenge the degrading stereotypes of Black Americans. During the Harlem Renaissance, artists took a novel interest in African culture, in attempts to reconnect with their ancestral roots. A Pan-African perspective was promoted, connecting the struggles of Black Americans with the struggles of Black Africans under European colonial regimes.

Beneatha embodied the spirit of the “New Negro”. In partial embarrassment of her family’s working-class habits, Beneatha immerses herself in high culture through literature, music and art. She takes a particular interest in African culture, enthusiastically donning Nigerian robes gifted to her by her African boyfriend, Joseph Asagai, while scorning her “assimilationists” counterparts.

In numerous ways, Beneatha represents progress. She embodies the drive towards success and betterment. In fact, according to Mrs. Johnson, the Younger’s neighbor, Beneatha is the only one in the family to “make something of herself”.

However, Beneatha also demonstrates the naivety and consequence of that same yearning for progress.

Beneatha’s naivety is rooted in her youthful idealism and lack of foresight. Beneatha strives for the unconventional. Her yearning for self-expression stems from her longing to access all that the world has to offer. She strives to broaden her horizons and transcend beyond the values and conventions of her upbringing.

Unfortunately, Beneatha refuses to acknowledge the discrepancy between how she perceives herself and how the world sees her. She blinds herself to the ever-present obstacles that threaten her ambitions. Her gender, her ethnicity, and her economic class are all stumbling blocks to her goals of self-actualization.

It is only when Walter loses the insurance money that Beneatha realizes the fragility of her dreams. Her vision of herself earning her medical degree “fester like a sore”. When she’s confronted with harsh realities of her life, she cynically gives up, concluding that progress is futile. It’s her suitor, Joseph Asagai, who points out that life is an eternal line where you can’t see the beginning, end or the changes in between.

When energized by idealism, we earnestly push to realize our dreams, unaware of the challenges that lie ahead. When confronted by reality, we instinctually resort to giving up and abandoning our ambitions. Beneatha’s story shows us that striving for our goals is a worthy cause. Yet, we’d be deluding ourselves by not acknowledging the challenges that need to be addressed.

To be an effective agent of change, a dreamer must be armed with idealistic energy and a realistic temperament. This is what Beneatha starts to realize by the conclusion of the play.

The Politics of “Minority Representation” in Pop Culture

Earlier today, I read Celeste Ng’s scathing review of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. The Good Earth, published in 1931, is a heart wrenching story revolving around an agrarian peasant family in pre-WWI China. Pearl S Buck, the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries from West Virginia, spent the first forty years of her life in China, straddling between the “white, clean Protestant world of [my] parents and the big, loving, not-too-clean Chinese world”. She grew up bilingual, speaking English and Chinese with equal fluency. During childhood, her friends and playmates were all Chinese and she was even introduced to classical calligraphy by a local scholar. Her complete immersion in Chinese culture allowed her to write an intimate story set in China.

Celeste Ng, a well-known American novelist born to immigrants from Hong Kong, makes it clear that she does not object to Buck, a White American woman, writing about Chinese people. In fact, she states “ I don’t hate it—as was once suggested to me—because it’s a book about China written by a non-Chinese author. Even if Pearl S. Buck hadn’t spent most of her life in China, she’d have every right to write about it“. Ng goes as far as to acknowledge that The Good Earth is a “powerful story that has been popular for more than three-quarters of a century”.

The roots of Ng’s resentment lie in the public reception of the novel, especially in the Western World. In her review, Ng expresses annoyance over the habits of readers assuming they know all they need to know about China and Chinese culture just from reading The Good Earth. The novel is presented, whether it be by Oprah’s Book Club or a typical high school English class, as an authentic, National-Geographicesque picture of China.

Celeste Ng highlights a broader problem. Stories set in “exotic”, “non-Western” parts of the world are received by the Western public as encyclopedic accounts of contemporary life in those far-away lands. Ng points out a similar issue with the reception of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Set in Kerala, India during the 1960s, Western readers were enthralled by Roy’s raw and “authentic” depiction of life in Kerala.

As a Malayali from the same religious-cultural background as Roy, I love The God of Small Things. I’m not surprised that the novel won the Booker Prize in 1997. However, the lives of the characters depicted in The God of Small Things were not relatable to me. Believe it or not, people from the same demographic group don’t lead the same lives or even hold the same values. Arundhati Roy was drawing from her own life experience when penning her novel. In fact, she had once claimed her book to be “semi-autobiographical”. However, her experiences are not my experiences, nor are they shared by other Malayali Syrian Christians.

