Chaos Is A Ladder

Image Credit: Game of Thrones HBO TV Series

One of the best players of the political game in the famous television series ‘Game Of Thrones’, Petyr Baelish, tells his equally strategic colleague, Varys, at a pivotal point in the story, that ‘Chaos is not a pit; Chaos is a ladder’. It is a powerful, metaphoric way of saying ‘Do not fear change: use disruption to transform your blocks into opportunities, into breakthroughs’. 

This television series appealed to the imagination of millions of viewers, and rightly so. Although it is set in a fantasy realm and a fictional era, we feel that the struggles of the characters are real. 

And that their progress towards their personal goals is complicated and put at risk by a myriad challenges, both external and internal. Just as it is, in real life. 

The politics of the Seven Kingdoms of fabled Westeros is a wonderful spectacle. Their history is still being written. In the last episode of the HBO series, a relatively learned man suggests that, ‘since a ruler is to rule everyone, the decision to choose that ruler should be offered to everyone to make’. The feudal lords and ladies around him find this amusing, disappointingly. But that is not a game, and it is not fiction or fantasy. It is a dream of greater inclusiveness, and better opportunities for all: a wider ladder, up from the pit of chaos. 

There was a wheel of cyclical chaos affecting the kingdoms in the world of Westeros. From our perspective, it is impossible not to see it as samsara, as a drama of egotistical dynamics, pitting themselves against each other. One of the major characters in the story was asked towards the end of her part in the story if she wanted to stop the wheel. People said it was impossible. It had not been done, in living memory. But she said she wanted to break the wheel. Going from one extreme to another may be colorful, but chaos does not result in progress. 

A billion dollar global self-help industry is based on transformational change. And it is a wisdom we can learn in our own lives, as well, in what so many people so often call ‘these troubled times’. 

Do you remember the childhood game ‘Snakes and Ladders’? As the dice rolls, you move your piece on the board, making progress forward, based apparently on chance: a fortunate throw will elevate you rapidly up a ‘ladder’; an unlucky one will plummet you down a winding ‘snake’ - to a lower position. When this happens, you throw again and try to change your luck. You take a long view - with the goal, the glittering prize at the end, in your sights. 

This journey is a fascinating one, applied to the timeline of our own lives; but even more so when we apply it to the progress and evolution of a country. In our actual lives, we can see that times of misfortune and even distress and despair can be opportunities for us to re-shape ourselves: to re-evaluate, to audit, to take stock and reposition ourselves, and our resources. 

The country in which we live has been plunged into chaos, since April 21st. But if we look at ‘chaos as a ladder’, we can see that the disruptions to our self-image as a nation, and the individual anxieties the crisis have unleashed in us, can be used as an opportunity to transform the shape and direction of our collective path into a more positive trajectory. 

We can see that this crisis has insight to reveal to us, if we refrain - as we have, remarkably, in fact, done, this time, to our great credit as a nation - from panic, terror, victimhood and survivalism; and resist the impulse to blame or hate or target others. There were other voices which made themselves heard, as an alternative to the ‘ancestral voices prophesying war’, and many people have listened to these alternative voices. Because these terror attacks were not immediately followed by more orchestrated and organic chaos, but by a tense space in which we could revision ourselves. The people as a whole put their best beliefs into practice. 

It is - perhaps - the most profound distillation of wisdom in Buddhism: learning equanimity. To not react, in a triggered way, to resist becoming a puppet in the hands of manipulators. But to choose the best course of action, and follow it: with determination not to be discouraged or dismayed by the disruptions along the way. 

This is not easy, given the famous volatility of our national character. But this game is not for a mere fictional throne: there is actually a more exalted state than kingship, and that is the freedom and peace of our sovereignty as a nation. 

The people of the country refrained from being stirred into race riots. The hate speech that we see on social media platforms and chat threads is daily exposed for the ugly rhetoric it is. The ladder we create in this chaos can lead us to make better choices, and revision the future we want. 

We make that ladder with our own hands. And break the wheel, in real life. And progress is made possible. 

Will He Burn For Me?

The recent Federal Election in the great country of Australia 🇦🇺 yielded some unexpected insights into the leadership zeal of the PM. Many articles in the Australian media have commented on the devout Christian faith of Scott Morrison, and television programmes have shown him worshipping with enthusiasm in his evangelical church.

Some Australians have confessed that they are embarrassed that their elected representative repeatedly says he will ‘burn for them’, meaning that he is passionately committed to representing their concerns. There is a lot of fire 🔥 in Australia, for sure. Bush fires, hell fire and the fiery invective of entitled radio jockeys — and the fire of the day of judgment, of which Election Day is just a taste. Who is chosen, and who falls short, measured in votes.

97% of the population registered to vote in this election, and the results are therefore a big index of confidence in the leader who until now had a divided party and a perceptibly shaky foundation of support.

