The Shadows

It was 2:00 am. As I was leaving my lab, the bell housed in Burruss Hall – the main building of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies – had rung twice. It was strange for the main building of a university campus to have bells ringing like this one. But then, nothing about Blacksburg was usual. It was a small college town. Like any other college town in the middle of a semester, this one also usually bustled with students at all times of the day, odd or not. Not tonight, though. Fall break was supposed to start that day which explained why the streets looked like they had been robbed of their charm in the middle of the night.

To a PhD student like me, fall break didn’t really mean anything. In fact, it had become the norm for me to leave my lab around this time every night since the past two months. I had just taken up a new project in my PhD. My long-running experiments had mercilessly usurped my daily routine. They were now slowly getting on my nerves. The cancer cells I was genetically modifying seemed to be incognizant of my efforts. It would have been nice if even one of my experiments had worked. But no, it wasn’t my day today. Neither was it my night.

Since I didn’t own a car and bus services had stopped at midnight, I started treading along my regular route through Toms Creek Road to get to my apartment. This was always a 25-minute walk for me. And that included the time devoted to my shenanigans on the road.

I liked taking the Toms Creek Road because it was always empty at this time. No traffic, except for the occasional one or two cars. This road boasted of running alongside a graveyard, closely followed by an elementary school and some not-so-useful streetlights. It probably explained the unpopularity of Toms Creek Road among pedestrians at night. Since this road got me to my apartment ten minutes sooner than the other, more happening road, I couldn’t afford to be so picky.

Two streetlights immediately outside the elementary school on Toms Creek Road kept flickering every night I walked back from my lab to my apartment. The flickering streetlights made me uncomfortable every single time. It was just an eerie spot. The fact that the streetlights that flickered were right outside an elementary school didn’t help the situation. Neither did the fact that the lot next to the elementary school was a graveyard. It was even more unsettling to think that these lights – that were motion-sensitive and supposed to turn on when a pedestrian walked towards them – turned off whenever I walked in their direction, and on after I crossed them. I had never been accompanied by anyone when walking on that road, so I wasn’t sure if other people had noticed this. To ease my discomfort, I had even created a story in my mind, explaining the fickle lights. That the light behaved this way only for me. That I had some unusual kind of power over the lights.

I always pretended to myself that the graveyard didn’t affect me. I believe that the dead deserve respect and not fear, which is also something I say to pacify myself after every horror movie I watch. But being a fan of horror movies, I have the same two problems as most other fans of the genre. One, I love being scared, and two, I have a very active imagination. Any unusual, stranger than fiction event that may have a hidden scientific cause becomes a scary twist in my conversations with friends.

Nevertheless, I always tried to enjoy this time – walking back to my apartment after a long, hard day at work. In fact, the two streetlights had kind of become my pals. No matter how my day ended, I always stopped next to these two streetlights – almost like a religious ritual. I would look around to ensure that I was all alone on the road and once convinced that the coast was clear, I would start dancing. I am a good dancer, but it is a preciously guarded secret for some reason. I used to dance in my room in the apartment all the time, until my downstairs neighbors came knocking one night. Now, dancing on this abandoned road had become my way of throwing caution to the wind and unwinding; my way of forgetting what happened at work and happily looking forward to my five hours of sleep. The two streetlights cast two long and flickering shadows of me on the road. Each night, I would be amused looking at my shadows as I danced. They reminded me of the synchrony of a dance trio I had seen on World of Dance.

However, this was not any other night. Something was different. Perhaps it was the repairmen I had seen in the morning when I had walked the road from my apartment to the lab. Well, run, really – because I was going to be late for a meeting with my PhD advisor. So, while running along Toms Creek Road that morning, I had noticed a few repairmen from Appalachian Electric Power hoisted atop their crane, repairing (I hoped) the streetlights that flickered. ‘Great! It will finally be a horror-less walk back to the apartment!’, I had thought to myself while waving at my friend from the lab next door. I had soon forgotten all about it because I was late to the meeting, and my advisor had ripped me a new one.

