Occupy Wall Street : A threat to finance capital or just a tickle?

Strike!, October, Battleship Potemkin! The vivid poetic montages of Eisenstein cinema created an intellectual universe that thrust upon us the sheer force of political movements. The vigor of emotions, kinesthetics of movement of people across the streets, the organic unity of the masses, the synthesis of ideas in public, dream vocabulary; it was the realization of a film sense that resonates in the heights of imagination. Even after nearly a century, this film sense inspires my political blood and rips of the media clutter of our times.

Occupy Wall street Movement (OWM) ! A conglomeration of people in the ivory towers of finance capital in gargantuan scale. The volume, variety and velocity of people associating at a global happening place! The world wide media coverage and the news flash showered upon their initiatives are beyond the reach for any working class organization aligned to communist or socialist movements. Yet they fail to send ripples down the memory lane. It freezes in the thin time frames of our life. When I tries to recollect the organic unity of the event, OWM reminds me of yet another flash-mob that happens in shopping malls or public spaces. 

The movement arithmetic of contemporary anarchists fail to rip off the fundamental equations and governing laws of finance capital and new forces of hegemony. OWM lacked the coherent vision required to overthrow the hegemonic forces of finance capital. They proclaimed themselves as the 'movement of squares'. Out of the polemic and rhetoric, what do they really signify? As a political activist, should I be concerned if my movement should be only inspired by Tiananmen square protests? A mass resistance to the walls of finance capital should not be allergic to the trade unions and political parties. International Socialism magazine hails OWM as 'Construction of mass experiments in cooperative living'. 

We know the deplorable extents to which the mass experiments of cooperative living corrupted the public spaces in the Anna Hazare model experiments for cooperative living. They fail even to qualify to be called as anarchist for the simple reason that they had no democratic ideology or a basic inspiration in the values of peoples democracy. 

Strike is not a carnival moment for participatory living in the market spaces. It is a call for overhaul in the ways of market capitalism. When required to communicate the strength and significance of the cause, it disrupts the passive living of the market dynamics. The obsessive embrace and hedonistic inspirations of mass experiments in OWM completely forgotten that the any movement that calls for a social change must be united by a logical goal that unites the length and breadth of the movement. 

They hail a term called direct democracy! Who would you like to be the cardinal of the direct democracy. Imperial nation states? multi national corporate syndicates? A movement rationale should know the phases and strategic critical path for transitioning from each phase. #Lenin and #Grmasci had written elaborately on the tactical directions for collective resistance against an oppressive market force and its institution.  

A collective resistance will never be frozen in time. The class struggle will not strive to amplify the market force or an institution. The first and foremost contribution of OWM to the social consciousnesses is that it amplified the significance of #WallStreet. What is wall street really? Just another trading center of market capitalism. It is just a place where all the market manipulations take place. By overthrowing wall street you are not going to eliminate the finance capital forces. They have incarcerated each ounce of our political institution. They have penetrated into the tiniest entities of governing and bureaucratic entities in government. 

Thus the basic nature of market hegemony still remains very much the same. The different form of commoditization that emerged in our times is in society and social organizations itself. It was what we call ambiguously as 'Social capital'. The #NGOs, #CSOs, the Carnival Celebration organizations (CMO) can be seen as the manifestations of this abhorrent and hedonistic conscience in the society. They act as the cheerleaders of the finance capital. They can stage manage the protests at any mammoth scale. They can get you any hit rate on social media and TRP in Global television channels. It is such a versatility and innovation that oppressors and oppressed becomes hale and happy at the end of a six month long mass resistance. All is well!

Thus mass resistance becomes a corporate ritual for branch awareness and market positioning. They strip naked their half baked intellect in front of the altars of the market and corporate. They scream, they howl, they dance, they enact all sort of epic plays to incite a tickle of laughter or an apathetic gaze in the pathological senses of finance colonialists. 