A little while before the big day, ‘Sco Mo’, as he is known by his own decree in understated and egalitarian Aussieland, made a Sri Lankan chicken curry for Mother’s Day at home with his family. Several birds were killed that day with one stone, not just the chicken that was the primary ingredient in the delicious dish — which had been made famous throughout the nation as a winning recipe on the TV show Masterchef, shortly before.

It was a beautifully succinct and effective optic: pink from his honest effort, apron tied neatly, the radiant kitchen light 💡 pouring benevolently on his head like a benediction both from God and John Howard, dimples uppermost, the man beams as reassuringly as his stainless steel kitchen utensils, shining in the well-equipped kitchen. In total contrast to the empty fruit bowl of Julia Gillard’s early interview, we have here a man presiding over abundance, and plenty.

Family man. Man enough to cook for his women on Mother’s Day. Inclusive enough to cook a justly famous dish of a South Asian country, something far more exotic than the sun-dried tomato that was the previous yardstick of exotica in Terra Australis. And the caption of the photograph put out by the PR team for the PM appeals to decency, hard work and quiet 🤫ly getting on with things — God knows, qualities we all want to see embodied, in the current era, characterized as it is by the vulgarity of Trump and the virulent threat of global terrorism.

I love this photo. But I have to wonder, as Mr. Morrison heats up the burner under his chicken curry — one of my own favourite dishes too, by the by — does he burn for me, too?

Does the fire of his passion for the greatest country on Earth include those seeking asylum, detained off-shore in reportedly inhumane conditions? With the security guards outsourced to private security firms so the government cannot legally be held directly responsible for their actions? Some of those detainees are Sri Lankan. Is the chicken curry over which the PM is presiding big enough for them, also, to partake of it?

Australia is indeed a great country. It opened its doors to non-white immigrants after the brazenly racist White Australia Policy was dismantled in 1972, under the Labour government of Gough Whitlam. Refugees from Vietnam came in boats — and became dentists, and doctors, and shop owners, and writers. Under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, immigration was extended to include South Asians, and skilled migrants. In 1992, the rights of indigenous Australians to be regarded as people who could — and did — own title to land was recognized by the Mabo case.

Under the Liberal government of John Howard, those rights recognized and bestowed in law by the High Court of Australia were systematically eroded in actual practice. Pauline Hanson emerged to state that Aborigines had provably smaller brains than white people, that they and other ‘welfare parasites’ were being given special treatment, and ordinary Australians were being ‘ripped off’ in their own country. Howard dismissed the late-breaking and initially hesitant inquiry into the treatment of Aborigines at settlement as unnecessarily negative: ‘a black armband view of history’. But a vast number of Australians, often themselves the second or third generation descendants of recent immigrants, in response to his refusal to apologize for the atrocities of first contact, had enough empathy to understand the experiences of the Stolen Generation, and to listen with a sense of common humanity to the shared experiences of cultural fracture experienced by the First Australians. 

Dark-skinned kids got called ‘chocolate drop’ at school, and Marcia Hines with her dark burnished skin was described in Kingswood Country as ‘having vegemite on her legs’. The official religion is not really Christianity but a sort of cheerful, entitled materialism. It’s a wonderful, wonderful life. And it must be protected, of course. Only those who share our values are permitted to enter.
Desperation and ill intention and the inability to contribute and participate will disqualify some. No one wants to share territory with anyone who is a waste of space.

The generously-sized Kim Beazley, years ago said, when asked about his immigration policy, that his Mum used to say that ‘there was always room for one more’. Some acerbic old geezer at the time commented that he must have thought up that slogan in a pie 🥧 shop.

 ‘Sco Mo’ is the proud inheritor of a lot of traditions. Like other first world countries established on territory which was colonized by Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Celtic and European invaders, the aggressive dominance of weaponry, and the noise and effectiveness of industrialism and commerce, constantly outperform any other voices. Starting in 1788 as a dumping ground for convicts, and some free settlers, Australia now selects the people we allow to come in, most stringently.

 A colorful, outspoken, controversial young Muslim woman woke up on Anzac Day and wrote a few provocative words, starting ‘Lest We Forget’ and mentioning the treatment of asylum seekers and other groups at risk in other countries. The tsunami of hate-fuelled protest which she received showed that a nation’s household gods and the sacrifices made by their armed forces must be respected, and kept separate from, and unequated with, other people’s strife. There was only room for one narrative. 18 months later she is doing a book tour, supported by large sections of the Australian media and local booksellers. Many were generous enough to forget — perhaps what she endured in public means she has paid her debt, and is back in credit.

When I miss Australia, which is often, I check out the vitriolic comments on the Telstra Facebook page. There are the Australians I know and love: those outraged sceptics, vigilantly aware of their own rights and honoring their responsibilities. Swearing like troopers. Every second word full of asterisks.

 It’s all perfectly decent and reasonable: work hard, pay your respects and take your place in the Aussie way of life. But be prepared, clearly, for cultural appropriation of your signature dishes — and cost-cutting expediency by someone who sees no irony in his actions: grieving for someone close to him who has disability, for example, and cutting funding for those who have disabilities.

