Terrified by boredom — Hereditary

 Starring: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, Gabriel Byrne

Direction: Ari Aster

I am not really a fan of horror genre, atleast in film. While I devour horror anthologies as books, I mostly stay away from Hollywood horror. I cannot stomach gore. I tried watching Hannibal series in Netflix, but stopped in the middle. (It is not horror. It can be classified as thriller/ mystery genre, with quite a lot of gore)

I genuinely think that there should be a separate genre called horror and another genre for gore. There are a few people who enjoy watching the Wrong & Final Destination series. In my opinion, a genuine horror film should be able to give the chills without resorting to gore.

So, on a personal scale, did Hereditary satisfy my requirements as a horror movie? There are flashes of gore and flashes of chills. With an overdose of demons resulting from watching series like Lucifer, Supernatural etc, adding another name to the Pantheon fails to make any impression.

Where does hereditary fail? It has all the elements or to be exact cliches of horror stories. An isolated house, (either that or a grand mansion is a template), an attic, flashes of gore, jump scares, glimpses of ghost, quirky characters, seance etc.,

However the story falls flat in the last few minutes. While it is possible for an evil to be terrifying than a ghost, evil in Hereditary is more voodoo-ish. Also, nobody wants to google the name of a demon in the middle of a movie.

A ghost is more relatable. A ghost has been human once and a human can live as a ghost, haunting the memories of his/her loved ones.

The movie also commits a cardinal sin, mostly unseen in horror movies. It ends. A horror movie is not supposed to end. The ghost is supposed to smile at the camera just before the credits roll, leaving the movie open ended.

Or may be it is just that I lost the ability to feel any chills with my prolonged nights till 3.00 a.m with a messed up sleep cycle. May be Ari Aster could confine his horror movies to the ghost subject.

In the name of God – Trance

(Note: If you have not seen “Trance” you wouldn’t be able to make head or tail of this review as I have tried my best to refrain from narrating a synopsis)

Starring: Fahad Fazil, Nazriya Nazim, Sreenath Bhasi, Chemban Vinod, Vinayakan, Gautam Vasudev, Dileesh Pothan

Direction: Anwar Rasheed

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

- Karl Marx (A Contribution to Hegel’s Philosophy of right)

It is a cliche, for an atheist to begin a review of a movie which relies on religious critique as a theme, with the most popular quote by Marx on religion. A quote, which is often used out of context, far away from Marxian analysis of religion. I have decided to continue the long tradition. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

The movie revolves around the life of Viju Prashad/ Joshua Carlton (Fahad Fazil) as Motivational speaker/ Preacher. This complete reliance on a single character results in other characters being caricatured/ stereotyped.

The movie can be neatly divided into three segments, which can be made into individual movies in their own right. The life of a motivational speaker with his brother (Sreenath Bhasi), who suffers from bouts of depression; The life of a preacher who makes quiet a lot of money by questionable means; The complicated relationship between Joshua Carlton & Esther Lopez which pops up as an intermittent segment & ends up as tail of the movie.

Sreenath Bhasi’s act, though only for a few minutes leaves a lasting impression in the first short segment. Though short, the segment makes a point that depression is an illness and cannot be cured by positivity/will power alone, by juxtaposing Viju Prasad, who is a motivational speaker vis a vis his brother in depression. While the segment has time compressed to extreme level, from my imagination as a viewer, I can feel that, stretched at a movie level, the segment can make a much wanted movie about mental health issues.

In particular, the two minutes showing Viju Prashad and his brother in their younger selves is one of the most intensive tragi-poetic segment I have seen in recent films.

In the second segment Viju Prashad is rechristened as Joshua Carlton aka JC (to resemble Jesus Christ). This is the segment which rakes up a myriad of questions.

Can Pentecostalism termed as a cult? No. However, the flexible nature of Pentecostalism vis a vis other denominations which have been institutionalized/ ritualized offers a fertile ground for a cult leader to amass followers in a short span of time.

A faceless corporate is used as a plot device instead of forming a narration on cult formation and indoctrination. It would not be far fetched to say that the faceless corporate is the deus ex machina of the movie. By doing this and almost cutting directly to Joshua Carlton on stage, the film has missed out an opportunity to delve deep into the psyche of believer and preacher.

