Imagine Amitabh Bachchan standing at the Iron Pillar, trying to put his arms around it and babbling, “I want sexy. Maa, mujhe sexy chahiye. I want sexy.” Even in Hindi films can this not happen, you would imagine. But (spoiler alert) in Cheeni Kum it does. The film has many charming moments, but the bathos in the last one-third of the film destroys it.
The dialogue above sounds ridiculous out of context, but is even more ridiculous in context. Quite as much so as Amitabh’s dialogue earlier in the film about the level of the water rising because the fish are crying. Tabu looks lovely and acts well, but really, her character, what is she thinking? The problem with the character she loves in the film is not that his age is 64, but that his IQ is.
Nobody kicked my chair during this film, sadly. I’m almost beginning to miss it. Some entertainment?
I met up with an old college friend a couple of days ago, and he told me that he was planning to shift professions, and leave a mid-to-high-level marketing job to join the film industry as a beginner. (He wants to direct.) He wanted my advice.
Every career move I’ve made has arguably failed in materialistic terms, so I was hardly the right person to ask, but after warning of him of the many pitfalls that awaited him, I foolishly told him that if I was in his place, I’d follow my heart. (As indeed I’m doing in my place.) Then I got home and sent him a link to Steve Jobs’s famous speech at Stanford—cheesy in parts, but marvellously inspiring, and one that I recommend everyone should read.
And though I prefer the written text, here’s the video as well:
If the above picture (courtesy AP) is anything to go by, pigs may prove a potent threat to the inevitability of the world domination of cows. I suspect we humans may just get stuck in the crossfire. Enjoy the sausage, I say, till you and the pig change places.
We all agree… that society has a right to constrain individual freedom when it threatens to do harm to others. The First Amendment doesn’t give you the right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater; your right to practice your religion does not encompass human sacrifice.
Well, alongside the Harm Principle, there is a more fundamental reason why shouting “fire” in a crowded theater would be wrong: it is because that theater is someone else’s private property. All our rights, including the right to free speech, are nothing but extensions of property rights. As Murray Rothbard writes in ”‘Human Rights’ as Property Rights”:
[T]he concept of “rights” only makes sense as property rights. For not only are there no human rights which are not also property rights, but the former rights lose their absoluteness and clarity and become fuzzy and vulnerable when property rights are not used as the standard.
In the first place, there are two senses in which property rights are identical with human rights: one, that property can only accrue to humans, so that their rights to property are rights that belong to human beings; and two, that the person’s right to his own body, his personal liberty, is a property right in his own person as well as a “human right.” But more importantly for our discussion, human rights, when not put in terms of property rights, turn out to be vague and contradictory, causing liberals to weaken those rights on behalf of “public policy” or the “public good.” As I wrote in another work:
Take, for example, the “human right” of free speech. Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. But the neglected question is: Where? Where does a man have this right? He certainly does not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises. In fact, then, there is no such thing as a separate “right to free speech”; there is only a man’s property right: the right to do as he wills with his own or to make voluntary agreements with other property owners.
[...] [C]ouching the analysis in terms of a “right to free speech” instead of property rights leads to confusion and the weakening of the very concept of rights. The most famous example is Justice Holmes’s contention that no one has the right to shout “Fire” falsely in a crowded theater, and therefore that the right to freedom of speech cannot be absolute, but must be weakened and tempered by considerations of “public policy.” And yet, if we analyze the problem in terms of property rights we will see that no weakening of the absoluteness of rights is necessary. [My emphasis.]
Read the full piece, it’s wonderful. I try to get the same point through when people tell me that if I support free speech I should open comments on this blog—such a suggestion conflates private property and the public domain. For more, read my post, ”The Flying Spaghetti Monster v Private Property.”
(Rothbard link via email from Sumeet Kulkarni. And do read Obama’s book: Few politicians write as well as he does, and much of what he says is a refreshing change from the usual political rhetoric that flies around, even if I have some minor misgivings about his thoughts on economics.)
Update: In case it needs to be spelt out, the references to shouting “fire” in a theater by Obama and me are obviously in a hypothetical instance in which the theater is not actually on fire. Heh!
