The devil reporter wears emotions?

A rape apologist is somebody who condones rape, not one who reports on its verdict. The Steubenville trial has concentrated on making a devil of a reporter by comparing what she said with the terrible online comments. How concerned about rape are those who merely ‘followed’ the herd to outrage about the news?  All those who downloaded or watched the YouTube clips are as much rape apologists as Poppy Harlow. 

The CNN site and others have got many hits. Yet, who has bothered to even mention that she called it a “serious crime”?  That is just so tame and obvious, isn’t it? So, this quote from her has made it:

"Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart."

The screenshot reproduced by Mashable has the incessant query, “Not one word about the victim.” What do they want to know about the victim that has not been already reported? Is this a spectator sport? Trent Mays and Ma'Lik Richmond were sentenced for raping a 16-year-old by a juvenile court. Why are rapists punished? Because society needs to understand that they are committing a crime against women, against another human being. 

The idea is to make an example of them, and what better way than to mention that they were star football players and good students who had indeed lost it all for behaving in such an atrocious manner. Is this not the message that has to be sent across to other young men that, whoever you are, if you commit a crime, then this is what you get? 

One recalls other crimes, including mass murder and terrorism, where the convicts has been deemed insane. This results in covert sympathy, which is far worse.

You might ask: why was it difficult for a reporter or the news anchor to discuss emotions? Check out the comments. Anger is also an emotion. Pity is an emotion. Had the judge let them off, most people would have reacted emotionally. It was difficult to sit in the courtroom probably because both of the convicted got up and apologised to the family of the victim; one broke down. It is not about sympathy for their crime, but for their response to being punished. I would judge Harlow harshly had the verdict been innocent and she had said that this was an incredibly emotional moment watching as these two footballs stars and good students could return to a new life that awaited them. This was not the case.

A report further states:

(Candy) Crowley turned to legal expert Paul Callan who sounded almost apologetic when explaining how the rape conviction will mean that the Steubenville rapists will now be registered sex offenders and how that "will haunt them for the rest of their lives." None of these things said were untrue. But the tone was certainly a little off.

How does anyone decode that the tone was off? As I said, the report was about the trial, not on the rape. The emphasis ought to be on the rapists who will be tainted for the rest of their lives. This is as it should be, for the usual narrative is that it is the victim who is so tainted and who has to live with this all her life.  If, for the sake of argument, the tone sounded apologetic, it does not reverse the judgment. It brings to the fore that whatever anyone might feel those two young men will have to live with it, their futures have been mucked up. Justice has been done.  

Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine said after the verdict, "As I said already, any rape is a tragedy. But, it is even more of a tragedy when that victim is continually re-victimized in the social media."

This is what people should understand, instead of a typical knee-jerk reaction.

But, then, it is becoming increasingly impossible to do so.  Online abuses by anonymous blokes are being spread around by women, giving even more ammo to them.  How many of those reading these get sensitised? It just becomes part of the sickening term ‘rape culture’ that even well-known commentators use with impunity.

One report while rubbishing CNN – that I do not admire, anyway – talked about how the circus has just begun. Well, the moral high-standing falls flat on its face when you decide to ignore the crime and only watch the ensuing performance. How many referred to the victim while pulling up those who they think are rape apologists? Online warriors are primarily online voyeurs. This is being an apologist, too.

There is also a clear hierarchy regarding who to feel sympathy for. A few days ago in Mumbai, four men sodomised a eunuch, stubbed him with cigarettes, poured kerosene on him and threw him out of the moving car in which they committed the crime. Has there been any reaction to it except for a newspaper report? For all those who participate in the Gay Pride parade and offer lip sympathy to the LGBT community, this still remains an area of darkness. One of the reasons is that liberalism is all about accepting, but not questioning crimes towards the community as well as within it.

© Farzana Versey

Sunday ka Funda

“The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts.” 

- Bertrand Russell

Today's choice of music is not directly related to this quote. There is just unspeakable sadness that goes beyond stupidity and doubt. The problems with the world are often best expressed in small personal ordeals. And it does not need each word to be understood.

"Don't talk that way, my cruel lover, 

Let me save you from the ordeals."

Sunday ka Funda

"There ain't nothing you could ask I could answer you but I won't (I won't)
I was gonna change, but I'm not, if you're doing things I don't


You better think (think) think about what you're trying to do to me
Yeah, think (think, think), let your mind go, let yourself be free"

Sunday ka Funda

“Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film. They advertise memories.”

- Theodore Parker

Most of us are cynical about ads, but we read them and watch them. Some of us are taken in. Is it because we need the product or because it has been sold to some instinct we did not know we had?

The above quote brings to mind two recent ads on TV. They work well.

This one took me to adolescent years. It has got everything right - it tells a story, weaves in the product and does not push it. It is catering to this young market with a music mobile phone. The actors are so real and the brilliant touch is the song. It is an old song, so why use it here? I think it conveys the longevity of emotions and by default the product.

Watch it and remember those days, unless these are your days!



In this other one, the brand positioning is brilliant. They have used an investment banker and "Mr. HCL" so effectively that when one of the models appeared in another ad, I thought it was betrayal. Again, a story, here more upfront because the product is meant to convey a high-profile, in anecdote form with a fine touch at the end:

Sunday ka Funda

"On the darkest days there's always light
and now I see it too..."

Sunday ka Funda

“We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not yet learned the simple art of living together as brothers.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr

I do not know about brotherhood, but music transcends any hood. Or should. Or could. Some fusions are wonderful, some not. Many are purely experimental.

Mix of Arabic, Persian and Reggae:

Sunday ka Funda

"And I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

- T. S. Eliot

- - -

Don't want to close my eyes

I don't want to fall asleep

And I don't want to miss a thing

from...