Yes, it is very hard to digest the sumptuous meals and the folk art served in your mass media in Kerala soil. When the communist movement of Kerala in Solar protest plummets to an OWM scale of irrationality it invokes the memories of a ritual to titillate the emotive prowess of the Sun God. It becomes nothing more than a 48 hour long stage drama forgetting the root causes of solar scam and the market dynamics of energy politics behind the scene. However this is the moment of truth for a political critic to realize that market can commodity even out of the resistances against it and to make mileage and media attention out of it.

ANTI CHRIST—Historical Speculations

Anti Christ: A Visual Mediation of Primitive Minds

CASTRATION ANXIETY IS  THE SEMINAL STRUCTURE OF FEELING  EMBEDDED IN THE VISUAL TEXTURE OF THE FILM THAT SYNTHESIS THE  SURREALIST PRIMITIVE FEAR AND HORROR OF PRESENT DAY  REALITY. COMMODIFICATION OF SEX AND SEXUALITY  IS THE CAUSATIVE

STRESS OF THE PRESENT DAY CASTRATION ANXIETY. IT IS  PROFIT MOTIVATED GLOBALISATION AGENDA WHICH THROWS HUMANS BACK TO THE  SPACE OF PRIMITIVE CASTRATION PRACTICES LYING IN THE HORROR OF RACIAL MEMORY

 Lars Von Trier  registers the agony of marital sex , the integrity  of which been subjected to murderous  assaults by the sexuality theses of global capitalism.  In the holy name  of multiple diversity of  sex, capitalism has launched a furious propaganda against male -female sex, particularly against monogamy , which has been reduced to a fragment of racial memory excavated from the woods of the collective unconscious. Of course in the present historical context .monogamous sex happens  to be  a curious fossil  of primitivism   for the post modern  exercises of market ideology celebrates the inevitability and necessity  of the schemes of non productive biology cited in  Lesbianism gayism , transgenderism,bisexualism and all such perversions that would  dismantle the sexual harmony of marital sex whereas biological fertility  can be proceeded only through a marital family design.

                      The film is a voyage back to the pre-Christian ages.and the emotive  dynamo of the  visuals is invigorated by the fusion of surrealist frames of hidden reality and the open pictorial discourses of  surfacing realism It is a journey back to the conjugal prototypes of Adam and Eve   and  the irony of a  fall, cast them off to  the forest reminiscent of Eden.

The metaphor of fall

The theme of fall in the old testament   corresponds to  the conjugal desire. Here also  conjugal desire happens to be a punishable offence  but in a situation antithetical  to the testament. The god in the testament prohibits the experience and knowledge of sex;  the vey act of sex itself is estimated as  commitment of sin. The fall of the humans in the paradise is consequential to  the novel experience of mating.

 In the film, the fall of the child, unattended, drowned to the terror of death. is the cause that incites the panic of sin. The death of the child  is a historical  event, as in the post modern period , pre marital sex,  extra marital sex and homosexuality are  preferred to  monogamous marital aesthetics of sex.  In such a situation  paternal  identity as well as   maternal identity of the child is diffused and it marks the historical death of  the child’s familial identity. Child of course is the seminal problem of  sexual extravaganza that has been glorified by the capitalist sex theorists. Female playwright Carryll Churchil  and the likes feel that child is an unbearable  liability in the present context of the feminist  speculations of freedom. To do away with the child. is a philosophical issue, and the abortion- killing is an escapist device. We live in a world of condom vending machines ; we are afraid of child birth .How to exclude child from the terrain of the sexual extravaganza of premarital ., extra marital  conjugations is a major problem .Homo sexuality is preferred to hetero sexuality as homosexuality liberates humanity from the liability of the child  that constitutes the fundamental inevitability of family. The post modern sexuality denounces biological fertility and seeks conjugal pleasure bonded to sterility. The death of the child by fall , marks a negative shift in the civilization. It marks the death of human  biology.

