Thinking Activity: The Birthday party

 

Hello Readers, 

Welcome to my blog on the movie Screening of The Birthday Party by Horald Pinter. 

• Why are two scenes of Lulu omitted from the movie?

There is a lot of confusion created by the director to interpret the movie  based on LuLu's character. It is very difficult to know the director's intention behind omitting Lulu’s scene. Because it does not make any difference, maybe the scenes are omitted. Lulu is a girl who can be impressed very easily and we can see in the movie that she is actively participating with Goldberg. Goldberg is not doing it forcefully or Lulu is not in a position where she has to be submissive.

She is doing it willingly and after that complaining. he was less focus on female characters  justification like Meg and Lulu because this character show only few minutes and Meg and Lulu haven’t individuals identity. In the film we can see Meg most of the kitchen and Lulu show ready for sexual relationships. Maybe her complaint is right but no one will believe her. The centre of the play is Stanley and symbolically Lulu is his inspiration. When Lulu goes near Goldberg, it is enough to see that how Stanley is left alone now and after this may be there is no need to show the scene of Lulu blaming Goldberg. Maybe because of this reason the director omitted the scene of Lulu.

•  Is the movie successful in giving us the effect of menace? Were you able to feel it while reading the text?

Yes, while watching movie we do feel the effect of menace. The pause between dialogues we can feel while watching, but while reading we don’t take pause and we can’t feel also. The effect of menace come when we watch the expression of actors and by that we also can feel. The pause and silence of Pinter is hard to understand while reading. When we have audio visual effect the menacing effect becomes stronger. But while reading some time it happens that we don’t understand effect and so we can not feel

• Do you feel the effect of lurking danger while viewing the movie? Where you are able to feel the same while reading the text.

Yes, I do feel lurking danger while watching a movie. In the movie I feel it when Stanley hides in the kitchen and then they all are playing blind man’s buff and this danger remains as it is when Goldberg and MacCann take Stanley away. When Stanley constantly biting the drum and during light off after Lulu's screaming voice there scenes are the effect of lurking danger while viewing the movie. Petey read the newspaper and Meg asked questions there. I felt the same as watching a movie and reading text. While reading for the first time we feel this when Meg asks Petey if it is him or not and for some time Petey doesn't answer we feel the danger there. Then again when the interrogation scene came and at last when they took Stanley away.

• What do you read in the 'newspaper' in the movie? Petey is reading a newspaper to Meg, it is torn into pieces by McCain, pieces are hidden by Petey in the last scene.

Newspapers are one of the symbols in movies. Newspapers are something which shows us the reality of the world. Petey is reading a newspaper to Meg at that time he is exercising his power over his wife. Meg is the person who mostly lives in her goody goody world. She also asks Petey to tell her some good news only. Petey is a different person than Meg so while reading the newspaper he is trying to have his own separate world from Meg. MacCann is tearing the newspaper, it shows that he is trying to destroy reality, maybe his real self. He is very disturbed by the job which is given to him and by tearing the newspaper he is trying to tear his fear and frustration. At last Petey hides the pieces of newspaper from Meg. To keep Meg in her imaginative and happy world and to hide the reality of Goldberg and MacCann and Stanley. Petey knew about her wife's ambiguity relation with Stanley but he avoided and read the newspaper. McCain cutting newspaper and that pieces are hidden by Petey in the last scene may suggest that news reality is missing and unfolding by someone.

• Camera is positioned over the head of McCain when he is playing Blind Man's Buff and is positioned at the top with a view of the room like a cage (trap) when Stanley is playing it. What interpretations can you give to these positioning of cameras? 

The director of the movie has taken very effective work from the camera. During the blind man’s buff scene also it works effectively. MacCann was there in that house because he wanted to grab Stanley. When it came to blindfold MacCann the camera was over the head of MacCann and his expression was also savage. It is like he is trying to get his prey. But when it comes to Stanley the camera is on top of the room and this is a sign of Standly position like he is in a cage or trap by system. Stanley is trying to escape. So it is symbolically said that now Stanley is in a trap and he can not escape because Goldberg and MacCann will not allow him to escape.

• "Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of one another and pretense crumbles." (Pinter, Art, Truth & Politics: Excerpts from the 2005 Nobel Lecture). Does this happen in the movie?

Yes, this does happen in movies. Most of the scenes are in the drawing room, the space is so narrow and the dialogues are also unpredictable. We can not imagine what is going on in the mind of characters. Every character is at the mercy of each other, whether it is Stanley, or Petey, Meg, Goldberg, MacCann, or Lulu. Every character is living on another. At some point of time every one’s false face falls down. They became what they really are. So yes these lines do happen in movies. where like when Goldberg asking questions to Stanley their dialogue like to hide something it doesn’t show in the movie and text.

GOLDBERG -Where was your wife?

