WAITING FOR A G2

An absurd short play by Deepak Dhruvkumar H

SCENE:

Late afternoon.

A bus stop. But there are no seats. There are supposed to be two railings, but there is only a broken half.

dude 1 is sitting on one end of the pavement, or the raised “floor” of the bus stop. He looks like a college student. Maybe it’s because he’s constantly staring at the screen of his phone and swiping his index finger across it constantly. Maybe it’s because he’s wearing a large pair of headphones, it seems like he’s come from a future where there are no roads. You decide.

Silence.

dude 2 walks in from R. Rather, ambles in. He is also staring at his phone and constantly swiping his finger across the screen in different directions. The bag that is on his left shoulder keeps slipping off with every second scraping of the foot along the ground, but he seems to be more engrossed in the affairs of the phone. He makes a half-hearted half-arm movement to get the bag’s sling back on his left shoulder, but fails. He does not even look up but is aware of the presence of DUDE 1.

DUDE 2:    This is where I get a G2, right?

Silence.

DUDE 1 is obviously absorbed in his phone and music and DUDE 2 is also engrossed similarly to acknowledge that DUDE 1 has not acknowledged his presence or his question. DUDE 2 notices the lack of an audible response and now addresses DUDE 1 by turning his face towards him.

DUDE 2:   (slightly louder and slightly annoyed) Excuse me, is this where G2 stops?

Silence.

DUDE 2 makes a “tch” sound. This means that he would have to waste his precious energy by dragging himself, and his shoulder bag which was falling off, closer to DUDE 1. Not to mention pulling his medium-sized trolley-bag. He moves closer to DUDE 1 with such reluctance, it could be compared to how one really does not want to brush one’s teeth, but had to do it anyway to get rid of bad breath.

DUDE 2 drags his feet noisily towards DUDE 1 and waves his hand in front of DUDE 1. DUDE 1 looks up, his eyes fixed in a gaze and mouth agape. Slightly shifts one headphone-earmuff so he can hear.

DUDE 1:    Yeah?

DUDE 2 feels like an ass when he has to say something more than twice.

DUDE 2:    G2.

DUDE 1:    Yeah. (Shifts the earmuff back into place)

DUDE 2 plops himself to the left of DUDE 1 on the platform. He finally decides to let go of his shoulder bag. He feels his pockets and takes out a pack of cigarettes. There seems to be only one left. He swears under his breath and puts it to his lips. He searches his pockets again. Leans over and taps DUDE 1’s shoulder. DUDE 1 doesn’t look but shifts his left headphone-earmuff.

DUDE 2:   Do you have a light?

DUDE 1:    What?

DUDE 2:    A matchbox or a lighter or—

DUDE 1:    Nope. (Shifts back his earmuff again. Looks like the type who doesn’t like to be disturbed.)

DUDE 2 does not like being spoken to that way. He crushes the cigarette and flings it to his right, beyond DUDE 1. He throws the empty pack in the same direction as well. Both of them sail in front of DUDE 1. DUDE 1 reciprocates with the same vigour.

DUDE 1:    Can you please not litter?

DUDE 2:    So, you can speak more than one word at a time!

DUDE 1:    Can you please pick it up? (He doesn’t seem to know that ‘please’ is usually accompanied with ‘could’ and not ‘can’.)

DUDE 2:    Why?

DUDE 1:    Why do you want to litter your own country?

DUDE 2:    (Smugly) If I didn’t litter, the sweepers wouldn’t have their jobs.

DUDE 1:    Exactly. (Beat.) They would have a better one.

Uncomfortable silence.

DUDE 1:    The dustbin is just a few steps away. Fucking put it in that.

DUDE 2 is shocked. He promptly gets up, picks up the trash, puts it in the bin which is to the left of the bus stop, and comes back to his spot.

DUDE 1:    (Drilling it in slowly and viciously) I bet you don’t even wash your coffee mugs at work. I can imagine them piled up in your crummy little cubicle and your colleagues go by every day thinking it’s better they have self-respect and can sacrifice drinking coffee instead of coming up to you and asking you to wash your damn mugs.

Beat.

DUDE 2:    Sorry I hoped you would speak. (Beat.) When is this bus going to come anyway?

DUDE 1:    Why?

DUDE 2:    Well, I have to go places.

DUDE 1:    So… go.

DUDE 2:    Are you trying to act smart, man?

DUDE 1:    I’m not acting.

Beat.

DUDE 2:    I bet you go for a lot of stand-up comedy shows.

DUDE 1:    (Shocked) How’d you guess?

