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Journalism of Courage
Sunday, bloody good Sunday. If watching television is, once in a while, your patriotic duty, or then, you simply enjoy the sight of fully clothed women, there was Yukta walking away as Miss World (Zee). Alternatively, if you delight in a man dressed as a woman and acting like one too, there was the utterly delightful, The Birdcage (STAR Movies). If neither of these pastimes somersaulted your heart, your vote must got to Rear Window (Hallmark), starring Christopher Superman Reeve in a reprise of the Hitchcock film. This is the first, major part Reeve played after a horse-riding accident left him paralysed from below the neck: he needs a ventilator to breathe for him.
The similarities between the original and its copy, are what separates the two. A paralysed architect (Reeve) whiles away evenings peering out of his window and into other people’s apartments, lives across the road. He stumbles upon what he believes is the murder of a blonde. Only hitch: there’s no body and no evidence. Assisted by sophisticatedsurveillance equipment and that mermaid, Daryl Hannah (in Grace Kelly’s role), Reeve attempts to discover both. The rest you can see: Hallmark will repeat the film (and how).
The modern Rear Window is loosely defined as a made-for-television-film. It is expertly shot and edited: since the main character can barely move, the suspense has to be generated by a voyeuristic camera and eerie soundtrack. In the original, actor Jimmy Stewart had to act the part of the handicapped `detective’; Reeve doesn’t need to: he is the part. From the first glimpse of him leaving the hospital (“there must be a reason you survived,” the doctor says), to the only kiss he and Daryl exchange at the end (he tells her one day he might be able to do more), the line between reality and fiction are constantly crossed, blurred, erased. To act with only your facial muscles and voice box is awesome; to have to play yourself, brave and poignant.
This is all about Re(eve). His sad smile as he gazes upon his reshapedoffice/apartment/existence; his assertive-combative, “I’m back with my resources in tact” when he returns from the dead; the constriction in his voice as he thanks his colleagues for the `welcome-back’ party; his resignation when he admires his fancy wardrobe and the wistful longing in his eyes as he watches a couple making love, a woman undress. These expressions are not simulated, they come from experience.
From the tender and moving to Movers and Shakers (Sony). The following will go fully towards explaining why Manoj Bajpai (and yours truly!) haven’t traded in a B for a V and changed the entire spelling of our surname.Shekhar Suman: Are you married?
(Guest) Sonali Vajpayee: No.
Shekhar: What is it about Vajpayees that they don’t get married?
Vajpayee (very young, pretty pretty and quite indignant): I think, there is still time!
Shekhar: And maybe time for you, one day, to become Prime Minister! (Loud canned merriment). If you share any of the PM’s three names and his singlehood, change thefirst, invent reasons for the second and be prepared for unholy amusement at your chances of rising to the top.
Ever wondered why we say `unholy’ amusement and not `holy’? Because the sacred cannot be funny? So you might think, after watching The Indian Mythological. There are no smiles for miles. Faces are either grim (with anger/suffering/self-righteousness) or serene (with godliness/goodness/inner beauty/). Characters in Jai Hanuman, Om Namah Shivay, and most recently, Jai Mata Ki (all DD1) don’t giggle-gaggle, cackle or god forbid! — guffaw. When gods play, it’s a serious game. Once in a laugh, they do emit a sound akin to laughter but it’s so exagerrated, it’s grotesque. To misquote singer Eric Clapton, there are no jokes only `tears in heaven’.
Increasingly, mythos resemble sci-fi. Jai Mata Ki (DD1) is a direct descendant of Star Trek. One way to combat cultural imperialism is for the empire to strike back to pit the past against the future, so to speak. The two TV genres have such closeapproximations: computerised special effects to recreate the abode of the gods and outer space or to enact celestial dishum-dishum with arrows or missiles; there’s the other worldliness of both, the magical apparitions and transformations last week, Indra took the form of a crocodile to capture his prey. The fact that in both genres, the supra-supernatural are pitted against the human and the humans are at the mercy of unknown forces. The only major difference between the mytho and the sci-fi is perhaps civilisational: in mythos there’s more talk than action and in sci-fis actions speak more than words.
Finally, the curious costumes. In Star Trek, they’re from comic strips, in Jai Mata Ki, they’re calendar art, a cross beyond Gandhian simplicity and wedding opulence dhotis combined with heavy jewellery. The distribution of finery is a sociological (fashion) statement: the chieftain god wears none, the lesser gods are more heavily decked than brides, and the children of lesser gods, (yaani ki hum, tum)wear the amount which befits their status in the hierarchy. Hair-archy: the wigs for the gods are long and wavy with kiss curls for sideburns; to distinguish men from Them, males sport handle-bar army moustaches.
So much for all you never wanted to about Great Indian Myths…