The lights had now stopped flickering. ‘Good job, repairmen!’, I said to myself while in the midst of my usual dance routine next to the streetlights. As I was savoring the synchronized dancing of my two shadows and myself, both the lights turned off. I stopped for a second to see if the lights would turn back on. I was about to take my phone out and continue my walk when someone called my name. I didn’t recognize the voice, but I could have sworn it was a kid. ‘Here I go again, imagining a scene out of a horror movie!’, I tried to convince myself, now thoroughly stressed. More so because I discovered that my phone was dead.

It was too dark to see anything – pitch dark, and a cloudy night too. My dilated pupils didn’t help me much. As I heard the kid call my name for the second time, a whooshing sound startled me. My breathing became labored, as I was worried now that what was happening was absolutely real.

Panicked, I started running in the general direction of my apartment when both the lights turned back on. I looked around trying to locate the kid who had called my name in the dead of the night. But the kid was nowhere to be found.

Out of sheer habit, I looked at the ground beneath me to glance at my shadows.

I only saw one.

The mystery of why there was only one shadow, when science – and the fact that I had seen two shadows right before the lights had gone off a couple of minutes ago – said otherwise, was something I couldn’t fixate on when other strange things were going on. There must be a scientific explanation that was eluding me, just like my interest in horror movies had eluded me a minute ago.

I mustered some courage and decided to continue the walk. The walk metamorphosized into a run as my skin gave way to a million goose bumps. The ground had just begun to slip under my feet when the two streetlights went off again. I dared and stopped again. Within a second, my decision seemed foolish as a terrifying shriek came from the darkness – another kid, screeching my name.

The hair on my arms resembled the spines of a porcupine in those moments. I couldn’t move even though I very much wanted to disappear, hoping I hadn’t watched The Nun two nights ago. Within a few seconds, the two streetlights were back on.

As I turned to look at the lights, I saw an eerily dark figure crawling away, from the spot where I stood towards the playground of the elementary school – perhaps on all fours, or perhaps gliding away in a supine position inches above the ground, I couldn’t tell. My voice seemed to have deserted me. Terrified, I flexed my eyesight to look at my shadows another time.

Not one shadow. None.

The trio was down to a solo dancer now. The most disconcerting thought yet came to me in that bone-chilling moment. It seemed as if invisible kids from an elementary school next to a graveyard were stealing the members of my ‘dance trio’ one by one.

As I began to shudder uncontrollably, a third voice bellowed my name into the night. I ran, deciding not to stop at any cost this time, even as someone seemed to be pulling the ground from beneath my feet.

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Historical and Cultural Influences on Louis Kahn’s Architecture

For some reason, I recently ended up reading the Wikipedia page of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), India. I have never visited the institute, so I wasn’t quite familiar with its architecture but the brickwork I saw in photographs looked eerily similar to the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, where I received my undergraduate education. I kept reading about the architecture of IIMA and got to know that it was designed by American architect Louis I. Kahn. Of course, now I had to read more about him and his works and what inspired him to design his buildings the way they were. Here’s a detailed account of what I found.

Kahn’s work covered a vast breadth in terms of the countries, cultures, industries and religions it transcended. He designed academic institutions, research labs, mosques, synagogues, churches for clients in the US, India, Bangladesh and Israel. What set his buildings apart was that he did not conform to a single school of thought in architecture. He has often been recognized as “an artist as much he was an architect”. Perhaps it was this amalgamation of art and architecture that made Kahn so observant and free-spirited when designing his buildings. Contemporaries and art historians have called him a Classical Romantic architect whose idols were 18th century Roman architects, even though he was trained as a Classical Modernist in an era when glass, steel and concrete had become the norm.

As I read more about Kahn’s life, I became drawn into exploring the various factors that influenced Kahn’s designs, specifically in the context of three very distinct buildings, each based in a different country: The First Unitarian Church of Rochester, USA (1959); the IIMA building, India (1961) and the Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban or the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh (East Pakistan, when the building was commissioned in 1962). These buildings are widely different from each other in terms of the purposes they serve. The First Unitarian Church of Rochester is, foremost, a church where devout believers congregate to pray, and it also has a church school attached to it. On the other hand, the building for IIMA was designed to serve as an institution of higher education based on the Western style of teaching. Meanwhile, the National Assembly Building in Bangladesh is a place where elected members of the government engage in political discussions. To Kahn, all these buildings were temples or places of worship in one form or the other, of a deity, of learning or of political discussion for the benefit of the society.