      The question  why conjugal pleasure  is prohibited by the archaic  power structure supposed to be supernatural,  demands historical investigation. The testaments were written   not in the period of savagery but  at a time of transition from barbarism to civilization, the period which marks the genesis of serfdom. Female as well as male slaves were then castrated with a view to extract maximum labour  and subjugation. The ruling tribes that mutilated the genital organs of the slaves sought moral justification .for their treacherous act and the primitive priesthood justified castration by the word of god raising admonition  even against the proto typical mating. The slaves, male and female were  castrated for the same reason for which bulls are castrated even in the present century. Sterility sterilization and celibacy were honoured in  the civilization as per the laws of necessity that sustained the interest of the ruling class. The   circumcision of the males and females performed by certain religious sects are rituals emerging from the early castrations inflicted upon the tribes of slaves

Castration Anxiety

Mutilation  of the genital organs  of the male and female   transmutes the  structure of  feeling in  the film diction  toward a deep historic horror that digs deep into cerebral recesses of genetic memory.  The violence of  the nightmarish castration is not an excess of surrealistic grammar but a strand of bleeding ultra reality plucked out  of the post-modern   marketised existence  that annihilates the fertile biology of the humans and its aesthetics realized with the child. Castration anxiety was a reality that haunted   the serfdom of archaic times but it is revived in the present by the forces  of market economy. Castration is performed as an act of self penance, feeling  guilt  over the death of the child abandoned at the time of mating. Castration is penance as well as a journey back to the terror of primitivism.

Castration anxiety is the dominant structure of feeling in the film and the foregrounding of castration anxiety is probably an inevitable happening that unfurls from the unconscious  of the artist. This foregrounding is spontaneous and not a conspired artifice.

           Freud while defining castration  fear confines it  to the dungeon of infancy, and fancies oedipal situation in the genesis of fear in the male child  He argues that the female child  suffers the feeling of castration due to the lack of penis which is supposed to be the  vital organ of sexuality. His observations are fantastic jokes as he ignores history of sex as well as history of terror emerging from  the castration experiences etched in  genetic memory. The humans living with butchered genitals is not a gory fantasy but  a reality that haunts existence of the present and would haunt the memory of  the humans ever.

                  Why castration fear is fore grounded as the seminal  disturbance of the present age? Even T.S. Eliot and a bunch of modernists complained of a devastating  monotone  of sterility  but for false reasons such as the death of spirituality. Spirituality is the antithesis of sexuality and the  malignancy of spiritualism in no way injures positive sexuality. But the death of child by condom , abortion or castration is the necessity of capitalist market economy, which advances entreaties for the liquidation of the institution of family.

     A barren conjugal pleasure  devoid  of the terror of child birth is the necessity of the consumerist imagination; a person who enjoys conjugal pleasure with no weight of a family or child is free to enjoy the consumerist pleasure to  the bottom level for he or she is not bound to find food, cloth and shelter for a child or family. That is why the cultural affairs minister of Kerala proposed legislation for homo- sexuals who would never produce a biological child that would disturb the freedom of consumerist sterility. In the present age of women empowerment, if one turns a lesbian , or moves by the path of premarital  or extra marital exorbitant sex it would undo the  emotional design of the family and consequently the commodification of the female body that would boost the potentials of the market at different levels becomes an easy affair. The cause of the eunachs, transgenders and homosexuals ,  fly high all over the world demonstrating the justice of castrated human existence. The child neglected and ignored against  the festival of conjugation  falls and dies imposing ulcerous wounds of castration upon the physique and psyche of the parents. Mother hood and father hood are dismantled in the wild; They are never more father and mother as the child ceases to exist The death of the child is a historical inevitability and the father and the mother realizes the fact that they cannot escape the destiny of castration. It is scripted upon their skull by the machines of marketism -- S.Sudhish

Financier is the Hero!

