brokeback mountains out of molehills

This post might seem a bit dated by now, but I randomly came across this article in the San Francisco Chronicle the other day and it made me think. As the article exemplifies, it has become common for people to assume that males who do not want to watch the movie Brokeback Mountain are homophobic or "insecure". This is both unfair and erroneous. Has it never occurred to people like Mr. Hartlaub (the author of the piece) that there may be other reasons for some males not wanting to watch the movie than the mere fact that it has a few gay sex scenes?

Think about it. It is a 134-minute-long "tender, complex" love story directed by Ang Lee and based on an Annie Proulx story about cowboys. Now I know three things about my taste in movies: (1) tender, complex love stories, especially 134-minute-long ones, are generally insufferable (see Remains of the Day- enough said); (2) The last movie Ang Lee made was The Hulk; and (3) The Shipping News, the only other movie based on an Annie Proulx work, was boring, meandering, and pointless. Plus, I can’t even pronounce her name. All in all, I would be a complete idiot if I didn’t learn from my mistakes and still watched Brokeback Mountain, when it is a composite of all the types of movies that I just don’t enjoy.

But Brokeback Mountain isn't just a movie, it's a "phenomenon". And that is the genius of it. Making a movie seem more than what it is is a brilliant marketing tool, because it ensures that even people outside your target market will watch it in droves. Yes, many people watched Brokeback Mountain because they like movies like it. But we all know people who watched it because they felt they had to - to show themselves to be "open-minded" or whatever. That is absurd. I shouldn’t have to watch movies to be proving shit to anyone.

And it has nothing to do with the sex scenes. I admit, I (a heterosexual male) am likely to be a bit squeamish about them - I can’t help it. But I was also squeamish about the scene in American History X in which Ed Norton jams a man's head (teeth first) into the curb with his foot. I still half-close my eyes at that scene. Yet, I consider it to be a fantastic film. And what about the scene in Pulp Fiction where Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames are kidnapped, strapped up, and raped by rednecks? As far as I am concerned, that is a far more disconcerting (albeit less explicit) depiction of gay sex. Yet, there are tons of guys (myself included) who would rather watch Pulp Fiction than Brokeback Mountain.

So if you tell me, Mr. Hartlaub, that Brokeback Mountain isn’t just a gay movie, then you should be able to accept that I may still not want to watch it, for reasons other than its depictions of gay men. The fact that you are so quick to judge me for my decision says more about your insecurities than it does about mine.

where there's smoke, there's ire

Here's an article in the New York Times about how the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has been persuaded by anti-smoking groups to consider the prevalence of smoking (of tobacco) in movies when assigning ratings. That is to say, a movie that depicts no sex or violence, but merely some guys lighting cigarettes is unlikely to get a PG rating.

This is ridiculous, and it's the kind of thing that makes anti-smoking groups lose their credibility. Those who know me know that I (a non-smoker) am a proponent of the campaign to ban smoking in bars, and may wonder how this is any different. Well, it's not that I don't ever want to SEE anyone smoke, or because it may influence or tempt me, but simply because second-hand smoke bothers me personally. I shouldn't have to pay a potential health cost (however miniscule) for somebody else's (voluntary) actions.

Watching people smoke in movies, on the other hand, does NOT affect anyone directly. By upping the rating, the MPAA is merely saying that you should watch a movie in which people smoke only after you are old enough to decide whether or not to smoke yourself. If that's the case, we may as well not allow PG movies to depict drinking, driving a car, or for that matter, working for a living. Our kids, since they run out and do everything they see in movies, may become alcoholics, underage drivers, or child laborers. Or all three. In fact, we should all watch Sesame Street for the rest of our lives. That way we won't ever be exposed to anything untoward.

Strange how through all this, a movie like Home Alone will retain both its PG rating and its status as a children's classic, despite the fact that in it, we root for a child who assaults a man by hitting him in the face with a hot iron and jamming a nail through his foot.

a show by any other name

The L Word is a TV show on the Showtime network about a group of women, mostly lesbians, living in Los Angeles. It's something of a soap opera, with terrible dialogue. It does, however, contain some steamy scenes that make it mildly bearable. But before all you pervs who found this blog through weird searches get all excited, that's not what this post is about.

The show is typical of Showtime's repertoire, which often brings into the spotlight issues that many are not comfortable with. The issue in this case is: lesbians. The show has a number of items on its agenda: Making people talk about lesbians; Asking questions like 'What does it mean to be a lesbian in America in 2007?' And most importantly, pointing out that apart from the way they have sex (which is totally hot), lesbians are just like the rest of us.

