‘It didn’t look like you were the type to see a Tamil film’

Having missed the screening of Ini Avan at the EU Film Festival last month, D and I were quite pleased to see that it was being screened at Savoy. So we set aside our Sunday (23rd) to catch the 1.30 screening at Savoy, Wellawatte. Responsibly, I checked the showtimes and D and I made it to the cinema at a respectable 1.15.

Upon requesting tickets from the counter (in Sinhala, so there was no question of this being a language-related misunderstanding), we are told that the film (Ini Avan- we specified a few times) has a special screening time of 3.00pm and that we would have to come back. I ask them in turn, why they can’t update the website to that effect and they say that the information conflicts with the other screening times- which, if of course untrue since each film/EAP theatre has a dedicated page. Fine we say, and ask to buy tickets now. They refuse to sell, saying that ticket sales only open at 2.00pm. Fine, we’ll be back before 3.00pm.

So after mulling around Colombo for an hour and a half, D and I return with A in tow. The three of us head to the counter inquiring for tickets and the same seller has the audacity to (very rudely) laugh at us and say ‘oh it’s actually at 4.15′.

Of course, I lose my cool. I explain to him that when I very clearly inquired (regarding the film and the website times) he insisted that the screening was at 3.00pm, when he could have easily just sold us tickets for the 1.30 that we originally asked for. There’s not paying attention and then there’s making a sheer mockery out of your customers- especially given that they refused to sell us tickets for the 3.00pm screening saying it was too early.

So I ask, do you really think people have nothing better to do than to keep coming back every couple of hours to the cinema according to the whimsy of the sales staff? Then they laugh at us and say,

‘Well I asked you to come back for the 3.0opm Hobbit screening since it didn’t look like you were the type to see a Tamil film’

Because, your appearance as a visibly ethnic stereotype matters when the cinema staff decide for you what film you should be seeing and what they sell you tickets for. Especially when you dare show up to see a Tamil film without making your best effort to highlight your ethnicity as a qualifier to watch a film in your mother tongue.

A sharply asserts in Tamil, that she is indeed Tamil and asks what he meant by that.

They find it acceptable to laugh at us in response, a sneering sort of laugh that has everything to do with the fact that we are women and they somehow are making a joke of us. They won’t event let us buy tickets for the 4.15- once again apparently, it is too early. The manager is apathetic and completely unhelpful, laughing along with his clever salespeople.

Then they say (and they are finding this hilarious) ‘Well you could always go to Concord (in Dehiwela) it will be 4.15 by the time you get there.’ Snigger.

They clearly don’t want us to 1. make a scene 2. see this film.

We leave to Concord and get there by 4.00. What do you know, they got that wrong too (or lied). The film started at 3.00.

That was 4 hours of our afternoon wasted, out of what I can only interpret as some form of bad joke, deliberate misinformation and absolute disrespect to customers coupled with some sort of negative twist of ethnic and gendered differentiation. I might be reading too much into this, but the unapologetic and snide attitudes of those employed at Savoy, doesn’t have me in a particularly forgiving mood.

—

Utterly appalling customer service by the Savoy staff aside (rest assured, I will never return to Savoy), Sunday’s incident highlights a greater quandary.

I would like to inquire how many of us make a conscious choice to dress Tamil or Sinhala everyday? Should A be embracing an ethnic stereotype of sari, pottu, flowers in her hair finery? Should I be highlighting my mixed-heritage with some form of indication to both to satisfy judgment on what film I am ethnically and linguistically qualified to see? If you don’t speak English/Sinhala, does that mean you will be redirected to seeing a film in your own language because you don’t look the type of person who can watch an English/Sinhala film? Would the situation have been different if we were three men who perhaps would not have taken the mockery lightly?

