Interestingly the Children film “A bugs life” completely inverts the original. The grasshoppers are shown to be the devilish ‘Mafia’ like, while the ants meek and innocent; The basic emotion aroused is to protect and save the ants from the Grasshoppers. It may not seem obvious at first but this new theme marks the neo-pro-active-christian-morality that runs under the hood of the modern neo-conservative American consciousness. But these are old wine in new bottles and some packed with atheist labels. One only has to translate the "Ethical egoism" of Ayn Rand or the latest avatar “Manliness” by Harvey C. Mansfield, with the moral lesson that the strong should protect the weak, Insha’Allah, It could also be written as 'The strong should rule the weak'. [...]
In the film “Starship Troopers” Earth declares war on aliens, called Arachnids or "Bugs". In one scene small cute children are shown smashing bugs (cockroaches) as they belong to the same species as the Arachnids (as it is an all-out war and the very question of the species/race becomes the main defining factor) or may be the director is confused and wonders about their origin and as to from where they could have come in the first place (may be shaitan 'Satan' put them there). This is understandable as the west is predominantly defined by its religion which due to its inner law/dharma always ends up equating their own kind with Earth which become synonymous at some point (at the unconscious level of its lived reality) and thus everything else gets marked by alien and demonic evil and as the cockroaches are the front end in the Arachnids game plan to populate the universe with their own types, they are natural targets. All very very filmi […]
What's good about the film is the internationalization of our Bollywood archetypical film formulas: Two brothers (lost in Kumbh mela archetype) discovering their identity and topped over by an over the wall rescue from the sure jaws of death has always worked in our films; It is a happy feeling to know that the international audience is also enjoying what we have savored for all these years. And then the nauch of Basanti in Sholay where the villain Gabbar aka Aseef in this case makes Sohrab the son of Hassan dance to the infectious tunes of classical music to the point where the ghungroo breaks and shatters. [...]
In several ways, the book dangerously misleads, and does so in its own seductive way. It charms you in as it slips through its liminal gap its US specific Neo-Imperial world picture. In doing so, it sets about to pass in the counterfeit by filling its page with such gross misrepresentations and all done on such grand and massive scale that one is left wondering at the actuating politikreal of the author; often one gets the feel that one is reading a new genre, the ‘new age’ American novel, like the ‘new age’ spirituality of Deepak Chopra, a chick-lit or rather a choc-lit verity of it; even eclipsing the sentimental high tide of ‘Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’. [...]
I am an Independent writer/filmmaker presently working from Delhi ‘India’.
I have made several films including a few animated serials and several Ad’s as well as documentaries and I am presently working on integrating (digital as well as traditional) Puppetry with poetic fiction-cum-documentary modes of story telling. [ more... ]
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