So, what were the influences that drove Kahn to design these buildings the way they are? To answer this question, I took a deep-dive into the evolution of Kahn’s take on architecture. Now, Kahn was trained in the ‘modern classic’ style of architecture under his mentor Paul Cret. Art historian Vincent Scully defines this modern classic style as a merger between traditional classicism and modernism. This style of architecture still advocated monumental symmetry and the use of ‘permanent’ materials. However, a new era was heralded by the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier in the late 1920s. Now, asymmetry, lightness and thinness became the desired characteristics of buildings, as opposed to the modern-classical features of symmetry, heaviness and enormity. Kahn was also not used to the new order in which glass was conspicuously used in architecture. These were significant changes that forced Kahn, among other architects, to change the way he designed buildings. But conforming to the new age of architecture did not inspire him.

Inspiration also came to Kahn from his trips to Europe. He had been to Italy in the late 1920s and looked at the kind of architecture he was familiar with – solid, primeval, glassless architecture. Then in 1950, Kahn went to Italy again, this time to the American Academy in Rome as a fellow. These trips had a massive influence on Kahn’s architectural style. Indeed, in the 1950s, after he returned from his trip to Europe, Kahn wanted to resurrect the architectural style of the past. Some of his contemporaries, such as Philip Johnson, were going through similar radical changes in their architectural style. This change was clear from the buildings that Kahn designed after his trip to Europe. In fact, direct influences can be traced in many cases.

On his second trip to Italy, Kahn visited several buildings and drew many studies, including Foro Italico (Mussolini’s Forum) in Rome and the Piazza del Campo in Siena. During this trip, he also went to Greece, where he visited the great temple of Apollo at Corinth. Later, he travelled to Egypt, drawing the Temple of Khons at Karnak and the great Pyramids of Giza. These studies found a place in Kahn’s designs after he returned to the US. For instance, while he was in Egypt, he was commissioned to design the Yale Art Gallery. Here, he used tetrahedral elements in the art gallery’s ceiling, inspired by the pyramids of Giza. His trip to Egypt also allowed him to think about his religion (Judaism) and inspired his design of the Mikveh Israel Synagogue, which unfortunately did not get built. In his design of the Richards Medical Research Laboratories between 1957 and 1961, he used pre-cast concrete columns that were laid without using mortar, much like the Greek Temple of Apollo at Corinth that he had visited earlier. This made scholars note that Kahn was trying to bring back the architectural traditions that had otherwise been replaced by Modernism.

This proved to be true in his designs for the three buildings I brought up earlier. For instance, the First Unitarian Church of Rochester is a design unlike any other. At the first glance, the building does not look like any other religious building. It dissociates itself from historical norms and is certainly a Modernist representation of a church. The brief given to Kahn was that the church respects both science and religion. In his attempt to materialize such a union, some scholars believe that Kahn was inspired by the plan of the Augustus Mausoleum in Rome. Similarly, the idea of separating the served and the serving spaces in a building came to Kahn from the French Gothic Cathedrals. These cathedrals are characterized by square areas, circular domes and corridors defined by cylindrical pillars. The plan for another one of Kahn’s built works, the Richards Medical Research Building, was greatly and more directly inspired by these features. But it should also be noted that the design of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester also has a similarly inspired concept of served and servant spaces.

Other buildings also inspired certain features of the First Unitarian Church. The church is a double-story building made of steel-reinforced concrete with bricks used on the exterior. The overall design of the building gives a unity and solidity to the whole structure. Even the doors to the building are not readily seen by observers. They are concealed, which seems to have been inspired by Kahn’s drawing of the Piazza del Campo in Siena, lacking windows and doors to hide the scale of the architecture. Kahn also helped design the furniture and other interior décor items of the building. Here, he introduced modularity, multi-functionality and flexibility in the pieces used in the interior design. Kahn similarly made the open spaces within the building, such as corridors, multifunctional too. For instance, corridors provided for ventilation as well as a meeting place. Further, the ground floor exterior has projections that serve as small benches. These projections have small windows on either side to allow for indirect light to enter the interior, giving an interspersed aura of light and shadow. Alternate projections and recessions on the exterior walls also generate many vertical shadows in direct light, something similar to what Kahn drew in his study of Mussolini’s Foro Italico and its many open arcades. Thus, the interior of the building was connected strongly to Modern architectural theory, while the exterior was inspired by the many classical architectural works that Kahn had studied during his trip to Europe.