The display of flamboyant lifestyle of the new age pastors & the stress on prosperity gospel (which of course is a blatant capitalist gospel that stands against liberation theology) had hit the bulls eye. While I could not find any investigative journalism on Indian Evangelicals, please see the below video to understand the hold of Televangelists on believers in US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg

While the film takes enough care to capture the antics of miracle healing, glossolalia (or gibberish, to be exact), & particularly the effects of lighting set ups, flooding the floor with music & other sensations on worshippers, the film fails in analysing the minds of believer and preacher, thereby ending up as a film lacking depth.

A fine example would be Thomas (Vinayakan), who loses his daughter due to his extreme reliance on faith-healing. He cannot simply afford to take up arms. As a believer he will rationalise his belief by any possible way rather than going against it and suffering another psychological loss. Instead, he too is used as a plot device to tie up any loose ends.

The segment with Esther Lopez seems to be a completely unrelated sub plot, which could have made another, even better film with some imagination. The tail end of the film, dipped in red, reminds one of Wong Kar Wai. But one does not become Wong Kar Wai by simply mimicking his colour palette.

Why should we read literature?

“I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.” 

-          Sylvia Plath (Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)

We wake up every day; Go to our work, which we may or may not like; Come back to home exhausted; Indulge in something that may chase away our sense of fatigue like spending time with family or trying to escape from family into our own shell or by just being home; Then we sleep only to wake up the next day and continue our routine.

As we step up our career ladder, the routine may change into another routine. But still, routine is a routine is a routine. This different forms of routine continues till we retire and then we will create another routine which continues till we pass away. Memento Mori.

We live a life, only one life at a time. People who are adventurous may live a few lives at a time, by seeing a lot of places and people, moving around with different people. Not all people are adventurous and lucky enough to live more than one life. Our culture also places a great deal of respect on the word “settled” than the word “wandering around”.

Some faiths talk about unlimited number of births and deaths, transmigration of soul while some other faiths talk about an infinite afterlife. These conjectures may or may not be true. The most certain truth is we have one life which we can live in only one way and can experience it in only one way.

Literature opens a window for us and offers us an escape from our mundane, monotonous life. It clothes us with the skin of other people, people from other time, another culture and helps us experience life in multitude of ways.

To the non-reader, who is a literate, even the idea that one might read for pleasure might seem bizarre. A reader who had experienced the pleasure of living in many skins might wonder why all people aren’t reading.

What makes literature so special is it represents a culture, a period of time. It provides people with a sense of identity. It would not be possible to draw up a narrative of Tamil culture without Sangam literature, nor would it be possible to talk about English culture without invoking Shakespeare. Literary symbols also attract reverence in modern times and are important in establishing a coherent social identity.

The same could also be said about other forms of artistic expression like music, painting, sculpture etc. Without Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci European culture would not be the same today. But what differentiates literature and other forms of artistic expression is that other forms embodies culture in an abstract way, whereas literature embodies culture in a more concrete way by giving it a form which can be remembered by mortal human beings- words.

Literature also piques our curiosity to explore other forms of knowledge like psychology, sociology, anthropology, history etc. Knowledge available to human beings is embedded at the literature created at that age. Literature also speaks of human condition at the age of history, hence when reading literature chronologically one could understand the flow of history and condition of people of the particular culture.

Literature delves deep into human psyche, discusses the making and breaking of social relationships, raises and answer questions about being human. It represents the collective consciousness of the culture at the particular point of time.

Literature provides us with companionship that is humanly impossible. We are social animals; hence we do not prefer others to see our vulnerabilities, our gloomy side out of fear of rejection and awkwardness. We follow established social norms for communication even in most intimate of our relationships. Very few people were able to break such inhibitions.

Literature exposes the vulnerability of human beings and the dark side of being human by setting human beings as characters in various combinations and permutations of situations. What would happen when a young, city bred man becomes a civil servant in a remote district? We would get “English, August”. What would happen when assassins from different backgrounds converge to take the life of a journalist? We would get “The story of my assassins”.

Literature also delves deep into the human mind. Neela. Padmanabhan’s “Pallikondapuram” almost happens completely in a man’s mind. Such transparency, in exposing the human mind is not possible in other forms of artistic expression.

