Sunday, March 18, 2007

Freedom

There is a special satisfaction I imagine deriving from being defeated by forces too big for me. Life is a constant struggle for as long as we keep battling forces that can be overcome with enough effort and resolve. But when you are brought down to your knees and kept there by a giant invisible hand that is simply impossible to throw off, you can finally give up. I keep imagining being beaten by Fate so roundly that I can then guiltlessly give up the Sisyphian struggle I go through all day, all week, all year. Every time I face a problem that looks as though it might just be too big for me, I come across a new one that makes the first one pale in comparison. But the day I allow myself to finally, absolutely give up on life, the future will cease to matter. What people think of me will not matter, because I will have ground my ego to dust. Whether people love me or not will not matter because any betrayal will only make me surer that life was indeed worth giving up on. I will then have the license to be mean to people who take the trouble of caring for me. I will be able to shamelessly plead for pity from everyone. I will be able to cut anyone in mid-sentence and tell them I couldn’t care less for them but I want them to listen to me for hours. I’ll do exactly as I please. I’ll be liberated from political correctness. Not only will I not have to be politically correct and pretend I view men, women, gays, blacks, browns, mongoloids, sardars, ugly people, beautiful people, rich people, poor people, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, people of different castes, dark people, fair people, women with facial hair and women without, foreigners, south Indians, people with the right accents, people with regional accents, people with fake accents, people who mispronounce words and people who correct my pronunciation, people who stand up during the Indian anthem and people who think saluting the flag and standing at attention for 52 seconds means they can cheat on taxes because they love their country, people who don’t even pretend they love their country, people who read, people who don’t, people who get their kicks from spending money and people who get theirs from technology, people who have no standards when it comes to people they befriend, people who have closed their minds to entire genres of music, films, books, people who have strong convictions, people who support reservations, introverts, extroverts, ambiverts, perverts, slimy people, holier-than-thou people, rightists, leftists, centrists, hawks and doves, abstract artists and people who write absurd plays and people who draw people who look like people, meek people, doormats, assertive people, people who never admit they have insecurities too, people who enjoy reading other people’s on their blogs, people who reveal theirs on their blogs, people who understand double entendres and graphic novels, people who watch the same music videos again and again, people who enjoy remixes, smokers, drinkers, vegetarians, beef-eaters, conservative people, liberal people, bohemian people, libertarians, Pakistan bashers, people who understand people don’t always mean what they say, people who always mean what they say, people who complete my sentences and people who never can, etc equally, I’ll also be free to shout out loud that I am a bigot and a racist even when I’m not because it’s so much easier to exist with hard lines delineating black and white etched in your life than with shadow lines that shift with time. I’ll be free to be a hypocrite, to love and hate at the same time.

True freedom is perhaps the freedom to be unreasonable.
______

I was going to make a strong pitch for 300 but it's been getting some pretty negative reviews too. I think everyone who's read and even mildly enjoyed the graphic novel by Frank Miller has watched the film already. If you haven't yet, drop everything and stand outside Priya or whatever your local equivalent is for as long as it takes to get a ticket and then watch it. Also practise your whistling because you'll want to wolf-whistle all the time. If you haven't been exposed to this kind of filmmaking, through Sin City, or even this kind of Art at all, through other graphic novels by Frank Miller & Co. that mostly consist of beautiful visuals, sex-violence-machismo stories in which characters (mostly men) speak almost exclusively in punchlines, then you may not like it. If you get turned off by violence, you will certainly not like it.
But if you like your movie to be a grand spectacle, and enjoy men on screen being ubermanly (even women say things like "only Spartan women give birth to real men", so you should get the idea), are attracted to depictions of honour, uncompromising valour and doomed last stands, go for it. Do not expect a history lesson, it's a testosterone fest. This movie should get you by the balls for you to love it.

15 Comments:

Blogger thelostcause said...

Terrific first ten lines!

18/3/07 3:36 PM

 
Blogger Tapasya said...

True freedom, instead, is the freedom to be reasonable at all times, at all places, with everyone. Reasonability, however, is individual-dependent.

18/3/07 11:06 PM

 
Blogger Vik said...

On March 19,2007 at 1:10 AM, I read the lengthiest sentence my eyes would ever encounter.

19/3/07 1:10 AM

 
Blogger Phoenix said...

all restrictions to freedom are self-imposed.

20/3/07 9:35 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I liked 300 primarily because I had to- though one must say that such "self-conscious" artistry in slow motion does not make great cinema...
And for too long in our lives, beheaded bodies (& heads!) have been , well, plain funny- in slow mo and all seriousness, they extract sheepish smiles confused between disgust and amusement..

For the first part of the post,
bravo

20/3/07 2:38 PM

 
Blogger inhas said...

you are giving joyce competition with the length of your lines.. though yours are more interesting to read

20/3/07 2:38 PM

 
Blogger quagmire said...

Nice! Thats the second great poem I have read on an iit landmark!

I loved 300. I thought it was brilliant. Its probably just pseud to say that you didn't like it ;)

p.s. I hate word veification, especially when I get it wrong.

21/3/07 1:35 AM

 
Blogger Robert Frust said...

[thelostcause] Thanks.

[tapasya] ...I think unreasonability is universal :D.

[vik] Read Joyce (I couldn't).

[phoenix] I agree.

[sharman] Great cinema is simply and solely what one enjoys watching.

[inhas] At least say something I'll believe!

[rohan] I take it you are referring to the wind-t poem. Thanks.
You didn't get it wrong, it just asks everyone including me) to enter the word multiple times. I hate it too.

21/3/07 3:47 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

what's eating you?

21/3/07 10:38 PM

 
Blogger Robert Frust said...

[vivek] That's classified. Try getting it out of me at the next party :).

22/3/07 11:53 AM

 
Blogger Vik said...

"it just asks everyone including me) to enter the word multiple times. I hate it too."
-This is 2nd or 3rd time u r talking like that, as if u can't do away with it!

22/3/07 5:50 PM

 
Blogger The Reader said...

Mujhey daru peene hai !
Pila do !

Also, the word verification does not seem to ask me more than once. Ever :D

28/3/07 10:48 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Freedom...it's a very big thing to wish for.

Boy, I must start following this blog!

29/3/07 5:30 PM

 
Blogger Robert Frust said...

[vik] I get spammed if I do away with it. I think I'll just shift to wordpress or something. In fact, I might just stop blogging. Apparently, hundreds of thousands of blogs are becoming dormant because the novelty has worn down.

[anon] Lucky you :).

[akshay] Thanks. Also, many thanks for your generous praise on the other post.

29/3/07 6:32 PM

 
Blogger Bismark Singh said...

well true freedom includes that all as u said only in forms which do not disrupt others freedom... so if staring ,gazing and eyeing "those" people makes them frown that means that u r getting freedom at a cost and freedom being a birthright is free(free-dom??).
the people with dash dash dash thing was brilliant...
PS:which year r u in?

1/8/07 10:34 AM

 

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