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I’ve seen the whole thing. Like many male millennials, I discovered the “shocking, extreme, gory, etc.” parts of the internet — Rotten.com and the like — when I was in middle school, so I’ve developed a fairly strong stomach for this type of content.
Like everything Kulak posts, his description of the film and its significance is bombastically overstated, emotionally overwrought, but with a kernel of truth. The film does indeed make a persuasive case that there is a lot of fucked-up stuff going on in India. The only part that I found tough to watch was the part where people are literally eating shit, but obviously there’s plenty in there to trigger nearly anyone’s distress. The lower-caste people of the subcontinent really do seem to be profoundly dysfunctional and unpleasant, and there’s ample footage of their problems to cherry-pick and compile into a worthy propaganda reel.
My mother and father traveled to the subcontinent on their honeymoon, and my mother found it a fairly distressing place. She’s spoken about the leering behavior of the men on the trains, how she felt as though at any moment they might begin pawing at her like a pack of hyenas surrounding a dying elephant. She complained about the shocking poverty she saw, the overall levels of filth, and the several times she witnessed people openly shitting in public areas. This was in the very early 90’s, so presumably some things about the country have improved since then. The footage in the film appears, based on video quality, to mostly be filmed more recently than that, though, so clearly many of the problems have not gone away.
I also want to take a road trip through India at some point — mostly to visit ancient architectural sites, and also to see some of the more modern architectural delights bequeathed on the country by British administrators — but I know I’m going to have to carefully plan my itinerary to maximally avoid exposure to the grosser aspects of the place. Maybe I’ll have more objective anecdotes to convey here once I’ve done so. It’s certainly not the worst country on Earth, if for no other reason than it still contains the remnants of a legacy of magisterial glory from its past, and enough intelligent and clear-eyed individuals who have so far committed themselves to preserving it. If they start blowing up Mughal and Zoroastrian monuments out of some revisionist Hindu nationalist vendetta, then I’d be willing to comfortably call it a contender for the worst.
agree. I find it over-the-top, but I'm still kind of glad it exists. I've lost the plasticity-of-mind to "go there" anymore.
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