FINANCIER IS THE HERO

In the context of financial capitalism, finance , in  aggressive moods and designs  conspire direct conquest of the heroic space in the Malayalam film industry. Finance, of course, is the hidden motif in the business  of  heroism, cultivated by the commercial track of the cinema but in the golden times of the middle class oriented cinema , hero was primarily a philistine musical performer with  muscled  brain fighting against the illicit money  mountains and all the social evils delivered from the  caverns of capitalist  filth   . At the beginning of the twenty first century, the quotation goonda and murderer,  an ugly creature and a side tracked inevitability  in the conventional film script, is transformed to a dignified  metaphor of heroic pathos aligned to the ennobled monetary terrorism. Saathan displayed by the youngster hero , Prihviraj,( in an excellent filmic excursion on terrorism and pathos— the cathartic pity and terror---) marks the birth of a quotation goonda climbing the  pedestal of the tragic hero- deity.. The terror scripted in the fabulous filmic jargon, is sustained by the powerful motif of finance,  which formulates the destiny of the narrative-drama. Finance and terror aligned to  finance accumulation, displace the conventional muscled throats of music from the berth of heroic  consummation

                Sree Krishnan,  the financier of Kuchelan ,darling of the females , the flute player and musical artist. .the warrior majesty who smashes  a legion with the sway of  single revolving finger, is a condensed archetypal image.   The Malayalm film industry(nor the  malayalm lyricist  herd with its high priestess,  the ultra feminist Sugatha kumari)  never could extricate itself from the roots of this heroic physical and metaphysical labyrinth; In the dusty  fable of Nandanam (of Balamani demonstrated by Navya nair) which sells the Malayalee  Cinderella( endearing to the infant  worshippers of  Khasak),the sentimental  directorial malice makes the presence of the financier felt in the indirect terrain of miracle.  It is miracle displayed by the hidden financier god, The modern film maker who interprets  the financier myth is  enmeshed in the instinct of racial sentimental threads  which binds him tight to a  breath  of suffocating unfreedom.

     Now  in  the post modern premises, as the financier and the financing  institutions  write the deep destiny of the fourth world paradises   the financier of Kuchelan is never more a hidden miracle but a super intellectual  hero as he makes his appearance as naked financier of the married girl down the door in Ore Kadal.He takes his worshipper female down to the agonizing fantasies of insanity  invalidating her young male partner who is an innocent victim of the adorable womanizer and financier.Ore Kadal is the supreme  cinematic expression of  the emotional subjugation of a race manipulated by the financier myth. Humanity  swims back to the racial memory of the emancipation of the poor Kuchelans., as it listens to the thunderous voice of the emancipation of women, concocted  by the world bank.  Syamaprasad accepts the theme of emancipation  of women  ignoring the existence of the male partner who also demands justified micro-financial emancipation ;but  the theme propagated by financial capitalism is the emancipation of women, ( not of kuchelans but of gopikas only). what ever be the fate of  the young husband. The  genius director is overawed with the tragic fate of   the financier womanizer embroidered with the vestiges of existential anguish. As the woman climbs the steps towards the upper storey she is emancipated from the time and space of her husband who vanishes  into nothingness. So emancipation of women by means of micro financial contribution is the political agenda in which the existence  or fate of the vanishing husband is a zero affair;it doesn’t come within the emancipation theme which is a coveted  feminist right  and a boon in the fantastic decentralization exercise  played upon a depleted economy

                             The dear accomplice of the financier is the hired goonda the racial archetype of which is the heroic Chevakar, who would cut the throat of another hired sub-human for the benefit of ankappanam or   the wages  of  murder. What ever be the historical and cultural premises of the ankam ---sword duel- the philosophy of the quotation goonda and chevakar geminates from the  absurd  of- murder( for  financial  reward)—and suicider human bomb  is the extreme of the horrible absurdity  glorified  to the level of noble sacrifice . In the cinematic disposition where the quotation goonda is the hero –( remember the exemplary filmic language of  Violence-) finance smeared with blood is the  tacit supreme motif.

