CM Gets It Right, Reporter Doesn't

The excitement of the night of 7 September 2008 was such that I thought I wouldn't be able to go to sleep! Mamata Banerjee, inspite of the Left Front and the right-wing Bengal media's attempt to present her as "mad, bad and dangerous to know" (to use a phrase from another era used for another person in another country!) managed to pull off a spectacular triumph by forcing the ludicrously arrogant Left Front Govt. to capitulate and bow down to most of her demands. This whole Singur-Nandigram controversy has been fascinating for the clarity with which the CPI(M) kept consolidating its newfound position as the bosom friend of the capitalist and the sworn enemy of the farmer! Not surprisingly, a section of the media is very pleased with the Communist Party's newfound love of capitalism and have happily decided to vilify anyone who gets in the way of no-holds-barred money-making. Mamata Banerjee is such an easy target! Lacking as she is in English, in sophistication, in "class" she ready material for snobbish ridicule! Recently she was compared to the Roman Emperor Nero!! Her painting was declared equivalent to Nero's fiddling! So far so acceptable, because this comparison did not pretend to be a report, but merely a childish comparison! What stunned me was a report in Monday's press, of Sunday night's press conference at Raj Bhavan. In one newspaper, the reporter describes the scene thus: "A little after 10:30, when the talks ended, [Chief Minister] Bhattacharjee was a picture of chivalry as he and Mamata followed governor Gopalkrisha Gandhi to Raj Bhavan's Marble Hall to face the media."
""You get on the dias first," the chief minister said, and she did." Well, as the first image in this blog will tell you, it was the CM who was first up on the dias (he can be seen standing to the left of the Governor). Even after he has taken his position beside the Governor, Mamata Banerjee is still climbing the steps. I saw this bit of the drama over and over again so I know what happened. The CM did indeed ask Mamata B. to get on the dias first, but she firmly asked him to do so, repeating the "request" once! He sheepishly climbed up, followed by Partho Chatterjee in the green kurta and then the lady herself! CM got it right. He knew who was really wearing the dhoti last night. He did as Mamata B asked him to do. Our reporter probably had his eye play a trick on him. He blissfully reversed the order in which the CM and the "Mad Lady" got on the dias! Our reporter also does not realize that "chivalry" is a deeply patriarchal, patronising code of conduct towards the female and not really something to applaud anyone for, even if that anyone is a Capitalist-Communist Chief Minister of a Capitalist-Communist state so beloved of the capitalist media!

How courageous!

I'm back to blogging after a long time, because I have once again found a few things to write about. This extraordinary interview came to my notice recently. Published in The Times of India, Calcutta edition on 3 September 2008, this is an interview with starlet Anuj Swahney. It is fantastic how homophobic we can be even when we try to be gloriously liberated! Of all the things that Swahney talks about in the admittedly otherwise-insipid interview the newspaper thought it best to headline the story with a throw-away comment by our two-bit actor that he is open (mind, meet gutter!) to playing a gay character. Like that is the final frontier! The ultimate taboo! Child-molester? No problem! Drug-dealer? No big deal! Terrorist? Why not? Serial killer? Sure! Gay? Ermmmmm..... Let me get back to you about it!! Anuj may not be aware that at the last count at least ten two-bit actors like him have already played gay characters and the list is set to grow with Bobby Deol playing one in the film Dostana whose music will be released at the end of this month and which itself will (ahem!) open nationwide on 14th November! Soon to be released in the latest Madhur Bhandarkar film Fashion where homosexuality features more prominently than it has hitherto done in his previous homo-friendly movies such as Page 3 and other movies such as Rules - Love ka Superhit Formula, Life in a Metro, Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd to name just three. While actors in other countries, even other Asian ones, don't think twice before signing on for a gay part, in India our actors have to take a deep breath, weigh seriously the enormous damage their (often-non-existent) careers will suffer, before signing on the pink dotted line! Anuj, - forget about Western films - I suggest you watch an Indonesian film called Arisan, or a Taiwanese film calld Formula 17 or a Filipino film called Duda (Doubt) and realize that it really shouldn't be a big deal even for an Asian guy to play gay! What is even more surprising about Anuj's line is that it is coming from someone who has been trained at the Barry John Acting Studio. Barry John, in one of his productions of Shakespeare, had turned a pair of heterosexual lovers into homosexual ones (Othello: A Play in Black and White). So, good luck with your career, Anuj and I look forward to seeing you play a gay character! You would be so brave!!