Nascent Tamil language cinema in this country is still at a fledgling stage and I encourage you all to support local film making, especially when artists are attempting to draw attention to extremely important social issues that require greater attention. The predicament of ex-combatants in Mullaitivu, which is addressed by Ini Avan is one of particular relevance to present day Sri Lanka, being at the stem of manifold social integration issues ranging from attempts at illegal migration to social exclusion and economic marginalisation.

Post 2009,  amidst all the problems and challenges that remain conveniently undiscussed, we can only hope to look forward and do our part in building a lasting foundation for reconciliation and integration.

However, when you go into a cinema and someone is still making a bluntly unfounded judgment call about your ethnicity and its relevance to what films you may want to see, one must really wonder if any progress has been made, and deliberate how much further we have left to go in changing people’s petty attitudes towards differences.

A Year In Film

Having previously posted my literary picks for 2012, it is necessary that my year is charted in film.  As I haven’t seen some of the big tickets for this year including Lincoln, The Hobbit and The Life of Pi, consider this a list of personal picks and likely not reflective of the general filmic landscape of 2012 or any measure of quality (save for personal recommendation) for that matter. Also some of these maybe from 2011, which I only got around to seeing this year.

1) The Dark Knight Rises - Pièce de résistance ending to Nolan’s masterful Batman trilogy. I don’t think I blinked once during the film, so need I say more really? Considering international waters were crossed to catch this on imax, consider it necessary viewing. A far better review here.

2) The Descendants - An unexpected and pleasant surprise. You start watching for George Clooney and you tumble into quite a sweet and thoughtful deliberation of family, heritage and infidelity. Wonderful.

3) The Perks of Being a Wallflower – So much love for this film and excellent, excellent soundtrack. Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller and Emma Watson (who is taking her post-Potter roles with panache and will no doubt have an exciting film future ahead) were equally brilliant. Very highly recommended.

4) My Week With Marilyn – Exceptional performance by Michelle Williams and Eddie Redmayne (swoon) in an evocative portrayal of the late great Marilyn Monroe, and her brief relationship with an eager young film student Colin Clark, during the making of The Prince and The Showgirl.

5) Skyfall - I don’t care what you think, I absolutely loved this. More Bond, Daniel Craig!

6) The Amazing Spiderman – This one’s for you Andrew Garfield.

7) The Iron Lady - Meryl Streep for Queen of the World! Despite her prickly reputation, this film is a sensitive biopic of Maggie Thatcher through the lens of memory, aging and her relationships to her family, as she dwells on her glory days as Britain’s first female Prime Minister.

8) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Eleven year old Oskar’s modern-day quest in search of a lock that fits a mysterious key, woven into loss, 9/11, World War II and the holocaust. Heart-rending.

9) Melancholia – An intriguing take on the end-times. Visually, spectacular.

10) Drive – Ryan Gosling. That will be all.

11) The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – This was another pleasant surprise. Unconventional and endearing premise, featuring a positively stellar cast of British greats. Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith- perhaps not so unexpected.

12) 50/50 – Another gem. Despite my irrational dislike for Seth Rogen, this was excellent. Also Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Yes.

13) The Artist – Can’t say anything about this nostalgic piece that hasn’t been said before- a must watch.

14) Dark Shadows- A fabulous, beautifully-rendered ode to cheesy 70s horror- absolute adoration. Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green and a smart-mouthed Chloe Moretz in a winning kitschtastic creepfest.

15) Midnight in Paris- So. much. love. Paris in the 1920s, the lives of its literary expatriates, time-travel, Woody Allen on form, the ever so beautiful Marion Cotillard. Magic.

16)  The Art of Getting By – Because everybody loves (read: I LOVE) an endearing coming of age story.

* Honourable mentions to The Hunger Games (because Jennifer Lawrence is beautiful and the film was a vast improvement on the book) and Looper (because I love Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

Thuppaki (The Gun) : Why You Shouldn’t Mess with India

In an effort to be less predictable and acquire a bit of street cred, the name of social anthropology, I found myself in Cinecity, Maradana (call me a newbie and make what you will of this, but a cinema atmosphere unlike anything I’ve previously encountered. We’re talking whoops, whistles, claps and cheers after every and I mean every scene of arguable significance- including a close-up of the hero’s biceps- i.e. every few minutes).

