COMMENT PPL!!!!

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P.S.: Do I need to be more specific? ;P

Indian Media

Indian Media

It is only natural to find yourself associating in your mind Indian culture with the indian media. Whether it's gender roles or values, the media constructs the image and ideology of our country, and we draw from its portrayals heavily. Subconsciously, we're molded to a large extent in our thinking and attitudes by the media. The indian media can and is doing alot to promote our culture, which is wat it is essentially supposed to do. The danger in all this is that the age of information and entertainment is still relatively new, and we overlook that most of the portrayals are heavily sensationalized and embellished. Experts call it passive vs. active processing of information.

Indian soap operas
Mainstream Indian soap operas today are mostly quite regressive. On the one hand they show polygamy, extra marital affairs and devilish, scheming characters in the guise of modernism and then the same over decked women follow all the malpractices of our culture. A smart woman with a definite agenda,Ekta Kapoor consistently strikes a chord with viewers across the subcontinent. She says "This is real India, not the India we see from Malabar Hills". Most households are undoubtedly big on the whole Hindi serial craze. While media representations of values and sex roles continue to change and evolve over the years, we tune ourselves to its variations conveniently.

News

Media's penchant for sensationalism is by no means a new phenomenon. Ever since tabloids were first published in the U.K. sensationalizing news events, publishing unverified reports, gossip columns and celebrity news, became a part of the media. However, they never posed a serious threat to mainstream newspaper because the readers were aware of the fact that tabloids had more to do with entertainment than serious journalism. Tabloid journalism never gained a similar foothold in India in the first fifty years of independence, conservative Indian society did not allow the same level of openness and irreverence that is so essential in tabloid journalism. Even in the post- liberalization era tabloid journalism was not successful except for national dailies publishing entertainment news and celebrity gossip in what is now popularly called page 3 news. However, with the advent of satellite television tabloid journalism in India has found a new face in Hindi and vernacular news media especially the visual media. It soon degenerated into something which is yet to be defined.

News channels again are a mixed lot. There are channels that have encouraged people to stand up for their own rights. Even casual stances are directed towards creating a bias and influencing opinions. They have helped solve many long standing court cases (Jessica Lal and Nitesh Kataria cases), but the thing to be considered is the transmogrification of news channels into a sensational, televised tabloid that seeks and breeds on lurid topics.
A growing and potentially harmful trend in the Indian media is glamorization of supernaturalism and occult. The line demarcating superstition from supernaturalism is too fine, if any group of professionals should stay away from this realm then it is undoubtedly the group of tabloid journalists. Predictions based on Sun Signs and Moon Signs are a regular feature in tabloids world over but Indian news channels have taken this trend to a new level.
India is being increasingly seen by the rest of the world as a rapidly developing powerhouse of science and technology but most of the popular news channels not only ignore the country’s scientific achievement but also reinforce superstition and regressive mindset. For instance, the recent successful launch of PSLV hardly got any coverage when compared to exclusive programmes on fortune-telling methods.

Movies

We've been subjected to regular pot boilers for decades. Moving away from these, movies like 'Life in a metro' and 'Taare zameen par' that are treading new grounds by blending modernity with traditionalism are now entering mainstream cinema.


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Contemporary ads raise pertinent questions about perspectives on gender in media representations of men and women. Men in ads are being presented in a much more macho-dominant manner than they were before.
On the other hand, while sports and athletics sported more men than women in the past in India and in the West, today however, real achievers like Sania Mirza have changed all that. Yet, women do not appear in ads for 'solid' products such as steel and cement and even if they do, they are sidetracked within the script. So have male and female roles in Indian ads changed over the past decade? Are men more frequently visible in Indian ads than they were, say, ten years ago? Have the images of men and women in ads softened over time, blurring the stereotypes, or have they hardened?
There is an increased appearance of men in Indian ads. This may be attributable to a number of factors. First, India is one of the fastest growing markets for consumer durables and several "male-oriented" products such as insurance, medical, industrial, and technology-related products. Because men are more often considered to be the primary decision makers for such products, the increase is understandable. Second, the number of ads in business and general interest magazines in India has increased tremendously while the number in women's magazines has not. Both of these factors could have led to an increase in the number of men appearing in Indian ads.

Some of the common stereotypical portrayals seem less prevalent in Indian ads. For example, unlike in British magazine ads, women in Indian magazine ads were more likely to be portrayed in "neutral/other" ways and less likely to be portrayed as sex objects. Women modelling for mobile phones, cars and two-wheelers, painkillers, and as protagonists carry neutral portrayals. Women were also less likely to be portrayed in "dependency" roles in Indian ads than in British ads. It is noteworthy that these results are similar to those found in two other Asian countries--Korea and Japan--where, again, females were less likely to be portrayed in very negative stereotypical ways than in western nations.

Book Review

RK Narayan is better known for his fiction that portrays life in the fictional town of Malgudi, but his essays are as delightful as any of his novels. The Writerly Life is a collection of short essays written by Narayan as a weekly contribution to The Hindu, longer essays that dwell for the most part on the cultural ambiguities that persist in India, and his jottings during his travels to America.

Subtly humorous takes on everyday objects and occurrences such as crowds, noises, allergies, headaches, and coffee – for which Narayan extols his love consistently – form the major part of the first section. The section ends with a recollection of a nightmare in which he dreams of writers and their stories being placed under the purview of a “controller of stories”.

The essays that form ‘My Dateless Diary’ first formed daily entries in Narayan’s journal when he first went to the USA in 1956. Once again, these essays begin with coffee. The time-consuming, perfectionist approach to making coffee in his hometown, Mysore, seems to him a far cry from the crisp “black or white” coffee offered by cafeterias in the USA. Another hilarious essay details his encounter with two thieves who try to ambush him.

