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WHAT’S ON TV?

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By Ransiri Menike Silva

The above innocuous question can yield a variety of answers, for there is much on TV going on all day on all the TV channels.

Though referred to as the ‘idiot box’ the TV does not carry only ‘idiotic’ stuff but caters to a wide range of interests for people of all ages, the most meaningful of which are the documentaries from which the viewer gathers extra knowledge in many fields.

On the negative side are the doleful dramas in different languages thrust upon us by Hollywood, Bollywood, Kollywood and now, Korean-wood! – and the absurd advertisements aired regularly.

I shall comment first on the latter irritant. There is an abundance of these badly produced ads that interrupt the viewing time of good productions.

This horrendous crime is committed by the advertising companies which have a tight hold on the purse strings and are labouring under the impression that the more often an ad is shown the more effective it will be. In reality it works in reverse order.

To curb extra expenses incurred by productions filmed here, these companies display cheap ones produced in India which often have no relevance to our country.

These short-sighted people appear to be unaware of our own superb film location in the south – ‘Ran-Mini- Thenna’ offering affordable rates.

On the other hand there have been some excellent advertisements produced locally that have had a positive feed-back from the public. Some of these are ‘mini-stories’ of sorts that captivate the viewer and thereby promote the product on offer. Unfortunately the producers, labouring under the moronic impression that short is sweet, have slashed down the original version to a mere snippet which is ordinary, meaningless and utterly boring. Two outstanding examples of this were the exhilarating original versions advertising Mortein Cockroach spray and a well known Ayurvedic cough syrup.

In a bid to economise the producers of bad ads, unearth untrained ‘models’ from within their own circle of acquaintances, who are enticed more by the publicity thus earned than the pittance in payment.

These specimens are inappropriately attired; bare their teeth like enraged curs – in lieu of smiles; mouth phrases learned by rote to promote products they have never used. Their unconvincing performances only drive away potential customers.

Our young models, both male and female, professional or otherwise are a feast for the eyes, but the same cannot be said of the elderly lot. Some of them are pleasant, dignified and fit snugly in to their well performed roles, others are an eye-sore.

Two elderly people, a man and a woman, appear to be addicted to screen portrayals, sneaking in to every role possible, however minor – the male especially loves to be attached to females, the younger the better!

Then there is the mimic who believes he is an accomplished actor, under the impression that stammering is a comical trait, he stammers his way through every role he can work himself into. He also promotes greed, grabbing and holding on to some food product yelling – “Bedhā ganna nevei – badhā ganna !” What a disgusting example to set for children.

The use of children even as voices in the background, to advertise products or promote even worthwhile projects is child abuse in its basest form. Both, the advertisers and the parents who ‘sell’ their children, mainly mothers with warped ambitions, should be charged in courts and severely punished, imprisoned in fact, for committing such an outrageous crime.

It has been proved that animation is a more innovative, attractive and effective alternative. So why not use it more often?

The latest trend, borrowed from Bollywood, is to insert English phrases in between — “OK amma?”; “Thank you, amma!”; “Don’t worry, amma!” ; “Surprise!!”; “I love you”; “I love you too,” etc.

Then we have actresses, long past their prime, who appear singly or in groups to advertise complexion enhancing products. Perhaps this is to supplement their low income due to their enforced retirement from stage and screen.

An enterprising sales gimmick by a marketer of spectacles was to sponsor a tele-drama which featured almost 70% of the actors wearing the actual models of the spectacles he was selling! A novel idea for which the trader should be heartily congratulated.

As a respite from grumbling I shall comment on the documentaries that are resounding in contrast. These are authentic productions that cover an unimaginable array of subjects. Even those mainly targetting children educate us adults as well. What an immense store of extra knowledge I have gathered from them. Both foreign and local productions are of an equally high standard and I offer boundless thanks to the producers, narrators and the real heroes, and the cameramen in the background who undergo untold hardship to present these programs to us.

Some recording nature have yielded ‘seeing is believing’ occurrences – water from the waterfall being blown back upwards (!) both here and abroad, and a wild boar contentedly grazing on its bended knees and covering on extensive area in that same position!

Fascinating was the perfectly timed instant upward swing of a hanging bat for a momentary defecation and a similar performance by pigeons and doves roosting on the ledges of building.

I have swum through sunken ships; ridden on the backs of whales; been high up on mountain tops; trudged through snow; trekked through dense forests; and gazed direct into the eyes of a leopard – merely – by sitting comfortably in front of the TV.