I am a relative stranger to Tamil cinema, its gloriously-kitsch-frolicking-on-Swiss-mountainsides-dishoom-dishoom-aesthetic occupying an entirely ignored periphery of my cinematic interests.

Thuppaki (The Gun) is essentially an action flick centered on a terror plot to destroy Mumbai, with a sub-plot of modern Indian romance and marriage (aptly summarised in the most inventive lyrics I have encountered: ‘(Girl) are you an Apple product?’ and the sage advice: looks fade, so marry a guy who makes 200,000 a month, even if he looks like a toad).

A young Tamil, Indian army officer named Jagdish (emphasis on Indian Army in all it’s multi-coloured, multi-ethnic, multi-religious badass, song and dance glory) returns to his family in Mumbai on vacation, where his parents and sisters take him straight from the train station to the home of a potential bride, Nisha. Jagdish discards Nisha assuming that she is an old-fashioned girl (meaning demure, sari-clad and neck tattoo concealed by chaste braid). He later finds out that she’s a father-slapping, short skirt wearing, red-wine drinking experimental smoker who plays every sport imaginable aside from being a pro boxer, which inevitably ends up in an irrational and comedic arranged marriage  triangle (cue song: ‘Why does my heart slide on Antarctic ice? Are you a penguin? Are you a dolphin?’) and ultimately undying love, as is usually the case. Easy peasy.

The main storyline revolves around a terrorist plot, by an Islamist terrorist group (trendy) with vague (completely unexplained) motivations to blow things up and create chaos in Mumbai.

Fabulously outlandish plot. Gloriously-kitsch-frolicking-on-Swiss-mountainsides (More progressive song lyrics: ‘I ran a search on google and found no one crazier than him’)-dishoom-dishoom-with Matrix-style slow-mo fight scenes, expert assassinations and explosions at sea. A ‘cold-blooded murderer’ of a hero who ‘extensively tortures’ the baddies (chopped off fingers, forced suicides- the works) and can single-handedly take out an entire armed terrorist cell and rescue five girls (one of them on the knife’s edge of a Youtube execution) with the help of a retired police dog and one gun.

What’s not to like, right? Right.

Contrived Portrayal of Diversity:

Representing ethnic, racial, linguistic, cultural diversity hand in hand with sexuality, stereotyping, typecasting are hot topics within the entertainment industry, where films and largely (American) television shows are being actively analysed and critiqued for their mono-everything casts.

I’m all for diversity, but Thuppaki is so consciously (and consequently unnaturally) diverse.

The Indian army, a central symbol of strongman virtue (including apparently a no-strings-attached license to torture and kill at the whimsy of individual operatives) is composed of all varieties of Indians imaginable, to the point of laboured. The last scene of the film, where the hero’s army train departs to Kashmir, the Muslims (identifiable by skullcaps, beards, covered heads- all typical expectations fulfilled) stand out on the platform (token, human white flags to all the Muslims they offended in the first 2 hours and 20 minutes of the film by saying, HEY the Indian Army adores Muslims, they are our loyal cold-blooded, torturing highly-trained assassins, and they are fighting for our consciously-portrayed-as-diverse-and-united-India against extremist Muslims with Jihadist tendencies. Yes.)  A major plot point in the film also revolves around a wardrobe revelation, the coat and tie attire typical to the Christian wedding (diversity for the win?) that helps the terrorists identify the Indian army assassins, who cannot be identified but the fact that they were in suits is common knowledge and where do people wear suits to? Naturally, Christian weddings- get me a list of all the Christian weddings in Mumbai (population a gazillion) so that I can identify and avenge with speedy success.