In some cases, literature may also expose the vulnerability of the author, such as the confessional poetry of Sylvia Plath. By reading the poetry of Sylvia Plath one could understand the anxieties of a young woman and make sense about the path of her life as she matures from a young girl to a young woman and then to a wife and a mother. It would be extremely difficult to untangle Sylvia Plath’s life and literature as both are almost the same.

Reading literature does not always end in pleasure. Sometimes it may also lead to exquisite mental pain and agony. I still remember the exquisite agony and gloominess that had befallen me after reading Sylvia Plath’s “Bell Jar”. This is because we empathize with the characters, we live in their skins, and we feel what they feel. Thus our sense of empathy is sharpened by literature.

Literature helps in acquiring a sense of destiny. The truth of fiction is immutable than the truth of science. Whereas scientific truth is subject to change according to the facts and new discoveries, fictional truth has no such limitations placed by facts. Romeo and Juliet are dead; nothing the reader could do can wake them, though they never existed. The acceptance of fictional truth helps a reader in accepting the facts of life as it is presented.

Literature helps us live an infinite number of lives; to live and to die in different space and time; expands the possibility of the single life we have at least temporarily.

Music, movies and literature provide joy to the human mind. We experience immense pleasure when we discover a good movie, listen to a good piece of music for the first time. Similarly let us experience great pleasure in discovering our next book. Good luck!

BITCOIN AND BLOCKCHAIN = THE FUTURE?

It is an innovation which could change the rules of the modern world; undermine the authority of the existing systems. It may not be a big breakthrough for humankind like the invention of wheel, but still it is an important breakthrough in modern history. But we don’t know the name of the innovator. Such anonymity is unsurprising considering the medium through which the innovation came into existence.

Let us consider the first paragraph as a puzzle. Can you solve it? If not, continue reading. If you think you had found the answer, continue reading to verify your answer.

The innovator(s) go by a pseudonym – Satoshi Nakamoto. The innovation - Bitcoin. The medium - a combination of networking, cryptography and coding.

Let us not be in a hurry. We have to trace the origins of money in its modern form, before elaborating about Bitcoin which might be a probable future candidate of currency systems.

Transactions between ancient people were carried on by barter system. But barter system has a very romantic problem – the double coincidence of wants, which is a rarity. So, coinage system came into being to build a standardized transaction system.

Early forms of coinage depended on the perceived value of commodity upon which they were based. Units of cowry shells, salt, livestock were used as money. With the emergence of civilisation and economies of massive scale, standardized coinage emerged where the value of money is based on metal as well as the guarantee of sovereign or trading authority issuing it. This coincided with the invention of writing which from then on, was used to record various trading transactions.

Modern day coin system operates similar to paper currency. But how does paper currency operate? How are we accepting paper currency’s face value? Modern paper currency had severed its links with Gold. Now the paper we hold on to is only backed by guarantee of the issuing Central Bank and the sovereign authority. This type of currency is called fiat money – backed only by guarantee of the sovereign authority.

This paper money has a unique problem. It will incur costs on the issuer- both printing costs and transaction costs. Reserve Bank of India has estimated that in 2015, totally Rs. 21000 Crores were spent on Currency operations cost by itself and commercial banks. This problem exists because India is a cash intensive economy. India has cash to GDP ratio of around 12.3%. Wear and tear of paper currency and issue of paper currency of lower denominations are imposing considerable cost on exchequer. So, there is an urge to move towards low cash intensive and electronic transaction incentive economy.

Every scheduled commercial bank has now established a stable electronic transmission system which helps in moving the money just from one electronic ledger to another without physical movement of paper money, thereby reducing transaction costs significantly. Much of India is digitally unconnected; even most of Indians who are connected tend to be sceptic about electronic transactions. Hence electronic transactions are comparatively lower though steadily growing.

Banks, as intermediary to these payment services, charge around $1.7 trillion globally for their payment services and to cover their transaction costs. World Bank has estimated that cost of sending currency to another country is very high – at 8%.

Various payment services have emerged to take over the traditional intermediary role of banks. Vodafone’s M-Pesa is such a service completely based on mobile, where money is transferred from a mobile number to another mobile number. Also, credit is provided to the customers based on their transaction records.