Handicraft; traditional music and dancing; authentic indigenous healing that even mended fractures; the superstitions connected to each subject, have made inroads into my brain to be lodged there permanently.

Now to the dramas aired regularly.

There should be a restriction on the number of episodes for each drama. Some that are being currently aired have been going on non-stop for several years. The first child actors are now past their adolescence and the current storyline has deviated much from the original.

In contrast there are some excellent ones produced and directed by well known dramatists that are meaningful, short and attention-holding. Regretfully, viewing them is a hassle, the incessant stream of repetitive ads in between hindering enjoyment.

Over a decade ago I was vacationing in Australia and found that they had perfected the art of ‘ad control’. Each advertisement is permitted only once during any particular program, with not more than four between each episode. At the end of the month viewers are invited to rate on the quality of the ads. The best is awarded appropriate rewards while the worst is struck off permanently from all forms of media, in addition to fines.

How gloriously effective it was – a superb example for Sri Lanka to follow.

Now back to Sri Lanka.

There are many tele-dramas and even films that are a downright insult to humanity, which have been produced even by established directors.

It is considered imperative that a disabled person be a part of the show, either in a central, major or minor role. Often it is some trifling bit – player in the back-ground who has nothing at all to do with the story.

So there is a plethora of imbeciles; deaf-mutes; blind people; stammerers; dumb people; victims of facial tics and body contortions. In order to accommodate them, crutches, and wheel chairs galore.

The most fancied of these deformities are that of the teeth, with an unimaginable array of badly constructed dentures, protruding or otherwise, their unfailing close-ups being particularly repulsive.

Another ‘must’ – the long loose tresses of women, in the office; ambling along the highway; in buses; or in the case of ‘village’ damsels, performing innumerable domestic chores like eating; drinking; cooking at an open fire-place; sweeping the compound; chopping firewood; climbing trees and hills; harvesting paddy fields; flirting; and perhaps in the loo as well.

Women supposedly living in villages deep within the country are unfailingly draped in ‘Lungis’ not ‘reddha’ that reach down to the feet and artistically arranged ‘frill’ at the waist. These are topped by expertly tailored ‘blouses’ – not ‘hattey’ – often black in colour with uplifting brassiers underneath and revealing underskirts as they mince around instead of walking normally.

Authentic village women wear no underskirt but wear an undercloth beneath the outer one. The “reddha” is worn well above the ankles as they walk daily through grass, mud, water and paddy fields.

The hair is knotted tightly into a ‘kondey’ with a few unkempt wispy strands framing the face, while their arms and necks are shone of glittering jewellery.

The pseudo village woman is at a loss as to what she should do with her hands – so she keeps meddling with her hair or undoing and re-tucking her ‘lungi’.

The absurdity of these depictions was highlighted on my discerning, very distinctly, the outlines of a panty beneath the tightly draped cloth of a wiggling bum!

In happy contrast are our male actors who are quite comfortable in whatever they are attired in – trousers, sarongs, loin cloths, and they know exactly how to use their hands ‘in natural gestures’

The only tragic sight is to see them forced into striped pyjama suits at bed-time, when even our local ‘Suddhas’ wear sarongs to sleep in !!

We also have no Ammas and Thaththas – only Daddies and Mummies. !

And where oh where has the Middle class gone? Vanished beyond the horizon.

Everybody lives in multi-storeyed mansions with fretwork balconies set amidst sprawling landscaped gardens.

Inside are curving stairways, glittering chandeliers, ornate furniture, carpets and professionaly arranged flower vases.

The women are invariably dressed as if to go out, in gorgeous sarees, glittering ornaments, with the hem and the ‘pota’ sweeping the floor and hair coiffured by a beautician, if not falling loose.

To exhibit there familiarity with the Anglo-saxon tongue a few phrases like – ‘Please’, ‘Thanks’, ‘Okay’, ‘Hi!’, ‘Bye’ – are thrown in for good measure.

When going to sleep they jump into bed fully clothed in lacy transparent negligees complete with bra and panty underneath!

Mealtimes are hilarious.

The family and guests sit around the dining table talking earnestly. After serving themselves they start mixing the food on their plates.

 

They continue to keep mixing as they talk, never pausing to sample even one bite. Then the head suddenly grabs a glass of water, washes his hands in the nearby bowl, stands up, pushes back the chair and strides off. The others immediately follow suit leaving their plates still untouched. Meal time is over!