Extensive Torture? No big deal:

I may have been appalled by the casual and sometimes comedic tone the representation of torture was dealt with in Thuppaki. Jagdish apprehends Terrorist #1, beats him up, chops off his fingers, locks him up in his closet (yes, right behind those dress shirts) and shoots him?  Apparently this is completely unacceptable behaviour from a highly-trained Indian Army intelligence type, who will have to answer to no one about his public killing spree. This and the assassination of people in malls, cinemas, boats etc., more torture, using one’s sister as bait to annihilate terrorist cell, etc. You know, the usual.

It is true that films sometimes cast things in black and white, the existential questions and metaphysics puzzles of the grey an irksome inconvenience to the whooping-clapping-whistling masses. But how okay is such light-hearted portrayal of torture? Are we saying we will die and kill for our countries, the greater good of an artificial filmic celebration of diversity?

Perhaps it is a warning of geopolitical significance, You Shouldn’t Mess with New India. Especially not the Indian Army- they will shoot you right between the eyes, if they’re not locking you up in a closet and torturing you first.

Have you seen Thuppaaki? Thoughts?

Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished

Has been met with silence. Or so it appears to me on the relatively mute social network feeds. A smattering of protests stir traffic in Colombo, but really, they could be protesting anything. Good old apathy, short Sri Lankan memories or fear, the lines have grown blurry.

Please cross over to The Platform for my thoughts on the Channel 4 Documentary on the final phase of Sri Lanka’s civil war which culminated in May 2009.

Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished

*A more comprehensive review by indi.ca can be found here: Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields 2 (A Review) Well worth a read.

White Skin, Black Masks

There is a particular violence in Frantz Fanon’s polemic on race and decolonisation.

Both ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ (1952) and ‘The Wretched Earth’ (1961) controversially deliberated the inferiority complex of blackness in a white world, examining the psyche of colonisation and pugnaciously advocating a cleansing violence. The thoughts in this post were largely inspired by this paradox of black skins and white masks that marks how race is perceived by both the self and the other. Although, I feel the age of political correctness is perhaps behind us (As made evident by virtually any episode of 30 Rock)- are we so optimistic that race in cinema is immaterial, or is it still insidiously informing orientalist stereotypes of otherness?

Race and violence in cinema have been as multifaceted and complex as the colonial experience, where differences of race, ethnicity and nationality – with a healthy dose of villainised Eastern Bloc rasps in the cold war decades and breathy Middle-Eastern whispers in the post 9-11 years – have been conflated with cinematic identities of wickedness. Save for the psychokiller genre that focuses most exclusively on deranged white men or Charlize Theron, baddies come with accents, bred from the irrational evils that oppose wholesome Western do-gooding (Or do I mean American hegemony?) and maniacally seek world domination. Of course the dashing American hero (unless of course it’s Bond, James Bond with his wicked smooth British vowels) will save the world, a stunning empowered heroine and perhaps even a bright-eyed, quippy child from  unspeakable evils or a nuclear holocaust. Blue sky and sunshine unless there’s a sequel involved.

Have colonial race politics set the precedent for how race is represented along caricatured stereotypes in cinema?

D.W Griffiths’ epic Birth of a Nation (1915) (although extremely cinematically significant, it is the vilest piece of racist fecal matter in existence aside from being painfully long) that details the heroism of the Ku Klux Klan. If you haven’t seen it, yes, you did read right- the heroism  of the KKK in the pro-confederacy American South during the civil war against aggressive African-American men (played by white actors in blackface).

So does evil come with an ethnic/racial identity? Often I believe it isn’t a stretch to admit that it does.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing and interrogating portrayals of race in cinema, which plays with the construction and deconstruction of African-American identities like a clever kitty (or a cool cat) with a ball of rainbow yarn, is found in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000). A biting satire centered on a modern-day minstrel show featuring black actors in blackface, and the violence that ensues is a truly marvelous and intelligent piece of cinema.  Blackface forms a common thread in both Birth of a Nation and Bamboozled, despite the many decades and racial and political ideologies that separate the films. Bamboozled deals with the offensiveness and Fanonesque racial inferiority complex of the makeup phenomenon that originated a caricature of blackness as a racial identity in minstrel shows and Vaudeville.