All that is fair enough. But I have a problem with the name. I'll explain. The show is about a group of women. The bigger issues are dealt with through the women's stories, but for the most part it's a soap opera about these characters, who are individuals in their own right. Calling it "The L Word" implies that it is a show about lesbians that happen to be these characters, rather than one about these characters who happen to be lesbians. In other words, they are implying that this is a show that represents not these lesbians, but all lesbians. It's like doing a show about a group of black people and calling it "Black People." The "L Word" is, after all, just an 'edgy' way of saying "Lesbians."

I understand that this is the first big show about lesbians, and therefore groundbreaking. But what about the second show about lesbians in, say, 2012? Will it just be called "The L Word 2"? I also understand that many lesbians are proud of the show for bringing their lifestyles into the mainstream. And they should be. But part of bringing something that others consider alternative into the mainstream is to not put a label on it that says "ALTERNATIVE" in big block letters.

adnan siddiqi is a choot

Some of you may have noticed that I cross-post my cricket posts on cricket.bloggers.pk, a sort of combined forum for Pakistani cricket bloggers to get better outreach for their posts.

Well, I recently posted michael holding is a choot there, and here is a comment I received from a fellow named Adnan Siddiqi.

"Your voice could be heard if you had no't (sp) prefered (sp) to choose censored words. I hope you can make a difference between a personal blog and a collabrative (sp) forum?

thanks"

First of all, I didn't prefer to choose "censored" words. No words in my post were censored. Mr. Siddiqi would like for some of them to have been, but they were not.

In any case, I recently wrote about the differences between the real argument for free speech and the not-so-important argument about being able to do whatever you want for no reason whatsoever. Well, here's an example of the former.

I am not asking Mr. Siddiqi to read my articles, and I am not certainly not asking his opinion on them. God knows I have a painful time trudging through his overlong posts to edit them. He does, however, get 100 times the hits I do, so he's probably doing something right... But that's not the point.

I also noticed that he has a link on his blogroll to a site called "Fucked Company." I can only assume he endorses this site. So my guess is that Mr. Siddiqi has one of two problems:

1. It is fine to cuss in English, but the word 'choot' is particularly offensive.

2. There is a difference between posting on billu.net and cricket.bloggers.pk.

Of course, he mentions that it's the latter, but I do have a sneaking suspicion that if I had merely substituted for an English term (say, 'pussy'), it would not be quite as much of a problem. In fact, I have written some pretty nasty things in English on cricket.bloggers.pk that seem to have gone unnoticed, which is a particularly disturbing double standard.

As for the second point, I will admit that for a while I was hesitant to post darrell hair is a choot pt. 2 in its entirety on cricket.bloggers.pk, but more out of respect for the creator of the site (Teeth Maestro) than anything else. But Mr. Maestro went on to express disappointment that I had censored the post, since he is a true champion for free speech. Add to this the fact that I am one of the three official site editors, and I set about the task of expressing my opinions in most unbridled fashion.

It may be a collaborative forum, but it is still a forum for free expression, and I should be able to use whatever words I wish, as long as I talk about cricket. That's what makes it interesting. If everyone expressed their thoughts in a predetermined template, there wouldn't be much point in collaborating, would there?

"Don't block the blog" is the word on the street among Pakistani bloggers. Well, don't temper the blog either, I say. Otherwise everyone's blogs will start sounding like tepid, watered down drivel...

every f%#$ing thing is not censorship

Here's an interesting piece in the New York Times. Basically, students at Middlebury College have been told they can no longer cite Wikipedia as a source in History papers. For some reason this has created a big furor.

Apparently this article has been making the rounds, and a lot of campuses are starting to talk seriously about the issue. As usual, the New York Times has painted the issue in broad black and white strokes along the lines of: "Some professors are so old school they want to ban laptops altogether, and others so hip they have robots for TAs."

But jokes aside, it does seem as if a lot of students are very vociferously against any such policy. The article cites one writer in the Middlebury Campus in particular who says that the ban heralds "the beginnings of censorship."

Of course, as enlightened semi-divine beings, we all have a problem with this on a very visceral level. We like to say things like: "Censorship and academia are mutually exclusive," "Censorship is modern fascism," and other similarly wordy rhetoric that doesn't actually mean shit.

How is it censorship for a professor to say that a student can't cite bloody Wikipedia as a source in an academic paper? If you want to cite lyrics from Smash Mouth's "Can't Get Enough of You Baby" in an Economics paper about supply shortages, and your professor says you can't, is that censorship too?

No matter how much we may hate to admit it, an academic environment is actually pretty regulated. If it weren't, we wouldn't learn anything. Everything doesn't have to be free all the time. Talking about free speech just for the hell of it only detracts from the real (and incredibly important) argument for freedom of speech.

Of course, if you do want free expression, then everyone should have the right to exercise it. So how's this? You are free to cite Wikipedia to your heart's content... and your professor is free to flunk your ass out of school.

india killed the video star

A while ago, Omar put up this post arguing that the ban on Indian movies in Pakistan will inhibit the Pakistani film industry from improving itself. He said that the lack of competition would allow the Pakistani industry to become complacent and settle for mediocrity.

