Jeeves and Wooster: The BBC series

Making a TV or Film based on PG Wodehouse’s books is, at the best of times a risky enterprise, inviting thankless comparisons to the originals. That is what I kept telling myself repeatedly while watching the BBC adaptation “Jeeves and Wooster”. It was Bill Clinton that said that “What’s wrong with America can be fixed by what’s right with America”. That statement could apply quite easily to this series.

The TV adaptation has many things going for it. Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster is stupendously brilliant. No one else could have played this role better, not even the real Bertie Wooster, had he existed. When I saw him singing “Back in Nagasaki”, I almost wept, such is the man’s talent.

The roaring-20s theme music and title animation are delightful. With eyes shining and lips parted in pleasant anticipation - much like Lord Emsworth’s while returning to visit the Empress after a tedious London trip- I waited for each episode to begin. I almost could see Bertie Wooster and friends lunching, dining and taking hapless girls out dancing. And Bertie’s Astor Martin is great eye-candy.

Lest you think that this is all too much hyperbole for one blog post, let me balance the score by pointing out the things that distressed me deeply:
Slapstick! Why, in the name of all that’s holy, would you not let Wodehousian humor stand on its own, and instead dilute it with slapstick? I’m talking about Madeline Bassett rolling her eyes and lisping in a completely overdone way. Yes, Madeline is supposed to be a Gawd-help-us, but a girl who routinely says that the stars are God’s daisy chain does not need slapstick to enhance her goofiness. Another casualty is Bingo Little, whose character was positively massacred in the series. I refer especially to his distinctly unfunny antics in the episode where he competes in a race with old people (Wails of anguish).

Why, oh why, did they combine 2 or more stories in a single episode? It made the plots hopelessly unwieldy and sometimes almost unrecognizable, and not in a good way. And what hubris was it that possessed the director/ script writer/ whoever-did-the-deed to insert their own plotlines from time to time? Like the episode where Tuppy Glossop is trying to hawk cars to Pauline Stoker and her father? In fact, they made Tuppy - he of the steak-and-kidney pie fame - a marketer of dubious schemes: cars, soups, and possibly elephants. In short, a sort of Proto-Amway Man.

The Verdict: What’s right with the series manages to balance what’s wrong, but just about, no thanks to the director and script writer. Hugh Laurie and Wodehouse’s genius compensate for the negatives.

Tip for future Wodehouse TV/ movie makers: Take the Wodehouse plot line and stick to it like glue. Die-hard Wodehouse fans are not looking for innovation and the others don’t matter.

Funny in Farsi

By Firoozeh Dumas

You could say that Firoozeh Dumas’ book Funny in Farsi is about the immigrant experience in America, but it is certainly not as boring as that sounds. You could say that this book is about people of different countries and religions behaving with humanity and tolerance towards one another, but it is not as preachy as that sounds. You could call this book a laugh riot, and you’d be dead right.

Firoozeh’s Iranian family is a Farsi version of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” with dozens of uncles, aunts and assorted cousins, all of whom live within short driving distances of each other in Southern California and enjoy each others’ company and rally around one another in times of need and otherwise. There’s Firoozeh’s kind and loving Aunt Sedigeh and scholarly Uncle Abdullah, who has not figured out how not to delete files on his computer (“You just have to say “No” when the computer asks you if you are sure you want to delete the file, but the computer unfortunately does not ask Uncle Abdullah). Her mother’s English remains very shaky despite living several decades in Southern California, and she uses Firoozeh as her translator all though her adolescence, much to the teenager’s embarrassment.

Above all, there is her extremely eccentric and lovable father Kazem, who is the life of this book. Kazem loves to go to Vegas and gamble in hopes of winning wealth, but losing only increases his determination to play. Among his many gambling superstitions is that “non-Americans at the table are bad luck” notwithstanding the fact that he is one himself. America, the Land of the Free is, to him, the land of free samples and trips to San Diego and Santa Barbara (free with timeshare seminar sales pitches).

Of course, the Iranian experience in America cannot really be free of the shadow of the Revolution of 1979, especially the hostage crisis. Firoozeh’s father suffers through a period of unemployment and prejudice during this period when anything “I-raynian” was deeply mistrusted. There are some why-can’t-we-always-get-along passages, which could easily have become annoying if it was not for the writer’s skill in combining humor with potentially more preachy stuff. One might argue that she glosses over some of the more serious aspects of the Iran-US relationship (or the lack thereof), but this is, after all, supposed to be a funny take on an Iranian’s experience in the US and not a critical analysis of the relationship between the US and Iran, so I did not miss the lack of serious discussion.

