On PK 2014 film by Rajkumar Hirani

Alien-ation/ Alie-nation of Religion:

PK is a typical Raju Hirani enterprise:- didactic, simple, contrived, entertaining and humanitarian...complex if not profound subtexts to do with language, truth and lies and so on....an interesting marriage of sci-fi with social satire...a good and lovable Amir Khan...though Bollywoodized, a relevant film in our dark times of increasing religious intolerance and dangerous stereotyping. 

Thought-points on PK:---

1. You need language to lie.

2. There is thought and thought reading without language.

3. Touch is the foundation of ethical encounter: a haptic ethic

4. God is an idiom of fantasy.

5. Money is only a paper with picture on it.

6. Skin with its potential racial profiling is simply a "fashion".

7. PK is a name floating between languages.

8. De-familiarization (alien-ation) creates ignorance and generates new myths such as PK's "dancing car" theory or the "wrong number".

9. The popular discourse needs a coinage/formula/mantra/letter such as "all is well" "wrong number", "gandhigiri" which will crystalize the whole discourse instantly and quilt it. This letter will capture the mass with the power of a metaphor.

10. Religion as an institutional practice bases itself on an omnipotent notion of man which can be deflected by 'planetarity'. PK is quite exactly a figure of that critical planetarity c.f. Amir Khan's response to the God-man in the television interview.

11. The talismanic object of religion comes from outer space. It's an object to communicate with the cosmic Other who isn't God but other human species living in a different planet. This is a problematic deconstructive moment because it risks replacing the transcendental Other (God) with yet another species-image of man. And if that's the case, there is a residue of the same humanistic cult of man here which the film otherwise attempts to debunk with its critique of religion.

12. The previous point demands a question: is God an alien?

13. Is TV the new God or a new God?

14. The loss of the communicating object which leads to PK's homelessness (with all connotations of the "unheimlich") on earth is strikingly supplemented by a radio/transistor which is another kind of communication: with old films and later on with the beloved's voice. The use of retro-technology (cassettes) is notable here.