Dog considers himself a die-hard 'liberal', so when he did this, I had to explain to him that it was, in fact, a fiscally conservative argument. A liberal would have wanted to protect the Pakistani film industry until it became good enough to compete in the global marketplace.

In general, my stand on this has veered tentatively on the side of protectionism. But that's not what this post is about. After all, loyal readers will know that tentativeness doesn't form the basis of too many posts here on billu.net.

What I would like to do, however, is draw some comparisons to television. A similar ban was placed some 3-4 years ago on Indian TV stations. Prior to this ban, there were only 2-3 Pakistani channels worth mentioning, and the only real attempt to go global was by broadcasting PTV to the UK and US and calling it “PTV World.” Other than that, the status quo had existed unchanged for a good 10-12 years. Meanwhile, Indian television was pouring into every middle-class Pakistani home.

Since the ban, no less than 62 privately-owned stations have emerged in Pakistan, with plans for another 9 by the end of the year. Coincidence? I think not.

There are, in fact, two reasons for this boom. The first is that the government has become a lot more tolerant of free speech than it once was. The second is that the prominence of Indian TV stations had made Pakistanis accustomed to cable television as a source of entertainment. Once these stations were removed, a concerted effort was made to replace them with local alternatives.

So protectionism, in a sense, led to the current media boom in Pakistan. But not exactly. It was not the banning of Indian stations per se that caused the change. Instead, it was the application of the ban after having grown used to the high quality product that generally accompanies global competition.

So the question is, could the same idea work for the Pakistani film industry? Possibly, but there are two very important differences. First, film and television are two very different products. A movie in the theater needs to capture the viewer's attention for a sustained period of time. Thus, Pakistani films would have to be of a very high caliber in order to compete with Bollywood's high budget extravaganzas. Television, on the other hand, succeeds in part because it is consumed in bulk. Because there are so many stations, it is possible to keep oneself entertained by switching between them. The quality of each station need not be particularly high, as long as it is mildly entertaining for short periods of time.

Second, despite the ban on Indian movies, there is a strong, and quite open, black market that deals in them. This makes it possible for the banned product to make it to Pakistani homes anyway, and neutralizes whatever protectionist effect the ban may have had.

In other words, the black market has made it so that the market is essentially already open. So, just like television a few years ago, Pakistan has grown accustomed to Indian movies as a source of entertainment. Point being, if the black market is shut down, then the dearth of quality films will force the Pakistani film industry to offer an alternative. Movies may be harder to make than TV shows, but if the growing professionalism of the media in Pakistan is any indicator, there should be no dearth of high quality, creative, and talented individuals to fill the void.

Of course, nobody is likely to take any sort of initiative on moving any of this forward. That’s the kind of thing that only happens in movies.

pushing the envelope

Sacha Baron Cohen, the guy who does Ali G and Borat, is selling out.

First, he has started to appear on talk shows to promote his show, when earlier he would refuse to be seen in public out of character. When this first started to happen, I thought, well, enough people are in on the joke now that it's okay. But I still feel he could have kept his integrity by staying out of the public eye.

Second, he is taking this whole Borat thing a bit too far. Basically his Borat act involves saying horrible things, racist and otherwise, while pretending to be a Kazakhi television reporter. When it started, it was a nuanced and deftly constructed act, in which he would use people's ignorance against them by pretending to be completely out of sync with civil society, and in doing so bring out their own lack of civility. Kazakhstan at the time was just a symbol, representing a place about which most Westerners are completely ignorant, to the point where they could expect anything from someone who was from such a place.

This involved him making fun of many races, but also of Kazakhstan itself. Needless to say, everyone got offended, but none moreso than the Kazakhs themselves, who started having to defend their own traditions and decrying what was being said about them. At this point, Cohen had two options: 1. to ignore the Kazakh response, and 2. to retatliate. Unfortunately, he chose the second. So instead of being a nuanced attack on people's ignorance, it became an all out schoolyard brawl with the Kazakh authorities.

The latest episode in the saga involves him parading outside the Kazakh embassy maintaing that despite what the Kazakh embassy might try to tell you, rape and ping pong ARE in fact the two favorite pastimes of Kazakhstan.

It is childish and mean. It is irresponsible, and it is unnecessary. Media is powerful, and he should know how badly his words can hurt the image of a country. If his idea is to manufacture high-brow comedy then he shouldn't assume everyone will get it. And if they don't he shouldn' lash out at them.

Needless to say, I still think he is a genius, and the new Borat movie will definitely be worth a watch. But the joke is starting to go sour now. Let's hope it doesn't start to stink anytime soon.