                         I

                            In the contest between the actor and script writer, the script writer emerges   victorious only because a noble financier patronises   him.—Udayan is the Hero--; the script writer cum director  here is a diplomatic tool deployed by the financier. In the battle between actors and superstar financiers, between Thilakan and the financier cum superstar  the superstar financier is supported by film chamber and technicians.. The actor is reduced to a caricature and thrown out of the field. It is the  financial conquest of  cinema and  financial imperialism dictates the terms of the heroic space and time ; the artist,. the miserable kuchelan is banished and vanishing  whereas his fiancé or soul mate is finally emancipated by the financier.

                              Get on to the Loud Speaker : the organ trader, the organ donor and the financier are unified into a single sentimental composition . The film that treats the organ donor as a flexible virtuous idiot , romanticizes the financial donor to the level of a glorious tragic hero. In Ore Kadal the middle aged financier subjugates the young husband ; In Loud Speaker the old aged financier subjugates the young illiterate idiot so as to make himself a hero  adorned with romantic charm. The illiterate donor belongs to the species of Ayyappan, embedded in the folk epilogue:ayyappanenthina pennu. Pasu pore….?(A wife is of no use to Ayyappan as he is  pleased with getting a cow  as his life partner); and the rustic idiot does not identify the ethical value of a human organ

                        A direct contest between the artist director and the financier is demonstrated with  remarkable stupidity in Azhakiya Ravanan. The director artist sells his girl for the profit of a project and the caricaturized financier  wins the girl; the woman is emancipated from the space of romance to the financier’s nuptial bed allied to the terrorist money won from the Mumbai underworld. The  image of financier in  Azhakiya ravanan is blunt but he is the natal sibling of the  super intellectual financier in Ore Kadal ; The director of  Azhakiya Rvanan is humble enough to feel shame in projecting the financier as hero , who lacks a feudal back ground . But the super intellectual hero of  Ore Kadal borrowed from the waste bin of Bengali literature is baked in boiling arrogance , a nauseating contempt supplemented by his feminist  sex-mate who fiddles the jargon of stale sentimentalism.

                           The illiterate financier-Palisa Govindan turns a romantic hero in a Jayaram comedy.. The blade of finance that cuts the neck is transformed to soothing romance. Yet  financier Govindan is a new generation myth   that feeds upon the memory of the ludicrous villainy of the Saint Kochu vava. The major point  of contradiction here is the illiteracy of the financier hero but Syama Prasad makes his financier hero an abominable creature as he decorates the crown of the financier with laurels of intellectual recognition

                       Mizhi Randilum is yet another demonstration of financial heroics in which a financier male and genial joker  outshines a humanist doctor  and protects a sinking family of  damsel twins- another instance of women empowerment agenda set in motion by the financier lads and lords

               Now come to the film Madambi a film  managed or manipulated by a shameless butcher of the entire history of art. It is a propagandist film in which the heroine is a lamb  deployed by a new generation bank  and the hero is the convert of a traditional  scoundrel who now does the business of financing just to redeem the entire humanity from the multitude of sins that burn the entire surface of  terrestrial existence. Now as we live in an age of 2g  spectrum. Ipl,. Commonwealth., Lavlin,SantiagoMartin –Kairali nexus episodes we do comprehend the hidden versatility of financial heroism. Yes , we dig up the fable of midnight murder set at Palaery for congested political motives. but  erase from  memory, the midnight murder of Muthoot Paul the financier prince; midnight murder or day time lottery or burglary, the financier hero registers contribution of crores per day in the accounts of  advertisements. It is the tract of reality where we plant the financier hero with a spurious mission- to betray the necessity of truth 

           

Ratan Tata and not Manmohan raja is the hero

Pharris Abuabaker  and not Pinarayi is the hero

Santiago Martin and not Issac is the hero

-S.SUDHISH