 A friend of mine, blonde haired and blue-eyed, descendant of European immigrants, moved suburbs because she did not like the Asianisation of the area in which she had grown up. Those pushy, loud Chinese with their alien values! She posted this up on her FB page, prior to last weekend’s Election:

She says she wakes up early and works hard every day to provide the best life for her family, and this is her reward: heaven on Earth, a little piece of paradise. An unsullied Arcadia. The product of blood, sweat and tears, but with no residue of those evident, all burned away by the hard yards done by all stake holders to earn and own each square metre of real estate. Location. Location. Location.

 I met her when we were both 5 years old — she lived across the street from me, and she and her little brother came over to say hullo when we moved in. When I stayed with her a couple of years ago, her daughter told me, matter-of-factly, that her mum saw me as part of the family.

 But when my friend dropped me off at the end of my stay at the bus stop near her house, with my overnight bags, she said she would wait until the bus came — because the ‘people in the area might mistake you for a refugee, Devi’.

 I grew up in the 1970s and 80s on absolutely equal ground in the sovereign territory of Australia. Watching Countdown. Eating the party pies that made Australia great. I dated Anglo-Celtic boys and young men as an equal. Worked alongside others as an equal. Never once in all that time was my race or my gender belittled or questioned. Hardworking, decent, quiet, simple, honest unthreatened Australians were my friends, employers, co-workers and teachers, guides and mentors, colleagues, peers and students. Some were Polish, some Greek, some Jewish, some Korean, some Chinese, some Indian, some Egyptian, some Italian, some German, some Irish, some French, some Scottish, some Scandinavian. We were in and out of each other’s houses.

 Another childhood friend had a mother who was concerned that immigration would ‘erode the Anglo-Celtic values’ that were the foundation of the Australian way of life. Her daughter, staunch Labor supporter that she is, said the political opinions voiced by her mother on any given day were often based on what she had had for breakfast, and to pay them no mind.

 But the Australia I knew then, whose values of decency and equality and human dignity I was impacted and formed by, has started to change, as all countries and societies do.

 A sun-dried tomato 🍅 which measured the line in the sand, is transitioning perhaps now into a marker lined with chilis 🌶 — and we surely, as a nation, collectively outgrew the marks of monocultural, fear-based, supremacist BS some time ago. Will true decency prevail, amidst the current cross currents of identity politics? If any nation on Earth could showcase that, it could be Australia.

 Australians will know the differences between an immigrant and a refugee; and the differences between a dark-skinned person of Middle Eastern appearance and an actual terrorist. We will be sceptical, and actually fact check when we are told — with photographs, as we were shown, in the Tampa Incident — that immigrants are not quite as human as we are, even capable of throwing their own children overboard, to gain our sympathy — and uneasy access to a land of plenty. There’s rule of law, and a process to follow. Shape up — or ship out.

The checks and balances inherent and learned over time in this great brown land might well bring us onto the generous side of the ledger.

‘BEYOND THE PALE’: Internalised Racism In SL.

Published in Ceylon Today, August 26th, 2019

(C) Dr. Devika Brendon 2019

I believe Ireland was the first English colony. And Dublin, the capital city on the east coast of Ireland, closest to the west of England, was the first colonial stronghold. The colonizing English built a fence around the city, made of pointed whiteish stakes and wooden planks, palings, and called it ‘The Pale’. They built their houses and amassed their wealth within its demarcations.
From this they derived the phrase ‘beyond the pale’ - and everyone who dwelled outside this safety zone was regarded as a barbarian, outside the realm of what was considered civilized. Through the decades and centuries following, the phrase became detached from geography and physical setting, and came to mean ‘outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour’. Such is the powerful tribal call of conformity.