Update 2: In Libertarianism: A Primer, David Boaz quotes Rothbard on this subject and then elaborates:
When we understand free speech this way, we see what’s wrong with Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes’s famous statement that free speech rights cannot be absolute because there is no right to falsely shout ‘Fire!” in a crowded theater. Who would be shouting “Fire”? Possibly the owner, or one of his agents, in which case the owner has defrauded his customers: he sold them tickets to a play or a movie and then disrupted the show, not to mention endangered their lives. If not the owner, then one of his customers, who is violating the terms of his contract; his ticket entitles him to enjoy the show, not to disrupt it. The falsely-shouting-fire-in-a-crowded-theater argument is no reason to limit the right of free speech; it’s an illustration of the way that property rights solve problems and of the need to protect and enforce them.
Vir Sanghvi is not happy with the way Indian kids behave in public. He writes in Lounge:
A friend of mine was enjoying a quiet dinner with her boyfriend at a Delhi pizza place when the children from the next table began invading their space and wrecking their dinner. Politely but firmly, she asked the mother if she could possibly keep her kids from hassling her table. Rather than offer any apology, the mother turned viciously on her. “I am sure you are the kind of woman who has no children of your own,” she snarled. “That’s why you are complaining.”
What is it with us? Why don’t we recognize that as much as we love Chunnu, Munnu, Pappu, Bunty or Pinky, the rest of the world is under no obligation to regard them with similar indulgence? Worst of all is the feeling of entitlement that prosperous parents have.They believe that because they are rich, their kids have the right to do whatever they feel like. It’s a funny thing but the children of less-wealthy or poor parents never behave quite as badly as the children of the rich.
I face such behaviour all the time. It’s happened in a restaurant, where kids from a neighbouring table have done unspeakable things to my plate, and on my complaining their mother has said to me, ”Arrey, bacchay hai, karne do na?” My reply that they are her bacchay and not my bachhay made her furious, as if I was a heartless monster for not allowing her children to wreck my evening.
They are also a nuisance in cinema halls, expecially when they sit behind you and kick your chair repeatedly through the film. Adults do this as well—once, after half-an-hour of being kicked, I turned around to the teenager behind me and made the entirely reasonable request that he stop kicking my chair. ”Arrey, humne bhi ticket ke paise diye hai,” he barked. (I have had the same argument offered to me when I asked a gentleman to stop snarling into his mobile phone during a film.)
I have tried various ways of dealing with this, and the most effective one, I have found, is this: Turn to your companion and say, in a voice soft enough to not be a direct insult but loud enough to be heard, “Villagers.” If you’re really angry, say “Bloody villagers.”
See, Sanghvi is entirely right when he says that such intrusive behaviour and the resulting arrogance comes largely from the nouveau riche, whose newfound prosperity may go to their head, but is accompanied by an anxiousness to appear sophisticated. For them, “Villager” is a far greater pejorative than “Bhainchod” or “Maaderchod,” even if those are also somehow accurate. It strikes at the heart of their identity, and also conveys the point that their behaviour is inappropriate. They often shut up after this, though they may kick the chair a couple of times a few minutes later to test the waters. An incredulous glare—as opposed to a merely angry one—is called for here.
Sometimes, of course, they retort. Once a group of teenagers kicked my chair and made much noise throughout a film, despite many pleas not to—there’s safety in numbers—and when the show got over I politely told them that their behaviour was out of place here, and called them villagers. They fell silent, and after I had walked a few feet towards the exit, one of them managed to think of a response. He shouted, ”Abey, townie!”
The irony of that will not be lost on those who know me well.
Posted by Amit Varma on 26 May, 2007 in
India |
Personal
The employee of a corporation who buys something for $10 and sells it for $8 is not likely to do so for long. Someone who, in a family setting, does much the same thing, may make his wife and children miserable throughout his life. A politician who wastes his country’s resources on a grand scale may have a successful career.
The excerpt above reminds me of Milton Friedman’s brilliant quote about the four ways in which you can spend money. But why don’t voters punish such extravagance? Well, that’s what Caplan’s book seeks to explain, so if you see it at a local bookstore, pick it up. I love what I’ve read of it so far, and you can read more about it from Tyler Cowen, Don Boudreaux and Greg Mankiw.
A man told a judge in the Calcutta High Court that he and his family did not want his wife, whom he had driven out of home, to wear a salwar kameez.
The husband, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, drew the attention of Justice Partha Sakha Dutta to the red salwar kameez his wife Rupali was wearing during the court proceeding, a dress worn by millions of Indian women.
“We are an orthodox family. We cannot accept such dresses, she should wear a sari,” the husband told an astonished Justice Dutta.
What I find sad is that the judge “directed Dibyendu to take his wife and child home and asked him not to create problems over such trivial issues.” I presume she was constrained by a lack of economic independence, for why would any sensible woman want to live with a man like that?