Most comical are the scenes in restaurants and hotels that involve the use of cutlery, when the diners are confronted by strange utensils. It is not possible to comment further on this, as one has to actually view it to believe it – scenes straight out of a Punch and Judy show.

And the makeup! Close-ups reveal the thick layers of whitening cream plastered on wrinkled furrows; artificially blackened hair on ancient faces and fancy streaks and splashes of white hair on the youthful plucked eye-brows; artificial eye-lashes; reddened lips and cheeks even on men and beggars. The beards, the moustaches, and their wigs are in a class by themselves, and there is little doubt that Rajiva Senaratne patronised this make-up artist before his infamous appearance on TV!

Sipping tea, in both ads and dramas constitute lifting an obviously empty cup to the lips, tilting it a wee bit and immediately putting it down without even a pretence of sipping or swallowing. In one of the most recent ads the cup and the saucer were both lifted and tilted together, perhaps they were glued together – no other explanation is possible.

In contrast enormous tumblers of water are downed in one great gulp, while each gulp of liquor involves much slobbering and wiping of the mouth.

Tea is rarely served in cups or mugs to visitors, on a tray. Instead a tray tottering under the weight of tea- cups, tea-pot, milk- jug and sugar bowl are carried or trundled in on a trolley. Then the tea is poured out in formal ritual like it is done among the British aristocracy. Oh my!

Spectacles. These are worn to correct weak eye-sight the only exception being sunglasses . But in dramas donning dark glasses is an indication of villainy!

Be-spectacled actors keep taking them off when under stress. As a regular spectacle wearer from my adolescence I can assure the viewer that we take them off only for a wash, to sleep or occasionally to give a brief respite to the eyes over-tired from close work. Even as children we indulged in boisterous physical activities with them on except in the case of boys who removed them before a fight as a precaution against severe punishment from home if the spectacles were damaged!

Valuable time is wasted on time-consuming shots that follow the progress of an individual or vehicle, first around the curving drive-way, then the side-lane, followed by the main lane and main road until a turn shuts out the scene .

Unrealistic deceptions of life at every level is rampant mainly regarding the elite and dwellers exposing the total unfamiliarity of the producers and directors with life outside their own close privileged circles. As a freelance journalist who has crept into hidden places with my ‘nose to the ground’ so to speak, it repulses me to see these monstrous depictions on screen.

Drama training is a must for aspiring thespians along with proper speech. Mispronunciation and inaudibility should be corrected by a speech therapist and should also include the proper presentation of lines.

Speech plays a very important role in everyday life, not only on stage and screen, but also among public speakers, lecturers and newsreaders.

Our Sinhala newsreaders make their presentations in a sing-song intonation, rising and falling alternately, the English news is ‘elocuted’ in a bizarre dialect concocted by Sri Lankans.

Realising the vital need for a drama school at least first in Colombo, a well known talented actress once opened up her own drama school, which was dedicatedly attended even by politicians and aspiring school children. Unfortunately severe health problems called a premature halt to her work. It is our fervent hope that she resumes her abandoned project soon.

It is time our ‘celebrated’ producers and directors opened their eyes to the real world around them and climbed down from their own elevated stage to tread the raw earth with bare feet. It is only then that they can refrain from committing horrendous mistakes highlighted above.

Swallow your pride and become human – but don’t depict yourself as corpses in coffins with moving eye-balls and heaving lungs as seen by us in close ups !

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Sat Mag

End of Fukuyama’s last man, and triumph of nationalism

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By Uditha Devapriya

 

What, I wonder, are we to make of nationalism, the most powerful political force we have today? Liberals dream on about its inevitable demise, rehashing a line they’ve been touting since goodness-knows-when. Neoliberals do the same, except their predictions of its demise have less to do with the utopian triumph of universal values than with their undying belief in the disappearance of borders and the interlinking of countries and cities through the gospel of trade. Both are wrong, and grossly so. There is no such thing as a universal value, and even those described as such tend to differ in time and place. There is such a thing as trade, and globalisation has made borders meaningless. But far from making nationalism meaningless, trade and globalisation have in fact bolstered its relevance.

The liberals of the 1990s were (dead) wrong when they foretold the end of history. That is why Francis Fukuyama’s essay reads so much like a wayward prophet’s dream today. And yet, those who quote Fukuyama tend to focus on his millenarian vision of liberal democracy, with its impending triumph across both East and West. This is not all there is to it.