STANLEY - In-

GOLDBERG - Answer.

STANLEY-  [turning, crouched.] What wife?

GOLDBERG- What have you done with your wife?

Other dialogue-

GOLDBERG-  Do you recognise an external force, responsible for

you, suffering for you?

STANLEY- It's late.

• How does viewing movies help in better understanding of the play ‘The Birthday Party’ with its typical characteristics (like painteresque, pause, silence, menace, lurking danger)?

The movie is really great help to understand its typical characteristics which most of them while reading are hard to get. In the movie I can well understand tones like silence, pause , menace. But in the movie I can’t see Painteresque characteristics while reading a play. At that time I was seeing Painteresque characteristics. Like there is too Silence in Pinter’s play which gave better understanding rather than reading. The pause we can feel while watching but while reading it is just like a word. So yes it is better to watch a movie of this play then the reading and it also gives a deeper understanding of Pinter’s characteristics. 

•  With which of the following observations you agree:

1. “It probably wasn't possible to make a satisfactory film of "The Birthday Party."

2. “It's impossible to imagine a better film of Pinter's play than this sensitive, disturbing version directed by William Friedkin”[3]. (Ebert)

Though I haven’t seen any other version of the play , I will go with the second observation. Because by this movie we feel all the effects which Pinter wants to create. Director has taken good work from the camera and all the actors also do a very good job. So I can’t imagine a better film than this one. Waiting for Godot is also absurd play and less even it is attractive when in this movie more characters even like boring for me. So the director could make it more interesting.

• If you were a director or screenplay writer, what sort of difference would you make in the making of a movie

This film is great in itself, I don’t feel anything to change. But maybe I will add the scene of Lulu because I don’t think Pinter has written it purposelessly. Other than that I don’t think the movie needs any further change.

• Who would be your choice of actors to play the role of characters?

If I have to choose the actors for this movie I will choose…

Stanley – Ranbir Kapoor 

Goldberg – Anupam Kher

McCann – Vicky Kaushal 

Petey – Paresh Rawal

Meg – Kiran Kher

Lulu – Karina Kapoor 

•  Do you see any similarities among Kafka's Joseph K. (in 'The Trial'), Orwell's Winston Smith (in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four') and Pinter's Victor (in 'One for the Road')? 

Yes, I can see similarities among Kafka’s Joseph K. (The Trial) in this text also saw a detective story as like a Birthday party play, I can say it is a deductive story of one person who may be against a political leader. And Orwell's Winston Smith in the ‘Nineteen Eighty- Four' according to the film version is a very strong and heart touching movie. Pinter’s play similarities to Kafka’s work because he read works of Kafka.

Thank you...

Existentialism: Flipped Learning

Flipped Learning: Existentialism 

Video - 1

Question -1

As Heidegger critiques the philosophy of his predecessors and traditional metaphysics and defines his final thought as understanding existence. So how death is the most original form of the possibility of Existence that threatens the entire universe?

Video-2

Question - 2

How do we know about the relation between an existential feeling of rebellion and freedom? 

Video  - 3

Question - 3

If the person may feel absurd and commit physical suicide and physical death then the question is what is a person? Is it the mind or the body? 

Video - 6

Question - 4

Is there any actual link between depression and nihilism because many religious people will try to scare them.

Experience of Flipped learning platform:

Blended learning is one of the most important pedagogical formats that can enhance student learning, optimize the use of active learning strategies, and potentially improve student learning outcomes. The Virtual flipped classrooms the students to watch and listen to lectures at home and then perform their interactive activities and apply their knowledge in a virtual synchronized classroom in a way similar to the real classroom environment.

One such way is class attendance hard to be engaged with class work if you're not there and on that score flipped learning does very well. where a student is first exposed to new material outside of class, usually in the form of an online presentation. Each lecture video is no more than 10 minutes in length, and covers only one concept. So it is easy to understand the different concepts. 

Learning technologies has given rise to a number of approaches that instructional designers can use to deliver eLearning content. Based on extensive research, the  NTL developed an effective Learning Pyramid that demonstrates a clear relationship between the teaching method of choice, and content retention rates.

Thank you....

Interpretation Challenge and video shooting

The play Breath by Samuel Beckett 

Breath is a play written by Samuel Beckett in 1969. It is considered as the shortest play ever written. It is only about 30 second play. It also considered as experimental play. This play can be interpreted many ways. The play consider as absurd play. Here I tried to interpret play and also shoot a video as given below.

 

Interpretation of the play  Breath :

Breath means both life and death. In life it is considered as the symbol  of action. Sometimes people are so habituated to breathing. Person doesn't realise it's actually important for life. The play reflects the reality of human life. It reflects meaningless and Existentialism. Meaningless in the sense that people have no purpose in living life. We live life just waiting for death. Breathing helps us to reach ultimately death. So Breath is the symbol of Bridge between life and death. 