This brings me to the hype surrounding the latest rom-com to hit theaters–Crazy Rich Asians.

Crazy Rich Asian is the cinematic adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s 2013 novel of the same title. The story is about a Chinese-American economics professor who travels with her boyfriend to Singapore to meet his family. She finds out that her boyfriend is the scion of one of the wealthiest clans in the Asian city-state and the hilarious cultural clash between the lead character and her boyfriend’s “crazy rich Asian” family forms the rest of the story.

The film was hailed by critics and media personalities as the first movie with an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club. Asian-American journalists and bloggers praised the film as a cultural step forward for the Asian-American community.

However, many Asian-Americans leveled scornful critiques at Crazy Rich Asian, accusing it of presenting a narrow view of Asians that focused solely on the wealthy elite. These critics had expressed their disappointment over the film’s supposed failure in not providing adequate representation of all Asians.

Just because a film has an all-Asian cast, it doesn’t mean it’s meant to represent all Asians. After all, that was not Kevin Kwan’s goal when he wrote the novel. Kwan had just sought to write a affectionately satirical depiction of the Singaporean Chinese elite, which was loosely based on his own upbringing.

It’s unrealistic to expect a novel, a play or a film to encapsulate all the cultural layers of a particular demographic. No community is a monolith.

The Joy Luck Club has been the target of unrelenting criticism from Chinese-Americans, who lambast Amy Tan, the author of the novel on which the film was based, of pandering to “western tastes” and “orientalist distortions”. These fault-finders complain about the “lack of authenticity” and their inability to relate to the lead characters.

What exactly is “cultural authenticity”? How does one distinguish an “authentic” experience from its antithesis? Amy Tan wasn’t trying to represent all Asians with her novel. She was projecting her own life experiences onto the characters and therapeutically coming to terms with her own personal issues as she penned the novel. Tan’s novel gained popularity because it resonated with many readers, but obviously, she never meant to provide an encyclopedia of the Chinese American experience.

But maybe that’s not “authentic” enough for some readers.

We, as consumers of literature and cinema, should be mature enough to receive stories as just plain stories. We should acknowledge them as simple narratives and nothing more. A tale revolving around a particular ethnic community could easily be countered by a contradictory tale centered on that same group.

If you want to learn about a culture, you should make the effort to study all its facets. Limiting yourself to The Good Earth will not make you an expert on Chinese culture. So, do more! Read a few more novels that are set in China. Watch a few Chinese films. Visit Chinatown. Make a few Chinese friends and take an active interest in their individual lives.

Even after all that, you wouldn’t be able to qualify as an expert on China, Nevertheless, at least you would now have a well-rounded insight into a culture that’s different from your own.

Film Review: Waiting

What if we had the power to prophesize? What if we could predict the future? What if we could foresee everything that will happen to us and our loved ones.

If we knew that we will eventually live happily-ever-after, we could sigh in optimistic relief. If we’re destined towards ill fate, we could mentally prepare ourselves and accept the tragedy with peace of mind.

Unfortunately we don’t have that luxury. So we wait. Trapped in a seemingly never-ending state of emotional limbo, we anxiously await our predestined fate.

Waiting is about the emotional roller-coaster ridden by a Tara Kapoor, a young model, and Shiv Natraj, a retired professor, as they cope with the pain of their respective spouses being in a coma. Despite their radically different personalities and contrasting worldviews, the two find solace in each other, as they are the only ones who can understand  what the other is feeling.

The relationship dynamic between Tara, portrayed by Kalki Koechlin, and Shiv, portrayed by Naseeruddin Shah, aligns with your typical cross-generational tropes. Tara is a social media fanatic while Shiv hasnt even heard of Twitter. Tara is an avowed atheist while Shiv seeks spirituality for comfort. Tara is blunt, while Shiv is more prudent with his words.

In fact, Shiv voices his criticism of the youth to his unresponsive wife, proclaiming “Of course, the young generation are more evolved than us. They’re more well-informed. But they lack grace and common sense…. After all, you can’t vomit out everything you’re thinking!”

However, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, cliches are not undesirable in themselves. They appeal to our yearning for familiarity. In Waiting, the cliched setup works well in touching on the grey texture of relationships and the deeper truths of life.