Also, how could “millions of Indian women” have worn “the red salwar kameez his wife Rupali was wearing”? Couldn’t they have worn their own salwar kameezes?
(You can read my other posts mentioning salwars here and here. I’m a huge fan. Cows should wear salwars.)
I love it when you can actually see censorship in action. In the 1980s, when I’d come across foreign magazines in India, I’d often notice bits blacked out from the pages. Maps of India showing a controversial Kashmir generally got a stamp stating the map wasn’t accurate, and I distinctly remember an issue of Esquire made doubly delicious by the necessity of imagination. “That’s the job I’d love to have,” I once thought to myself. Sit all day looking for bare skin in magazines and then blank them out with a tender caress of my black marker pen.
Well, it’s much worse in Iran, of course, where even bare shoulders are a problem. Reader Corporate Whore points me to an old post by Jonathan Lundqvist with many examples of Iranian censorship in action. Immense amusement comes, for the black markings focus more attention on the objectionable object than the picture itself would have.
Some of you may have read Arun Jaitley’s deplorable piece in the Indian Express a week ago, in which he invoked the concept of blasphemy to justify the violation of free speech that took place in Baroda. (Blasphemy as a concept happens to be “alien to Hinduism,” as Salil Tripathi pointed out in this excellent piece.) Well, I was having an email conversation with the renowned poet and artist, Dilip Chitre, in the course of which he sent me a response to Jaitley’s piece. With his permission, I publish it below in full:
Crisis in Culture
by Dilip Chitre
The real crisis in contemporary Indian culture—where any dissent can be seen as an act aimed at ‘hurting sentiments’—is that few of us are prepared to celebrate the heterogeneity of our cultural heritage; and by dissent I mean any non-conformist self-expression.
Politicians have always exploited religion and sectarian faith to create law and order problems. Today, they only need to announce that their followers’ ‘sentiments are hurt’ and we all understand the not-so-veiled threat to take the law into their own hands. The State—representing the political will of the people—is only too glad to clamp down bans, tighten censorship, and muzzle dissent. It only increases the State’s own power over the individual citizen and the minorities.
The latest example is the row between the Shiromani Akal Takht and the Dera Sachha Sauda. But our history provides ample examples of various inter-sectarian and intra-sectarian clashes among ‘Hindus’, Muslims, and others, not to speak of internecine communal conflicts. Religious sentiments are easy to hurt unless we accept heterogeneity in a religion-neutral sense as our common way of life.
Caste has been constitutionally abolished in India. In practice, however, by drawing water from the same source, a dalit offends supposedly more chaste Hindus. The Hindu’s ‘religious sentiments’ are ‘hurt’ and the provocation is enough for caste Hindus to physically attack dalits, wherever they can be found isolated and vulnerable.
As regards ‘blasphemy’, it is true that British, European, and American law tacitly accords Christianity the title to all religion and the entire sacred domain. Our Constitution---on paper and perhaps in spirit---is more secular. But the catch here is the word ‘secular’. In India it is often misinterpreted as ‘equally sensitive to all religions’ and not as ‘equally neutral to all religions’.
Via politics, religion has wreaked enough havoc in India since independence. Revivalists and atavists have succeeded in taking us back to a mythologized past which should have become increasingly irrelevant to our public life since we embraced our present Constitution. If the executive gives in to populist pressures and violent threats to any minority, and if even the judiciary succumbs to majority public opinion, all minority opinion and individual expression is doomed to go forever underground in this country.
Adult franchise gives each individual a vote. What if despite adult franchise no individual is allowed to voice dissent? For those who don’t believe in God, there can’t be any blasphemy. For those who don’t believe in fundamental rights, there can’t be any democracy. Whether God or democracy is our priority as citizens of this nation cannot be left to God to decide. He is not a registered voter in India.
That last para superbly puts it in perspective, as also the bit about the term ‘secular’ being “often misinterpreted as ‘equally sensitive to all religions’ and not as ‘equally neutral to all religions’.” Indeed, it strikes me that when the Hindutva right condemns the Congress for being pseudo-secular, they seem to be expressing their support for genuine secularism, in the sense in which Mr Chitre articulates it. That, sadly, could not be further from the truth.
This character’s creator described him as “insufferable”, and called him a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. On August 6 1975, the New York Times carried his obituary, the only time it has thus honoured a fictional character. Who?
Posted by Amit Varma on 28 May, 2007 in
Arts and entertainment |
Personal