The script of the play:

CURTAIN Up

1. Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold about five seconds.

2. Faint brief cry and immediate inspiration and slow increase of light together reaching maximum - together in about ten seconds. Silence and hold for about five seconds.

3. Expiration and slow decrease of light together reach minimum together (light as in 1) in about ten seconds and immediately cry as before. Silence and hold about five seconds. 

CURTAIN Down

Thank you....

Thinking Activity: A Tempest Aime: Cesaire

 

Hello Friends,

Welcome to my blog. This blog based on the lectures of professor Balaji Ranganathan.

A Tempest Aime: Cesaire 

The difference between the two playwrights, however, is that Shakespeare was problematizing the colonizer/colonized relationship for his strictly English audience, while Cesaire was writing for both the colonizers and the colonized. And though there are differences in the way the playwrights thought out the problem of master-slave relations, there is a striking similarity in how they expounded this relationship of Magician-Duke and Monster-Slave. Only the slave who desires freedom resists the master.

Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest interrogates the relevance of Eurocentric sophistications and value systems in the black cultural context. In fact, the black ethics and cultures had either been distorted or misrepresented in the European literature and history about colonial subjects throughout the ages but the black intellectuals like Aime Cesaire have always challenged to rectify and re-interpret those editions of colonizers-colonized tales. The Eurocentric values, which were taught in the guise of universal knowledge, experienced extensive critique in Cesaire’s play. 

By introducing local relevance in the play, Aime Cesaire has actually defied the colonizer’s edition of a colonial story where black indigenous traditions had been marginalized. In this article, I shall examine how The Tempest by Shakespeare comes across appropriations and rectifications in Cesaire’s edition of the play. This  will also interrogate how by re-interpreting a canonical text, Cesaire is actually developing the notion of cultural decolonization.Youths were able to find their identity throughtheir stories and project an image of themselves that they could live with. Finding self-value despitethe image imposed by the colonizer on thecolonized relates to Caliban’s monologue in ATempest when he confronts Prospero about the constraints Prospero placed on him:

And you lied to me so much,

About the world, about myself,

That you have ended up by imposing on me

An image of myself:

Underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior.

-Caliban, in Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest (Act III, Scene 5, Line 129)

Barbadian poet Edward Kamau Brathwaite has explained the implication of the word ‘mulatto’ in Caribbean cultural context. He argues:

Two main kinds of creolization may be distinguished: a mestizo-creolization: the inter-culturalation of Amerindian and European (mainly Iberian) and located primarily in the Central and South America, and a mulatto creolization : the inter-culturalation of Negro-African and European (mainly Western Europe) and located primarily in the West Indies and the slave areas of North American continent.

(Brathwaite, 344)

In a way, Brathwaite’s perception regarding the multicultural West Indies concentrates on the basic tenets of the plurality of his society and the two significant examples of “inter-culturalization” are the mulatto and mestizo communities. From this perception, Césaire’s play A Tempest can be interpreted because though the play has not brought into focus the plurality of his culture and society, it has certainly pointed out the differences of opinions regarding freedom and slavery.

I also thankful to Professor Balaji Ranganathan for the informative lecture.

Thank you..

Film Review: Postcolonial film: Midnight Children, The Reluctant fundamentalist , The Black Prince and Abdul & Victoria

The Reluctant Fundamentalist 

“Some books are acts of courage. Hamid has done something extraordinary with this novel.”

 I’m not sure what Hamid’s religious beliefs are but a Pakistani, supposedly Muslim man writing a novel about 9/11 in the way in which he did I’m sure caused a lot of controversy; especially the ending of the book. The idea of the man “reaching into his jacket” and Changez seeing the “glint of metal”. As we watched a movie in class that day, this ending can be interpreted in many different ways. I had some questions while I was watching a film.

• Did Changez kill the American man? 
• Did the American man kill Changez? 
• Did they both exchange business cards and part their ways in peace? 

I feel as though during the time in which this movie I was watching, those who interpreted the ending as the American being killed by Changez would watch this movie as though it were anti-American, which I don’t think it is at all.

“I had a Pakistani Once”

Consciously or unconsciously she portrayed Changez Khan as Pakistani. This act gives the lens through which foreigners used to see Islamic identity. Rather to consider anyone as human being they are more interested in considering religious identity. This act of her also drives him angry and suddenly he breaks up with her.

There is also a scene come in which one person says that,

“This long beard also makes him fearful”

A very little line arises a lot of huge questions against the identity of Changez Khan. After all this happening,

Can Changez Khan be able to be what he really wants to be?

The reaction of Chagez Khan is said a lot without uttering a word when he came to know about the 7/11 attack.  After hearing the news of the attack he is quite shocked but sooner and suddenly a smile comes out on his face which symbolizes his inner happiness also. This is only because of brutal treatment of foreigners towards him.