The third section contains longer essays that take up various aspects of post-independence life in India, while the last section deals with “The Writerly Life”. In particular, his observations on writing in English as a subcontinental writer are interesting.

RK Narayan continues to be one of the best-loved and most read authors in the subcontinent; yet, his modesty and irreverence have never deserted him. This is what makes reading A Writerly Life an absolute treat.

Notes: 1. Someone please put it in the correct format, or tell me what the format we're using is.

2. Word count is 279 words.

Lead Crisis!

What's happening with the lead? Is anyone actually working on it? Please update. In the bleakest scenario, I've got a back-up article which might be a feeble candidate. But, it will need a considerable amount of brushing up by someone. I'd much sooner choose a new article if it's in the process.

Film Festival Article

Hmm........ things are a bit quiet here. So, here's my article on the German Film Week. Do comment.

DETACHED FROM THE PAST



The annual German Film Week, jointly hosted by Max Mueller Bhawan and Suchitra Film Society was held from August 8 – 14 at Lavanya Theatre, Bangalore. Keeping up with tradition, this year’s festival featured a mix of award-winning films, relatively recent features and children’s films.


Since the era of New German Cinema, cinema in Germany has suffered through an extended period of steady decline, at least from the international perspective. However, there has been a revival of sorts since the late nineties with the meteoric success of ‘Run, Lola Run’, followed by a string of internationally acclaimed films. Leading this trend of revival in the global setup, are directors like Tom Tykwer, Hans-Christian Schmid and Fatih Akin to name a few.


Following in this upbeat tone, this year’s festival showcased a selection of German films in the new millennium. What sets apart these films from their venerated predecessors is a conscious effort to distance themselves from the clutches of dominant history and offer spectators a feel of the present life in post-war Germany. Though films like ‘Gespenster’ and ‘Warchild’ are melodramatic narratives that dwell on the human cost of war, most films showcased here tend to present it simply as a factual background.


One such film offering a fresh perspective of a no-strings attached German life is Rosenmuller’s ‘Grave Decisions’. It follows the adventures of 8 year old Sebastian who believes he is a criminal for ‘murdering’ his mother and other childish misdeeds. He wants to be immortal to evade hell and also tries to ‘put things right’ in his family. What follows is a hilarious catastrophe disrupting the whole town, in which fantasies colour perfectly ordinary events to charming mysteries and vice versa.


The highlight of the festival however, was the inaugural film ‘Requiem’. Director Hans-Christian Schmid’s second film is based on the true story of Anneliese Michel, a German student who died after an exorcism ritual. Sensational as the subject might appear to audiences suited to the regular fare of ‘The Exorcist’ or ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’, this film has a different tale to relate. Schmid adamantly refuses to take sides between religion and science right till the end. Instead, he simply chooses to look at the story through the eyes of the protagonist herself. The events are narrated in a pseudo-documentary style with remarkable self-restraint. Schmid seems to imitate Bressonian techniques and refuses to make use of the huge dramatic potential of the narrative. Sandra Huller is commendable in the role of Michaela Klinger, a devout Catholic student, who simply tries to be a 21 year old despite of her trials, but ultimately succumbs to faith. The success of Requiem perhaps lies in that it doesn’t herald the triumph of religion over science despite of its provocative plot. It simply records the life of a protagonist who makes a personal choice in having faith in religion over science to solve her existential problem. Schmid somehow manages to extricate the phenomenon from its supernatural overtones and make it seem plausible in reality. A refreshingly different perspective.


Fatih Akin’s much feted ‘The Edge of Heaven’ fails to live up to the expectations created by his earlier films, though. As is prominent in Akin’s oeuvre, this film too deals with multiple plot lines and the dualisms of an immigrant experience. However, this experience is only very distantly related to the political past. The protagonists seem to have accepted their situations more as a result of their immediate present and personal choices. However, the characters themselves are sketchy and broadly divided into white and black (who transform). But, apart from employing clichéd plot lines that only pretend to be different at first, the film seems to sink into the trap of the emotional power of its own narrative, that it brilliantly avoids for the first 20 minutes. The end result is yet another ‘message film’ which focuses on the human cost of turbulent times.


‘Four Minutes’ is another much applauded feature in the international circuit. Mainly because of the plot and the stereotyped protagonists, this film is a bit reminiscent of the Amitabh-starrer ‘Black’. Now this film isn’t half as obscenely shrill as Black. But, except for a few twists in the tedious plot and an acceptable performance by Monica Bleibtreu, this film is simply another ‘run-of-the-mill’ story of championing adversities. However, ‘Four Minutes’ too uses historical background to account for the miserable life of one of its main protagonist.


The German Film Week seems to have caught a snap of a slow transition in German cinema. A cultural phase that seems to be struggling to come out of the ‘guilt syndrome’ and dominant political/historical background….. To re-invent itself in the present times.

A lil' something

Maybe we could incorporate something of this??

Several television stations in Afghanistan have ignored a government ban on the broadcasting of Indian soap operas.

The authorities have said the broadcasts are in conflict with the country's Islamic values.

The ban came into force on Monday night, but some private television stations have continued to show the popular programmes.

The government says that infringements of the ban will result in punishment.

Conservative Muslim clerics in the country argue that the serials, which show dramatic and passionate love stories featuring the elite of Bombay, are immoral.

Hello!

Hi, everyone. I thought it'd be easier for us to update each other of the progress on the lab journal if we use a blog. Perfectionism is a loooooong word. But, we can atleast try to strive towards it. Let's start off, then!