DUDE 2:    You’re SO full of clichés. (A punch-line clash is heard)

DUDE 1:    Who did that?

DUDE 2:    Did what?

DUDE 1:    The symbol clash thing. Du-du-tish!

DUDE 2:    No one.

DUDE 1:    But I heard it!

DUDE 2:    You must be hearing things.

DUDE 1:    No, I’m quite sure I heard it!

DUDE 2:    It must be in your head.

DUDE 1:    Well…

DUDE 2:    I bet you laugh at something just because a bunch of people around you are laughing.

Beat.

DUDE 1:    Whatever.

DUDE 2 gets up with his bags as he sees a bus to his far right. He goes upstage, but stops.

DUDE 2:    Stupid three-thirty-fours! (Sits back in his spot.) Man, I really need a cigarette!

DUDE 1:    Stop being such a crybaby!

DUDE 2:    No one’s talking to you!

DUDE 1:    (Looks at the audience) Oh, right.

Lights off.

Lights resume. WRITER is sitting on DUDE 1’s spot and scrawling in a little notebook.

WRITER:   (Writing) No … one’s … talking … to … you …

Oh … right. (Closes the book and looks up)

Okay, that’s all I can think of now. (Beat.) Man, I really need a cigarette!

Lights off.

Images vs Text in Storytelling: Re-telling History

By Tara Saldanha

The act of re-telling history is already fraught with subjectivity. This paper seeks to explore how images and texts (here and throughout, the written word) explore historical periods and personalities in depicted in fiction, using varying and similar methods. First I will examine the characteristic points of the comic method of storytelling. I will then use these to make a comparative study of Art Spiegelman’s Maus against Brecht’s “The Burning of the Books” and Yala Korwin’s “The Boy with His Hands Up” to examine how they treat the theme of the Holocaust. I will also look at the portrayal of the Roman Empire in general and Cleopatra in particular in a relative study of Goscinny and Uderzo’s Asterix and Cleopatra alongside Plutarch’s Cleopatra from Makers of Rome and Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra.

*

As McCloud vividly explains in his work Understanding Comics, the comic form is able to use images that are recognizably real to the human eye to depict certain ideals or views. The undermining of this ability has led to comics been seen as inferior to ‘great’ works of art- indeed it is not considered a work of art at all. However the communicative power of the comic medium has been exploited by artists over the years and the role of comics as a possible medium for serious issues is gaining ground.

Comics consist of simple drawings and are therefore not seen as meaningful at least to the adult world. However Mc Cloud states that it is this apparent drawback of comics that is its strengthening feature. Comics strip the world they depict down to its essence and through this ‘amplification through simplification’ the reader is able to identify with the characters (McCloud, 30). However this identification is more than the mere identification that occurs in prose, here the reader sees the characters as universal. All prose requires some amount of description in order to create a mental picture so necessary in the process of signification. But in comics the simplistic portrayal means that readers don’t just identify with the character, rather they occupy the body of the character. This simplified character is sometimes placed against a truer to life background, for example the view of the city of Alexandria (Goscinny & Uderzo, 11). Thus the reader is able to take part and get emotionally involved in the action and the ideals the writer wanted to communicate.  Spiegelman depicts the Jews as mice in his graphic novel Maus. By avoiding stereotypical representation of Jews he allows the reader to become emotionally invested in the horrors that engulfed the Vladek and his family. He contrasts this with realistic portrayals of mice as well family photos, while the ‘beauty of ideals’ is accessed through his simplified drawings (McCloud).

Objects that the author wants to give especial attention too are however more realistically portrayed. Spiegelman draws attention to the squalid conditions of the bunkers by adding drawings of actual mice and Goscinny and Uderzo mock Caesar’s grandeur by giving him more detailed features.

The transmission of meaning is different for images as compared to text. Images can be polysemous. And text is often used in conjunction with images in comics to supplement, parallel or pin point the meanings given by the image. Comics are able to depict stereotypes, which gives it the ability to communicate information about characters and situations without lengthy paragraphs of detailed description. Goscinny and Uderzo make continuous references to Cleopatra’s ‘pretty’ nose in their work thereby establishing the stereotype of Cleopatra as a beautiful, sensuous woman. Speigelman also uses animals to depict metaphorical meanings for different nationalities. He also states his reasons for using mice and Mickey Mouse in the book. (164). Thus as McCloud elucidates the meanings got from images are easier to decipher and rely on universal knowledge, whereas written text takes time and specific knowledge to understand. When reading Brecht or Korwin’s poems we are not at once able to understand the horrors of the Holocaust as we are from even a glance through Maus. For that we would need to wade through metaphor and imagery and other poetic devices. While these might be desirable traits in poetry and prose it doesn’t allow universal access to meaning.