Our two protagonists candidly berate the preponderance of platitudes they’re forced to hear from friends and concerned acquaintances. From the surgeon’s standard ‘the next forty-eight hours will be crucial’ dialogue to Tara’s sister pontificating on ‘positive energy’, we’re practically programmed to assure distressed loved ones that ‘everything will be okay’ and ‘our thoughts and prayers are with you’. We don’t realize that this rehearsed string of rhetoric causes unintentioned resentment, exemplified by Tara’s single-sentence line, “I fucking hate people”.

Most married couples never anticipate a situation when one of them succumbs to a coma. We always assume it happens to other people, never ourselves. If your spouse was trapped in an unresponsive state for a long duration of time, would you consent to pulling the plug or not? And regardless of your decision, do you think your spouse would agree?

I suppose the ‘Would you pull the plug on me?’ discussion is not the effective way of setting the mood!

Naseeruddin Shah, as a veteran of Arthouse cinema, was perfect for his role. Kalki Koechlin also did remarkably well. She successfully managed to convey the distress of a woman who practically lost her husband without being excessively melodramatic. The supporting cast, including Rajat Kapoor as the physician, also did exceptional.

The cinematography was superb in capturing the charm of Cochin. I was pleasantly surprised to see the story unfold in one of my favorite cities in India. Those amusing snippets of our North Indian protagonists enunciating rudimentary Malayalam phrases were also a real treat!

Although the plot is slightly formulaic, this film offers some food for thought. The tone throughout the film was gentle and softhearted. This movie will make you count your blessings, allowing you to be more appreciative of your loved ones.

Film Review: The Man From Nowhere

-The Unexpected Bonds of Unconditional Friendship

On the surface, ‘The Man from Nowhere’ is an South Korean mystery thriller centered around a mysterious pawn shop owner well-trained in the martial arts. However, this eye-dazzling action-packed flick is actually a work of poetry celebrating the virtues of unexpected yet unbreakable bonds.

This film could rightfully be compared to Pierre Morel’s ‘Taken’ starring Liam Neeson. However, ‘Taken’ circles around a father attempting to rebuild a relationship with his estranged daughter, only to find her kidnapped by human traffickers. In contrast, ‘The Man from Nowhere’ is a story about two people who are nothing more than strangers.

Cha Tae-sik is a unlikable pawnshop owner,who operates from his apartment. He is scorned by his neighbors and is assumed to be a child molester. Despite such an outlandish rumor, Cha Tae-sik always seems to have one little girl following him around. This young child is So-mi. Her mother, Hyo-Jeong, is a heroin addict who unwisely steals drugs from an organized crime syndicate. Hyo-Jeong’s drug habits self-destructively lands her daughter in hot water with a crime syndicate, prompting Cha Tae-sik to embark on a life-threatening, dangerous mission to save his only ‘friend’ during which, in the process, his dark past comes to light.

Kim Sae-ron gave a heartwarming, emotional performance as So-mi. It is no wonder she is currently the most demanded teenage actress in South Korea. So-mi is a neglected child, verbally abused by a mother who craves a heroin-induced intoxication over the love of her only daughter. Detaching from her mother, So-mi turns to her neighbor, Cha Tae-sik, and invests all of her affection towards him. When So-mi infers Cha Tae-sik’s seemingly apathetic attitude towards her, she laments:

“Mister? I embarrass you too, right? That’s why you ignored me? It’s okay. My teacher and all the kids do that too. Mom said that if I get lost, I should forget our address and phone number. She’s gets drunk and says we should die. Even though that pig called me a bum…you’re meaner. But I don’t hate you. Because if i did, I won’t have anyone I like. Thinking about it hurts me here. So I won’t hate you”

It baffles me on how the most unloved tend to be the most loving. So-mi understanding of unconditional love is remarkably insightful. Even if she remains an social pariah, she unabashedly retains her love for Cha Tae-sik because that is her source of sustenance and hope. Her love for Cha Tae-sik is the net preventing her from falling into the abyss of nihilistic despair.

Bin-Won’s interpretation of Cha Tae-sik’s character was quite intuitive. He successfully captured the aura of mystery surrounding Cha Tae-sik. Dashing, with an edgy streak, our protagonist could trigger the interest of any viewer. He utilizes his astute martial arts skills to dazzle the audience while fighting off crime bosses. As the movie processes, his secret past is revealed, including a tragic event that changed his life forever.

The other cast members also played their roles well, including Kim Hyo-seo as Hyo-Jeong, Kim Tae-Hoon as the detective, and Thangagong Wanktrakul as Rowan. Kim Hee-won was exceptionally menacing as Man-Seok, from the crime syndicate.

