Lord Birkenhead. Just want to point out how hilarious that name is.

 Ghandi. We all know him. Or, at least, have heard of him, at any rate. 

Ghandi pulling out a machine gun and shooting 

at some baddies James Bond-style in a restaurant 

   Above is a very real picture of Ghandi.

   Okay I joke. This is a screenshot of a very hilarious movie called UHF. There is a section where a trailer for a fake movie plays. The trailer is for Ghandi II, in which Ghandi is a James Bond-style hero fighting a bunch of people. And what makes this so hilarious is the fact that it's the exact opposite of what Ghandi was. 

   Excuse me, who. Sorry, pronouns always get to me. 

  Anyways. Ghandi was always a nonviolent kind of guy. He sponsored and led nonviolent protests - sitdown riots. What were those, you ask? Exactly what they sound like. They sat down, and did nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

  So. What were they protesting? Well, mostly the oppressive British rule. Just the usual stuff.

A repressed citizen crying out for release from British tyranny

  India wanted self-governance, dominion, self-rule, self-dominion, independence, whatever you wanna call it. Whatever you call it, that's what they wanted. Who from? Why, the British of course? Who does anyone ever want independence from? The British! It's always the British. If a country has an Independence Day celebration, you can bet your sweet bippy it's independence from the British. 


  Let's talk about something else though. How about . . . pop culture! It's in the name of the class blog, is it not? Then let's do such things.

  Judging by the videos given to watch, we see that a whole lot of them have, well, a girl in them. Not surprising. Everyone loves girls. Girls are not jerks, unlike men, so who wouldn't love 'em? But let's look at it more carefully. What are the girls doing? Singing. What about? I dunno. Probably love. If it's a Bollywood film and there's a woman singing, you can bet your aforementioned sweet bippy that it's about love.

Clandestine is a funny word

  While it is not blatantly obvious from the information given what America's international policies were, some things are clear.

1. They were not afraid to express opinion. It seemed to me that all the Americans in the film were open about how they felt, and weren't too concerned with damaging relations with other countries. America had a reputation as a powerful country. It's people reflected that.  

2. They found other cultures intriguing. The whole concept of archaeology is the fascination of other cultures' (or your own culture's, but let's face it, in movies you never see an Egyptian archaeologist digging in Egypt) histories, and the subsequent unearthing (usually literally) of missing links.

  In that one Coca-Cola commercial, we saw Egyptians getting hilariously excited about an American beverage. I feel like there's some metaphor here for how America is a fat little kid who gets his dirtly little paws in everyone else's lunch.

  Oh wait. I just made one. 

  In Secret of the Incas, Americans seem to get along reasonably well with the rest of the world. Harry Steele, protagonist of the movie, is seen conversing casually with natives, Peruvians and other nationalities often throughout the movie, and mostly seems to be polite about it. He has a friend who's a barkeep at a hotel, and he is also a tourguide in Peru. We later see a group of Americans running an archaeological expedition in Monte Pichuu. They are working hand in hand with the natives, who are happily assisting them with the promise of finding an ancient, religious artifact they long for:

  The Sunburst. I believe I also remember something about archaeology being different than it used to be. More advanced, and a lot more risky. Throughout the film, Harry Steele is shown as an antihero, who's in it only for the money. He's a liar and a thief. But by the end, once he finds the multi-million dollar Sunburst, he returns it to the Natives, and lets them keep it, rather than running away with the money.  

India in the 1950s - a New Republic

India first became a republic on the 26th of January, 1950, and it was then that they got their first president, Dr. Rajendra Prasad.

But let's move on from that. We want to talk about daily life, the government, and mawwiage. Ahem, excuse me, mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us hewe, togetha, today-

Sorry about that. Anyways, we want to talk about daily life, the government, marriage, the things that happened (we call those events, yo) in the 50s in India, and, of course, pop culture, because who doesn't love that? *Raises hand.*

Marriage seems as if it was one of those stereotypical Middle-Ages royalty things where at a stupidly young age, everybody got married off to someone they didn't know and that was that.

What we see in Mr. and Mrs. 55 seems to show somewhat the same thing, though it ends happily with Anita  (the chick) falling in love with Preetam (the dude). The aunt, Sita Devi, is a huge women's rights advocate focused on the divorce bill and obsessed with the idea that men are rats. (I was like, "lady, to some extent, that's . . .well, mostly true, but c'mon, benefit of the doubt") She goes about parading her hatred for men in a seemingly reversed version of the Three Stooges Woman Haters musical (which none of us enjoyed all that much - A Plumbing We Will Go is so much better).

Back to the 50s in India. Now obviously it lacked the basics of what we have now, like a time six and a half decades ago likely would. Cellphones, easily accessed transportation, proper cleaning gadgets, or, you know, just . . . gadgets in general. Vacuums weren't all that common. People mostly read, hung out, went to movies maybe. To the uneducated, (illiterate, as Auntie Sita would say) the 50s look pretty darn dull.

I'm afraid I'd have to agree with you there.     

The Cranes Are Flying

The Cranes Are Flying. A Russian film from 1957. It starts with Boris and Veronica, or, as she's referred to by Boris, "Squirrel," running down what appears to be a wharf. Veronica looks up and and sees in the sky that cranes are flying.

Hence: The Cranes Are Flying. 

After Veronica recites a small bit of a poem about cranes, we are treated to opening credits overlayed atop a montage of our two star-crossed lovers frolicking through a city in Russia. Of course, it all goes to heck within the first ten minutes.

Boris goes off to fight in World War II, which has just broken out. Veronica is left to be sad at home in Mother Russia. Boris never writes to her, she gets worried, and then Boris is, surprise, surprise, the shock, the horror . . .  

. . . killed.

I tried to be dramatic there but I couldn't. It's really not at all surprising. Not in the slightest. Veronica is devastated, is forced to marry Boris' draft-dodging (not to mention cheating and possible rapist) cousin, whom, might I add, told her he loved her during an air raid as buildings blew up around them. As you can see, at this point, the crap has hit the fan in a big way. When the film ends, we are left with the impression that Veronica has left her swine of a husband and has slightly healed from the loss of Boris as she gives flowers to people and actually smiles for the first time in an hour of film time, which translates to roughly six years.

The film is very well done, the cinematography is excellent, and showcases the general day to day suckage of lives during World War II. The studio behind it definitely deserved what rewards they received for it, and the lead actress (Tatiana Samoilova) also very much deserved her rewards.

While on the subject of lead characters . . . for a moment there I did have to wonder, myself, who it actually was. It had seemed like it was Boris for a bit, but then it became clear it was Veronica. But then I asked myself, "who does it begin and end with?"

Answer:

Cranes.