Comics have the ability to communicate without verbosity but their expanse is limited due to practical reasons of printing and publishing. However by using the ability of ‘closure’ comic artists can rely on readers to fill in the gaps of meaning in the story (McCloud). This means that though graphic novels and comics might lack expanse they do not necessarily lack depth.

The very crafting of the images in comic form can lead to an ‘emotional or sensual response’ on the part of the reader (McCloud, chapter 3). Maus uses a comic within a comic in a seemingly Expressionist form. This depicts the emotional state of the protagonist through its form which resembles Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’. (Spiegelman, 103). Also Anja’s depressive state filters into her physical appearance as well-the lines that depict her are thin and drooping, and dark lines run under her eyes (Spiegelman, 36). The author’s helplessness in the face of his fame is shown as him regressing to the body of a child in the face of his publicists (202).

Spiegelman in his autobiographical work Maus switches between his father’s narration of the story and their actual conversation in ‘real time’ frequently. However the visual medium allows the readers to immediately recognize these shifts. Unlike text, the image finds no need to use much text to indicate change in time or place. Perspective is something that images portray well too. What devices could prose use to adequately describe the view through the cross hairs of a gun on the front line as Speigelman does through images? (Spiegelman, 50). The medium of comics allows for historical events and places, like the gas chambers at Auschwitz and the secret entrances to bunkers, to be portrayed as they actually are in first person. In text these distinctive historical details would be left to the visualizing power of the reader.

Spiegelman is also able to depict disguise, showing Vladek with a ‘Polish pig mask’, supposedly hiding his identity as a Jew. The rules of the comic’s world are dictated by the author and though the reader can see through the disguise the characters in the graphic novel supposedly can’t. (Spiegelman, 66). The medium of the image allows its user other freedoms as well. Spiegelman depicts how the hanging of the Jews haunted Vladek by showing the bodies in repeated frames (86,239). He is also able to use text to indicate objects in the frames, helping to build up the realistic quality of the background for instance Mala’s ‘X-word’ puzzles. Vladek and Anja’s future fate at the hands of the Germans is alluded to in the swastika shaped road they walk down after leaving Srodula (127). He is also able to depict movement by showing the characters in the car without explicitly stating that they are travelling. The image allows for use of irony too as is seen from the presence of a picture of a cat in the home the ‘rodent’ shrinks office (203). However this form does not allow for much probing into the mind of the characters as this would result in lengthy text. Only those inner thoughts which can be portrayed through artistic devices are available to the readers.
Brecht focuses on the same period in history in his poem ‘The Burning of the Books’. However he is able to explore the mind of the indignant writer whose books are considered subversive enough to be burnt. He focuses his poem on one aspect only of the Holocaust i.e. the literary purge and the attack on Jewish intellectualism. By drawing attention to this one aspect of the Holocaust the poet does not extinguish the racial purging that occurs, rather it lingers in the subtext of the poem. The poet uses irony and violent imagery to depict resistance to Nazism.

In an interesting mix of image and text, Yala Korwin bases her telling of the horrors of the Holocaust “The Little Boy with His Hands Up” on an actual photograph. Korwin from the title itself focuses the viewers’ attention on a two particular individuals in the photo. She brings out certain aspects of the image that would otherwise go unstressed, for instance the simile ‘palms…like two white doves’ emphasizes the innocence of the boy in contrast to the SS officers behind him. The poetic medium allows her to ask questions about the possible future of the child and the thoughts that could be running through his mother’s mind. The poem thus perpetuates and widens the meanings that can be derived from this image for belated viewers. This is an illustration of how the image and text can work in conjunction to retell history.

*

Cleopatra is portrayed by Plutarch as being playful and intellectual, seductive and persevering (296). Goscinny and Uderzo however focus on her perseverant side but depict her as childish, throwing fits and furniture when Caesar snubs her (5). The lines of her body too are shown as soft and childlike in contrast to Caesar’s sharp, chiseled face and white hair. Shakespeare is depicting a slightly older Cleopatra and uses sexual innuendos to communicate her relationship with Mark Anthony.

Goscinny and Uderzo effectively use the comic medium to satirize the might of the Roman Empire. In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra the Roman’s are seen to have authority, their armies commanding respect. Shakespeare shows Anthony and his soldiers as being hung up on honour and glory. However with their title Asterix and Cleopatra itself Goscinny and Uderzo show up the Roman Empire and glory. The Roman soldiers are shown turning green with fear at seeing Asterix and Obelix and the roman officers are depicted as rotund and bumbling fools. Their incompetence is the basis of several twists in the plots of the comics.