 Image credit: Stockade Fencing


 A couple of years ago, I heard the phrase ‘white worshipping’ for the first time, in Sri Lanka. The person who used it was a westernized Colombo individual, equipped with I-phone, fashionable disenchantment, airs and graces and the other accessories of young, self-described progressive liberals.
He used the phrase to describe those who substituted jeans for sarongs, and bias cut floating boho garments for cloths and jackets. Who put blonde streaks in their dark hair, and who, instead of grinding their own turmeric and plucking coconuts for their milk and water, buy the processed versions in beauty and food products, conveniently packaged in plastic packets and bottles. Did he realize that his use of the phrase itself indicated an internalized racism on his own part?
Worshipping in Sri Lanka is associated with religion and respect for our parents, leaders and guide figures: those who have attained a near-divine status, spiritually and through their learning and education. We bow to the ground in front of our parents, and our teachers and the leaders we respect.
How can such an exalted term be applied to any person’s choices to adopt westernized clothes and lifestyle, their reading habits and their cultural preferences in music, films and food?
Probably only in a society where materialism has replaced spiritual values can such a substitution be made.
It’s not an easy situation, living in a colonized world, as part of the colonized people. The nature of colonization is brutal, exploitative and hierarchical; and its underlying policy is to divide and conquer. Those divisions endure, and cause rancor between the colonized people, fuelled by insecurities that are fostered by the thuggery of coloniser’s norms and values: how ‘white’ are we? how straight is our hair? how much can we assimilate in a dominant culture or imitate our historical conquerors? how much can we identify with those who we perceive as powerful? If these questions trouble us, we are still trying to live within the pale.
It is disheartening to see how crude and binary these judgments are: how people strive to change themselves to gain acceptance into a dominant echelon, even to the extent of undergoing transformative surgery and damaging their health by using ‘straightening’ hair treatments and skin lightening creams.
Racism as an instrument of colonial oppression, when it is internalized by those subjected to it, operates insidiously. It disempowers us, and makes us unhappy with our essential selves. We live in the shadow of the tyranny of judgment, and this fractures our sense of self worth.
This two-edged sword, or fence of stakes and palings, cuts in a myriad ways: compliments are made to those with fairer skin, ‘high end’ clothes and food are French or Italian or North American or European. Fashion centres of the world - we have been told - have been in Paris or New York or Milan. ‘Top tier’ colleges and universities are similarly distributed, throughout the so-called First World, and access to them is increasingly narrowed, and indicates socio-economic privilege. The message of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ quality and value is sent to us in multiple ways: local produce, local products, local customs and local services are often decried in comparison to international ones.
Buying local, seeing value in what is done in the country, seeing beauty when we look in the mirror, being proud of our location and our resources, exercising our sovereignty and celebrating our nationhood, involves gradually transforming the mindshift ‘centre of gravity’ in the vehicle of our economic progress. We can surely progress and take our place internationally without any loss of respect for the traditions and wisdom of our distinctive culture.
We often hear people in the country laughing at others for ‘aping the West’, for westernizing their names, for acclimatizing physically to a Westernized world, mocking each other for our Westernized tastes, making assumptions about the hierarchy of who we date and marry based on their - and our - westernized aspirations or appearance. We can trace this by identifying what we consider to be special celebration meals, iconic destinations, and designer labels, and see it as not-so-White noise: these values often show not our own relative superiority or our nationalism or authenticity, but ignorance of our collective post-colonization experience, and our ongoing everyday situation dealing with its complexities.

Damage To Your Good Name: Defamation, Slander and Libel In The Age Of The Internet

Did you know that Sri Lanka is the only country in South Asia that has no clear cut Defamation Law?


Defamation was - until 2002 - a criminal offense in Sri Lanka, and sentencing for it included a 2 year jail term. 17 years ago, the law in which this legislation was expressed was repealed. And since then, Sri Lanka has been unique in South Asia as the only country which offers no protection to its citizens against criminal assault on their reputation.


I have been observing the posts and comments threads on Sri Lankan social media since late 2014, and like many others I have seen the unbridled way defamatory posts go viral. My observation of the way the absence of a defamation law operates to apparently license and facilitate assault to a person’s reputation was influenced into activism by an attack launched in a defamatory post uploaded as a status update on Facebook in late December, 2017.


The perpetrator named the individual he was targeting, called his post a ‘PSA’ (‘Public Service Announcement’) to attract public attention, made provably false assertions and omitted facts to an audience who would be influenced by his assertions, and explicitly and repeatedly recommended people to ‘shun’ and ‘avoid’ the target - both professionally and personally. He expressed the opinion that the target was ‘mentally unhinged’ - a statement that on its own was derogatory, stigmatizing and defamatory in itself. He posted the rant at a time of high volume internet usage late on a Thursday night, with the weekend coming and people with plenty of time on their hands looking for entertainment. He tagged 7 people with large followings on Facebook platforms. He remained on the comments thread, actively inviting people to join in and add their two rupees’ worth.


Lawyers were interested in this incident for several reasons: most attacks in SL have been implicit rather than explicit. No personal name is mentioned, but left to innuendo and surmise, like the calumny cited as ‘open secrets’ in gossip columns.


The post was set to public setting and remained in the public domain for 24 hours, so the lawyers once notified were able to photograph the comments live, as they unfolded in real time, and observe the perpetrator’s actions as he sought to extend the reach of the post. Screen shots of the conversation thread were filed in evidence, with the police, who after due investigation charged the perpetrator with malicious harassment. As the creator of the post, he was indictable for libel. Slander is usually verbally expressed, and defamation is usually printed in a permanent form, and is characterized by malice and forethought. Given the fact that the perpetrator had internet expertise and familiarity, knowledge which he utilized in the perpetration of this assault, his malice on a number of counts was evident.


Indeed the ‘birds of a feather’ who flocked to answer his call were betrayed into exposing themselves to legal charges as well. 10 of these participants were sent legal letters of warning. The lawyers’ point of view was that damage to an individual’s reputation constitutes a form of assault on the person. Given the vast reach of the internet, unlike a one-off physical assault to the body in the real world, this damage could be perpetuated - and would increase, every time someone else responded with an emoji or a comment, in shock or amusement in relation to what they read.