Don Bachardy, 1997

Last Wednesday (9th July) Fresh Air (NPR) broadcast an interview with Don Bachardy. I was unable to hear that programme but was fortunate enough to accidentally catch it in full on Sunday the 13th on the weekend edition of Fresh Air. Listening to the interview not only reminded me that I had to post pictures on my blog of the two portraits of myself done by Don but also of my meeting him in 1997. It was interesting to hear Don describe himself as an "unconscious mimic" when Terry Gross asked him about the uncanny similarity between his voice and that of Isherwood's. I remember the first time I called Don's number and was greeted by what I thought was Isherwood's voice on the answering machine! "Oh my God!" I thought, "he has still got Isherwood's voice on the answering machine!!" I subsequently realised that it wasn't Isherwood's but Don's own voice! In his interview with Gross Don says that he was beginning to sound "a bit like [Isherwood]" within a year of their relationship! Don also has the habit of saying, "Very good, very good" apparently exactly the way Isherwood used to. Edmund White writes in one of his essays that he once caught himself saying "very good, very good" during a conversation with someone on the 'phone and then realized that he was saying that phrase because he was missing Isherwood and wanted to hear his voice.
I was also struck by what Don had to say to Gross about mimicry being an important aspect of his drawing people. So when Don drew me was he mimicking me too? If so, how? We were from two fantastically different worlds: him, from sunny California; I, from hot and dusty Calcutta. By strange coincidence, I believe that Don has only drawn two Indians in his life and both are Bengalis from Calcutta: the other Indian and indeed Calcuttan Bengali was Swami Prabhavananda - Isherwood's Vedantist guru. So, I'm in very good company!
Don's 18-minute interview on Fresh Air made me realize how fresh the memories of that April in Santa Monica are still in my mind.

Portrait of Artists as Companions

On Friday, 20 June 2008 a documentary opened in one New York cinema house. Called "Chris and Don: A Love Story" the documentary charts the relationship between the novelist Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) and Don Bachardy (1934 - ) from the time they met in early 1953 to Isherwood's death on 4 January 1986. (In a sense the relationship continues to this day.) The documentary also sketches in Isherwood's life in England before he came to America to permanently settle there in January 1939. As I am in Calcutta, India, I do not when I will get to see this documentary, but seeing the two trailers now available on youtube it felt weird. As the camera followed Don Bachardy around the Santa Monica house where he and Isherwood lived from 30 September 1959 and where Bachardy continues to live I found myself revisiting my memories of interviewing Bachardy there in April 1997. I remembered being shown around the house by Don, being struck by the amount of light that bathes the house and, next day, sitting for two portraits by him. I shall soon upload images of those two portraits on this blog.

Also in the trailers, it is fascinating to see artistes like Tennessee Williams (third picture from the top in this post) and Igor Stravinsky in living colour. So far I had only seen black and white still images of the playwright. I had only seen Don in person in 1997, but it gives one a strange feeling to see him as a teenager, posing on the Santa Monica beach for Isherwood's movie camera . Seeing the moving images (moving both in the sense that they are mobile and that they are touching) one begins to understand the helpless love Isherwood must have felt for this teenager.

As of the 17th of this month, gays and lesbians in California have been able to marry. Don told me that because there was no such provision in the days when Isherwood was alive, the writer had to adopt Don as his son so that everything could be left to him when Isherwood died. I haven't been in touch with Don for almost nine years now. I hope he is healthy.

I subsequently published my interview with Don in a book and titled it "Portrait of the Artist as Companion". What the makers of this documentary gives us is a movie version of David Hockney's iconic double portrait of Isherwood and Bachardy: a portrait of two artists as each other's companion.

