Mostly Charmless: Privilege, Panahi, and a Hate-Watch

This newsletter has over thirty subscribers now, which means I can confidently say there are dozens of us, dozens! I can also confidently say that this number is a staggering ten times the number of people I have met in person since the beginning of the year. Quite the milestone, eh?

I write this on the eve of yet another winter storm, quaintly called a nor'easter out here in the nor'east. What's the difference between this and a blizzard, you may ask? Well, as my AI bot helpfully informs me, a nor'easter occurs when cold air and warm water meet, and a blizzard is when low and high pressure meet. One wonders why cold air does not meet warm water in any other geographic location. Why don't we hear of sou'westers, for instance? At any rate, I've had it with these storms. The only Blizzard news I want to know about for the rest of the year is when the new World of Warcraft expansion gets released and if Hearthstone Battlegrounds finally solves the random disconnect bug.

Alright, on to this week's books and binges!

A book

Meet the Savarnas by Ravikant Kisana

It took me about three to four decades to realize that a lot of what I took for granted in my life came out of privilege. Privilege of having been born in an upper caste family in India makes one blind and tone deaf, without realizing it. Or even when you realize it, you ignore it. And move on, complaining about reservation or affirmative action.

One of the most powerful quotes I read over the last few years was this: "when you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." It explains a lot of the backlash disadvantaged people face in countries around the world, particularly in the two that I call home. Disadvantaged due to their skin color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, religion, or caste.

Ravikant Kisana's Meet the Savarnas goes straight into the heart of the upper caste ethos, covering movies, academia, business, weddings - pretty much anything to do with India, as casteism runs extremely deep in the country. Even the President of India can be denied access to caste-sanctified spaces, as the author points out. Kisana is unflinching in his portrayal of himself as he describes his own journey of wanting to be accepted by his upper caste friends, wanting to be what he thought was cool. He asks uncomfortable questions throughout the book, making you squirm and question your own values, your outlook towards life, and the inherent privileges you took for granted. It is an uncomfortable but important read. Recommended.

A movie

A Simple Accident

I was initially confused by the poster above because it's in French for what I thought was a movie made in Farsi with a title that translates into It Was Just An Accident. The movie was filmed, like most of Jafar Panahi's works, in secret, without a permit from the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was co-produced by a company based in Paris, and is France's entry for Best International Feature at this year's Oscars. It debuted at the Cannes film festival, where it won the coveted Palme d'Or. I watched it a few weeks ago and believe it deserves every accolade that's come its way, and more.

Again, like most of Panahi's movies, this is drawn from real life but with perhaps a larger helping of fiction. It's about revenge. It's a road movie. It's funny as hell. It questions your values (which seems to be a theme for this week's newsletter). It is ostensibly about Vahid, a mechanic, who comes across someone who he thinks tortured him when Vahid was a prisoner of the state. Vahid and his van gather other people during the course of the movie, trying to confirm the man's identity, all the while rolling towards a very interesting climax. Highly recommended.

A show

His & Hers on Netflix

Luckily, the show His and Hers on Netflix did not make me question my values. Scratch that - it actually did question my judgment in picking shows to watch. Supposedly based on a book by Alice Feeney which I will do my best to avoid, it is one of the most ineptly directed, scripted, and acted shows I've ever seen. I usually skip such shows after the first episode, but I hate-watched the whole thing just to laugh out loud at the final bonkers killer reveal. And thereby helped boost Netflix's user numbers, of course. It is not worth spending more than a paragraph on. Avoid at all costs.