With regard to specifically image related devices, Goscinny and Uderzo show that the parts of the story that take place in Alexandria is dubbed in English so that their non-Egyptian speaking audience can understand it (6). This is an authenticity that Shakespeare’s play is unable to communicate as the switch is difficult to depict on the stage. There are some aspects of the atmosphere like Cleopatra’s barge that all three depict with fair consistency, except of course that Plutarch (293) and Shakespeare (Act II, Scene 2) must rely on a wordy paragraph while Goscinny and Uderzo use a single frame (46). With regard to the portrayal of grandeur though, the words used in the text descriptions of the barge give us an idea of the extravagance and detailed beauty of the barge which the single image merely satirizes. The speech of the Egyptian labourers is shown as hieroglyphics. It doesn’t really matter that the reader doesn’t understand it as it indicates in a single frame that Asterix and Obelix are in a foreign land. Shakespeare doesn’t capture the essence of Rome and Egypt in the context of clothing. Due to paucity of stage instruction in this regard most stagings of his Roman plays had actors dressed in Grecian dress. The use of imagery allows the Asterix comics a comparatively more accurate portrayal of Gaulish, Roman and Egyptian dress.

The other ways in which Goscinny and Uderzo exploit the particular freedoms accorded by the comic medium are given below. The thoughts of Obelix’s pet Dogmatix, i.e. his eagerness for a bone, is shown through a pile of bones in a speech bubble (26). In prose communicating a dog’s exact thoughts would mean that the writer would either have to rely on human assumptions of animal behavior or resort to talking animals. But here the artists are able to depict the true image of a waiting, hungry dog without resorting to imaginative devices. The writers of the comics also use large fonted onomatopoeic words as part of the image to depict sound and movement especially during fight scenes. Use of generic comic devices like a hash of symbols to indicate swearing takes place in this work of Goscinny and Uderzo.

*

There are other points that are important to understanding the retelling of history in the image and textual form. Given in this paper are several differences between the two mediums and their relative effectiveness in storytelling. This does not mean however that one medium is to be considered superior to the other. Rather they must both now be acknowledged for their unique abilities to retell history.

Works Cited
1. Brecht, Bertolt. “The Burning of the Books.” Poems 1913-1956. Routledge, 1987. Print.
2. Goscinny, Rene, and Albert Uderzo. Asterix and Cleopatra. 17. Impression. ed. London: Hodder Dargaud, 1986. Print.
3. Kilvert, Ian. Makers of Rome: Nine Lives by Plutarch. Penguin, 1965. Print.
4. Korwin, Yala. “The Little Boy with His Hands up.” To Tell the Story-Poems of the Holocaust. Holocaust Publications, 1987. Print.
5. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994. PDF File.
6. Shakespeare, William. “Anthony and Cleopatra.” Complete Works. Quartercentenary ed. London and Glasgow: English Language Book Society, Collins, 1965. Print.
7. Spiegelman, Art. A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History. Vol. The Complete Maus. Penguin, 2003. Print.
8. Spiegelman, Art. “Forms Stretched To Their Limits – The New Yorker.” The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 19 Apr. 1999. Web. 23 Aug. 2015.

