The film is based on a true story of how a homeless, black boy Michael Oher ( Quinton Aaron) who has had no access to any education and lives in the dark, forgotten ghettos of Memphis Tennessee, becomes a star football player.

I will not dwell on the story as I am sure it will be available on half a dozen sites.

These were my impressions of the film.

Thumbs up:

1. An American family portrayal that looks normal and truer to life. General impression is that Hollywood family portrayals  border on extremes. Either an unbelievably happy family or one that is made of only individuals. Sometimes one gets the feeling that American families never have to make compromises.

2. No patronizing dialogues that the white family is the saviour of the black boy.

3. Does not shy away from showing the gulf that exists between quality of life in the white world and that in the coloured world.

4. It is truly heart warming to see the ease and the generosity with which the Tuohy family adopts Michael. It truly is a wonderful gesture by the real protagonists in the real life story.

5. Sandra Bullock does look wonderful!

Thumbs down:

1. I dont know if Sandra Bullock’s performance merited an Oscar.

2. The latter part of the movie resembles any Bollywood movie or a zillion other Hollywood movies itself in terms of the treatment of the plot.

3. The actor playing Michael Oher is woeful.

4. The movie hardly manages to leave an indelible impression.

So…to summarise…a box of popcorn well spent but nothing to make one want to flock back to the cinema hall for an encore.

I answered that I had seen it and that I was disturbed about it. Then followed my attempt to try some twitter activism and below is a conversation that followed.

@shalinipv: Change the current docomo ad showing guy dumping girlfriend for no reason. It is offensive @tatadocomo #offensivedocomo

The above tweet was the beginning of the below conversation.

@x: @shalinipv @chandnipai your saas bahu type serials are worse for society..pls honour the Freedom of expression which is in d constitution

@shalinipv: @x am against saas bahu serials also. Never watch them. And this freedom of exprsn bit is frankly a bit too tiring. Dis is a society

@x: @arun4 @shalinipv @chandnipai (behenji) the URL to the ad is avaialble at www.mindyourowndamnbusiness.com

@shalinipv: @x well…its my damn business tht i’m minding thnk u! And u needn’t call ppl names pls. @ChandniPai

@x: @shalinipv exactly this is a society..and everyone loves the ad…the youth does too!..sadly behenji’s like u dont

@shalinipv: @x hey young man there’s no need to be rude. u dont agree…dont join! No one’s forcing u.

@x: @shalinipv and behenji pls see the add properly..the girl has another guy on her mind as well…. @shalinipv is major #FAIL

@shalinipv: @x i dont accept that either. tht’s y i’m asking for it to be changed\

@x: @shalinipv @arun4 u guys shld start ur crap w/ targetting #Bollywood #films first..then move onto the small screen

Sorry for having inflicted the above conversation but the point of doing so was to analyse this subject.

First, the ad itself. The ad shows as by now you’ve all seen, a couple breaking up. Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with breaking up, but the surmise for the break-up is what rankles. The guy and the girl are gazing into each other’s eyes one minute while in the next they decide that its all over between them just because they both see better prospects in front of them. Further,  the guy looking over his girlfriend’s shoulder is shown staring at a woman dressed in clothes which would be considered to be sexually attractive suggesting that the creator of the ad wants to project that the woman is only a sexual object igniting man’s desire. His girlfriend is shown as a ”demure”, ”sweet” girl. Also, one is not privy to the looks or otherwise of the girlfriend’s new object of desire. Maybe its not politically correct to show the girl also following a sexy man, as women are not supposed to look for sexiness in men and its certainly not acceptable for ”demure”, ”sweet” girls to do so. Both these underlying sub-texts are very regressive and don’t do justice either to the man-woman love relationship nor to the equality of the sexes. I felt very disturbed on seeing this ad as

1. It was being aired on prime time TV during a cricket match when people of all age groups are watching.

2. I strongly feel such messages can influence the younger generation which then also begin to accept that such behaviour is the norm and that it is acceptable and even desirable.

3. While there is freedom of expression and while that is an unassailable right in a democracy, when what is aired has the ability to influence the mindset of a huge populace, the creators have to have some accountability.