Since 2002, coinciding with the rise of the internet, and the increasing usage by Sri Lankan people of social media, especially Facebook, citizens have been largely unprotected from targeted attacks on their personal and professional reputations, allowing hate speech of this very specific kind to proliferate.


The motive for the attack in that case was in fact a personal grudge. The perpetrator stated that he had been attacked by his target in an article published in the print media. On examination of the article, it was clear to all that no person had been named in the article, and that the perpetrator had acted on bias and made assertions based on that bias with the intention to cause harm to the target of his attack.


The perpetrator sought to portray the target in ways which would make people in the specific professional spheres in which she operated doubt and distrust her, based on his selective version of events. What he did was attempt to orchestrate what is called an ‘online lynching’.


Professor Rohan Samarajiva, Chairman of the ICTA, the Information and Communication Technology Agency, has noted the effect of group manipulation via online platforms himself, on his public Twitter account:



Interestingly, the perpetrator of the defamatory post even referred to the lynching model himself, in a comment on the thread following his post, saying jeeringly that the target behaved ‘like a black man trying to get the KKK to join him’. Repellant as this statement is, it gives an insight into what makes that post and comments thread not just another expression of opinion on Lankan social media. The perpetrator was clearly aware of what he was doing, and so were some at least of those participating in the furtherance of the libellous comments thread, the somewhat lackluster witch-hunt and hue and cry that he was trying to incite.


In the absence of a clear public defamation law, and strong public enforcement of that law, this kind of assault can and does happen.


FYI, if you see a professional person whose professional and personal reputation has been negatively impacted by attacks on their good name, here is a checklist:


• Were they named in the attack?
• Were any institutions or endeavors they are associated with, named?
• Was their professional competence attacked or undermined?
• Would the comments influence people not to seek their professional services?
• Would their income from the damage to their reputation as a provider of those professional services suffer loss?
• Would their status in their professional community be undermined and devalued?
• How many people were likely to have seen the attack? What was its reach?
• Were personal comments made about them: their personality, their appearance, their personal conduct, and/or their private life? How extensive and far-reaching was the attempted attack?


Assault on character is, as we can see, a serious matter. Defamation operates as a mediator between the exercise of free speech and the rights of individual citizens to conduct their lives with immunity from professional and personal harassment.


In a country like this, people exercise their freedom of speech sometimes crudely, and violently, and often without checking the facts of the matter, indulging themselves in verbal assault for the sake of entertainment. They are encouraged by the roars of the crowd, just as they are in public executions and at public lynchings. People who are experts in tribal behaviour and crowd manipulation and groupthink have researched this extensively.


Without a defamation law, although we seem unprotected, we are also unconstricted: we can be creative in our defense and in the remedies we seek. The traditional legal remedies were that the perpetrator would remove the offending words, offer an apology in the same forums in which the attack was made, and pay compensation in the form of damages - usually assessed in terms of income lost by the target as a result of the attack.


The rise of the internet has changed this scenario. Damage can be assessed at a much higher level now, and compensation demanded in step with that. If the perpetrator has no honour, no apology is forthcoming. If they have no money, compensation is not going to be payable. But their abuse of internet privileges can be stopped by their platforms being shut down. And they can be charged with harassment, if evidence is supplied and investigated and proved true.


And onlookers, bystanders, members of the crowd - on the internet, that means those commenting, and sharing the damaging posts - can be held to account as well. Getting carried away by what we see - and blurting out our shock or glee - can now involve us in a reckoning that will make us rue the day we shared our views with no consideration for the impact it would have on our fellow human beings.

The Toxic Nexus Of Hate Speech And Online Comments Threads

Image credit: thechronicleherald.ca

Many of us communicate increasingly online. The rise of computer technology has caused this, and it is inevitable. In many ways, the ability to express ourselves rapidly and with impact is a huge personal benefit and a gratifying extension of our sense of power in the world. And our world has expanded, due to digital instruments such as email and podcasts and Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. We can connect like never before, and meet people virtually, whom, we may never have encountered in real life.

But we can also see that these instruments and platforms are open to abuse, on a scale not previously possible. As in every human sphere of activity, intention is significant, and it is also evident in the way people conduct themselves, especially when they think they are immune from consequence.

Years ago, I saw an experiment in human psychology being conducted in which a subject was seated in a chair attached to wires which were in the hands of a person in another room who could see the effect of what they were doing, when they pressed a button which transmitted electric shocks to the person in the chair. Glass partitions enabled the people to see each other. When the person administering the shock was allowed to wear a hood, and disguise their identity from the subject in the chair, the levels of pain and shock they administered sharply increased.