Kahn’s buildings in India and Bangladesh had similar influences. As was mentioned earlier, his drawing of the Piazza del Campo in Siena during his trip to Italy removed all windows, doors and even people from the building. These are the features that inform a viewer of the time, scale and use of a building. Removing them gives the building a ‘timeless’ quality and also hides the urban scale of the architecture. Kahn used this idea when designing both the National Assembly Building in Bangladesh and the IIMA building in India. Moreover, in the National Assembly like in the First Unitarian Church, secondary spaces are distributed around a central volume. This is reminiscent of churches from the Byzantine and Renaissance eras.

Apart from his studies of intact buildings in Europe, Kahn also drew inspiration from the archaic Roman architecture (or ruins) when designing the buildings in Bangladesh and India. Roman architecture had managed to avoid the use of glass, not because they did not have it, but because it was not necessary. Kahn borrowed this strategy, as can be seen in the IIMA building. Roman architecture had the concept of creating voids by using arches between brick walls and installing lintels below the arches. Kahn adapted this in his design of the IIMA building, abundantly using arches and lintels. The IIMA building also had cross-vaulting which is reminiscent of the Trajan’s Market in Rome. Here, Kahn’s equivalents to the Trajan’s Market’s concrete barrel vault and penetrating cross-vaults were brick arches with steel-reinforced concrete slabs.

Indeed, Kahn’s European expedition was not the only influence upon his works in India and Bangladesh. The local culture in these countries affected his design immensely, not only for the building that he designed in Asia, but in his later works elsewhere as well. This local influence was two-fold. Firstly, the preference of building materials had to be based on the locally available resources as well as what would benefit the workforce involved in building the projects. This forced Kahn to change his building materials and working style. Secondly, traditions and religion, particularly in his work in Bangladesh, affected his design. Material-wise, brick was the first choice for Kahn’s clients in India, as the use of brick would help daily wage labourers make earnings from the project. Kahn clearly took this demand in his stride and used a lot of brick in the IIMA building. The use of brick also guided the form in this building. For example, Kahn thoroughly used arches in the IIMA building because he believed that the use of brick as the primary building material fundamentally demanded the design of arches.

Kahn’s Bangladeshi clients also wanted brick, but he was able to convince them to build the National Assembly Building from concrete. However, Kahn probably overstepped when he tried to convince them to make a mosque that did not look like a mosque, much like what he did with the First Unitarian Church. Kahn’s idea was to make the roof of the mosque pyramidal and cover it with marble to make it aesthetically pleasing. The Bangladeshi clients were concerned that using a pyramidal design for the roof would make it look like a church and could impact the religious sentiments of the devotees. Aesthetics did not matter to them while they were a priority for Kahn, but Kahn fulfilled his clients’ wishes. Borrowing from the religious beliefs and culture of the Bangladeshi people, Kahn designed the building’s entrance to be a mosque, ten times larger than it was required to be as per the brief, where members could offer their prayers five times a day.

It is interesting to me how Kahn’s design and choice of form varied based on so many factors, including the philosophy that a building served, the materials he was asked to use and of course, historical and local influences. Perhaps it is because of, and not in spite of, the various influences and variations in his architectural design that Kahn is recognized as one of the greatest architects of the 20th century.

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Venice’s Piazza San Marco painted by Canaletto and Renoir – two artworks separated by a lot more than just time

Giovanni Antonio Canal (popularly known as Canaletto), an 18th century Venetian artist of the Rococo period, produced extensive, detailed and architecturally accurate ‘view’ paintings of Venetian and other landmarks. I recently saw a photograph of Canaletto’s remarkable painting The Piazza San Marco, Venice (1742-1746), which I discovered is just one of the artist’s many view paintings of this popular Venetian landmark. I spent a lot of time reading about Canaletto’s works as well as other renditions of the Piazza San Marco. I found it to be rather interesting and decided to write a rather detailed post on it.