Hamid does a very good job at portraying what life was like as a Pakistani or a Muslim in the United States after 9/11. This amazing country that Changes came to from Pakistan to start a new life, to attend the school of his dreams had turned its back on him. understand what it’s like to go to a new country after being in Pakistan for a long time. In his most vivid memory of leaving Pakistan was when he was nine years old and my family decided to spend a few days in Singapore. He remember as a little kid looking around and thinking he was in heaven. Of course Singapore and the United States are two very different countries but the feeling of being in this new environment completely different from Pakistan was mutual.

It wasn’t fair the way Changez was treated, it wasn’t fair how all Muslims were treated in the United States and as sad as it is, things haven’t fully changed even now.

Thinking Activity: Imaginary Homeland: Selected essays: Salman Rushdie

 

Hello Readers warmly welcome to my blog. This blog is based on the Thinking Activity of Imaginary Homeland by Salman Rushdie. 

Salman Rushdie is the most controversial writer among Indian writers in English. Rushdie's migrant status encapsulates a paradox, in his own queries in his essay Commonwealth Literature does not exist in his collection "Imaginary Homelands" (1991/1992). 

"In my own case, I have constantly been asked whether I am British or Indian. The formulation "India-bom British writer" has been invented to explain me. But, as I said last night, my new book deals with Pakistan. So what now?" "British resident Indo-Pakistani writer"? You see the folly of trying to contain writers inside passports.

In his essay, Rushdie consistently opposes any effort to restrain as well as enchain any ambitious author within any "Literary Ghetto" like the term "Commonwealth Literature".

Any rules which tend to confine any author within the parameters of tradition are basically conservative in character. Literature, according to Rushdie, transcends national boundaries and can, therefore, never occupy such "phantom" categories as English Literature or Commonwealth Literatures in isolation. Such boundaries are primarily designated by political or linguistic concerns.

The book ‘Imaginary Homelands’ is divided into six sections. Like..

1) Midnight’s children.

2) Politics of India and Pakistan.

3) Indo-Anglian literature.

4) Movie and Television.

5) Experience of migrants, -Indian migrants to Britain.

6) Thatcher/ flout election –question of Palestine

“Imaginary Homelands” is a vivid imagination of a vivid mind.

The essay includes controversial topics such as…

• Attenborough’s Gandhi

• Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist

• New Empire within Britain

• On Palestine

The term diaspora is at the center in Salman Rushdie's work, being a discourse the term has changing connotation, it depends upon which lens you develop to watch diaspora. Diasporic literature may not showcase longing for native rather it is a portrayal of problems they have to face in multicultural nations mainly regarding racism and social equality.

In Attenborough’s Gandhi, Salman Rushdie deconstructs the Oscar winning Attenborough’s film Gandhi with that deep postcolonial insight. The very first sentence of the essay is,

Commonwealth Literature does not exist 

Salman Rushdie talks on commonwealth literature as an imaginary idea which doesn’t exist. This question was already there as it is a highly debatable term but got legitimacy and validity when Salman Rushdie started to ask about it. As a term by commonwealth literature, generally we mean that it is a literature written in one place by people from another place. The idea of Commonwealth literature is never founded on any particular form or neither defined by a single norm. In today’s time we can not find mutually exclusiveness in the literature, it is simultaneously influenced by different cultures.

Diaspora 

The discourse on homeland reflected in Imaginary Homelands of Salman Rushdie provides a very critical framework to analyse all these aspects. Though some research has been made on the Rushdie. In this study an attempt has been made to study the issues of homeland, imaginary homeland, identity, authenticity, selfhood, predicaments of migration in Salman Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands. 

Salman Rushdie in his book Imaginary Homelands speaks about the diasporic lives, and the imaginary homeland which is often portrayed as the source of origin, purity of culture and nostalgic longing for the diaspora. These are the current features of diasporic lives in today’s world of multicultural society and age of capitalism with common features of high migrants across the globe. As Salman Rushdie has written: 

It may be that writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge in which gives rise to profound uncertainties that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind. (Imaginary Homelands 10)

CITATIONS 

"Hobsonjobson." Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. Lon-don: Granta/Viking, 1991. 81-83.

Kumar, Deepak. “A Note on the Notion of Home in Salman Rushdie's  'Imaginary Homelands'.” International Journal of Engineering Technology Science and Research, Volume 2, no. Issue 11, 0AD, pp. 196–197., www.ijetsr.com. Accessed Nov. 2020.

Laguerre, Michel S. "Dediasporization: Homeland and Hostland." Journal of nonverbal behaviour, Springer (2006): 131-161.

Rushdie, S. (1992). Imaginary Homelands. In S. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands (pp. 1-25). London.