This payment system has significantly reduced the transaction costs. (State Bank Buddy, a product of SBI is modelled on similar lines as M-Pesa, where money can be transferred from one mobile number to another) Such mobile-based transactions are considered very secure with the combination of PIN and mobile ownership.

What is the next big step? Enter Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is the brainchild of Satoshi Nakamoto, who identified himself as a Japanese man. He seemed to have developed distrust in modern financial system following Global Financial Crisis of 2008. No one knows his true identity, but many people have made logical assumptions about his identity.

1.      He is probably a person from a commonwealth nation since his English is flawless.

2.      He is well versed in cryptography and computer programming.

3.      He has studied the international monetary system with remarkable thoroughness.

His real identity still remains unknown. But his innovation is now well known and has few lakhs of enthusiastic followers around the world.

He had introduced a currency system which does not require trust to work, but relies on cryptographic proof based upon timestamping of digital signatures and a network of nodes to verify each transaction.

To elaborate, most of the digital currencies will suffer from the problem of double spending, (i.e., spending the same money twice) since electronic files can be easily replicated. To break out this from Bitcoin introduced the solution of Blockchain.

In this system, each transaction is signed with digital signatures of the previous owners in addition to which a timestamp is added and is widely published in a shared ledger to verify if there is any double spending.

Bitcoin implemented the proof of work method with One CPU- One Vote, rather than One IP- One vote. The block produced by time stamping a digital signature cannot be tampered with easily as redoing one block will also means redoing the blocks which follows it. In this type of secure system, Bitcoin will remain tamper proof unless majority of the computer nodes and CPU power in its network is held by attacking computers.

Here comes the interesting part. A greedy attacker who can assemble the required number of nodes can either use them to steal back his payments by redoing the block chain or may use it honestly and to get incentives in the form of bitcoins by adding new blocks.

With such a secure system, Bitcoin has remained tamper proof and largely successful as a digital currency. But its success as a currency is questionable.

Bitcoin remains a highly volatile currency with its value reaching as close to 75000 INR and falling to lower than 25000 INR within a year. Now Bitcoin is trading at nearly 78000 INR. This volatility in exchange has made it unattractive and a lousy store of value.

Further, the designer(s) of Bitcoin has limited the number of Bitcoins that can be mined. There would only be 21 million Bitcoins, to be mined over 130 years. As the number of Bitcoins increase, the difficulty of mining a new Bitcoin increases too. The number of bitcoins the miners will earn also will be halved now, thus increasing the price of Bitcoin as they need to keep their margin safe. Currently estimates say it takes $400 to mine a Bitcoin and its value ranges around $1200

Bitcoin’s volatility and limited availability has made it endearing only to a group of technolibertarians rather than common masses. Also, Bitcoin will find it immensely difficult to remove the entrenched trust which people place upon fiat money unless a major political or financial catastrophe takes place.

While modern monetary pundits like Raghuram Rajan finds the idea of Bitcoin fascinating, the technology underlying it – the blockchain is considered to be more realistic by them. Modern monetary system operates based upon a central ledger which monitors the transaction whereas in blockchain type, a decentralised ledger is shared between various nodes, thus making P2P transactions more efficient and with reduced transaction costs.

IMF and Central banks of several countries are studying the idea of blockchain to implement it in their payment systems, whereas Bitcoin finds no takers among central banks. But Bitcoin enthusiasts believe that without using Bitcoin, blockchain technology will be irrelevant.

The question of future is – whether modern currency system assimilates the blockchain system into itself or succumbs to Bitcoin. The answer depends upon people’s trust, which gives value to modern currency.

P.S: A recent judgement by the Miami- Dade Circuit court in United States declared that Bitcoin cannot be considered money and it has a long way to go before being considered as a money equivalent.

References:

1.      Nakamoto, Satoshi (24 May 2009) “Bitcoin: A peer to peer electronic cash system”.

2.      Davis, Joshua (10 October 2011) “The Crypto – currency”

3.      Lanchester, John (16 April 2016) “When Bitcoin grows up”

4.      The Guardian Website

5.      The Economist Website