Over the course of his life, Canaletto produced many architecturally accurate artworks showing the Piazza San Marco and its Basilica from different angles. He learnt the technique of view painting from his father, who designed and painted theatrical scenes in Rome’s opera houses. On one particular trip to Rome in 1719-1720, Canaletto moved from painting theatrical scenes with his father to landscape paintings, inspiring him to paint Venetian views. Soon, Canaletto’s works were admired, purchased and collected not only in Venice, but also internationally, with Britain being one of the largest markets. British aristocrats would come to Venice as tourists on the ‘Grand Tour’ and purchase a view painting as a souvenir when returning home. This particular painting of the Piazza, like many of his other paintings of Venice, is likely to have been commissioned by British patron, agent and dealer Joseph Smith.

Patronising Canaletto’s art quickly became a cultural movement of sorts, with patrons from many cities across Europe – including Vienna, Dresden, London, Munich and Warsaw – inviting the artist to paint the views they wanted. Within Venice, Canaletto had set up a large studio with many assistants who helped him meet the prolific demands of his patrons. Smith even set up a printing press which helped Canaletto sell smaller and cheaper prints of his works to those who were interested. Clearly, Canaletto’s paintings were serving the same function in that era that perhaps stamps and photographic tourist postcards did until recently.

Such was the sociocultural impact of Canaletto’s work that replicas of his paintings were being made and sold in Britain at the time. Given the accuracy, patronage and scale of production, documentation and reproduction became a natural – albeit secondary – purpose of Canaletto’s art, including the paintings of the Piazza San Marco. Indeed, present-day researchers have time and again testified to the geometric and perspective accuracy of his paintings of the Piazza and other vistas in Venice. It was a big surprise for me to learn that these paintings are so accurately detailed that scientists have used them to deduce the sea level in Venice in the eighteenth century.

However, it is interesting that Canaletto, who was revered for his accuracy, did take some artistic liberties in his work. He is known to have altered some perspectival, spatial, architectural and scale-related details for the sake of the painting itself, to include more monuments and landmarks in a single painting than could actually be seen from the viewer’s vantage point. This seems to also be true for the view of the Piazza San Marco shown in the work being discussed here, because there is another building on the side of the Basilica where the viewer is standing. It is difficult to imagine a spot in this building where a viewer will get the complete view that Canaletto has painted. In a way, Canaletto stitched together multiple consecutive views of the area to create a panorama. Indeed, this feat was enabled at the time by his use of a camera obscura to capture and trace images of the sites he wished to recreate in his paintings.

The reason for the intentional but largely inconspicuous inaccuracies in this Canaletto painting is better realized when one thinks closely of the function the painting was to serve. Since the work was made for foreign patron(s), it made sense to include a large expanse of the serene scene that covers a number of landmarks for the viewer to enjoy. Moreover, specific demands of his patrons could also have affected his paintings in general, and that could very well have been the case here too.

Nevertheless, in this painting of the Piazza San Marco, like in his other works, Canaletto makes the viewer a part of the scenery, as if they are experiencing Venice and its beauty first-hand. The painting does not only outline the architectural and monumental significance of the Piazza, but also at the same time depicts an ordinary scene in the daily life of Venetians and possibly tourists in that age. A number of people of different classes and occupations are seen gracing the Piazza, presenting the grandeur, the multiculturality and the mingling of classes – aristocrats, commoners and tourists alike – in 18th century Venice. This conveys Canaletto’s pride in his city and its people, a feeling that he wants to communicate to Venetians as well as the foreigners who patronised his work.

In sharing this message, Canaletto’s training in painting opera house scenes with his father becomes conspicuous. In a way, he uses the sunlight as a spotlight, as if in an opera house, to draw the viewers’ attention to the people dominating the scene. This starts at the right side of the painting where we see a massive shadow of the architecture that is largely hidden from the view. Then, using the sunlight, Canaletto further “spotlights figures in a way that you would in a theatre”. Canaletto uses white and other bright colours for the dresses of many of the people in the scene, which immediately draws the viewers’ attention, giving the patrons an insight into the exotic world that was contained in Venice. In true Rococo style, he uses the graceful curves of the canopies set up by vendors in the Piazza as well as those of the clothes worn by the people to further guide the viewer into the painting.