Lee Jeong-beom’s sense of direction is nothing short of sensational. The background setting was so authentic, you felt as if you were there. The action scenes were astutely choreographed. The soundtrack was so unique and eerie, it would implant itself in your head for at least a week.

The Man from Nowhere is a beautifully-crafted movie that attests to the greatness of Korean cinema. Highly recommended!

 

Book Review: Members Only

Over the past few mouths, America has been going through some kind of reckoning with race relations. The recent tragic episodes of police brutality towards Black Americans has forced this country to reexamine how we contextualize and discuss racism.

What makes the conversation on race so difficult is that no one likes to think of themselves as “racist”. We all picture ourselves as forward-thinking and progressive. And yet, we have these secret hang-ups and implicit biases that we don’t even want to admit to ourselves.

Discussions about racism tends to revolve around Black and White Americans. As an Indian American, I’ve always felt alienated from the conversation because I didn’t belong to either category. Growing up, my experiences were never represented in stories about racism.

Which is why I found Sameer Pandya’s Members Only to be refreshing as well as entertaining. Pandya aptly captured the nuances of the Indian American experience while hilariously expounding on the awkwardness of our interactions with both White and Black Americans. He illustrated how while Indian Americans are in a relatively privileged position in American society, we’re still forced to put up with an excruciating amount of microaggressions that leave us frustrated.

Members Only is a story about Raj Bhatt’s terrible week. Raj, a anthropology instructor at a local university, serves as a board member of his local tennis club. When he takes part with his fellow board members in interviewing a Black couple who’ve applied for membership of the tennis club, he accidently utters a very inappropriate phrase which he meant as a joke. His board members predictably recoil in disgust, putting his own membership in the tennis club at risk.

During that same week, Raj delivers a lecture in his anthropology class that touches on orientalism and cultural appropriation, or as he put it, “standard Edward Said stuff”. Unexpectedly, however, Raj ends up arousing the anger of a group of hyper-conservative students, who accuse him of being “anti-Western” and “anti-Christian”. In addition, Raj finds himself being stalked by one student in particular.

Finding himself, inadvertently, in the middle of a cultural war, Raj finds himself confused, distraught and frustrated by his circumstances. How he responds to the situation in which he finds himself forms the rest of the story.

Members Only serves as a unique take on the sociopolitical and cultural landscape of 2020 America. The conservative students who stage a protest in response to Raj’s lecture on Orientalism are undoubtedly written to be a symbol of the rise of right-wing student movements that have mushroomed since the mid-2010’s. There’s even one character who’s blatantly written to be a fictional hybrid of Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk.

Interestingly, Raj draws parallels between the rise of right-wing movements in America with the rise of Hindutva in India. Raj reflects on how one of the students protesting his class reminded him of a young man he met during his field study in India. He expounded on how this young man, a cab driver, was just a mild-mannered, economically vulnerable person who was slowly being swept up by a belligerent and bigoted ideology. The two examples serve as microcosm for the broad social trend of young, vulnerable men becoming attracted to right-wing ideology as a means to attain purpose in their life and contextualize their own identity.

Sameer Pandya

Raj’s horrifically awkward encounter with the Black couple applying for membership in the tennis club similarly serves as a microcosm for a broad, real-life trend. Despite sharing the commonality of being “non-White”, the interactions between different groups of “POCs” can be uncomfortable and uneasy. For example, Indians and Blacks don’t benefit from being perceived as “regular Americans”. Neither group has the advantage of white privilege. And yet, Indians and Blacks lead very different lives and don’t identify with one another.

As an Indian in a White-dominated club, Raj was excited at the prospect of another “POC” joining the club. He reveled at the anticipation of sharing an intimate bond with fellow “non-Whites”. Yet, he didn’t realize that being non-White didn’t allow him to share the Black American experience. Consequently, being non-White didn’t allow him to make certain jokes.

Sameer Pandya’s Members Only was an enjoyable read. However, I found that the narration often meandered. There were too many passages of Raj’s flashback that didn’t contribute to the main plot. They were distracting and I think they should have been taken out. Nevertheless, I loved the story and its themes were much-needed commentary in our crazy, modern world.

Nostalgia for Late-Aughts Social Media

I’m amazed by how much social media culture has morphed. Today, social media platforms are an integral part of our day-to-day interactions. We post pictures on Instagram. We send selfies through Snapchat. We post memes on Facebook. We forward videos on our family’s WhatsApp group. And we shitpost on Twitter.