Faithful to the text – The Godfather

By Imtiyala Jamir

Forty three years ago, The Godfather was released to movie audiences. Both Mario Puzo’s novel about the life of the Corleone family and the subsequent films directed by Francis Ford Coppola have been subject to much discussion. This is one such movie where many scenes, even lines of dialogue, are straight from the books. Certainly not all films that have been adapted from books have been good. However, the novel’s greatest achievement is perhaps the films that it spawned- films that have inspired direction, iconic performances, memorable music and dialogue that have become part of our vernacular. In this paper, it is my aim to explore the relationship between a novel and its movie adaptation through The Godfather and analyze how both are products of creative experiences.
When a film is made from a book it is called an adaptation. Film-makers for a very long time have made films based on novels, short stories, biographies and plays. Adaptations of books may vary from being very faithful to the book or loosely based on the book. There are three main reasons a film-maker might make major changes in adapting a literary work. One is simply the “changes demanded by a new medium and sometimes they make changes to highlight new themes, emphasize different traits in a character, or even try to solve the problems they perceive in the original work”. (Adaptation: From novel to film. 15, 16)
The story of The Godfather as depicted both in the Mario Puzo novel and in the films of the same name is multi- faceted. On the one hand is “the world of organized crime, the Mafia. A world where ties are strong, loyalties are somewhat flexible and tempers are short, a world of revenge, violence and distrust, and a world where the weak cannot survive”. (Richard Warren, The Godfather). On the other hand it is the story about family – the blood family one is born into and the one where you have to prove yourself to belong.  Varying degrees of power and control and the price paid to achieve success surrounds both of these.  This is the world we are introduced to, the world of Vito Corleone.
The differences between Mario Puzo’s novel and the film versions have to do mostly with character history where several of the peripheral characters in the films are given more attention in the novel. In some cases backgrounds are omitted from the films probably due to time constraints. The first character that comes to mind is Captain McCluskey. In the film version of The Godfather, McCluskey is simply a corrupt police captain, the death of whom, by Michael’s hand turns the tide of the story and forces Michael to fulfill his destiny. In the novel we learn of McCluskey’s upbringing and how it leads to his becoming a corrupt cop. A road to corruption that was paved by his father and grandfather who’d shown him that corruption was the way to make it out in the real world. It shows why the monetary price of law outweighed the need for order. To him order always came with the greasing of his palms. None of these details are included in The Godfather film.
Another major difference between the novel and the films comes by way of the attention paid to the character of Johnny Fontaine in the novel.  Though Fontaine plays a small role in Part I, the part he plays in Puzo’s book is more substantial.  Here we get an in-depth look into his relationships with young starlets, with his wives, with his daughters and details of the trials and tribulations he lives through related to his career.  In both versions, however, one scene stands out as key and in the film becomes as memorable a scene as ever appears on the big screen.  Though Fontaine is not in the scene, it is because he is the Don’s godson and has come to ask a favor of his godfather that the scene plays out.  This scene is the one where movie mogul, Jack Woltz, discovers the head of his beloved Khartoum in his bed.  In the film the scene opens with a glorious, peaceful morning in Hollywood.  The camera pans across the mogul’s majestic estate while birds chirp happily in the background.  Slowly, the camera ascends toward a small window and that music – possibly the greatest of theme songs – begins to play ever so softly as the camera continues to move upward.  Through the window we go and upon a slumbering Woltz we come.  In an overly ornate bed he lays on satin sheets, the music swells and the camera now follows him as he discovers blood.  He uncovers the head of the horse and the music dies leaving us in the midst of a gruesome sight and blood-curdling screams.  It is unforgettable.
An adaptation is always an interpretation, involving somebody’s personal views of the book and choices of elements to retain, reproduce, change or leave out.  A film is not just an illustrated version of the book.  It is a totally different medium. When adapting the novel, the filmmaker has to leave out a number of things for the very simple reason of time difference and because the medium is different. Things can be (and often must be) added to the film because the medium requires it, or because they will be more effective on the screen. The novelist on the other hand creates and describes everything that appears in the novel — the characters, the emotions of the characters, their actions, their thoughts, the plot, the costumes, the atmosphere, the environments, etc. The novel is also a visual medium, except that the author uses words to help the reader reconstruct the visual images in their head.
It would be a serious undertaking to note all that makes The Godfather a great film, a masterpiece, because so much of it is unforgettable.  It is simply a staggering film with so many great moments, performances and lines that one cannot mention them all.  The acting – it is phenomenal – each actor perfectly personifies the character he/she is playing.  Marlon Brando plays the title character with as much style and grace as he does his many other performances.  Playing a man much older than himself, a man in the twilight of his life, he commands the respect and honor naturally given to all leaders of men.  However, despite Brando’s great performance, one he won an Academy Award for, it is not the best in the film.  That honor has to go to Al Pacino whose portrayal of Michael Corleone, the Don’s youngest, and smartest son still stands as the best in his career.  Pacino’s gradual transition from a young, fresh-faced war hero to the tortured head of the most powerful crime family is nothing short of amazing  For instance, how his shoulders slump and his posture change throughout the film as the weight of the world falls upon him, is astounding.  Although it is clearly more visible in Part II, we can already tell that the Michael Corleone who is morphing into the next Don in front of our eyes is a different man than he is in Puzo’s novel.  Michael here is much more introverted, much more tortured by his decisions, which somehow make him more menacing.
The major difference between film and books is that visual images stimulate our perceptions directly, while written words can do this indirectly. During the casting process filmmakers can do a great service to a film by matching actors to the characters of an original book source so that at least that part of the visual realization is done prior to the beginning of filming.  It is also the other choices made by Francis Ford Coppola to bring this film to life that “make it his crowning achievement as a director”.  In this case “he is a director directing the film he was born to direct.  That crowning achievement is the look and feel of this film.”(Aurora, Novel to films)
Despite the growing popularity of adaptations, there are a lot of concerns and arguments against adaptations, and they’re not all for the same reasons. One such argument is that adaptations work against the uniqueness of film. Film is its own creative art form and using other works to adapt them to film stifles that creativity and prevents original work from being produced. This “growing popularity of adaptations not only dissolves the barrier between literature and film, but it creates a stigma that film is there to serve as another medium for which to display literature, rather than existing as its own separate entity capable of narrative merit”.(Adapting to adaptations. Web 16 February 2015)
But the disdain against adaptations doesn’t seem to stem simply from the viewpoint that adaptations shouldn’t be made at all, but rather, that they shouldn’t be made into film. “It does seem to be more or less acceptable to adapt Romeo and Juliet into a respected high art form, like an opera or a ballet, but not to make it into a movie” (Hutcheon, 3). So the concern is not that adapting will reduce the quality of the original work, but that it is actually the form or medium it is being translated to that matter. In this case, a film is thought to lower the original, causing the general disdain for adapting works of literature-particularly classics-into film. Director Alain Resnais once claimed he would never shoot an adaptation because “the writer [had] completely expressed himself in the novel and wanting to make a film of it is a little like re-heating a meal.”
Film and literature are two different roads that lead to the same goal. Often, they are intertwined; more than 50% of commercial movies are book adaptations. Sometimes you need the instant, intense catharsis a movie can provide you with; sometimes you want to create your own mental images and to immerse yourself in a world of words for a longer period of time. One medium doesn’t have to be ‘better’ than the other. Film and literature are interrelated yet independent art forms.