To me what’s interesting about the essay isn’t his thesis about the end of history – whatever that meant – but what, or who, heralds it: Fukuyama’s much ignored “last man.” If we are to talk about how nationalism triumphed over liberal democracy, how populists trumped the end of history, we must talk about this last man, and why he’s so important.

In Fukuyama’s reading of the future, mankind gets together and achieves a state of perfect harmony. Only liberal democracy can galvanise humanity to aspire to and achieve this state, because only liberal democracy can provide everyone enough of a slice of the pie to keep us and them – majority and minority – happy. This is a bourgeois view of humanity, and indeed no less a figure than Marx observed that for the bourgeoisie, the purest political system was the bourgeois republic. In this purest of political systems, this bourgeois republic, Fukuyama sees no necessity for further progression: with freedom of speech, the right to assemble and dissent, an independent judiciary, and separation of powers, human beings get to resolve, if not troubleshoot, all their problems. Consensus, not competition, becomes the order of the day. There can be no forward march; only a turning back.

Yet that future state of affairs suffers from certain convulsions. History is a series of episodic progressions, each aiming at something better and more ideal. If liberal democracy, with its championing of the individual and the free market, triumphs in the end, it must be preceded by the erosion of community life. The problem here is that like all species, humanity tends to congregate, to gather as collectives, as communities.

“[I]n the future,” Fukuyama writes, “we risk becoming secure and self-absorbed last men, devoid of thymotic striving for higher goals in our pursuit of private comforts.” Being secure and self-absorbed, we become trapped in a state of stasis; we think we’re in a Panglossian best of all possible worlds, as though there’s nothing more to achieve.

Fukuyama calls this “megalothymia”, or “the desire to be recognised as greater than other people.” Since human beings think in terms of being better than the rest, the fact of reaching a point where we don’t need to show we’re better lulls us to a sense of restless dissatisfaction. The inevitable follows: some of us try finding out ways of doing something that’ll put us a cut above the rest. In the rush to the top, we end up in “a struggle for recognition.”

Thus the last men of history, in their quest to find some way they can show that they’re superior, run the risk of becoming the first men of history: rampaging, irrational hordes, hell-bent on fighting enemies, at home and abroad, real and imagined.

Fukuyama tries to downplay this risk, contending that liberal democracy provides the best antidote against a return to such a primitive state of nature. And yet even in this purest of political systems, security becomes a priority: to prevent a return to savagery, there must be an adequate deterrent against it. In his scheme of things, two factors prevent history from realising the ideals of humanity, and it is these that make such a deterrent vital: persistent war and persistent inequality. Liberal democracy does not resolve these to the extent of making them irrelevant. Like dregs in a teacup, they refuse to dissolve.

The problem with those who envisioned this end of history was that they conflated it with the triumph of liberal democracy. Fukuyama committed the same error, but most of those who point at his thesis miss out on the all too important last part of his message: that built into the very foundation of liberal democracy are the landmines that can, and will, blow it off. Yet this does not erase the first part of his message: that despite its failings, it can still render other political forms irrelevant, simply because, in his view, there is no alternative to free markets, constitutional republicanism, and the universal tenets of liberalism. There may be such a thing as civilisation, and it may well divide humanity. Such niceties, however, will sooner or later give way to the promise of globalisation and free trade.

It is no coincidence that the latter terms belong in the dictionary of neoliberal economists, since, as Kanishka Goonewardena has put it pithily, no one rejoiced at Fukuyama’s vision of the future of liberal democracy more than free market theorists. But could one have blamed them for thinking that competitive markets would coexist with a political system supposedly built on cooperation? To rephrase the question: could one have foreseen that in less than a decade of untrammelled deregulation, privatisation, and the like, the old forces of ethnicity and religious fundamentalism would return? Between the Berlin Wall and Srebrenica, barely three years had passed. How had the prophets of liberalism got it so wrong?

Liberalism traces its origins to the mid-19th century. It had the defect of being younger, much younger, than the forces of nationalism it had to fight and put up with. Fast-forward to the end of the 20th century, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the shift in world order from bipolarity to multipolarity, and you had these two foes fighting each other again, only this time with the apologists of free markets to boot. This three-way encounter or Mexican standoff – between the nationalists, the liberal democrats, and the neoliberals – did not end up in favour of dyed-in-the-wool liberal democrats. Instead it ended up vindicating both the nationalists and the neoliberals. Why it did so must be examined here.