4. Is it really necessary to show an ad with such a regressive message to advertise a bill plan for a cellular service?

The second analysis I want to do is to touch upon the above conversation between @x and me i.e @shalinipv. At the time I was surprised by the sudden and unwarranted hostility of this person. Later, on going through his profile I realized he was probably a representative of the company as his profile had Tatadocomo splashed all over it. If that was the case, then I think its all the more regrettable that a person handling the company account uses his personal account to stoop to such combative levels of dialogue. Is basic civility so difficult to maintain when one is arguing a point. Dialogue is not equal to argument. Period. Is it necessary to resort to name calling, in this case the use of behenji in his retort.

Somehow, I feel dialogue has regressed so much with this over emphasis on the self in the present day environment. There is, these days, the sense of power that the internet bestows on you, especially with applications like twitter making one feel that he/she is omnipotent.

However, in conclusion, I was rather disappointed at the support or the lack of it that my attempt to effect a change garnered. I was indeed disappointed that this didn’t matter to many and especially to youngsters. There have been many instances when the twitter fraternity has come together to denounce someone or something which probably did not affect so many people as this one had the potential to do.

Before I end, I’d like to post here, another ad from the same company. I hope that the readers of this post will read the subtexts in this ad. I would think that if this ad was exhibited in an occidental country, they would have lots to complain about.

That night and the rest of the day went by in a blur as I awaited this most significant event – atleast for the likes of me for whom the ”Sunday Magazine” of ”The Hindu” was equivalent to the Shashi Tharoor column for many years now. I was very disappointed when he announced that he would not be writing his regular column there a couple of years back. Eventually the clock inched its way to 8pm. In the meanwhile the venue had begun to fill with eager youngsters waiting to meet up with Dr. Tharoor. Apparently the honourable minister was running temperature and others had advised that this meet be cancelled. But apparently notwithstanding his ill-health, he had refused to cancel this meetup… errr… tweetup. He came in a little after 8pm having taken a few minutes off after his previous engagement to provide some relief to his throat which was under strain after a whole day of addressing gatherings. We were all a motley bunch of people who didn’t much know each other except for the fact that we were on the same social networking platform twitter. All of us were a little unsure of how to kickstart things when Dr. Tharoor took it upon himself to set the ball rolling. The next 45 minutes were action packed. There were many intelligent questions asked about his experience with twitter and also his journey from writer, diplomat to politician. He answered the questions with an elegance that only he can command. But the drawpoint of his personality is the geunine engagement that he embarks on when he responds to a question from someone. There are people who can talk and explain things and give answers to queries but here was someone who exuded a personal and active engagement with the questioner. He only refrained from talking about things which had potential to raise controversy keeping in mind his official position as minister of state.

The response that stayed with me was one which he gave to a person who asked him this – “if the writer Tharoor and the administrator Tharoor were to have an honest face-off who would win.” Dr. Tharoor replied that in the short term it would be the administrator Tharoor but that in the long term it would be the writer Tharoor. That for me was both happiness and to some measure disappointment. Is the inspiring administrator avatar of Dr. Tharoor not going to be around to effect more positive change in the way politics is viewed by people especially the youth? On the other hand, readers of his works which are filled with warm humour (thanks to the influence of P.G Wodehouse, his inspiration) will have a lot more to look forward to. Dr. Tharoor also held forth on the uses that a social platform like twitter can be put to when he said that his ministry had worked on resolving about 25-29 cases regarding passports and similar issues which came to his notice via tweets from his followers.

To wind up an already too long post, I cannot but admire the support staff that Dr. Tharoor has and I am sure he would not be able to accomplish all he does so without their untiring and zealous efforts. I had the good fortune of meeting Mr. Sandeep Chakravorty, Mr. Jacob Joseph and know via email, yes, that first astonishing mail, Ms. Nehha Bhatnagar who keep company with Dr Tharoor on his punishingly long days. They I think put in as much work as he does to ensure that their office is demystified and accessible to all people in the true sense of the word democracy.

Thank you Dr Tharoor for giving generously of your time even when you were not in the best of health and here’s a wish that the good work that you do will find more resonance across classes, ages and gender. Wish you and your fantastic team a power packed future to accomplish all you set out to do so.

You may also want to visit these.

http://digitaloman.blogspot.com/2010/02/shashi-tharoor-enthrals-oman-twitter.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/multimedia/2010/03/100309_tharoor_va.shtml