my thoughts today: this is so scripted it isn’t even corny. escalating violence in order to provoke a reaction then exaggerating that reaction in order to simulate a state of war. one of the best equipped armies in the world funded by the only super power in the world vs a besieged civilian population on a minimum calorie diet for the last 6 yrs? u must be kidding me. hysterical israeli woman coddled by IDF soldier vs men squeezing the charred remains of their children against their bodies? seriously? i want to cry and puke at the same time. what a fucked up world we live in.
Category: self-authored
my new collage series “this heirloom” on show at the little cafe, starting nov 10th
this is the first collage in the new series inspired by my filmwork on the partition of india and by the idea of bearing witness as a dynamic act. that’s my maternal grandfather in the foreground. he went to aligarh university (in uttar pradesh, india). he spoke fluent urdu, english and sanskrit. he was a lawyer, an excellent tennis player and a soccer referee. altho he and his family survived partition, he died soon after moving to pakistan. maybe he couldn’t recover from the trauma and dislocation. i never knew him. i’ve seated him in front of delhi gate in lahore, which is one of the doorways to the walled city. it’s 1946. my grandfather is my connection to the turbulent history of the indian subcontinent. what he witnessed binds us together. agha shahid ali talks about this inextricable bond in his poem “snowmen.” his ancestors came from the himalayas.
“This heirloom,
his skeleton under my skin, passed
from son to grandson,
generations of snowmen on my back.
They tap every year on my window,
their voices hushed to ice.”
another screening of the muslims i know
just came back from a screening of “the muslims i know” at an OASIS community class called “the descendants of abraham.” the class is taught by jewish, christian and muslim instructors. extremely excited that they’ve been using my film in their introductory class for the last 3 yrs. a lady asked me a question that bothered me. i tried to stay calm but i might have seemed a bit cold. she said that the muslims portrayed in the film are well-to-do professionals. they r not the ones she’s worried about. she’s worried about the less well-off muslims who might send their kids to madrassas and teach them to hate others. ok. so my answer: first of all, the film is called the muslims i know. i refuse to stand up and pretend to speak for all muslims. the media do that. i don’t want to fall into that trap. i will not generalize. second, it’s interesting how people are uncomfortable with a certain “face” of islam. muslim doctors, lawyers and academics do exist. get over it. third, this connection between socio-economic class and violence is v disturbing. not only is that connection made with reference to muslims but also our own local communities, where poor inner-city neighborhoods are presumed to be violent as if, for some reason, they don’t share our civilized “values”. fourth, as one of the instructors added, violence is not just about shooting people, it’s also about enticing someone to take out a mortgage they can’t afford, foreclose their home and kick their family out on the street. pray, which socio-economic class perpetrates that kind of violence, which destroys the lives of many more people? finally, on the teaching of hate: how would u describe going to war with the second poorest country in the world, where most kids die of malnutrition, not extremism? who’s being taught to hate whom?
melancholia by lars von trier
melancholia: sadness, lugubriousness, moroseness, wistfulness.
“an oppressive sorrow, which, to wit, so weighs upon man’s mind, that he wants to do nothing.” (thomas aquinas)
“the height of joy, the moment when the world can improve no further, is both the end of joy and the beginning of melancholy.” (christopher john murray)
“profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, and inhibition of all activity” (sigmund freud)
watched lars von trier’s “melancholia” and liked it. what a stunning idea to depict melancholia as an actual planet, hidden behind the sun, which is about to crash into earth and annihilate all life. the film is suffused with cosmic imagery and the music of wagner. moonlit landscapes are bathed in blue light. startled birds take flight in a flurry of feathers and precipitate snow flakes. even family scenes emit the heightened, almost grotesque, drama of myths. as the end of the world nears, melancholia seems to make much more sense – perhaps it’s the longer view of life and our role in the universe. masterful performance by kirsten dunst.