The greatest thing about this book is Firoozeh’s language – at times making fun of her adopted country, at times making fun of her native country, and at times self-deprecating. If you read too fast, you might miss savoring some of the really funny stuff. I leave you with some of my favorite quotes:

While referring to the hole-in-the ground toilets in the market of her native Abadan – “If odor could be measured in decibels, these toilets were the equivalent of front-row seats at a heavy metal concert”.

While lamenting the unpronounceability of her/ her family’s names – “Nobody without a mask and a cape has a Z in his name” in America.

“My one memory of a family excursion to an art museum ended with my father asking ‘Did we have to pay to get into this place’” – (no doubt at a modern art museum)

“Having grown up in California I had always heard about the big one, the inevitable huge earthquake that awaited all of us who chose to live in sunshine instead of reason”

Referring to her objection to eating fried turtles as delicacies – “I draw the line at any animal that features in Aesop’s Fables”.

If no one reads my blog, does it even exist?

I recently came across this metaphysical conundrum “"

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound"?

According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, this conundrum deals with such issues as the possibility of unperceived existence, knowledge of the unobserved world and the differences in perception and reality.

Which makes me wonder, if I no one ever reads my blog, does it really exist?

How to mass produce Chik-Lit

There are two broad categories of women’s romance literature. The first involves books in pink or fluorescent green or - when the publisher is feeling particularly audacious – pale yellow covers. These books are invariably set in New York and usually deal with a single working girl making her way in NY on a meager income but with a strange compulsion to buy $ 500 hand bags and $ 400 shoes and living in a loft with her best friend who happens to be sexy, glamorous and everything our heroine wishes to be but is not. In addition – and this is the main point - the said girlfriend possesses the world’s hunkiest and nicest boyfriend. Inevitably, our deserving heroine dumps her terrible job and gets a fancy new one that does justice to her unique talents. Of course, she also gets the hunk, and is not exactly overwhelmed by guilt at cheating her friend.

The other genre consists of super syrupy and very enjoyable historical romance with titles like “The Barefoot Bride”, “One Night with You” or “A Summer to Remember”. The guy is always a rich, cynical, irresistibly handsome nobleman who has sworn off love because of traumatic past experiences. The heroine is a not-so-rich nice girl who starts by sparring with the guy, but eventually redeems his faith in love and they get married and live happily ever after.

Both genres unfailingly employ every possible cliché and have such stereotypical story lines that I suspect that they are not really written by authors called Jane Feather, Adrianne Byrd or Rebecca Vinyard, but are actually generated by specially designed computer programs that publishers have installed in secret server farms. The programs are designed to accept crucial inputs such as heroine’s hair and eye color, length of hair as well as name of rich nobleman (Lord Harold Hussy, Duke David Doodle, Sir Gavin Goose). A set of complicated algorithms is then run and voila, an entire new book is generated and published to delight the hearts of millions of women yet again.

Ironman: Fairy Tales For The Guys

Much against my will and better judgment, I saw the movie “Ironman” a few weeks back and was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed it, because it was very much like the fairy tales I read as a child. I’ve come to realize, after seeing guy movies like the Star Wars, War of the Worlds, and now Ironman, that these movies are essentially fairy tales for men who never grow up, which pretty much implies all men on earth.

Tony Stark is a brilliant inventor and business mogul who is the envy of every man on the planet, for he gets to make a ton of money by inventing destructive missiles that he sells to an obliging government. While on a trip to Afghanistan to sell missiles to the troops stationed there he gets kidnapped by terrorists who try to force him to make him a brand new missile system for them as well. Oh, and incidentally, amidst this fracas, our hero has lost his heart (literally, not metaphorically) and is kept alive by a battery that uses magnetic forces to keep the shrapnel from his arteries. All straightforward so far? Good, because now the story gets really complicated.

With the help of a scientist who is also held hostage by the gang, Sparks develops a big hulk-like costume with advanced powers linked to his artificial heart, so that whoever wears it can launch himself into space and make a thorough nuisance of himself. All this while the idiot terrorists are thinking that he is diligently making missiles for them. With the help of his costume, Sparks becomes Iron Man and launches himself away from the terrorist hideout and gets back to civilization, where he announces that he will henceforth stop making war weapons, and spends all his energies on making a second Ironman costume, in flashy red, which he wears to rescue a bunch of people under attack by the same bad terrorists in Afghanistan. This new costume is even more powerful and can carry him high into the stratosphere.

Spoiler Alert.