I watched The Devil’s Double (2011) last week, featuring Dominic Cooper in an exceptional double role as the tortured political decoy Latif Yahia and the sadistic playboy Uday Hussein, the son of America’s ex-Public Enemy Number One, Saddam Hussein. I’m not going to deliberate the successes and fails of the film- it was quite excellent as far as Dominic Cooper’s performance goes and worth watching.

However, what I would like to draw attention to the less than Iraqi (Or well a broad umbrella of middle-eastern or a narrower Arab?)  cast that won critical acclaim for playing an entirely Iraqi cast (Ok so the female protagonist Sarrab was Lebanese, played unconvincingly by French actress Ludivine Sagnier). Don’t  get me wrong here, Dominic Cooper deserved every bit of the praise. His performance as the swarthy Uday Hussein was particularly arresting. However, what exactly does this fluidity of race, ethnicity and nationality mean? Particularly when the gradients of colours and inflections only believably turn darker?

Ultimately, this post isn’t an argument on cinema and race politics, but rather a query.

We have the great insult of blackface in cinema stirred by historical productions such as Birth of a Nation or satirical critiques such as Bamboozled. We have seen further fluidity of race on cinema as seen in Lawrence of Arabia (1962)  (and so on) with Peter O’ Toole and Alec Guiness flouncing about the desert in yet another epic bit of film. Today, we have an English actor convincingly playing the psychopathic son of an Iraqi dictator.

I suppose the question is, are we post-race where the best man does the job? Or are we harking back to an insulting precedent when racial politics permeated the cinema screen? After all, the reverse wouldn’t be entirely convincing- for then we would have White Chicks (2004), The Sequel.

Does villainy still have a colour and an accent?

Remembering The Help

The Help has generated glorious buzz among readers and film buffs alike, with the ambitious but ultimately lacklustre cinematic rendition starring the lovely Emma Stone, who is sadly no match for the spunky Miss. Skeeter.

Promising the ‘other side’ of Gone with the Wind (immortalised in the line “Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.”), Stockett tells the tale of The Help who populated the peripheries of white Missisipi in the 1960s. The writing is wonderful in its ability to convey the complexity of heartbreak and small joys existing side by side, as these women, both coloured and white, perpetuate and challenge a grey rainbow social injustices.

The book has been met with well-deserved praise, and I shall ramble no further save for saying pick up a copy, if you haven’t already.

I would also however, like to draw attention to the novel’s epilogue that remembers Demetrie, Stockett’s own childhood maid. She writes,

‘I’m, pretty sure I can say that no one in my family ever asked Demetrie what it felt like to be black in Mississipi, working for our white family. It never occurred to us to ask. It was everyday life. It wasn’t something people felt compelled to examine… I have wished, for many years, that I’d been old enough and thoughtful enough to ask Demetrie that question.’ (2009:45)

Within this third world island (Or do I mean a politically correct developing world, emerging economy?), labour is cheap and bound to a tradition of devoted ‘help’ that raise the ‘babies’ of wealthier women, wash clothes, draw baths and prepare meals; the kind of dedication that made ‘Sri Lankan’ domestic labour prized beyond its watery borders.

The peripheries of my own existence in Colombo were populated by a steady stream of women and men, mostly if not entirely of Plantation Tamil origin , who transited through our home, for anything from a few weeks, a few months to a few years. Sometimes three generations of the same family, vertical and horizontal relatives flitted through, attending to our meals and laundry.

I would be lying if I said I remembered the names and faces of these umpteen women whose own lives were intimately bound with our own for pockets of time. But several remain deeply ingrained as a part of my childhood.

There was Mallika, a teenager with a mop of curly hair from Kandy, who was a worthy playmate and went on a trip with us to Anuradhapura.