Rise in bullying

Online conduct is very like that. The rise in bullying and cyber harassment, in countries like ours, with heavy internet usage, reflects that the relative anonymity of internet activity - the fact that people observe and interact with people they do not know in real life - seems to liberate the sadism within a lot of people, whom we see participating in online chats and comments threads, desensitised, enjoying the blood rush of bullying, forgetting (or uncaring of) the impact their words may have on the subjects of discussion.

A particularly interesting example of this occurred in Colombo in late December, 2017. A person posted what he called a PSA (Public Service Announcement) on his personal FB page wall, tagged seven of his friends, and wrote a post in which he viciously defamed the character of a person he had a grievance against. He named the person, and set the post to a public setting, so anyone online could see it. He then stayed on the thread, inciting further discussion, and inviting other people to join in.

This was a rant, an expression of personal opinion, and people are of course free to form, hold and express opinion on their own pages and platforms. But, it was also malicious harassment and breach of the internet. The fact that the post was set to public, and the choices made to use digital technology to further the damage he sought to cause to the reputation of the person he attacked, opened his actions to legal scrutiny. He was summoned and charged by the Police with malicious harassment. Ten of his friends and supporters, who had chimed in to the comments thread with their opinions and reactions, were warned by legal letter that their comments on that thread constituted participation in the furtherance of a libellous act. A second offence would lead to litigation.

Abuse on record

The intention to harm was clear, and the evidence was the printed transcript of the post and comments thread. The perpetrator removed the post and comments thread 24 hours after he posted it, but the damage was done, and the evidence was filed. He has a record, incidentally, of verbal abuse against women on public platforms going back a few years. Under the cover of jokes, the professional status of Sri Lankan women has been easy to undermine and call into question. 

Statements that women use their bodies or their beauty to sell their business products, that their success is due to their marriages to powerful men, or the accident of their birth into famous families, and not to any personal talent or hard work on their part, find great traction in a culture where women obviously do not have the status and respect they deserve.

Group think, compliance, conformity and the natural desire to fall in with prevailing trends are easily discerned and manipulated in our tribalist society. Few people have the time or the skill to investigate people’s claims and assertions and separate fact from fraudulent misrepresentation.
Like many perpetrators of hate speech, his actions flourished in a culture of misogyny, where gross disrespect has become normalised. Eve-teasing and street harassment is physical. Online harassment and defamation occurs verbally, and often behind the scenes, comments being circulated in private or secret or closed WhatsApp discussions and FB posts which go viral, fuelled by emojis of shock and amusement which indicate that the activity spikes dopamine, generating pleasure and excitement in the minds of those participating in damage to a person they do not know or care about.

Many people in such a culture do not realise what they are seeing and participating in, when they comment or react in such online hate attacks.  They are genuinely upset when they hear of people committing suicide due to ragging or bullying at school or university. They say it sickens them. But they themselves participate in chats and threads on FB and WhatsApp, passing opinion without restraint, and without apparent recognition of the similarity of behaviour between what they are condemning publicly, and joining in, privately.

Bullying

The terrible ragging incident, which resulted in the suicide of a young man, recently, would not have happened in a culture where abuse and harassment had not become normalised. It is not acceptable, and yet it happened. And apparently it cannot be prevented from ‘happening’ again. 

The bullying and abuse which resulted in such a tragic loss of life took some time to escalate. There were bystanders. There were people who saw it, many incidents of it, and did nothing. There were people who participated in the abuse, feeling a sense of bonding with their fellow perpetrators.

It did not just happen. It does not need to ‘happen’ again.

Black Panther Takes Cues From African Tradition And Storytelling

• FemAsia Team
 
• 30 April 2018

Note: Two viewpoints, two authors in this review

Kevin Andrews says:

Fable.

Bedside tale.

The Lion King.

The opening scene of Black Panther is pregnant with these impressions. A mark of Marvel Studios’ strength is that their best movies almost always focus on superior storytelling. This is showcased in my favourite movies from their cinematic universe, as they enraptured me in the same way children are enthralled before they sleep and dream of the impossible.

Black Panther takes cues from African tradition and storytelling right from the establishing sequence, beginning with a masterful narration coupled with a unique visual aesthetic: the figures and locations emerge as living sand sculptures.

Its setting, style, and the incredible performance delivered by its actors combine to earn the nostalgic throwbacks it makes to legendary stories. To be clear, Black Panther does not ride on The Lion King’s coattails: both movies simply benefit enormously from the rich fabric of life and history that makes up the African continent. It pulls enormous strings tied to the continent’s history, particularly concerning slavery and oppression, and uses the stunning backdrop of Africa’s various cultures, fashions, rituals, and cuisines to proudly ground its audience.

Rich, vibrant, and sometimes even neon colours make up the visual aspect of this tale, set mostly in the fictional African nation of Wakanda. Despite being the most technologically advanced city on the planet, it shucks off the trappings of many minimalist-and-chrome, futuristic-seeking worlds portrayed in other contemporary works, choosing instead to represent the might and splendour of a nation that wove its heritage and traditions into the evolution brought about by technological progress.