The fundamental issue with liberalism, which nationalism does not suffer from, is that it views humanity as one. Yet humanity is not one: man is man, but he is also rich, poor, more privileged, and less privileged. Even so, liberal ideals such as the rule of law, separation of powers, and judicial independence tend to believe in the equality of citizens.

So long as this assumption is limited to political theory, nothing wrong can come out of believing it. The problem starts when such theories are applied as economic doctrines. When judges rule in favour of welfare cuts or in favour of corporations over economically backward communities, for instance, the ideals of humanity no longer appear as universal as they once were; they appear more like William Blake’s “one law for the lion and ox.”

That disjuncture didn’t trouble the founders of European liberalism, be it Locke, Rousseau, or Montesquieu, because for all their rhetoric of individual freedoms and liberties they never pretended to be writing for anyone other than the bourgeoisie of their time. Indeed, John Stuart Mill, beloved by advocates of free markets in Sri Lanka today, bluntly observed that his theories did not apply to slaves or subjects of the colonies. To the extent that liberalism remained cut off from the “great unwashed” of humanity, then, it could thrive because it did not face the problem of reconciling different classes into one category. Put simply, humanity for 19th century liberals looked white, bourgeois, and European.

The tail-end of the 20th century could not have been more different to this state of affairs. I will not go into why so and how come, but I will say that between the liberal promise of all humanity merging as one, the nationalist dogma of everyone pitting against everyone else, and the neoliberal paradigm of competition and winner-takes-all, the winner could certainly not be ideologues who believed in the withering away of cultural differences and the coming together of humanity. As the century drew to a close, it became increasingly obvious that the winners would be the free market and the nationalist State. How exactly?

Here I like to propose an alternative reading of not just Fukuyama’s end of history and last man, but also the triumph of nationalism and neoliberalism over liberal democracy. In 1992 Benjamin Barber wrote an interesting if not controversial essay titled “Jihad vs. McWorld” to The Atlantic in which he argued that two principles governed the post-Cold War order, and of the two, narrow nationalism threatened globalisation. Andre Gunder Frank wrote a reply to Barber where he contended that, far from opposing one another, narrow nationalism, or tribalism, in fact resembled the forces of globalisation – free markets and free trade – in how they promoted the transfer of resources from the many to the few.

For Gunder Frank, the type of liberal democracy Barber championed remained limited to a narrow class, far too small to be inclusive and participatory. In that sense “McWorldisation”, or the spread of multinational capital to the most far-flung corners of the planet, would not lead to the disappearance of communal or cultural fragmentation, but would rather bolster and lay the groundwork for such fragmentation. Having polarised entire societies, especially those of the Global South, along class lines, McWorldisation becomes a breeding ground for the very “axial principle” Barber saw as its opposite: “Jihadism.”

Substitute neoliberalism for McWorldisation, nationalism for Jihadism, and you see how the triumph of one has not led to the defeat of the other. Ergo, my point: nationalism continues to thrive, not just because (as is conventionally assumed) liberal democracy vis-à-vis Francis Fukuyama failed, but more importantly because, in its own way, neoliberalism facilitated it. Be it Jihadism there or Jathika Chintanaya here, in the Third World of the 21st century, what should otherwise have been a contradiction between two forces opposed to each other has instead become a union of two opposites. Hegel’s thesis and antithesis have hence become a grand franken-synthesis, one which will govern the politics of this century for as long as neoliberalism survives, and for as long as nationalism thrives on it.

 

The writer can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com

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Sat Mag

Chitrasena: Traditional dance legacy perseveres

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By Rochelle Palipane Gunaratne

Where would Mother Lanka’s indigenous dance forms be, if not for the renaissance of traditional dance in the early 1940s? January 26, 2021 marked the 100th birth anniversary of the legendary Guru Chitrasena who played a pivotal role in reviving a dance form which was lying dormant, ushering in a brand new epoch to a traditional rhythmic movement that held sway for over two millennia.

“There was always an aura that drew us all to Seeya and we were mesmerized by it,” enthused Heshma, Artistic Director of the Chitrasena Dance Company and eldest grand-daughter of the doyen of dance. She reminisced about her legendary grandfather during a brief respite from working on a video depicting his devotion to a dance form that chose him.

“Most classical art forms require a lifetime of learning and dedication as it’s also a discipline which builds character and that is what we have been inculcated with by Guru Chitrasena, who also left us with an invaluable legacy,” emphasized Heshma, adding that it makes everything else pale in comparison and provides the momentum even when faced with trials.