freud’s last session at geva theatre
went to see “freud’s last session” yesterday. written by mark st germain, the play is based on an imaginary meeting between freud and c.s. lewis. lewis is a young professor at oxford. freud is in his 80s and dying of cancer. england is about to launch into the second world war. they talk about the existence of god with intellectual vigor and enthusiasm (freud is a committed atheist while lewis has just converted to christianity), they parse reason as opposed to emotion, they psychoanalyze each other, they surprise each other by broaching the subject of sex at the tail end of their meeting. they realize the importance of humor in helping us overcome horror and they use it often in their successive verbal jousts. the play is witty and engaging. it was brilliantly acted by kenneth tigar (sigmund freud) and ron menzel (c.s. lewis), and directed by skip greer.
malala yousafzai
the attack on 14 year old malala yousafzai by a criminal gang in swat is repulsive. it’s even more repulsive that the pakistani govt will be incapable of apprehending the perpetrators and bringing them to justice. there is no accountability or justice at any level of society, anyway. do we know the names of 14 year old girls (or the names of their mothers or fathers or baby brothers) who are incinerated by drones – “carbonized bodies, burned so fully they could be identified by legs and hands alone, the bystanders sent flying like dolls through the air to break, with shattered bones and sometimes fatal brain injuries, upon walls and stone” (in kathy kelly’s words). all dead children are not equal. it makes my blood boil when people use malala’s horrific ordeal to justify america’s drone warfare. if the “militants” (that mysterious designation reserved for the exclusive use of president obama and his henchmen) are worth going after, at the cost of other lives, then let that sacrifice be yours and your family’s, not that of the people of waziristan.
Women Hurting Women
another misguided, “topsy-turvy” piece from kristof. micro-finance is NOT what it’s made out to be in western media. have u read about india’s micro-finance suicide epidemic? get real dude.
typical nyt reporting – we know what’s best for u and by god, we’ll shove it down ur throat. he doesn’t even mention how micro-finance, for the most part, has enslaved women into a never-ending cycle of debt, not liberated them.
he uses words like “scorched-earth offensive” to describe hasina’s “persecution” of yunus. the cia backed a scorched earth campaign in guatemala in which more than 400 villages were destroyed, 150,000 people killed and one million displaced. women were raped as a deliberate policy – in order to decimate guatemalan society. this horrible legacy still haunts guatemala, where the murder and rape of women remains incredibly well-entrenched. extremely offensive for kristof to make such a comparison, esp since he’s a self-appointed defender of women’s rights all over the world.
his explanation of why hasina might be going after yunus: “One theory is that she is paranoid and sees Yunus as a threat, especially since he made an abortive effort to enter politics in 2007. Another theory is that she is envious of his Nobel Peace Prize and resentful of his global renown.” lol. yeah, she’s also emotionally unstable and suffers from frequent bouts of hysteria. and she keeps her smelling salts handy in case she’s overwhelmed by fainting spells. seriously.
kristof’s article here and more about india’s micro-finance suicide epidemic here.
for sabiha phuppo
i will miss sabiha phuppo – her wit, her elegance, her wonderful kindness. only a woman of her confidence and independent mind could have raised daughters like asma jahangir and hina jilani. i gravitated towards her lively, intelligent presence as soon as i married into the family and things didn’t change over the next 20 years. rest in peace dear phuppo. it feels like the end of an era. i know many many will miss u here, and in ur beautiful city of lahore.
Juan Cole: Muslims are no Different, or Why Bill Maher’s Blood Libel is Bigotry
“The touchiness of Muslims about assaults on the Prophet Muhammad is in part rooted in centuries of Western colonialism and neo-colonialism during which their religion was routinely denounced as barbaric by the people ruling and lording it over them.” — this is not just history but also v relevant today. qurans have been burned by u.s. soldiers and flushed down toilets by u.s. interrogators in the present war on terror. also, it would be interesting to flip this story. what if muslim americans went around town burning the bible publicly and calling jesus names? what if palestinians made a film about moses in which he was having some non-kosher sex? how would evangelical christians react to that? or jewish settlers? after all they r part of the “civilized” free-speech-loving west. of course, i’m not advocating the making of hateful films. i’m proposing a theoretical argument where we switch the religions of the people involved and imagine how things would roll. not so smoothly i predict. more here.