The Male Body in Bengal Art

Ever since the new building of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations opened in Calcutta on 1 June I've been waiting for an opportunity to go there and check out the five inaugural exhibitions they have organised in different floors of the same building. Today I finally got the time to check out the exhibitions. Plenty of goodies to feast your eyes on, but my attention was monopolised to a large extent by an oil that I found in one of exhibitions. Since I am always intrigued by the lack of male bodies in Indian art (boobies, boobies wherever you look!) I was struck my Rathin Moitra's undated "Nulia" (the first two pictures in this post). This painting reminded me of the pictures of Bruce Weber, somehow. Weber's subjects are mostly well-built young men, mostly on the beach, mostly in swimwear. By strange coincidence, Weber appeared on BBC World hours after I returned home. He was being interviewed by Stephen Sackur on Hardtalk. During the interview Sackur tried to out Weber but the photographer was defensive. He thought what he did in his bedroom was irrelevant. The fact that his images are often described as homoerotic does not, apparently, put him under any pressure to come out. I know nothing about Rathin Moitra apart from the fact that he was part of the Calcutta Group formed in 1942, a group which emphasized colour over form. But what can see in the painting is an awareness of the young male form like it is seldom seen in Indian art.

Asian Identity Formation in a Western Hothouse

In the Mandarin-English film The Map of Sex and Love (blogged about earlier) the long-haired Hong Kong dancer - who has never set foot outside Hong Kong - asks the bespectacled Chinese American man he is looking to pick up, "Do you go to Christopher Street often?" Behind them, across the waters, glow signs of multinational companies such as Hitachi and Siemens. It is interesting that two Chinese individuals are establishing contact with each other in Chinese-administered Hong Kong and the event is framed by the presence of globalisation, be it in the form of glow signs declaring the omnipresence of Japanese and German companies or be it in the mention of Christopher Street, an address of mythical significance to American gay identity formation. That a Chinese gay man is aware of the presence of Christopher Street is an indication of the fact that Western - especially American - gay culture, as has been shown by Dennis Altman in his work, can and often does serve as a template on which Asian, non-Western gay identities are formed. In the Israeli film The Bubble (blogged about earlier) there is a scene in which a group of gay Israeli men discuss gay male British pop stars. Names such as George Michael, Morrissey and Stephen Gately (of Boyzone fame) are mentioned. The camera also focusses on a wall covered with pictures of gay British singers cut out of magazines.

In the Indonesian film Arisan! (2003), similar influences are seen in the identity formation of gay Indonesians. The two gay men in the film, Sakti (Tora Sudiro) and Nino (Surya Saputra) first meet and greet each other (although they had earlier discreetly eyed each other up at the gym) in a restaurant that can only be described as a square mile of intensified America in Jakarta. As the middle image shows, when Nino (in a white shirt) and Sakti (in black) leave the restaurant, the camera follows them, taking in an arrangement of small American flags and a Coca Cola sign on the wall. When the two men leave the place, the camera stays inside but turns its gaze on a huge poster of Marilyn Monroe on the wall. This is what Gerard Genette in Narrative Discourse (1980) calls an "advance mention". The significance of the Marilyn Monroe poster would become clear at the end of the film when one of the lady friends of Sakti declares that not diamonds, but "a gay man is a girl's best friend" referring to Monroe's song in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). The fact the film seems bracketed by the Monroe motif is yet another example of the hothouse Western environment in which global gay identities take shape in Asian countries.

When we first see Sakti he is just finishing his daily workout. He stands in front of the mirror and beams, joyfully, at his reflection in the mirror. Here is the joyful acceptance of one's identity as theorised by Lacan when he speaks of the "mirror stage". What has to be remembered is that the beam on Sakti's face is an affirmation of the fact that he has been able to conform to the imaginary of the global, ergo Western, gay man - toned body, flawless skin, perfect teeth, straight-acting.

It is not my job to judge this teleology of Asian gay self-fashioning, but merely to say that such processes of identity-formation are being cinematically represented with greater and greater frequency. And in a way this is rather appropriate, isn't it? What better medium than cinema to exemplify a kind of identity formation which depends on the visual? After all it is called the imaginary!

