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Showing posts from 2010

Your Name is Justine

A film about the attempts of young woman sold as a prostitute by her boyfriend to hold on to her sanity and her identity as her captors attempt to break her. Her name is Mariola, but the men who buy her inform her that her name is Justine. The film, shot in Luxembourg, is set in Berlin, and has its dialogues in Polish, English, and German. It begins with Mariola's boyfriend, Artur, suggesting that they travel to Cologne, Germany from Poland to visit his family. Before the trip, he takes pictures of her including one with her grandmother with whom she lives. Moriola lies to her grandmother saying that there is a group which will be taking the trip. Her grandmother asks if Artur is a part of the group, and when Mariola confirms that he is, her grandmother remarks that Mariola's mother trusted blokes too much. Before she leaves home though, Mariola leaves a letter for her grandmother letting her know that there is no group, and that only she and Artur are going on the trip. At the

Artemisia Gentileschi and Agostino Tassi

Artemisia Gentileschi was raped by Agostino Tassi, 'an artist her father had hired to teach her perspective'. Technically, she was not on trial. stood accused of raping her. ... Artemisia, however, was the one who was tortured to see if her story would remain consistent. The authorities used thumbscrews, tied cords around her hands and pulled them tight, which would be agonizing for anyone to go through but for a painter held a special horror. Tassi was not tortured, though his testimony was so contradictory that the judge told him repeatedly to stop lying. Artemisia was also subjected to a public examination to determine whether she had in fact been a virgin before the rape. Source: Artemisia Gentileschi: Artist and Rape Survivor The story has somehow always haunted me: true, today no authority (one hopes) would torture a woman who made an allegation of rape. There are, however, far too many instances where people whether they be healthcare providers or those involved in la

Privacy: Content Centric to Control Centric

"Devastated but Don't Ask Me Why." That's a status message I saw on a social network, and it once again made me think about the nature of privacy. Despite obviously being willing to share information over the Net which we may not have been willing to share over coffee, we still demand privacy. We exhibit facets of our lives, and then inform people that our privacy should be respected. And while that's entirely understandable: privacy should be respected, what often seems to happen is that people volunteer more information than they ever should if they want to keep something private, and then demand that others delve no further. Take the case of the status message -- if you choose to inform the world that you're devastated, perhaps you should not also require people not to ask you questions in the same breath. Yes, you do have the right to privacy, and you have the right to refuse to answer questions, but if those two rights are important to you, why on Earth w

Experiences in Delhi's Buses

Somehow, travelling in buses seems to offer one, possibly not a greater insight into the lives of people, but at least a much wider view of the lives of people than travelling by any other means of transport does in Delhi: the metro is too crowded to do anything other than try to stay alive by ensuring that one has enough space to breathe in it, and cars, along with other forms of private transport, for obvious reasons, make it next to impossible for one to see beyond the end of one’s nose (while travelling, anyway). That being said, it isn’t always clear that the sights which travelling in a bus are sights which one would actually want to see, nor are the experiences which one has necessarily those which one would want to have. In the last twelve hours, I’ve seen in buses, a man with an awful wound on his leg – his skin had peeled off and the wound was white in places. It seemed pretty clear that he hadn’t had access to good medical care, if at all any medical care; God knows, I’ve ne

Medea and Criminal Liability

Euripides' Medea has defined the modern perception of her. Some time ago, the Teatro Instabile Di Aosta presented, in Delhi, a contemporary revisiting of Euripides' Medea in a play based on the texts of Euripides and Pasolini revolving around “discriminations and forbearance, power and revenge, and the meeting of two extremely different worlds; the one that is logical and rational, and the other one that grapples with the possible reality of mythology and ritual,” as the brochure said. The performance was meant to portray the universality and power floating in the story culminating in the “terrible decision that Medea comes to as a result of her painful suffering.” Her “painful suffering” was the suffering which her husband Jason inflicted on her by being unfaithful to her and marrying Glauce, a princess, to further his political ambitions. He justified himself by saying that he could not pass up the opportunity to wed a princess, and Medea was, after all, a barbarian woman, ne

The Tomb at Tughlaqabad

The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings. Sceptre and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. — James Shirley I had visited Tughlaqabad fort which was built by Ghiyas-ud-din Tuglaq in the 14th century. An elevated causeway on the southern side of the fort connects the fort to the mausoleum of Ghiyas-ud-din Tughluq which was built by the ruler himself. The fort itself comprises what were undoubtedly once imposing stone fortifications, now in ruins. The causeway has been cut across to make space for a highway. And the lake over which it apparently once ran has long since dried out, giving way to a rather dusty ground which children play on.The mausoleum is relatively simple; it’s architecture Indo-Islamic. Inside, there are two graves which unnerved me a little bit: one is in the centre and the other to its side. While I know little abou

The Sexual Contract

Reading about marriage and contracts, whether they be marriage as contracts or otherwise, I came across an interesting analysis of the social contract: that it was preceded by rape, and that it finds its genesis in the Sexual Contract which Carole Pateman expounded. The Social Contract, which Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau dealt with, speaks of political obligation, obedience and legitimacy, and is, remarkably, by and large, silent about women. True, Locke talked about the "person" but a close reading of his work reveals that his individual person was in fact, the individual man. He spoke of wives being subject to their husbands although he had nothing but the Bible and contemporary social norms to support his assertion. In marriage, women were assumed to exchange obedience for protection, they therefore could not have truly entered into a contact with free will and autonomy given that they effectively lost that autonomy when they married. His Social Contract also contained a se

Black Orchid

The effects of militancy in Manipur were portrayed in this play which was directed by Toijam Shila Devi. Set in a fictional village in Manipur, it focussed on the effects of the militancy particularly on women and children. There were several moments in the play when I wanted to get up and leave, not because the play wasn't good but because it seemed the pain the actors conveyed seemed extremely raw at times -- there was sometimes no "artistic portrayal", and it felt as though the actors were far too familiar with the effects of militancy to need to "act" at all. Manipur comprises nine districts: four in the Valley and five in hilly areas, and all nine of those districts have been subject to militant activities for years. A separatist insurgency began in Manipur in the 1960s demanding that Manipur secede from India, and that a separate "Kingdom of Manipur" be established -- Manipur was in fact the last kingdom to be annexed by the British and made a pa