Blazing a dynamic trail

The patriarch’s life and times resonated with an era of change in Ceylon, here was an island nation that was almost overshadowed by a gigantic peninsula whose influence had been colossal. Being colonized by the western empires meant a further suppression for over four centuries. Yet, hidden in the island’s folds were artistes, dancers and others who held on almost devoutly to their sacred doctrines. The time was ripe for the harvest and the need for change was almost palpable. To this era was born Chitrasena, who took the idea by its horns and led it all the way to the world stage.

He literally coaxed the hidden treasures of the island out of the Gurus of old whose birthrights were the traditional dance forms, who did not have a need or a desire for the stage. Their repertoire was relegated to village ceremonies, peraheras and ritual sacrifices. The nobles, at the time, entertained themselves sometimes watching these ‘devil dancers.’ In fact, some of these traditional dancers are said to have been taken as part of a ‘human circus’ act to be presented abroad in the late 1800s.

But how did Chitrasena change that thinking? He went in search of these traditional Gurus, lived with them, learned the traditions and then re-presented them as a respectable dance art on the stage. He revolutionized the manner in which we, colonized islanders, viewed what was endemic to us, suffice it to say he gave it the pride and honour it deserved, though it came with a supreme sacrifice, a lifetime of commitment to dancing, braving the criticism and other challenges that were constantly put up to deter him. Not only did he commit himself to this colossal task but the involvement of his immediate family and the family of dancers was exceptional, bordering on devotion as their lives revolved around dance alone.

Imbued in them is the desire to dance and share their knowledge with others and it is done through various means, such as giving prominence to Gurus of yore, hence the Guru Gedara Festival which saw the confluence of many artistes and connoisseurs who mingled at the Chitrasena Kalayathanaya in August 2018. Moreover the family has been heavily involved in inculcating a love for dancing in all age groups through various dance classes for over 75 years, specifically curated dance workshops, concerts and scholarships for students who are passionate about dancing.

While hardship is what strengthens our inner selves, there were questions posed by Chitrasena that we need to ask ourselves and the authorities concerning the arts and their development in our land. “Yes, there is a burgeoning interest in expanding infrastructure in many different fields as part of post war development. But what purpose will it serve if there are no artistes to perform in all the new theatres to be built for instance?” queries Heshma. The new theatres we have now are not even affordable to most of the local artistes. “When I refer to dance I am not referring to the cabaret versions of our traditional forms. I am talking about the dancers who want to immerse themselves in a manner that refuses to compromise their art for any reason at all, not to cater to the whims and fancies of popular trends, vulgarization for financial gain or simply diluting these sacred art forms to appeal to audiences who are ignorant about its value,” she concludes. There are still a few master artistes and some very talented young artistes, who care very deeply about our indigenous art forms, who need to be encouraged and supported to pursue their passion, which then will help preserve our rich cultural heritage. But the support for the arts is so minimal in our country that one wonders as to how their astute devotion will prevail in this unhinged world where instant fixes run rampant.

Yet, the cry of the torchbearers of unpretentious traditional dance theatre in our land, is to provide it a respectable platform and the support it rightly deserves, and this is an important moment in time to ensure the survival of our dance. With this thought, one needs to pay homage to Chitrasena whose influence transcends cultures and metaphorical boundaries and binds the connoisseurs of dance and other art forms, leaving an indelible mark through the ages.

Amaratunga Arachchige Maurice Dias alias Chitrasena was born on 26 January 1921 at Waragoda, Kelaniya, in Sri Lanka. Simultaneously, in India, Tagore had established his academy, Santiniketan and his lectures on his visit to Sri Lanka in 1934 had inspired a revolutionary change in the outlook of many educated men and women. Tagore had stressed the need for a people to discover its own culture to be able to assimilate fruitfully the best of other cultures. Chitrasena was a schoolboy at the time, and his father Seebert Dias’ house had become a veritable cultural confluence frequented by the literary and artistic intelligentsia of the time.

In 1936, Chitrasena made his debut at the Regal Theatre at the age of 15 in the role of Siri Sangabo, the seeds of the first Sinhala ballet produced and directed by his father. Presented in Kandyan style, Chitrasena played the lead role, and this created a stir among the aficionados who noticed the boy’s talents. D.B. Jayatilake, who was Vice-Chairman of the Board of Ministers under the British Council Administration, Buddhist scholar, Founder and first President of the Colombo Y.M.B.A, freedom fighter, Leader of the State Council and Minister of Home Affairs, was a great source of encouragement to the young dancer.

