Gleeks

I'd read Julia Lovell's book about Maoism and really enjoyed it, so I picked up her The Opium War despite it not strictly speaking being a topic of interest to me. As it turns out HO BOY I enjoyed this book a lot! It's an earlier publication than her Mao book so the modern-day portions end about a decade ago without the latest geopolitical changes, but even so it's very timely, plus hella compelling and such an interesting to plow through despite the large word count.

Lovell's focus is on the nitty-gritty of what is known about the first Opium War, with especial focus on the misunderstandings between the British and China sides, with their differing priorities and understanding of what the war was even about. I knew enough of an overview of the war itself and the hypocrisy of the British empire in pushing opium in order to recover their silver deficit with China, but this book really gets into the detail of each confrontation and the players involved, and Lovell's greater framework, which is so effective, is in showing how this confrontation between the two nations set the stage for future relations between China and the West, and Lovell draws a straight line from the Opium War to modern day racism, yellow peril paranoia in all its evolving manifestations, and China's modern day nationalism. I am fascinated by how the Opium War gets revisited and remembered on both sides of the divide, with Lovell arguing that at the time China had so many other problems it was just one among money, but in modern day has been used as a symbolic turning point of China's century of humiliation under the West. Like certain other events in other parts of the world that have been repurposed.

Such a great read, combo of her style and the topic itself, and I'm especially fascinated for how the Chinese Emperor did not know the extent of what was going on during the war because his underlings kept lying in their reports to him due to fear of being punished for being unable to stop the British advance. Lovell takes care to elaborate on the major players on both sides (as they were then, and as they have been remembered since) with all their manifestations of prejudice, cruelty but also politic thoughtfulness at times.

Before I started watching Aryana, I read an overview of the premise which closed with the line: "As she faces her fate of becoming a mermaid, Aryana is torn between choosing the sea and the surface world of humans where her heart belongs."

Now that I have finished 134 episodes of 189, I can confidently say, WHAT. There's no dilemma in the show at all. Aryana is a human girl with human girl tribulations and doesn't think about the sea at all. Although she did for three episodes get kidnapped by Neptuna, she has otherwise barely interacted with the merfolk storyline, which only exists to explain what Neptuna and her mother are up to, for otherwise Neptuna and/or her minions would be popping up every 30 episodes or so out of nowhere like Javert to chase Aryana. Was that overview written while they were still figuring out the show, and thought that Aryana would be interacting more with merfolk storyline?

Anyway, just as I was getting worried that the tone was off for a show that's supposed to be heading into the endgame, stuff has started happening! Not immediately, cos the first half of this batch was more of the love quadrangle faffing about of Aryana & Adrian vs. Hubert & Megan; NOTHING FOR MARLON, LOL. I kind of like Hubert but have trouble buying Hubert and Aryana behaving like it's a big tragedy that they can't be together. The writers only seemed to decide that Aryana had big feelings for Hubert after she declared that they couldn't date because of Marlon and/or the mermaid thing, and to be fair both those issues also exist for Adrian, who has been friendzoned, but I'm still like, these kids are fourteen. This is crush territory, not sweeping romance territory.

But in the second half of this batch, that story has been shunted aside for the family plot to come back to the forefront, and it's moving so quickly! In one fell swoop, Victor and Elnora now know that Aryana is Victor's daughter AND that she's a mermaid! Following that, school drama forced Victor's hand to tell Megan and Stella about the paternity thing as well, though not the mermaid thing, which has given Megan's plans to oust Aryana a more sinister edge as Megan tries to befriend Aryana to find something to destroy her, yum yum delicious.

On the other side of the story they've started styling Ofelia better with subtle but still visible make-up, and that is how we know we're heading into an endgame reconciliation between her and Victor. There's been barely any of the three boys in the second half of this batch of episodes, though that'll no doubt change eventually, I'm grateful at the rapid pace and I wonder if the showrunners were told to kick things up a notch, instead of dragging out this plot further, so they paced these reveals in back-to-back episodes in order to ramp up viewer interest, and the stats on these episodes certainly bear that out.

While I was away for Eid I got into a mini-Bollywood marathon watching old movies on streaming, and I had SUCH a fun time. The movies I watched:

Khabi Khabie (1976)
Netflix's summary: "Years after they're forced by their families to marry other people, a poet and his true love must come to terms with their past".

I was bamboozled by that summary, wrongly assuming that said poet and his true love would get back together! After poking around a bit, this movie seems to be part of a mini-movement of movies in that era that explored emotional and/or physical infidelity, though this movie is "only" of the emotional infidelity front and is actually really thoughtful because no one's a villain, and it delves into the complications of romantic and familial bonds, and how love and our expectations of love change over time. I also really liked that, when one of the characters is adopted, the movie made sure to show that her adopted parents are her real parents, and do not become secondary after said character finds her birth mother. The 1970s style with its emotional shorthands and broad drama really worked for me in this case because it was balanced with a grounded emotional core. As a side bonus, I don't think I've ever watched a movie that had both Shashi and Rishi Kapoor in main roles, which was fun.


Anjaam (1994)
Netflix's summary: "A wealthy industrialist's dangerous obsession with a flight attendant destroys her world, until she takes matters into her own hands to exact revenge."

This doesn't even start ominously the way Darr does, and instead uses rom-com tropes some have described as "slap-slap-kiss" except in this case there's no "kiss" reward for the man, because his pushy behaviour is used to show his sense of entitlement and his refusal to take "no" for an answer is bad, actually! The tonal shift wasn't abrupt per se because there was build-up, but when the movie turned to outright violence I kind blinked dazedly in ye meme of "well, that escalated quickly". My parents only caught glimpses of this as I was watching it, and were super confused because they kept assuming that Shah Rukh was the hero/romantic lead, and he's, uh... not. Very not. Satisfying turn for the female lead, satisfying revenge arc, satisfying ending for the characters. Madhuri Dixit wasn't among my fav Bollywood actresses growing up, but I'm really appreciating her depth and range now.


Aaina (1993)
Netflix's summary: "When a woman leaves her fiance to pursue her dreams of stardom, her sister steps in to marry him. But what happens when the bride returns?"

About half an hour into this movie I realized that I'd seen it before, when I was younger and specifically during those formative years, because boy oh boy some iddy tropes I still find super delicious today are in full technicolour in this movie. I do laugh that this movie wants us to believe that Juhi Chawla is the "plain" second sister, but she's so good at playing the arc of a self-conscious woman who'd been raised to believe that familial respect means always letting her older sister bully her, and eventually learning to stand up for herself for herself (as opposed to fighting purely for the sake of a man). Although her character is in love with Jackie Shroff's character from the start, the movie fully acknowledges how messed up it is that she has to be his replacement bride, and she is the one who sets boundaries for their new marriage. The melodrama and big gestures of Amrita Singh are SO delicious and OTT as she tries to sabotage their marriage, and the machinations of the movie are not "reasonable" or "realistic" -- they are indulgent and cruel and wonderful, and I love it. I hadn't seen anything of Jackie Shroff's for years and years, so watching this movie was a journey from "yeah, I remember how charming he is now" to "he is the most handsome Bollywood actor in the WORLD" (/hyperbole)