We’re able to do all that through a simple swipe of a finger. With a smartphone perpetually grasped by our hands, we’re constantly inundated with a million posts, snaps, tweets and likes. And likewise, smartphones have empowered up to flood everyone’s feeds with millions of posts, snaps, tweets and likes from anywhere and at anytime. With social media plus smartphone, the world is constantly online and constantly connected.

This wasn’t the case during the mid-to-late 2000’s. Back then, the internet was still in its formative years. People were just unburdening themselves from the inconvenience of dial-up. Libraries had just shifted to online catalogs. Schools discovered the advantages of posting students’ grades online to be viewed by parents. Businesses were creating their own websites to bolster their marketing. To sum it all up, the internet was no longer feared or scorned, as it was in the 1990’s.

However, during this time, social media was very much in its infancy. Friendster and MySpace (which, in 2020, are nothing more than objects of historical curiosity) both launched in 2003. While Friendster never really took off, MySpace enjoyed widespread popularity during the mid-2000’s. As a middle-school student in 2006, every other person in my school had a MySpace account. Hell, even I had one for a very brief period of time. Then, inexplicably, MySpace’s appeal waned by 2008 as Facebook became the new, cool kid on the block. Around that same year, Twitter had started to attract attention.

The late 2000’s was a thrilling period in internet history. A variety of social media platforms were popping up for cyber-denizens to dwell and experiment. The early-adopters of social media played a critical role in defining its culture and what it would eventually entail in the decade to come.

The majority of those early-adopters were teenagers and twenty-somethings. On platforms like MySpace, and eventually Facebook and Twitter, almost everyone was in their teens or twenties. This was before the age of smartphones, where the only way to go online was through a desktop or laptop.

In those days, social media platforms were like a portal to another world. As a teenager, I remember Facebook as a temporary respite from the commotion of everyday life. I’d log in on my desktop computer, post memes on my friend’s wall, send a poke to a girl I’d like, maybe join in on a common thread about some topical issue, play Farmville for a bit, and then log off and go on with the rest of my day. In retrospect, life seemed so much simpler back then.

Maybe I’m just looking at that period through distorted nostalgic lens. But honestly, I miss late-2000’s social media. I know that social media platforms have come very far throughout the past decade. And I remember being frustrated by some of the limitations of Facebook during the late 2000’s.

However, Facebook was our world. And before then, MySpace was literally our space. for us youths, social media was a refuge from the real world, a world where we were often dismissively derided or disingenuously patronized. Although I fully acknowledge the origins of cyberbullying on platforms like Facebook, for many of us youths, Facebook was a safe space where we could figure out our place in the world. Again, social media wasn’t perfect. But it was ours.

In my opinion, Facebook became less fun for people my age during the early-to-mid 2010’s. By then, a lot of our parents and older relatives were creating accounts for themselves and sending us friend requests, to our chagrin. As smartphones became the norm, social media was accessible by a swipe of a finger. By this time, everyone was perpetually online–on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, 4chan et.all.

Fast forward to 2020. Social media no longer a refuge from the real world. As far as we’re concerned, social media is the real world! Social media is the motherboard  of our culture and civic discourse. Major news stories are now derived from the president’s tweet. Social movements are now ignited by #Hashtag trends on Twitter. A person’s very identity is defined almostly solely by their Twitter and Instagram accounts, to the extent that deleting them is almost equivalent of committing suicide.

Social media provides a real-life stimulation of Trevor’s Axiom. Where culture wars are started by a controversial post on Twitter, followed by the backlash to said post, followed by backlash to the bachlash, followed by the bachlash to the backlash to the backlash.

Everyone is online. Everyone is tweeting, snapping, posting, liking, sharing, retweeting and forwarding. Everyone is perpetually-connected. Once you go online, you can’t escape from the digital clutches.

 

 

 

Movie Review: Trance

Trance, directed by Anwar Rasheed and written by Vincent Vadakkan, is a story about a simple man named Viju Prasad. All that Viju, portrayed by Fahadh Faasil, wants is to be a world-acclaimed speaker, with thousands of people heeding this words. He relishes this aspiration, clapping to himself in front of a mirror in anticipation of the thousands of pairs of hands applauding in praise of him. And yet, this man is also shackled by the dire toments of his own life. His mother’s suicide left him and his younger brother, Kunjan, orphaned. Kunjan’s tortuous battle with depression, which also resulted in suicide, has darkened Viju’s outlook and hopes. And lastly, Viju is chained to his own psychological issues, which leaves him vulnerable to be manipulated for a sinister scheme.