Power of passion
i’ve always found the pakistani newspaper “dawn” to be disturbing in its greedy embrace of american imperialism. now i’m more sure than ever that dawn is just a sad pakistani version of the NYT. i commented on this article “power of passion” by dawn’s correspondent in brussels. her writing lacks context and i tried to provide that in my comment. interestingly enough, even tho the editors felt comfortable publishing all the comments u see under the article, they chose not to publish mine. here it is anyway.
…
it would help not to talk about a film only. there is always more context, more historical continuity than what western media will concede. the invasion and decades long occupation of muslim countries matters. the detention w/o trial and torture of muslim bodies matters. the film is just the last straw, the last insult but it’s not the whole story. it’s “the playground bully calling your mother a slut after already breaking your jaw, and then wondering why you can’t take a joke” as michael muhammad knight said. what about the 8 afghan women who were recently killed in a US-NATO airstrike? what kind of “rage” was that? christian? western? imperialist? it’s not a level playing field – some violence is more normalized than other. also, there is a strong distinction b/w free speech and hate speech. the denigration of a group of people on the basis of their religion and ethnicity is not protected by law. the campaign to dehumanize muslims is not random – it’s not the work of independent artists or political activists. it’s coming from a well-established network that finances people like pamela geller and daniel pipes and funds ads such as the ones that ran on san francisco buses which said: “in any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man” followed by “support israel. defeat jihad.” so these things go a bit deeper than “the film that roiled muslims.” max blumenthal has exposed many of these connections in his incredible work. everyone should check it out here.
TERRA BLIGHT trailer
watched “terra blight” today, at the greentopia film festival. it’s an extremely informative documentary about how e-waste (e.g. most of the 100 million computers discarded each year in the u.s. alone) is being shipped to developing countries like ghana where it is poisoning people and the environment. the sad part is that this e-waste is completely reclyclable. the cost of the reclycled materials is a fraction of the cost of mining those same raw materials from scratch. yet we continue to dump our toxic waste on poor countries. since i just watched “detropia” i couldn’t help thinking why detroit cannot become the capital of america’s recycling? the city’s already set up for manufacturing. why not make it the center of disassembling? it’s certainly more sustainable.
Detropia – Official Trailer
watched “detropia” today at the greentopia film festival. a lesson in filmmaking. by constructing a gradual, deliberate visual tapestry of the city of detroit as it stands today, accompanied by a compelling musical score, the filmmakers capture the saga of its economic devastation in an emotive, visceral way. the dialogue is spare and the facts of detroit’s prolonged recession terse. we are introduced to a few survivors and their commentary is interlaced with this visual weaving of a city’s shifting reality. the message is powerful. what’s happened to detroit is coming to the rest of america. i would go further – detroit embodies the future of capitalism. it’s coming to most of us.
Chasing Ice OFFICIAL TRAILER
watched “chasing ice” at the greentopia film festival yesterday. gorgeous, surreal cinematography. disturbing message about global warming, presented with undeniable visual evidence. must see for all citizens of the globe, esp those who contribute most to climate change. we’re close to an irreversible tipping point.
colorado shooting – discussion on NPR
heard this ridiculous debate on NPR about how people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (like james holmes) cannot have their gun rights revoked just because they could possibly pose a threat to the public. a couple of points about that: (1) maybe we should revisit the whole idea of gun “rights” before we blame everything on mental illness (2) brown people with muslim names get more than their gun rights revoked on a daily basis – they get solitary confinement for possible future misdeeds. so what rights? and for whom?
Certified Copy
watched abbas kiarostami’s “certified copy” and loved it. it’s an intellectual and visual treat (set in tuscany, it’s about art and authenticity, love and marriage, illusion and reality) and yes, juliette binoche is one of the most stunning women on earth. more about the film, including a clip, here.