Works cited:
1.    Puzo, Mario. The Godfather. London: Arrow random house, 1991. Print
2.    The Godfather. Dir Francis Ford Coppola. Paramount pictures, 1972. Film
3.    Warren, Richard. The Godfather. n.d. Web. 20 August 2015
4.    Adaptation: from novel to film. 23 July 2009 Web. 20 August 2015
5.    Hutcheon, Linda. A theory of adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006. Web 20 August 2015
6.    Adapting to adaptations. N.p  web 20 August 2015
7.    “Adaptation” def 2. Merriam-webster online. Merriam-webster , n.d. Web 20 august 2015
8.    Aurora, Novels to films-The Godfather, n.d Web 21 August 2015

World Dust

By Minal Sukumar

  
We walk on world dust

Hurrying along uneven roads

Stumbling through the pain

Scared by the blood and the lust

 

Newspapers spilling tragedy

The world crumbling to powder

 

Fighting for our rights

Walking on our tiptoes

Afraid to wake the anarchy

Attempting to stay under the lights

 

Suffering filling our screens

The world crumbling to powder

 

Trying to make a difference

Struggling to stay above the surface

Terrified prayers to gods galore

Guilty but defensive for our sins

 

Anger breaking down bonds

The world crumbling to powder

 

Hoping the bullets never hit

Every new day a heaven sent gift

Tears washing down the hurt

A battle of guns and human wit

Love and Peace almost myths

The world crumbling to powder

 

The world howling only louder

We walk on World Dust

Is home where my heart is?

By Diana Sushmitha

Battling through life’s constant struggles,
The pain and trauma it leaves behind,

Hindering not the family’s “bond”,

I feel a funeral in my brain.

 

As dawn breaks, the “door” of a place wide open into a space, 

Mother, startled, wakes to see the miseries set afresh before her; 

Scared, she wakes her daughter; 

through the open door, a silent battlefield is all they see.

 

Holding mamma’s hand I try to face the world around us, 

Why alone I wonder? 

Men brag, crave authority, yet are unseen in this “womenly” trap.

Struck with idealistic notions left unfulfilled,

Life, like a royally crumpled paper waits to be scribbled upon.

 

Why then does Mother need her Husband?

Merely to wait in silence to be objectified or

Be pushed to accept the life of torture that awaits her?

Everything remains a secret, silenced by men.

A hidden “noise” thumps my heart,

Perplexed, I fight our battle,

Not to prove to men, 

But merely with no choice left.

 

Detached from her homeland, trusting, aspiring, depending, 

Mother walked into a “heaven”.

Least did she know it was hell amidst a “heavenly” abode.

Yet she strived, failing forever and

Bore her “wound – less” state.

 

Hopes lost, she lived for her children.

Worthless she felt,

What else could a poor woman do?