After the suicide of Kunjan, Viju leaves his native Kanyakumari and all the terrible memories with it and travels to Mumbai where he hopes to forge a new beginning. He assures himself that “this is not the end”. In Mumbai, while searching for a job as a motivational speaker, Viju runs into Latha, a friend from Kanyakumari, who connects him to Tripac Co, a firm run by Solomon Davis and Isaac Thomas. In a meeting with Solomon Davis and Isaac Thomas, Viju is offered an unusual yet outstandingly lucrative career opportunity. Solomon and Isaac suggest to Viju that he could be more than just a mere motivational speaker. The two clean-cut, suited men introduce Viju to their firm’s newest project: religion. And Viju will play the key role in this ambitious endeavor.

At this point in the film, Viju Prasad is no longer Viju Prasad.

He is now Pastor Joshua Carleton™.

The film offers an entertaining and provocative deconstruction of the increasing popularity of Prosperity Gospel and Charismatic Christianity. These forms of Christian preaching have circulated in America for half a century and have recently been making inroads in India, particularly in Kerala. This genre of evangelizing is easily recognized by fiery preaching, emotionally-charged ambiance and constant pleas to send more money to the ministry in exchange for divine blessings and grace. While watching the movie with a group of friends, one of them aptly remarked “This is basically Joel Osteen”.

Fahadh Faasil seamlessly settled into the role of Viju-turned-Pastor Joshua Carleton. From his neatly-cropped hairstyle and TV-friendly attire, to his exaggerated body language, to his captivating voice to the ostensibly forceful conviction of his speeches, Fahadh Faasil has perfectly captured all the markings of a world-famous TV preacher capable of filling a the Super Bowl stadium.

In scenes of Pastor Joshua Carleton’s preaching sessions, the film highlights how simple production tricks are utilized to create an intense atmosphere that overwhelms the congregants to get down on their knees and heed more of Pastor Joshua Carleton’s words. As the film’s title suggests, this atmosphere puts the congregants in a state of trance, intoxicated to the point of addiction. As Solomon aptly points out, religion is the most powerful drug.

The first half of the movie will propel you to the edge of your seat. However, the second half leaves much to be desired. The second half had potential, as the film delves deeper into Viju’s tumulteous mental state. We’re introduced to a young woman named Esther Lopez, portrayed by Nazriya Nizam, who is hired by the firm to spy on Viju. Unfortunately, what could have made for an interesting character was sullied by one-note characterizations. There were no depths to Esther other than being a series of boyfriend-left-her-pregnant/addicted-to-alcohol-and-drugs/loose-woman-with-a-heart-of-gold cliches tropes rolled into one. Esther came and went, almost like a temporary hallucination.

I’ve always like Amal Neerad for his cinematography. He’s an innovative artist who is willing to experiment and cross boundaries with this camerawork. Movies in which he was the director of photography(DP) have been some of the most visually-engrossing movies in Malayalam cinema.

In this movie, Amal seemed just as motivated to impress the audience with this fancy camera angles. In fact, some of the scenes almost put me in a state of trance! The attention to detail is particularly noteworthy, such as the close shots of blood dropping into a transparent drink during a slashing scene.

However, the incessant slow-motion shots were an unnecessary headache and really tarnished what could have been riveting climax. They made the movie so unreasonably long, I kept on checking my phone for the time, wondering when was the bloody film going to be over!

As someone who has always been interested in fringe religious groups, this movie caught my attention when I glanced through a brief description of it in an article. I really wanted to like this movie but I was left somewhat disappointed.

Nonetheless, not only was I was impressed by Fahadh Faasil’s performance as the sleazy Pastor Joshua Carleton™, I was also intrigued by Viju Prasad, the simple man who is striving for something better despite experiencing such heartbreaking tragedies and being affected by his own mental instability. Fahadh Faasil intuitively captured the deep-seated vulnerability of a such as person. I definitely felt the depths of his despair and the heights of his hopes in the scenes where he claps to himself in front of a mirror. Viju is a person who seeks validation and praise. And he takes refuge in those dreams as an oasis in his otherwise devastating life.

I also think it’s commendable that the film addresses mental health issues. As we progress into a new decade, it is important for people to be socially-conscious and informed about things that are usually hidden from the public’s view. Hopefully, this drive towards destigmatization could lead to a more healthy society.

Although it is an imperfect product, I also commend the filmmakers for tackling an issue like Religion-As-Big-Business, which is as socially-relevant, as it is controversial.