#phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

west bengal is currently in the grip of a dire heatwave that's sweeping across the subcontinent as well. so, if you're living anywhere here, go to the market early in the morning, stay indoors as much as possible (yes, i am encouraging you to bunk school/college if they haven't declared holidays already), keep at least five litres of water on hand, in case the water line gets interrupted for a prolonged period of time (this happens quite often where i live, even when there's no heat wave) and try and make arrangements for power outages (we've already had two last week, luckily they were both in the evening and only lasted about two hours each, so it wasn't unbearable, but it was not fun)

#phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

that's it, isn't it? studying fascism as a matter of mere culture will inevitably lead to insanity; it must be studied in economic terms to ground it, contextualize it, and break its bones and teeth.

#phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

remember, the inauguration of the ram temple isn't a mere matter of hindu religious grandstanding, it is also an event to signal investment opportunities for the further development of the neoliberal economy.

sure, the official story says that the temple was built from donations gathered from hindus and inexplicable well-wishers across the economic spectrum (the fundraising for this was notably, extremely threatening), but this is most likely a smokescreen for a complicated series of economic maneuvers carried out by the bjp, rss, vhp, and allied organisations.

we already know that the temple itself was built by the multi-national construction agency larsen and toubro, which really lays precedent for the exact form of investment this “development project” and its peripheral projects seek funding from, and to whom the profits accrued will go.

#i will look into this more when i have time #sorry for using the economic times as a source #phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

There is a difference between Bollywood and Bombay cinema?

listen, subcontinental cinema began in bombay; the very first exhibition of the lumieres' cinematographe was held there in 1896, a few months after its debut in paris, 1895. this event predates the discursive existence of bollywood and hollywood. shree pundalik and raja harishchandra, the films that are generally considered the very first subcontinental features were also exhibited there first.

subcontinental cinema under british colonialism was produced in certain metropolitan centers such as lahore, hyderabad, and calcutta; bombay was just one of them. in 1947, when the indian nation state was formally inaugurated, the idea of a "national cinema" began forming, but given the cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of the indian union, this was quite untenable. regional popular cinemas flourished well into the 1950, 60s, 70s, and 80s and various art cinemas began taking shape alongside.

under the economy that i'm going to completely elide as "nehruvian "socialism"" bombay cinema focused on broadly "socialist" themes, think of awara (1951), do beegha zameen (1953), pyaasa (1957), all of which focus on inequality in indian economy and society from different perspectives. these films were peppered in with historical dramas, and adaptations from literature, but the original stories tended towards socialist realism. reformist films centering the family generally waxed poetic on the need to reform the family, but i haven't seen enough of these to really comment on them.

the biggest hit of the 70s, sholay (1975) was about two criminals, posited as heroes fighting gabbar singh who was attacking village folk. deewar (1975) also had two heroes, and the stakes were the two brothers' father's reputation; the father in question was a trade union leader accused of corruption.

"alternative cinema" included mani kaul's uski roti (1969) and Duvidha (1973) both of which were situated away from the city. then there's sayeed mirza and his city films, most of them set in bombay; arvind desai ki ajeeb dastan (1978), albert pinto ko gussa kyun aata hain (1980), saleem langre pe mat ro (1989) which are all extremely socialist films, albert pinto was set in the times of the bombay textiles strike of 1982 and literally quotes marx at one point. my point is that bombay cinema prior to liberalization was varied in its themes and representations, and it wasn't interested in being a "national cinema" very much, it was either interested in maximizing its domestic profits or being high art. note that these are all hindi language films, produced in bombay, or at least using capital from bombay. pyaasa, interestingly enough is set in calcutta, but it was filmed in bombay!

then we come to the 1990s, and i think the ur example of the bollywood film is dilwale dulhania le jayenge (1995) which, in stark contrast to the cinema that preceded it, centered two NRIs, simran and raj, who meet abroad, but epitomize their love in india, and go back to england (america?) as indians with indian culture. this begins a long saga of films originating largely in bombay that target a global audience of both indians and foreigners, in order to export an idea of india to the world. this is crucial for a rapidly neoliberalizing economy, and it coincides with the rise of the hindu right. gradually, urdu recedes from dialogue, the hindi is sankritized and cut with english, the indian family is at the center in a way that's very different for the social reform films of the 50s and 60s. dil chahta hai (2001) happens, where good little indian boys go to indian college, but their careers take them abroad. swadesh (2004) is about shah rukh khan learning that he's needed in india to solve its problems and leaves a job at NASA.