Nobody knew her struggles, her silent fear nor her pain

All she could do was yield to fate and fight her battles “still”.

 

Unraveling challenges did not seem difficult anymore, 

With the ebb and flow of time any situation seems challengeable. 

But it is the mind that plays tricks of loneliness and anxiety,

Leaving us completely bewildered.

Relationships strike a war with the mind and emotions. 

merely silencing my outside world.

The mind works without ceasing, my real world seems completely ceased.

Can the mind be held without fear or the head held high? 

Oh! It makes me wonder if I could ever capture that sight!

Onomatoplea

By Amanda D’Souza

  

Rhyme and Punishment

It was 4 am on a Monday morning when Riley sat bolt upright in bed. She held her knees and rocked back and forth, softly humming a curious tune under her breath. From somewhere under the sheets, Luke stirred.

“Are you okay, mommy?”

“Yeah sweetie, go back to bed.”

Outside the window of their tiny, one bedroom apartment, Riley saw the red lights of a faraway sedan flash once. She stopped rocking, and fell back asleep.

**

On Tuesday night, this time, at 4.30 am, Riley sat up again. She was sweating. She couldn’t believe she was hearing that sound again, after all these years. She began to rock back and forth once more.

*Woop, woop, woop, woohoo, woohoo, eh, eh, eh, woooop, wooooop.*

The same sound, again and again on loop. It was distant, and no one in Riley’s vicinity could hear it. But she heard it as clearly…

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From nature to where it’s all fabricated

By Swati Sinha

Expressions

      This is after realising the pleasant dominion of nature, recently after a trip to Rishikesh!

All my mind can do at present is remunerate on the single image of a beautiful, stupendous hill cliff swaddled by the milky moonlight, much like someone swaddling an infant in a white satin sheet…I recall myself sitting on one of the rocks on the river bank, goggling at the moon appearing from behind the cliff and all I want to do at present is go back to the same place repeatedly and feel the pacifying breeze penetrating through my soul, inevitably giving me a tranquillizing illusion of my flight in the open air where I encounter multiple happy, amiable creatures who give me a slight taste of the eternally beautiful nature. 

A very usual yet unusual trip that happened to me when I needed a change in life the most. When I…

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Old Music

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By Tara Saldanha

 

where the oaks are silver

There’s a sound from my childhood that I haven’t quite put a finger on. It’s rhythmic, definitely music of some kind. I think its the sort my dad likes to listen to- so probably Louis Armstrong, or Ella F., maybe Manhattan Transfer or Johnny Cash or a hundred others. I’ve never really been able to identify which one.

But the music seems to follow me around, playing sometimes in my head and sometimes in the air around me. When I’m listening to Loggins and Messina I sometimes think I’ve caught it, but it slips away, mutating its tones from blues to jazz to soul.

It’s woven so tight into my memory that I scarce can appreciate anything else. My dad succeeded in teaching me about ‘good music’. That sound from the past works so well that my response to ‘what music do you listen to?’ is always ‘old music’.

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Rapunzel Reinvented

By Maitri Vasudev 

  
“‘Tut, tut, child!’ said the Duchess. Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.’” – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.

In the essay ‘The Historical Model of the Development of Children’s Literature,’ Zohar Shavit argues that there is a universal structure in the development of children’s literature. Over centuries, he claims that there has been a consistency in the way reading material for children has been produced. He does not mean that the very same ideas about books for children have been carried forward over time, but that the system for the generation of popular works for children has been very consistent. Ever since the Puritans made the difference between books for children and adults, there has been a clash in what has been considered appropriate by institutions and those texts that children themselves enjoy reading. Institutions – first the Puritans and then the moralists – inculcated the former, their ethics, into the latter, the commercial formats, borrowing chapbook stories and instilling morals into them, so that they were enjoyable and instructive together. Fairytales were only narrated in chapbooks and were frowned upon until the moralists realised that combining them with significant lessons could further their cause.

As a retelling of the story of Rapunzel, Disney’s Tangled is a very interesting version indeed. Grimm’s account of the fairytale, which can be assumed to be the most popular one ever since it came out in 1812 as part of Children’s and Household Tales, has been overturned completely here. As opposed to Rapunzel being the daughter of a poor couple who is bribed away by Dame Gothel in exchange for just a plant that the mother craves during her pregnancy, the protagonist in the story is a princess; by birth, therefore, she is more empowered and more likely to be rescued than in the earlier one. Prince Charming, on the other hand, is replace by Eugene, a.k.a Flynn Rider, who is no royalty but a plain thief.