Black Panther divests itself of other trappings as well. It is the first superhero movie since Blade (1998) to feature a person of colour in the lead role. In fact, it is much more: a blockbuster whose cast comprises almost exclusively people of colour. The titular character, T’Challa, played by  Chadwick Boseman, is portrayed powerfully through multi-dimensional representation as a son, a king, and Wakanda’s guardian angel, particularly as he grapples with ideals concerning those whom he should or should not consider his people.

His younger sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) and his mother Ramonda (Angela Basset) are excellent in their supporting roles as loving family, but the real stars of the show are the Wakandan General Okoye (Danai Gurira) and the spy Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o).

Okoye is a force of personality and skill, backed by her unshakeable faith and perseverance in duty. Of all the characters in this film, she relies on tricks, technology, and superhuman abilities the least, preferring to act upon the fulcrum of her close-quarters combat skill and experience.

Nakia is another character that displays strong agency in Black Panther. While she plays T’Challa’s love interest, the romantic subplot is vastly superseded by her will to execute her job as effectively as possible, and to work for the betterment of all people. This comes up early on in the movie, when she tells T’Challa that she cannot stay in Wakanda because she is needed elsewhere. She too is a capable combatant in her own right, another warrior with noble bloodlines and strong cultural roots.

It must be said that Shuri also has the distinct markings of a character who is being set up for larger prominence in future movies or spin-offs. In the comics, the Princess has long wanted to become Wakanda’s first female Black Panther, and Wright’s portrayal of the character is both lovable and solid enough to make this a distinctly intriguing possibility. What’s more, it’s clear that the filmmakers have the sense to portray Shuri foremost by her personality and merit. An example of this is seen fairly early on in the movie, where she is referred to as “a child” during a heated monologue by M’Baku (Winston Duke), where other movies would refer disparagingly to a similar character as “a girl”.

Tied inextricably with Black Panther’s commentary on oppression is Erik Killmonger (Michael B Jordan), who can arguably be labelled the most engaging character of the movie, and the most compelling villain of every modern Marvel movie to date.

Killmonger shares some core beliefs with our heroes, but is set apart by the means he feels are necessary to make his vision a reality. It is also telling that his relationship to T’Challa means the two were separated only by the circumstances of their birth – one child born into wealth and power and trained to become a superhuman king, while the other was born into poverty and felt the sting of paternal loss early in life.

Killmonger, therefore, does what good comic book villains are supposed to do. He holds a mirror to our hero’s thoughts, ideals, doubts, strengths, and weaknesses, and tests T’Challa’s right to call himself the centre of our story. He is not the villain so much as he is what T’Challa may have been if his origin and circumstances of birth had been corrupted to the extent Killmonger’s had.

Black Panther‘s greatest feat is in how it makes you wonder that maybe, just maybe, the movie should have been called Killmonger instead.

Kevin Andrews is a lifelong fan of Spider-man’s antics, and now dissects the narratives and characterization within every Marvel and DC movie. He grew up in the Middle East, and is currently based in Sri Lanka.

Dulcinea Angelline says:

The images and sounds of the panorama on the screen imprint you: the thundering waterfall, with its strangely still, epicentered liquid dais, the graceful deadly warriors, glorying in their fierce skill, each person seen in the fullness of themselves, journeying to their own version of heroism, colliding in a vivid choreography.

The serrated fusions of tribalism and gang culture, of the powerful natural country and the CGI enhanced Cityscape, the giant metallic rhinos, the totem animals and the voodoo of the connecting rituals of life and transitional after-life. The vast, sun-scorched plains, the dark shapes in the trees. I loved the characters’ tactile and visceral affinity with their land. Watch for the joy in their faces when they see their country in its beauty and glory, as they come in on the plane from their mission in the outside world.

Other impressions: Wounds unto death, the hero who does not yield, the sassy kid sister with the mad tech skills, every stately woman a Queen. The ladies are impatient with restrictions and falsity: the General hates the fake wig and throws it like a weapon in combat at her pop-up enemy, and the kid sister disrupts the coronation ceremony when she complains that her corset is too tight. People thought at first she was contesting for the throne. No question that she is not a Princess, but a Queen. Her brother the Boy King with the lovely smile, his colours all on the inside at first, is tested as he should be, almost beyond our endurance.

All the colour and the wondrousness could not suppress a small question which has been growing in my mind since my first viewing. It is this. All these strong, fierce, archetypal women ultimately embraced wholly supportive roles: Mother, Sister, Lover, Warriors, Medicine ElderWoman, all surround him, at the periphery of his power, assisting the boy king to achieve his majesty.

Not one of these women felt ready to take her seat on the vacated throne; they felt the lack of an army, and sought help from another male tribal leader. They seemed to see themselves only as backup ancillary support. I hope true female power will emerge in the franchise to come, and that this ‘moment’ of fempowerment will become an era.

