Colonization
Keon Hee’s poster in conjunction with his campaign speech as an abolitionist displays imaginative skills, symbolic representation, sensitive observation & persuasive speech. Commendable!
Brainstorming the film: ‘The Butterfly Effect’ Friday, Nov 20 2009
TOK 6:40 pm
- To what extent is family important as the first agent of socialization?
- How far-reaching is the peer-group socialization?
- Reflect on the observations below: –
a) ‘The average American child spends 5 hours a day in front of a television set.’
b) ‘It has been estimated that children see as many as 20,000 murders by the time they reach 16.’ Brinkerhoff, David. Sociology
- What do the feminists theories advocate regarding gender bias?
- Reflect on the observation:-
a) ‘Young men who are exposed to sexually explicit materials for one hour per week for six weeks become more callous toward women’ (Check,1985; Zillman & Bryant,1982)
b) ‘One in five children between ages of 10& 17 … received a sexual solicitation over the internet in 1999…’ KimberlyJ.Mitchell, Youth & Society, March 2003
- How can the ‘rape myth’ legitimize rape?
- Will censorship on pornography restrict the freedom of the press?
- Where to draw a line between nude statues in the park and the extremes of sexual sadism?
- How does ‘hedonism’ impact society?
10. How can an innocent visual stimulus in childhood transcend fantasy & undermine real intimacy in adulthood?
11. Ethics: Multi-billion industries will continue to thrive on child pornography, why?
12. Why the nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe is pornographic in Hustler, not in Life?
13. What is pornography? How does it lead to sexual violence?
14. Will you call Michelangelo’s David pornographic?
15. Literature: Is Pauline Reage’s Story of O indecent?
16. Literature: Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple: story of Celie, raped by the man she calls “father” ; her long pain-stricken letters to God…
17. Art: Is M.F.Hussain’s painting on Saraswati ‘indecent’? Or Pablo Picasso, Le Rêve (The Dream). 1932, oil on canvas vulgar?
18. Should literary works be censored? – D.H.Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, James Joyce’s Ulysses, poetry in the Bhakti Movement, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, to mention a few.
19. The Museum Of Bad Art (MOBA) is the world’s only museum dedicated to the collection, preservation, exhibition and celebration of bad art in all its forms. Why?
20. Reflect: –
a) Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Pablo Picasso
Keon Hee Lee Thursday, Nov 19 2009
Nostalgia 11:35 pm
Your smiling face nestles in my eyes. I feel your presence in the the empty chair at Room no.5. I miss your naughty liveliness behind your innocent, love-sruck eyes when found hanging around with Meghna. I can hear your voice ‘Mr.Ghosh’ quietly receding into the boundless horizon. I feel the stabbing pain inside. Perhaps you can see the lighted candles, in the shape of a heart, in the Covered Court. The candles flicker beacuse you linger past them like a whiff of ageless fragrance . You can possibly see the harvest of our heart’s wishes written in English, Hindi, Bengali, Korean, French …! Keon Hee, you are free, not earth-bound. you have dissolved your form into the formless. You have embraced the endless, the eternal.
Kodi’s beggars! Sunday, Nov 15 2009
musings 3:25 pm
I reached into my pocket for a five rupee note. there was a sikka of five.
Gyanendrapati’s poem ‘Maachis’ Sunday, Nov 15 2009
A poet of rare sensibilities, Gyanendrapati, who is based in Varanasi, writes: ‘Match boxes have gone missing….’. why and how ? hinting at religion-swearing, blood-spitting fanatics? rings a bell? Gujarat?
or perhaps Nandita Das’ film Firaaq ? is the poet thinking ahead of a time when people would do away with ‘match boxes’ ? or does he smell an imminent threat ? what is the metaphor about? the poet wants the readers to comb through their perceptions on religion. is it possible to put the dusty, soily and smelly conditionings to the side of the trashcan? should we not proofread our actions flush-faced? are you glancing at me for my approval? why don’t you drape your ‘free mind’ over that wobbly chair of ‘age-old tradition’ ?
in retrospect Saturday, Nov 14 2009
uplift your face to the sky. the wind shaving the clouds off the sky. makes sense? the mist lying cosily on the bed of Kodai Lake. perhaps too idle to wave to you. see the morning walkers speeding off. see the old man with a chain of beads. religious? does ‘he’ drift through the fog…something falls with a clatter, the mind is cut short of the raging ideas. religion in barbed wires? mind starts to work tick-tock. slight drizzle. smell the ideas flaring within. sunita calls. where are you? i stand for a minute. a sudden break from the miscellany of things. my feet gather speed towards furz bank. the beggar on the sidewalk eyes me with hope in vain. the weather looks gloomy again. the sun has buried his face in the headlines of morning news. i walk faster thinking of the ‘sunshine’ at home.
Nirmal Verma Sunday, Nov 1 2009
You strode along the shores of modernity
Like Mallarme to disengage
Word-clogged reality by
Crafting silences,
Flickering between ennui and angst.
Buds twitched, petals drooped
Tears dry to a trickle
Values melting away on the pyre
As man’s ravenous eyes feed on,
Folded away in a corner
Lies the aching soul
The cast-away morsels of humanity
Caught in the cobweb of rebirth
Brooding over the heyday of Satya Yuga
“He is a victim of self-delusion”
Sarcasm is frozen in stupor.
As you glean impressions
Memories sail in endless flocks
A dragging, drugged silence
Veils your words…
NOTE: Nirmal Verma (3 April 1929 – 25 October 2005) was a Hindi writer & one of the pioneers of ‘Nayi Kahani’ (New Story), the literary movement of Hindi literature.
Poet’s persona in Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken Sunday, Nov 1 2009
Criticism Literature 9:46 am
The Road Not Taken does throw light on Robert Frost and his penchant for doubles. I would say, his infatuation with doubles could be traced to his childhood experiences. His mother would read him Bible stories stressing on the stark opposites – the good and the evil; failures and success; happiness and sadness; despair and hope. Moreover, the contrasting traits between the poet’ parents also left an abiding impact on the poet’s mind. The Road Not Taken is also an expression of the poet’s desire to fuse with his friend, Edward Thomas. By uniting with Edward, Frost could stem the primitive rage which he had inherited from his father and the poet would try to control his fury evoked by separation. On top of that, it is well-known that years before Robert Frost wrote the poem, he had a strange experience involving a crossroad where he saw a man just like himself approaching and almost uniting with him, who then passed by. This experience stayed with him as he uses this imagery in the poem. I think, the man he saw in his vision could be his ‘poetic self’ resolved to take the unconventional approach to life or his ‘mischievous self’ poking fun at his friend, Edward Thomas, for his compulsive indecisiveness. At the psychoanalytic level, the poem can also reveal the poet’ conflict between heterosexual and homosexual object choices. And, yes, like many creative personalities, Robert Frost also craved for secret sharers or doubles like his wife Elinor and later Kay Morrison to excite and facilitate his creativity. I think the poem is closely bound up with the poet.
From Coma to Consciousness… Sunday, Nov 1 2009
From coma to consciousness….
When there is a clash between creation and chaos at incomprehensible demands, the artist can only afford to hit out frantically in undeterred passion. Reeling under the the flings and stings of cancer, Sandip Ghosh could push himself from the fringes of oblivion by virtue of the psychic force, his mastering impulse, which prevented his senses from getting blighted and battered. This emotional refusal to resign to the inevitable finds inimitable release in his paintings.
Sudeep Ghosh's Blog 