The first edition of Children’s and Household Tales was heavily criticised as being far too unsuitable for children – the idea of childhood was well into its construction by 1812. In the consequent editions, sexual references were removed so that Rapunzel, instead of asking the witch innocently why her dress was getting too tight (indicating that she is pregnant), asks her why it is easier for to pull the prince up the tower than it is to haul her, which gives the game away. Evil mothers in Snow White and Hansel and Gretel became stepmothers, and the Little Red Riding Hood turned into a cautionary tale about how straying from the path could prove unsafe. Punishments meted out to wrongdoers in the tale became very intense, making the Big Bad Wolf fall into a well and die and Dame Gothel remaining prisoner in her own tower for the rest of her life.

Can Tangled, then, be considered a children’s tale at all? It follows neither the religious brainwashing nor the unrelenting moral scheme of earlier institutions. It does not even tell of a prince that rescues a powerless girl (they aid help other, and there are several people that aid both of them, including the horse). The premise behind Rapunzel’s captivity is more complicated and comprehensive – it is not in mere trade for a medicinal plant that the evil woman takes the baby away but the magic golden hair that will keep her young if only she knows the song to sing to it. This also gives the length of her hair some credibility, which, if cut, loses its powers. It could be called a romantic comedy at best, with humour that is too complicated for children to understand.

On the surface, John Locke’s advice, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, for keeping children constantly occupied at their business (he means books, but it could be taken as just keeping them occupied usefully) is followed thoroughly in the beginning, when Rapunzel makes sure that she has something to do all the time: cook, clean, paint, read and, finally, brush her impossibly long hair. However, the whole narrative is about how abandoning her work to fulfil her dream of seeing the floating lights, rebelling against the safety and protection that her mother has supposedly sheltered her in, leads her to her true parents, whom she was taken away from at the beginning of her life. All of John Locke’s principles of keeping children occupied at their fancy if they refuse to do their work, so that they tire of it and simply return to their books as a respite, is followed by the Mother Gothel in the hope that Rapunzel return to her and acknowledge that “Mother knows best,” but it does not work. Her plan to let the girl keep going, yet sabotage her relationship with Eugene, backfires when the protagonist finds out that it was from her that she should have stayed away, not the rest of the world. Locke, in all likelihood, would not have considered this worthy of a story for children.

A generic continuum, however, as M O Grenby puts it in his book Children’s Literature, is very obvious in this case with the older versions of the fairytale. Grenby points out in his introduction that no book that is meant for children can ever be completely original in itself (this is nothing new, as it could be said of nearly all literature ever written). His point, though, is that these continuities in genre prevail over differences in style and content. “In each intervening generation the formula has been modified in many new ways,” he says, so much so that the child that watches Tangled enthralled in 2015 would certainly find the Grimms’ Rapunzel dull or even ridiculous. Yet, several details have been carried over: the mother is healed by a plant in her pregnancy, a handsome man helps the girl out of her confinement and, most importantly, the power of healing in her tears brings Eugene back to life as it cures the prince of blindness in the earlier version.

The film definitely does not conform to the idea of children’s narratives that either the Puritans or the moralists followed, but Tangled actually verifies Shavit’s claim that the form that is enjoyed by children is eventually institutionalised; what is underground comes to light and takes over, thus contributing to dominant ideology. Disney uses animation, which is the most predominant form of telling a children’s story on screen, along with a well-known fairytale to make ideas that are creeping from the periphery up to the centre more accessible to children. The heroine is no longer a helpless girl singing in a tower, waiting for her Prince Charming to rescue her. Instead, she is a bright, young woman, very capable of knocking a man out and holding him captive in her cupboard, and then striking a bargain with him to take her to see the lights. Knowing fully well that he is going to die if he does so, he cuts off her hair in order to save her, so that she can be free, even without him, thus rendering the idea that a woman is incomplete without a man null and void. Finally, she is the princess, he is the thief; it is he who is empowered by their marriage, not her.

Tangled is, in conclusion, an anecdote for children that uses ideas in the process of entering hegemonic discourse in a form that has already been accepted by its audience. The story has a moral, just as the earlier versions do, as Mother Gothel – the wicked witch – perishes in the end. Yet, the notion that didacticism is no longer necessary is slowly becoming popular in young parents and teachers, and so Flynn Rider, who is a burglar, ends up a prince, a standing he would certainly not deserve according to Locke. Children’s Literature is constantly being redefined, and this movie has undeniably facilitated its passage.

Falling – A Spoken Word Poem

Watch the talented Mobika Maring perform her poem “Falling” exclusively for the Josephite Literary Review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAGLoNT_u94