Saturday, December 20, 2014

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.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

What does the blood not tell you?



This is a classroom, dead, for army kids
Does the blood not tell you? 

The army is a 'repressive state apparatus'
Doesn't the blood tell you?

They've inherited their original army sin
What does the blood not tell you?

 No laces to tie in Van Gogh's shoes
Whether the blood tells you!

 A semblance of paradise in this room
Does the blood tell you?

 Buy an afterlife by killing children
Does the blood not tell you? 

Plundered chairs in a 'theatre of cruelty'? 
Is that what the blood tells you? 

Why does the floor look like the cushions? 
Does the blood tell you? 

Could we zoom in and see what book that might be? 
Does the blood allow you? 

The school is an 'ideological state apparatus'
Is that what the blood tells you? 

When is the cleaner coming? 
Who took that photo?
 Who is it that writes this poem?
Does the blood not ask you? 

The blood is 'lovely, dark and deep' with no 'promises to keep'
It flows, binds and unbinds  
That old man had too much blood and the military kids have too little!

They kill, we kill back and they in turn kill back again but for what?
For death and a possibly good life after death which remains impossible


There is no good life after death
There is no life after death
There is no world after death
There is nothing after death 

Doesn't the blood not tell you? 


[For the hundreds of army children who were brutally killed in Peshawar, Pakistan by Taliban on 16 December 2014 ]