these are incidental, anecdotal illustrations of the differences in narrative for these separate eras of cinema, but let me ground it economically and say that bollywood cinema seeks investments and profits from abroad as well as acclaim and viewership from domestic audiences, in a way that the bombay cinema before it did not, despite the success of shree 420 (1955) in the soviet union; there were outliers, there always have been.

there's also a lot to say about narrative and style in bombay cinema (incredibly diverse) and bollywood cinema (very specific use of hollywood continuity, intercut with musical sequences, also drawn from hollywood). essentially, the histories, political economies, and aesthetics of these cinemas are too differentiated to consider them the same. bombay cinema is further internally differentiated, and that's a different story altogether. look, i could write a monograph on this, but that would take time, so let me add some reading material that will elucidate this without sounding quite as fragmented.

bollywood and globalization: indian popular cinema, nation, and diaspora, rini bhattacharya mehta and rajeshwari v. pandharipande (eds)

ideology of the hindi film: a historical construction, madhav prasad

the 'bollywoodization' of the indian cinema: cultural nationalism in a global arena, ashish rajadhyaksha

the globalization of bollywood: an ethnography of non-elite audiences in india, shakuntala rao

indian film, erik barnouw and s. krishnaswamy (this one's a straight history of subcontinental cinema up to the 60s, nothing to do with bollywood, it's just important because the word bollywood never comes up in it despite the heavy focus on hindi films from bombay, illustrating my point)

#does this sound insane? #probably #this has been an effortpost #phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

go watch Ram Ke Naam.

#inexplicably age restricted #anand patwardhan #ram ke naam #phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

on this day, i would encourage you to reflect on the fact that it was liberal electoral politics that ushered in this era of hindutva. fascism enters bearing flower garlands, with the people's approval, it does not hold a gun to your head, well, not until it's too late anyway.

#phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

actually, i despise every piece of media that deplores screen time as some inherent form of evil, i read a lot, and i simply cannot afford the books i read, nor subscriptions to the journals i need. i get around that by downloading them on to my phone, racking up hours and hours of screen time every day, and even if my screen time were to lack the class marker of reading, and manifested as “wasting time on social media”, it makes no difference all. a smart phone opens up the world to a lot of people and moralizing about how people choose to engage with the world is the stupidest fucking bullshit i've ever had the misfortune to hear.

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[phenakistoskope]

i do love the sentiment on neocities that calls for a more democratic web, untroubled by the aggressive surveillance and monetization of facebook, instagram, google, and yes, even tumblr. i do, however, find a slight inconsistency in the rhetoric, for it fails to account for the fact that the monopolization of the web is very much question a of colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, and land.

meta, alphabet, amazon, and apple actively exploit the neoliberal order to establish their monopolies on the backs of labourers in the third world and the imperial core, they command the largest server farms, i.e. they own the most land on which content on the internet can be hosted.

no amount of setting up hand-coded, personal websites is going to change that, choosing to host with a smaller company will not change that, for they too are beholden to the prevailing economic order; and until the neoliberal economic order is dismantled, smashed to smithereens, the world wide web cannot be democratized.

#for personal reasons i will however be setting up a neocities #i really do want to polish the html i learned when i was 13 #phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

in english, i smoke a cigarette, in bengali i eat a cigarette, in hindi, i drink a cigarette. this is how i use trilingualism to rationalize smoking a cigarette for dinner.

#too tired to cook too tired to go out for roti #phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

i've noticed there's some apprehension associated with receiving and responding to media critically; a perception that reading critically would somehow detract from some idealized pure enjoyment. personally, i find great joy in situating media in its historical, economic, and political milieu, it feels like solving a puzzle and i love solving puzzles, especially puzzles that allow me to view a piece of media from positions of comfort and discomfort. whoever said pleasure doesn't originate from discomfort has never eaten a chili in their whole entire life.