The Republic of Nepal

I am a monarchist. I believe that constitutional monarchy is the best form of government. On 28th May 2008, Nepal ceased to be a monarchy. I watched Nepali television, thrilled to be watching history being made before my eyes. Yes, thrilled. Thrilled because I believe, like most Nepalis do, that it is better to be a Republic than to be under a king as universally unpopular as Gyanendra. I could not help being struck by the irony of the fact that the brand new National Assembly had gathered yesterday evening at the Birendra International Convention Centre to formally abolish the monarchy. The event took place inside a building named after the king who will, I firmly believe, always reign in the hearts of the Nepali people - King Birendra. I share with many Nepalis grave doubts about the official version of what happened in the Narayanhiti Palace in June 2001. My posting of an official portrait of King Birendra and his family here is meant to convey to my Nepali brothers and sisters that I feel their pain (which I'm sure seven years have done nothing to dull) at the loss of their beloved King Birendra and his family, but I also congratulate them warmly for getting rid of King Gyanendra and constituting themselves as a Republic. I wish the Republic of Nepal a happy and prosperous future.

The Berlin Memorial

As if to mark the opening of the Berlin memorial to gay and lesbian victims of the Nazi regime, on Monday, the day before the opening, the French TV channel TV5 telecast Un Amour a Taire (top picture). The next picture is a TV grab on the night of the 27th. This is a still from a looped video installation inside the grey concrete memorial. One can watch the video by peering into the window on the concrete structure. The next image (thanks to the newspaper Berliner Morgenpost) shows German politicians gathered at the Tiergarten for the opening ceremony. The most poignant presence is that of the Mayor of Berlin. Klaus Wowereit, in a blue tie, is openly gay. The fourth and last image (from the newspaper Berliner Zeitung) is that of the memorial.

Nazi persecution of homosexuals (by the way there is only one recorded instance of a lesbian being persecuted but she was persecuted because of her race - Jewish) began in 1933 with the destruction of the Institute of Sexual Science founded by Magnus Hirschfield. Hirschfield is written about at great length by the novelist Christopher Isherwood in his 1970's autobiography Christopher and His Kind.

In the Shadow of the Pink Triangle

It was entirely by coincidence that yesterday evening, of the two movies I rented for my weekend film festival, one was The Bubble (Israel, 2006). When I was watching the movie I was unaware that on Tuesday, 27th May 2008, in Berlin would be opened a memorial dedicated to all the homosexuals who perished in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. So what does a film made in 21st century Israel have to do with the Berlin memorial? Just this: in the film the two lovers (one Israeli, the other a Palestinian Arab) go to watch a play in Tel Aviv one evening. The play? Martin Sherman's play Bent (1979). As you may well know the play deals with the persecution of homosexuals in concentration camps. From the play Ashraf learns the gesture of tracing a line along the left eyebrow with one's index finger to express love. In The Bubble we see him do it twice, both times out of the sight of Noam, the man he loves. The film belongs not only in an intertexual web with Martin Sherman's play but also with the French made-for-TV movie Un Amour a Taire (A Love to Hide) which also deals with the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. When the Berlin memorial is opened on Tuesday it won't be the first such memorial. There is one in Amsterdam which was inaugurated on 5 September 1987 and there's another one in Sydney, Australia. But this most recent memorial's location in Berlin is especially significant because it is the first one on German soil.

It's a democracy yet!

Here are Thursday's front pages. I'll let the front pages of 22 May 2008 speak for themselves!:-)

Singrrrrrrrr!

Even a few hours ago I was planning to write a blog about a French musical that I saw yesterday evening (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) and speak of my amusement at the way in many scenes the wallpaper matched the frock of Catherine Deneuve, but breaking news from Nandigram and Singur has swept all that aside. Nothing captures the thrill of unfolding history better than newspaper front pages and live images on TV. While I have to wait another six hours for the newspapers to come thudding down on my living room floor I can atleast give you some TV grabs that will, hopefully, bring home to you the thrill of this historic moment when the people of Nandigram and Singur roared against state terror! All you who gave your lives to protect your land, you have not died in vain! All you who have voted against state terror, my congratulations! I have no words tonight that can adequately express my joy. Bravo, Nandigram! Bravo, Singur! If only the people in the cities were as brave as you are. Thanks to the brave people of those two villages, I'm proud to be a Bengali again!