Chitrasena learnt the Kandyan dance from Algama Kiriganitha Gurunnanse, Muddanawe Appuwa Gurunnanse and Bevilgamuwe Lapaya Gurunnanse. Having mastered the traditional Kandyan dance, his ‘Ves Bandeema’, ceremony of graduation by placing the ‘Ves Thattuwa’ on the initiate’s head, followed by the ‘Kala-eliya’ mangallaya, took place in 1940. In the same year he proceeded to Travancore to study Kathakali dance at Sri Chitrodaya Natyakalalayam under Sri Gopinath, Court dancer in Travancore. He gave a command performance with Chandralekha (wife of portrait painter J.D.A. Perera) before the Maharaja and Maharani of Travancore at the Kowdiar Palace. He later studied Kathakali at the Kerala Kalamandalam.

In 1941, Chitrasena performed at the Regal Theatre, one of the first dance recitals of its kind, before the Governor Sir Andrew Caldecott and Lady Caldecott with Chandralekha and her troupe. Chandralekha was one of the first women to break into the field of the Kandyan dance, followed by Chitrasenás protégé and soul mate, Vajira, who then became the first professional female dancer. Thereafter, Chitrasena and Vajira continued to captivate audiences worldwide with their dynamic performances which later included their children, Upeka, Anjalika and students. The matriarch, Vajira took on the reigns at a time when the duo was forced to physically separate with the loss of the house in Colpetty where they lived and worked for over 40 years. Daughter Upeka then continued to uphold the tradition, leading the dance company to all corners of the globe during a very difficult time in the country. At present, the grand-children Heshma, Umadanthi and Thaji interweave their unique talents and strengths to the legacy inspired by Guru Chitrasena.

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Sat Mag

Meat by any other name is animal flesh

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In India most animal welfare people are vegetarians. We, in People for Animals, insist on that. After all, you cannot want to look after animals and then eat them. But most meat eaters, whether they are animal people or not, have a hesitant relationship with the idea of killing animals for food. They enjoy the taste of meat, but shy away from making the connection that animals have been harmed grievously in the process.

This moral conflict is referred to, in psychological terms, as the ‘meat paradox’. A meat eater will eat caviar, but he will refuse to listen to someone telling him that this has been made from eggs gotten from slitting the stomach of a live pregnant fish. The carnivorous individual simply does not want to feel responsible for his actions. Meat eaters and sellers try and resolve this dilemma by adopting the strategy of mentally dissociating meat from its animal origins. For instance, ever since hordes of young people have started shunning meat, the meat companies and their allies in the government, and nutraceutical industry, have deliberately switched to calling it “protein”. This is an interesting manipulation of words and a last-ditch attempt to influence consumer behaviour.

For centuries meat has been a part of people’s diet in many cultures. Global meat eating rose hugely in the 20th century, caused by urbanization and developments in meat production technology. And, most importantly, the strategies used by the meat industry to dissociate the harming of animals from the flesh on the plate. Researchers say “These strategies can be direct and explicit, such as denial of animals’ pain, moral status, or intelligence, endorsement of a hierarchy in which humans are placed above non-human animals” (using religion and god to amplify the belief that animals were created solely for humans, and had no independent importance for the planet, except as food and products). The French are taught, for instance, that animals cannot think.

Added to this is the justification of meat consumption based on spurious nutritional grounds. Doctors and dieticians, who are unwitting tools of the “nutritional science” industry, put their stamp on this shameless hard sell. 

The most important of all these strategies, and the one that has a profound effect on meat consumption, is the dissociation of meat from its animal origins. Important studies have been done on this (Kunst & Hohle, 2016; Rothgerber, 2013; Tian, Hilton & Becker, 2016; Foer, 2009; Joy, 2011; Singer, 1995). “At the core of the meat paradox is the experience of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance theory proposes that situations involving conflicting behaviours, beliefs or attitudes produce a state of mental discomfort (Festinger, 1957). If a person holds two conflicting, or inconsistent pieces of information, he feels uncomfortable. So, the mind strives for consistency between the two beliefs, and attempts are made to explain or rationalize them, reducing the discomfort. So, the person distorts his/her perception wilfully and changes his/her perception of the world.

The meat eater actively employs dissociation as a coping strategy to regulate his conscience, and simply stops associating meat with animals.