#tldr; skill issue #phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

i'll be honest, i don't understand why it's so surprising to people that hindus commit various forms of violence in bengal, where violence against muslims is a routine occurrence.

what was surprising to me is that the vegetarians in question aren't vegetarians at all, they were simply dabbling in vegetarianism to celebrate ram navami; the couple who called the police and the woman cooking the fish are all bengalis of similar background, they are intimately aware of each others cultural tendencies.

and the really strange part is that the police actually responded to this on a day that is quite busy for them, to quote from the article:

In the past few years, West Bengal has not only witnessed huge participation in events related to Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti, but also reported several untoward incidents. Last year violence was reported at Rishra in Hooghly district as well as in Howrah. Central forces were deployed in several sensitive areas on Hanuman Jayanti after judicial intervention. On March 30 last year, violence broke out during a Ram Navami procession in Dalkhola in North Dinajpur district. The police initially booked 162 people in the wake of communal violence triggered by an attack at Tajamul Chawk, Uttar Dalkhola. On March 26 in 2018, clashes were reported during a Ram Navami procession at Raniganj in West Bardhaman district. One person was killed and several police officers were injured. Asansol-Durgapur Deputy Commissioner of Police Arindam Dutta Chowdhury was attacked with a bomb and he lost his hand in the attack. The tension then spread to Asansol. The police also recovered the body of a Muslim man who was killed allegedly in communal violence. Around 60 people were arrested in the case. A day before that, on March 25, 2018, a statue of freedom fighter Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was pulled down and a man was killed, following an armed Ram Navami procession at Kankinara in North 24 Parganas district’s Bhatpara municipality.

#hindutva #phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

the indian nation state's relation to its colonial territory, kashmir, is a contradictory one. for one thing, kashmir must be incorporated, however violently, into india to maintain the facade of secularism; having collapsed a multitude of castes and fragmented religious belief systems into an overarching category of "hinduism", the nation state requires at least one exception to continue calling itself secular.

on the other hand, the annexation of kashimiri land, its incorporation into the indian union, necessitates a genocidal transformation of its demographics, which is why the center has made it easier for indians to acquire land and start businesses in kashmir.

this contradiction is also the fulcrum upon which the congress and the bjp separate themselves in terms of governmentality; the congress strategy is the former, the bjp's the latter. regardless, both are colonial governments.

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[phenakistoskope]

i watched annihilation again. this time, i reflected on how there are seemingly, two entirely separate films in the running; one set in area x that attempts to adapt the book, and another which clumsily attempts to reconcile the fact that this is a hollywood film starring natalie portman and oscar isaac!

the scenes set in the shimmer try to visualize an area x for cinema, i don't think the action scenes are out of place, and the dramatization of the moaning creature's existence as an encounter the twelfth expedition has together was a creative decision well made.

i have a feeling that they filmed, or at least story-boarded, scenes of the tower, the crawler, and the words on the wall; the visuals of the fungal growths seem to foretell it; the fungus fades gradually as the expedition leaves the base camp behind. but it might have gotten too weird for a hollywood film.

so there's the other film, the one with lena and kane, who are normal american people with names, military histories, and no qualms about using phosphorous grenades on the unknown. it's the story of their happy marriage, lena's infidelity, and the circumstances which lead them to area x.

now, canonically, the biologist does describe her life outside area x, but that life is nothing like the lives of lena and kane, the biologist's awful employment record is erased in favour of an academic position. lena's time in the army would be unthinkable for the biologist, but entirely plausible for the requirements of the cinematic southern reach.

hollywood was never going to make a good adaptation of annihilation, the hollywood continuity system, as it has evolved and mutated, devouring techniques from marginal cinemas, lacks the language to tell the story of annihilation faithfully, but it had a chance to interpret it, and interpret it well. and they squandered it.

#annihilation #annihilation 2018 #southern reach trilogy #phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

if you've routinely balked at liberals practicing media analysis as a form of politics, i want you to know that it does not grow out of nothing. some time in the 1970s, certain forms of activism against imperialism and capitalism were sequestered (and therefore, defanged) into universities. here, some academics, especially in the literary disciplines, and the emerging field of cultural studies attempted to posit culture as the ground upon which anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist politics were carried out. and these forms of "politics" did not remain in universities, they bled out into society at large, especially in bourgeois democracies. liberals who do politics at the level of culture aren't delusional, they're chasing the heights of erudition.

#university abolition #phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

there's a misconception about the realm of cinema; that cinematic politics can be reduced to representation on screen. this is a clever ruse that originates from within film industries, for they are industries, that employ workers, from organised and unorganised sectors. this labour is often overworked and underpaid; a fleeting credit does not put food on the table. but reserving the glory of cinematic production to the actors, writers, and director does serve to distract from the material reality of film production.

(this is NOT about the writers' strike in the united states. i am talking about electricians, carpenters, builders, craftspeople, tailors, stunt-people, grips, light boys, script girls, runners, caterers, cleaners and a plethora of workers that constitute the life-blood of the many, many indian film industries)

#cinema #culture industry #phenakistoskope.txt

[phenakistoskope]

happy manusmriti dahan divas everyone

#phenakistoskope.txt