Compelled by Humanity

Those Calcuttans who feel that even walking down the streets of this city on a hot May afternoon is better than sitting at home and pretending that all's well with the world did just that on 9th May 2008: they walked in accordance with their conscience. This was the second time that angry, conscience-stricken, humane Calcuttans took to the streets to protest against the systematic violence being perpetrated by the state against those who cannot defend themselves anymore. As Aparna Sen said from the truck when the march ended at Chowringhee, "We are being accused of taking money for these protests! We are being accused of doing this for our own publicity! Those accusing us are so deeply implicated in politicking for selfish gains that they don't realize that there may be something called the compulsion of simple humanity and nothing more." The last time such an anti-state-terror march took place there were a million marchers and the media was out in full strength to cover it. This time only a few TV networks sent outdoor vans to cover the march. Does this mean that for the media, anti-state-terror protests in Calcutta aren't sexy anymore? (The story of tens of thousands of ordinary, otherwise apolitical citizens marching down the streets in Calcutta without ANY support from ANY political party was not deemed worthy of even a mention in The Telegraph, for example.) Nonetheless, the protests will continue, with or without the help of the media.

Auden in Hong Kong!

I rented a Mandarin film last evening called The Map of Sex and Love (2001) not expecting much. I was hoping that the other movie I had rented - Defense d'Aimer (2002) - would be the real star of my weekend movie watching! I ended up watching the Mandarin film twice, taking notes, frequently pressing the pause button to take pictures of scenes. So, yes, let's just say The Map of Sex and Love has now made a permanent place in my map of world cinema. Not since Happy Together (1997) has a Hong Kong film impressed me so much. While there a million things to discuss about this cinema verite-style movie, I will merely concentrate on a tiny scene, towards the end of the film. New York-residing Wei Ming (Bernardo Chow) sends a video letter to his friends back in Hong Kong, where he has been making a documentary. Resting against a rugged wall somewhere in New York, he tells his audience of three back in Hong Kong (a girl who loved him, inspite of knowing that he is gay, a male dancer who becomes his lover during the Hong Kong stay, and a man that the male dancer was once picked up by at a bath house) that when he first arrived in New York a friend had taken him to show the apartment block where Auden lived. He says that outside the block was a plaque which carried two lines of Auden's poetry: "If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me." He says that the plaque has since been stolen. What is interesting is the way the lines are used in the film. When Wei speaks the words, misquoting the line as "If no love can equal be.." the camera shows him. It is the lens of Wei's own camcorder through which we see him. But as he comes to the second line, "Let the more loving one be me" he is no longer there on the screen. It is the director's camera that shows the disappointed, pained expression on the face of Larry, the male dancer, who has loved Wei more than Wei has loved back. And, even more interestingly, as Wei's voice becomes the voice-over, the camera tracks the bathhouse man. The man walks away from the television screen and sits far from Larry, because Larry had hurt him by giving him a fake mobile number. As the camera focusses on the bathhouse man's hurt expression, we hear Wei saying that perhaps the plaque was taken away because nobody wanted to think of themselves as being the more loving one.

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) was responsible for putting Auden's poetry into the Bestseller Lists 21 years after his death because in the film a gay man, in a voice almost breaking with uncried tears, recites Auden's "Funeral Blues" at the funeral of his lover. I believe The Map of Sex and Love manages an equally successful application of Auden's poetry.

Erratum: In my previous post "preposterous" appeared as "preposteropus"!

Knowing Me, Knowing ABBA!