But there is a twist in the tale. Sparks is double-crossed by an associate who steals the costume and tries to gain hegemony over the entire planet. After some complicated situations, Sparks and the double-crosser face-off and everything ends well. Through all of this there is Gwyneth Paltrow as Sparks’ super-efficient assistant-cum-girlfriend Pepper whose slim elegance recalls Wodehouse’s description of what Euclid would have whispered to a friend on beholding the very slim and very tall Horace Davenport, “Don't look now but this chap coming along illustrates exactly what I was telling you about a straight line having length without breadth”.

Ironman was incredibly entertaining, but what I want to know is, where were the Fairy Godmother, the Gnome, Puss-in-Boots and the Big Black Witch? If you can have men in red costumes launching themselves into space with the help of artificial hearts, you might as well have witches with brooms powered by radioactive fissile material that activates at a click of a button.

News Flash: Joseph Fiennes likely to be indicted for monopolistic practices and fashion offenses

(From time to time, I will be helpfully covering important news items that have been completely missed by the mainstream media, obsessed as they are with non-issues such as the oil situation and global politics)

It is rumored that the European Union is planning to move against Joseph Fiennes for anti-competitive practices in monopolizing all the leading roles in Elizabethan Age movies. Let’s see, in ‘Shakespeare in love’, he plays a very sexy Shakespeare - there’s just no way bald old Shakespeare looked like the gorgeous hunk that Fiennes is. In ‘Elizabeth’, he is ambitious rake Robert Dudley, wooing the unsure-of-herself Elizabeth while having a wife tucked away in the country. In ‘The Merchant of Venice’, he plays Bassanio, whose wooing of the Lady Portia sends his buddy Antonio into the clutches of moneylender Shylock with disastrous consequences. To do full justice to these roles, Fiennes wore frilly shorts, long sleeves, multi-colored tights, carefully styled stubble, black eyeliner and what I suspect to be pale orange lipstick.

It is also reliably learnt that Fiennes is being indicted by the Fashion Police of several countries for offenses related to the simultaneous wearing of tights and (arguably) orange lipstick. However, he is receiving enormous support from the League of Smitten Women, which has vowed to defend him to the end. “Joseph puts sexy back into Shakespeare, give the man a break”, say the girls. My sentiments, exactly.

Shakespeare Comedies & Bollywood Movies: The Hidden Connection

No one would ever accuse Bollywood movies of being even remotely Shakespearean, but no one would be right. There are enormous similarities between Shakespeare’s comedies and Bollywood movies. Until a few years back, it was mandatory for at least 50% of Hindi movies made in any given year to inflict on the populations of the Indian Sub-Continent, the Middle East and any other place on the planet inhabited by people with a fondness for Hindi movies, a set of identical twins separated at birth.

The original inspiration for the identical twin themes in Hindi cinema comes no doubt from Shakespeare, who used identical twins liberally in his comedies. In “The Comedy of Errors” there is not one, but two sets of identical twins. Antipholus and his twin Antipholus have been separated at birth in a storm. Their attendants, another pair of identical twins called Dromio, are likewise separated. Antipholus I, Dromio I and Daddy live in Syracuse while Antipholus II, Dromio II & Mummy live in Ephesus, though Mummy is not in contact with her sons. There are many contrived and allegedly hilarious situations involving the two Antipholii and Dromii before the play meanders to its happy ending.

A Comedy of Errors was probably the most hare-brained plot from the Elizabethan Age down to the late 20^th Century, until the release of the iconic Bollywood movie “Judwa”, featuring only one set of identical twins (why this parsimony?). This movie was bad even by the glorious standards of Bollywood twin movies. Judwa has an interesting twist on the whole twin bonding thing. When twin A, for example gets beaten up by the bad guys, Twin B feels it, and vice versa. Shakespeare didn’t think of that one.

Another of Shakespeare’s plays, Twelfth Night, involves identical twins Sebastian and Viola, one girl and one boy, who absurdly get mistaken for each other. The beautiful Lady Olivia falls in love with Viola (dressed as a man) and ends up marrying Sebastian. Viola is in love with the Duke Orsino, who is originally in love with Olivia, and believes Viola to be a boy and therefore does not pay her much attention. In the end all the knots are untangled and everyone lives happily ever after. The absurdity of the play would have made any Hindi movie director of the 1970s or 1980s green with envy.

It is surprising that no Shakespearean scholar has ever studied this connection between Bollywood and Shakespeare. In Bollywood, shameless plagiarism is referred to as “inspiration”, and Bollywood directors draw extensive inspiration from a multitude of sources, including Hollywood movies, Turkish pop, classical music, rock, Hong Kong martial arts – often all at the same time, However the link to Shakespeare is not as well known, even though I’d reckon that Shakespearean comedies were probably one of the greatest influences on Bollywood, spawning a whole genre of idiotic movies with themes involving identical twins. Ah Shakespeare, Shakespeare, what hast thou wrought?