Armageddon - Aerosmith

Sunday ka Funda

“The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags.”

- Henry Miller

Today as New York once again becomes a place for souvenir tributes and the mobs rage has found its bellies full, we find that history is becoming closer, narrower. Cities are much, much more. We live in them and through them. No one talks about a time to stand and stare in cities. Why? There is a time and there is much to look at.

Rewind. New York six decades ago:

Sunday ka Funda

"Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work."

- Karl Kraus
 ---

Salt of the earth - Rolling Stones

and


She works hard for the money - Donna Summer

Sunday ka Funda

When you are at home and miss it...when you raise your eyebrows and yet hope...

Sunday ka Funda

I was sitting before a TV screen and suddenly this hip number was kind of in my face, quite literally. I had heard about the smoky new version of Dum Maro Dum and its sex quotient. Deepika Padukone has what it takes, but anyone could have done this – any item girl, any other actress. There are precisely two real moves in the whole song and it looks like an assembly-line product. There has been a build-up and people will lap it up. Will it stay in the mind for long? Nope. These belly-ass contortions need to be choreographed, and after a while the studied pout begins to look like a goldfish gasping inside an aquarium. It does not even have the cold-blooded streak of contained anger.

The new yawn

I don’t believe that anything old is necessarily sacrosanct. But if you meddle with something iconic then at least try and live up to it. Zeenat Aman was no great actress – Deepika is far better – but the original song stayed in character and does not look like the tens that came out even if we recollect the music of that particular era.

It remained in memory for years and continues to do so. It appealed to a new urban audience and created a different sound. It also created a different bad girl. The fact that it is so contemporary will be borne out by such scenes even today in many happening discotheques and lounge bars.

For some of us in our later growing up years, there just wasn't anything expressive enough for adolescent angst and we had to rewind to the 'dum'; just swaying sybaritically and pretending to be ‘ecstatic’ was such delicious rebellion.

The old dawn

PS: I think Zeenat was among the first mainstream dusky actresses and there was no special mention about her colour. It is, therefore, disappointing that Deepika who should be happy with her complexion is endorsing a fairness cream. She is pushing a stereotype and also assuming that people are fools. The advertising agency seriously needs to do a reality check. For a lot of bucks she is willing to be insulted, for insult it is to the way she is, and to cheat people into believing in the possibility of such change, which is not likely and should not be encouraged.

Sunday ka Funda

 - - -

Happy Holi...

"Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways." - Oscar Wilde

Sunday ka Funda

“Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble”

and

"Fear those who are afraid of you"

- Arab proverbs

And here's some music from there. Ah, where are the camels and the beards?

Sunday ka Funda

Don't you know you're talking about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper

Bhimsen Joshi: Always Dawn

Many years ago I had interviewed a classical musician, quite well-known. At that time he was disgruntled about several things and I clearly recall one comment he made. He said that great singing does not necessarily mean you have to contort your face so much. This was a swipe against the master of them all - Pandit Bhimsen Joshi.

As I scoured the obituaries today, there has been an outpouring of so much more, but one of them mentioned how he sang with his body - for every sound and rhythm he used gestures.

More than anything, he is thankfully not being lauded for taking our culture outside or for making us 'international'. He hosted a music festival every year in Pune and that remained his base. Yet he was a repository of how Indian classical music evolved in the post-Independence era. I hope his work is archived because this is one instance where the man and his music were equally large.

I have said earlier that I saw him as more of a technician, as opposed to Kumar Gandharva. These are personal connections we feel. Therefore, I was surprised when I first heard his version of Babul Mora Naihar Chhooto Jaaye. This was a Saigal signature for me and it had made its place deep in my heart. But Panditji sang it in such a mellow fashion with different inflections that one felt the heart just well up with emotion. It is in Raag Bhairavi, a morning Raag. The soul is always awake:

Sunday ka Funda

Sometimes, it is the sheer helplessness of their positions that make people come together. What is reputation? How we are viewed by others. Does their perception make us those things? It takes a rich zamindar to make a prostitute see this, but the lyrics could apply to any of us. Why do we become slaves to what people think and say? They see labels, they see invisible branded iron rod marks on us and then make up their minds.

As these simple lyrics state, and I translate liberally:

Such is the way of life that every dawn is turned to dusk
So what are you when even the revered Sita had to go through fire?
Why weep over verbal ire?
People will say things, for speak ill they must


kuchh reet jagat ki aisi hai, har ek subah ki shaam hui
tu kaun hai, tera naam hai kya, sita bhi yahaan badnaam hui
phir kyon sansaar ki baaton se, bheeg gaye tere naina
kuchh to log kahenge, logon ka kaam hai kehna




* Movie: Amar Prem
* Singer: Kishore Kumar
* Music Director: R D Burman
* Lyricist: Anand Bakshi
* Actors/Actresses: Rajesh Khanna, Sharmila Tagore
* Year/Decade: 1971

- - -

This song came flashing to mind because they are telecasting the film this evening and, of course, despite certain old-fashioned stereotypes, it is a beautiful love story...the sublimity contrasting to the brothel locales. In a manner of speaking, we aren't the walls we are pinned against.

Sunday ka Funda

What do we want? What do we get? Liquid steams...the voice dips deep into the stomach churning, turning, whisking away...


Sometimes you need it then you don't and you let go...whatever it is. Nothing like the sensual to make a lot of other things acquire similar meanings.

Sunday ka Funda

“Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit."

- Albert Schweitzer

“Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity”

- George Eliot

Such habits destroy others, such opportunities take people a step up on the ladder of beaten up bodies and corpses. The worst is when the victims are those who do not even know what the fight is about.

Sunday ka Funda

Colonial Cousins: Hariharan and Leslie Lewis

Sunday ka Funda

The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre


Light my fire: The Doors