When I see it again, I will appreciate fully the crackling resonances of the colonial outrages underlying the dialogue, the slashing glances, the random humour, the furious tensions of competing sovereignties. The glowing purple flowers, horrifically burned by the failed contender at the height of his false glory, the one residual one saved and kept sacred by the girl who says ‘It is my duty to fight for what I love’. Who wants to ‘save her country, not just serve it’. But I also remember the heroic villain holding the elder woman by her throat in disrespect. This model of male violence contrasts with T’Challa, and his challenge ends in a watery grave.

Black Panther is great, but its portrayal of women is still a work in progress. I carry with me now these worlds within worlds. The way the waterfalls seem to flow upwards into space. My own eyes wet with tears I did not expect to shed.

Dulcinea Angelline is a movie buff and cultural commentator, currently based in Sri Lanka. 'Dulcinea' is the pseudonym I use when writing film reviews. 

Participatory Grief Is Proof Of Our Humanity

Participatory grief

COLUMNS

CT WEB

09:45 PM APR 28 2019

UPDATED 4 DAYS AGO

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By Dr Devika Brendon

So, after the last few days of varied responses to the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in France, and the collective global reactions to it, we note that a great universal treasure has not been lost, but damaged.

People publicly wept, because of what this building represented to them, both personally and on a more universal level. It has aesthetic value, cultural value, spiritual and religious meaning, and is associated with famous literature and popular films.

Other people expressed themselves as dry-eyed, and unemotional, because of the disproportionate significance placed on a Western religious icon, when the West has been responsible for so much desecration and appropriation of the art and cultural artefacts of the countries it has colonised, over the past several hundred years.

Extremely wealthy people have stepped forward to fund restoration of the building. On a material level, restoration will be done. But the extent of the damage, in my view, can really be measured in the lack of empathy and the sneering contempt of those of the ‘now they know what it feels like’ school of inhumanities.

One of the most significant academic courses I have studied was called ‘The Holocaust and Moral Justice’, a Jurisprudence course at the Graduate Law School at The University of Sydney. Each student in the class of 30 had to present a seminar on one section of the course materials to the rest of the class, and mine was a report on the writing of the holocaust deniers.

The book I reviewed by David Irving was loathsome and repellent, and my presentation said so, but the response of my fellow students to his book was a revelation. Many of them were grandchildren of survivors of the holocaust, and to have terrible acts of genocide against their ancestors mocked, diminished and belittled was insult on an unprecedented scale.

One student told me that, because I was not genetically from one of the ethnic categories affected directly in that specific time and place, I had no right to claim any feeling at all, or speak about the experience of others.

I pointed out that as a fellow human being, if I feel genuine sorrow for another’s loss, it makes my human experience greater than the limits defined by my mere ethnic identity. To restrict what resonates within us, and what we respond to, is to narrow our own lives.

I have had the opportunity to study the meaning and symbolism of the rose windows of the cathedrals of France as part of a course I was taught on Poetry and the Visual Arts. I have been to see the flying and soaring buttresses and arches of the glorious building, and have sat inside its sanctuary. People’s reactions to this recent fire seem to reflect not so much what happened to an architectural monument, but their own residual pain. 

They are afraid about the end of the world as they know it, and the meaning they make from it: that Western values, which have formed their frames of reference, are now under threat from vigorous anti-colonialism.
And indeed all eras do come to an end, and the longevities and viabilities of first world empires which profited from colonialism are being challenged, in the days of Brexit and of Trump.

Hypocrisy

Many of the world leaders now commiserating with the French people in their loss authorised the destruction of other people’s culture and lives during their political tenure. Former US Secretary of State under President Clinton, Madeleine Albright, said the deaths of 500,000 Iraqis were ‘a price she was willing to pay’ for the mission she was spearheading. When loss of life was measured, the lives of her citizens were more valuable than those of others, to her, at that time.

If we operate on this isolationist and egotistical principle, any chance of a broader humanity will wither. If we mock the losses of other people, and their grief at the damage to what they hold dear, we attack any common ground we might ever have had. To jeer at the pain of another is unforgivably petty, however justified or karmic satisfying it may seem to our judgment.

Our own losses and ordeals have been great, and precious little empathy was accorded to us. Situated on the nexus of a trade route, rich in natural resources, colonised threefold, by empire -building Europeans, we have a right to be bitter. But at this point in our own history, to not allow ourselves a response of participatory grief in a universal loss is to perpetuate the injustices of ‘us’ and ‘them’, of divide and rule, that colonisation imposed on every country it utilised. Only we can free ourselves of this dynamic.

That student said so, after the class, when we had coffee after the Jurisprudence presentation. Recognising what someone values via their grief at its loss is an act of empathy, and that is a human instinct which is denied by hatred. It is the opposite of appropriation, because it respects the rights and dignity of the other, and the value of what is important to them. It is the opposite of denial. It is affirmation of more than just an assertion of self and identity rights.

It is the opposite of annihilation.





Image credit: Disney