For many years now Sunday afternoon for me has meant watching Vivement Dimanche on TV5. Not that I'm a fan of Michel Drucker (I'm not). I find the man peculiarly bland, boring and humourless. But I do enjoy watching the steady parade of international celebrities that pass through his show and chit chat sitting on the signature red sofa. Sunday before last the programme was devoted to French disco/pop icon of the 70's Claude Francois (better known to the English speaking world as the man who sang the original of what in English became Frank Sinatra's "My Way". Last Sunday, 30th March 2008, Michel Drucker absolutely made my weekend by devoting the show to ABBA! Although the show was put together to mark the imminent arrival of the musical Mama Mia! in Paris (1st to 13th July) and the release of the film of the musical (24th September 2008) but for me the show was made special by the appearance of Anni-Frid Lyngstad on the show. Although she didn't sit on the famous red sofa (she was interviewed elsewhere, as can be made out from my TV grab above), it was Drucker talking to her which threaded through the programme, interrupted by ABBA videos, live performances by the cast of Mama Mia!, trailer of the film, clips from the cult ABBA -The Movie, a performance by Sylvie Vartan etc.

Watching the show made me wonder about popular culture in the 1970's in general and ABBA in particular. Why was I so moved by their garish fashions, platform heals, wonky teeth, dowdy hair and annoyingly powerful melodies? I guess I was moved because in them, as indeed in many 70's artistes, one saw that great talent did not have to reside in "perfect" bodies. As opposed to the visually-fixated age in which we live right now, where your talent is secondary to your looks and telegeniality, there was a time when you didn't have to have a stylist for every part of your body; a time when merely being talented was enough. Watching the ABBA show as I was, just a week after watching Claude Francois ("Clo clo" to his fans!) put his anorectically thin body through the most preposteropus dance moves, while being framed by the barely-clad "Claudettes", I realized that ABBA had never made any attempt at packaging themselves as "sexy". They were singers with wonderful, open voices, carrying the most soaring melodies, not bimbos or himbos, relying on technology to make their pathetic voices sound almost melodious!

The fact that ABBA lives on whereas the world has forgotten about the much more recent Samantha Fox tells its story!

Dean to Ledger: The Homoerotic Movie and Early Death

In David Luke's translation of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, Gustave von Aschenbach thinks of the young boy Tadzio, "...he'll probably not live to grow old". Little did Mann know that when his novella would be made into a film, the boy playing the role of Tadzio would meet with a motorcycle accident and die before the release of the film.

James Dean's homosexuality has been widely written about and the homoerotic subtext of his relationship with Sal Mineo (also gay in real life) in Rebel Without a Cause has also been much discussed. Dean died in a race car accident.

River Phoenix's character in Gus van Sant's My Own Private Idaho struggles with his homoerotic feelings toward's Keanu Reeve's character. River Phoenix died on the pavement outside Johnny Depp's night club The Viper Room after a night of drink and drugs.

Leslie Cheung, himself gay in real life and openly so, played the role of a homosexual man twice. Once in Farewell, My Concubine and then again in Happy Together. He threw himself from his Hong Kong high rise apartment. He was 46.

Heath Ledger played the role of Ennis del Mar - a man who can never fully own up to his love for Jack Twist - in Brokeback Mountain. He was found dead at around 3:30 p.m. on the floor of his SoHo apartment in New York on 22nd January 2008.

So, here's the question. Is it a coincidence that as many as six films with homoerotic content or subtext have been followed by the unnatural early death of one of the lead actors?

The thing is, death of the homoerotically-perceived young male has been an important part of gay mythology since the homoerotisation of the figure of St. Sebastian, most notably in Derek Jarman's film Sebastiane and Yukio Mishima's autobiographical novel Confessions of a Mask. It is fascinating that the shocking and universally mourned death of Heath Ledger seems to have added yet another sad chapter to this extraordinary history where cinematic representation of the homoerotic has been swiftly followed by the mortality of one of the male bodies recorded by the camera. A mythology inaugurated so long ago seems to be playing out with unerring regularity even today.

Edward and Alexandra in British Iconography

As this picture will show, by way of contrast, the Punjabi portrait of the royal couple may have managed a competent likeness of the King but was wide off the mark as far as the Queen was concerned. Danish princess Alexandra was regarded as a great beauty and set fashion trends such as high-necked dresses and a limp (because she used to walk with a slight limp!)