In earlier hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies, people killed or saw animals killed for their table. But from the mid-19th century the eater has been separated from the meat production unit. Singer (1995) says that getting meat from shops, or restaurants, is the last step of a gruesome process in which everything, but the finished product, is concealed. The process: the loading of animals into overcrowded trucks, the dragging into killing chambers, the killing, beheading, removing of skin, cleaning of blood, removal of intestines and cutting the meat into pieces, is all secret and the eater is left with neatly packed, ready-to-cook pieces with few reminders of the animal. No heads, bones, tails, feet. The industry manipulates the mind of the consumer so that he does not think of the once living and intelligent animal.

The language is changed concealing the animal. Pig becomes pork, sausage, ham, bacon, cows become beef and calves become veal, goat becomes mutton and hens become chicken and white meat. And now all of them have become protein.

Then come rituals and traditions which remove any kind of moral doubt. People often partake in rituals and traditions without reflecting on their rationale or consequences. Thanksgiving is turkey, Fridays is fish. In India all rituals were vegetarian. Now, many weddings serve meat. Animal sacrifice to the gods is part of this ritual.

Studies have found that people prefer, or actively choose, to buy and eat meat that does not remind them of the animal origins (Holm, 2018; Te Velde et al.,2002. But Evans and Miele (2012), who investigated consumers’ interactions with animal food products, show that the fast pace of food shopping, the presentation of animal foods, and the euphemisms used instead of the animal (e.g., pork, beef and mutton) reduced consumers’ ability to reflect upon the animal origins of the food they were buying. Kubberod et al. (2002) found that high school students had difficulty in connecting the animal origins of different meat products, suggesting that dissociation was deeply entrenched in their consuming habits. Simons et al. found that people differed in what they considered meat: while red meat and steak was seen as meat, more processed and white meat (like chicken nuggets e.g.) was sometimes not seen as meat at all, and was often not considered when participants in the study reported the frequency of their meat eating.

Kunst and Hohle (2016) demonstrated how the process of presenting and preparing meat, and deliberately turning it from animal to product, led to less disgust and empathy for the killed animal and higher intentions to eat meat. If the animal-meat link was made obvious – by displaying the lamb for instance, or putting the word cow instead of beef on the menu – the consumer avoided eating it and went for a vegetarian alternative. This is an important finding: by interrupting the mental dissociation, meat eating immediately went down. This explains how, during COVID, the pictures of the Chinese eating animals in Wuhan’s markets actually put off thousands of carnivores and meat sale went down. In experiments by Zickfeld et al. (2018) and Piazza et al. (2018) it was seen that showing the pictures of animals, especially young animals, reduce people’s willingness to eat meat.

Do gender differences exist when it comes to not thinking about the meat one eats?

In Kubberød and colleagues’ (2002) study on disgust and meat consumption, substantial differences emerged between females and males. Men were more aware of the origins of different types of meat, yet did not consider the origins when consuming it. Women reported that they did not want to associate the meat they ate with a living animal, and that reminders would make them uncomfortable and sometimes even unable to eat the meat. In a study by Bray et al. (2016), who investigated parents’ conversations with their children about the origins of meat, women were more likely than men to avoid these conversations with their children, as they felt more conflicted about eating meat themselves. In a study by Kupsala (2018) female consumers expressed more tension related to the thought of killing animals for food than men. The supermarket customer group preferred products that did not remind them of animal origins, and showed a strong motivation to avoid any clues that highlighted the meat-animal connection. What emerged was that the females felt that contact with, and personification of, food producing animals would sometimes make it impossible for them to eat animal products.

What are the other dissociation techniques that companies and societies use to make people eat meat. For men, the advertising is direct: Masculinity, the inevitable fate of animals, the generational traditions of their family. For women it is far more indirect: just simply hiding the source of the meat and giving the animal victim a cute name to prevent disgust and avoidance.

Kubberod et al. (2202) compared groups from rural and urban areas but found little evidence for differences between these groups. Moreover, both urban and rural consumers in the study agreed that meat packaging and presentation functioned to conceal the link between the meat and the once living animal. Both groups of respondents also stated that if pictures of tied up pigs, or pigs in stalls, would be presented on packaging of pork meat, or pictures of caged hens on egg cartons, they would not purchase the product in question.

Are people who are sensitive to disruptions of the dissociation process (or, in plain English, open to learning the truth about the lies they tell themselves) more likely to become vegetarians? Probably. Everyone has a conscience. The meat industry has tried to make you bury it. We, in the animal welfare world, should try to make it active again.

 

(To join the animal welfare movement contact gandhim@nic.in,www.peopleforanimalsindia.org)

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