There was Mary from Rathnapura, who watched me when schools were shut at length in the late 90s and adept at frying prawns and letting me sneak ice cubes out of the fridge.

There was Poovathi from Badulla, my sister’s nanny whose incessant aches and pains made me dub her ‘the paper doll’. Her family remained linked to our’s  for many years: son, daughter, husband, a cousin who had a dramatic encounter with ‘spirit possession’ in our living room one night.

There was also Seetha who lasted three days, being intermittently possessed by her dead father severely interfering with her ability to hold down a job. I kid you not.

There was Yogamma, a refugee from Trincomalee whose tragic life we still speak of. She liked me the best, I think of all her counterparts and spared no butter in making me sour dosai. She wanted more than anything to ‘go to Dubai’ as she would say to earn money for her children who had been relegated to a refugee camp in India. Conned by several employment agencies, she died in the Tsunami in 2004 while attempting to claim and sell her family’s land in Trincomalee.

There was Letchumi, a raging but ultimately endearing alcoholic from Rathnapura who lived with us for many years, until she fell off a Jack tree while on leave at home. She thankfully recovered, but her love for the bottle continues.

Presently, there is Kala, the most idiosyncratic of them all and Letchumi’s daughter. A riot around the house, she once garnished coconut chutney with sliced plums, coriander, carrot and one solitary segment of green bean. She is also of the bucket fame, when one morning a group of builders working on our house found her playing Tarzan on a bucket pulley dangling off the roof. We always laugh about that one.

The faces, the names, the stories are numerous. Enlaced but separate, filial but somehow lesser, familiar but never friends.

Within the Sri Lankan context, the relationship between the help and their employers remain as complex and blurred as that of 1960s Mississippi, albeit less about skin colour and more about class and sometimes ethnicity and the injustices, jealousy and resentment that arise from these socio-economic and cultural differences.

Two Sri Lankan writers, whose books I don’t love but certainly consider worth reading, explore the snarled threads that tie nonas, mahaththayas and babas into convoluted relationships of dominance, reciprocity and even wickedness.

In A Disobedient Girl, Ru Freeman captures the interplay between patronising generosity and resentment, between Latha, an orphan deemed to a life of perpetual servanthood , and Thara, the baby of the privileged Vithanage household.

I could not bring myself to sympathise with any of the characters, who I found to be overwhelmingly selfish. I did not care for the plot revolving around the mysterious connection between Latha and Biso, a wronged woman fleeing to safety with her children.

However,

Freeman does succeed tremendously in portraying the sexual politics and tangled struggle of human emotion seeded in the soil of class prejudice; a socio-economic terra firma that both nourishes and poisons the actions of those entrapped in inflexible social hierarchies. Freeman’s account is moving and insightful, allegorically representing relationships of servitude, upper hands and curious unspoken friendships that are all too familiar to those of us who were fed, cleaned and watched over by women and girls not much older.

Karen Roberts‘ The Lament of a Dhobi Woman is not a great piece of literary fiction by a long shot, detailing the life of Seelawathi, a village girl brought into an exploitative and demeaning equation within a Colombo household. However, what it lacks in skilled prose and plot, it somewhat makes up for in its observations on the fractured nature of Sri Lankan society.

The author positions the book as a sort of exposé ‘to shame people into changing their behaviour‘ (2010:288), which in my opinion impacts Roberts’ character development negatively, with an almost unequivocal demonisation of the proverbial ‘Colombo set’, save for the innocent untouched by the wickedness or sociality.

I suppose, the point of this post- aside from a few recommended reads- is to remember, to wonder about those very women whose lives are in most ways no different to those of the real-life Abileens and Minnys from half a century and several continents apart. They toil, raise children and be enmeshed into the most private spheres of those people who will never acknowledge them as equals.

I wonder the same thing Stockett does, the questions it never once occurred to me to ask.

“We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.” (Kathryn Stockett, The Help)