The depth of the view is also noteworthy, so much so that one can also see the water in the canal deep in the background behind the Basilica. Since water is one element everyone associates with Venice, the presence of this feature, even in the slightest form, assists Canaletto in connecting his viewership with this painting. The brightness of his colours and the sheen of his paint also evoke the same connection with water and Venice.

The symbolic call to water and the city’s cultural plurality is also seen in countless other artworks about Venice as well as the Piazza San Marco, transcending centuries of political history and stylistic changes in art. Consider the 1881 rendering of the Piazza by the French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. While this painting also shows the Piazza in broad daylight and shining in the sun, it has been painted from a different viewing point. Architecturally, the only common monuments depicted in both the paintings being discussed are the Basilica and San Marco’s bell tower (or Campanile). Moreover, Renoir’s work is a playful combination of light and motion, merging the foreground with the background and thus diminishing the spatial depth of the painting in comparison to Canaletto’s painting. Still, Renoir achieves the same watery quality in his painting as in Canaletto’s. He uses purple/blue colour to paint the pavement to give it a watery nature while using the complementary yellow/orange, as was common in the Impressionism era, to highlight many of the architectural features. Renoir also leaves the people in his painting fairly nondescript, with no distinguishable features other than the occasional hats of different types. This indistinguishable quality evokes the feeling that the individual identities such as class or ethnicity of the people in the scene did not matter. Instead, their togetherness in this landmark was more important to Renoir.   

Of course, there could have been other reasons for the way the human figures were painted by Renoir. For him, his painting of the Piazza was merely a study meant for learning. He had come to Venice from Paris to improve his impressionistic painting, particularly figure painting, after having serious concerns about his ability as a painter. Deviating from his well-known portraiture, he took inspiration from Venetian artwork and indulged in landscape painting. Also, he was concerned that many rich patrons did not want to associate with him due to his “lower-class manners”. This could also explain why Renoir’s depiction of people in his Piazza is so different from Canaletto’s, eliminating class differences entirely by keeping the figures vague. Indeed, Renoir’s was not an artwork commissioned by a rich patron to show off to high-class acquaintances. Rather, it was a collection of memories of his trip to Venice, and an attempt to improve upon his artistic style.

Perhaps this is why in many areas, the paint seems to have been applied in a rushed manner in Renoir’s painting, particularly on the sky on the right-hand side. The imprecision and unevenness of the brushwork makes the scene depicted in Renoir’s painting look more active, such that one can almost see the pigeons, painted simply with small splotches of blue, fluttering off the pavement of the Piazza. In stark contrast, Canaletto’s work has an aura of stagnancy (or a ‘freeze-frame shot’ as one might say today), despite the scene showing people engaged in different kinds of activities. Clearly, Canaletto’s work was meant to stay frozen as memorabilia in someone’s collection, almost like a modern-day photograph.

Similar to Renoir’s indistinguishable depictions of the pigeons and the people in the painting, the four Greek horses (that are prominently seen in Canaletto’s work) on the Basilica’s façade too cannot be distinguished here. This also highlights a fundamental difference between what about the Piazza held importance for these two artists. For Renoir, a French tourist visiting Venice temporarily, the domes of the Basilica with the Campanile on the side were enough to evoke the memory of the Piazza. However, for Canaletto, a native, proud and patriotic Venetian, the horses on the Basilica’s façade held immense meaning. He uses light and shadow on the top of the Basilica to highlight the horses such that even in a painting that covers a vast expanse, the viewer does not miss them. To Venetians, these horses symbolized the sovereignty and the might of Venice. When Napoleon occupied Italy in the late 18th century, he ordered to have the four horses on the Basilica removed and sent to Paris (though they were reinstalled in 1815). Such was Canaletto’s patriotism that he did not stop painting them in his renditions of the landmark even after they were removed.

It is clear that national pride, patronization and documentation were the forces that defined the functions and importance of Canaletto’s work. Undoubtedly, his personal journey in life as well as his paintings’ visual properties, style and patronage have collectively shaped the sociocultural implications of his art and kept it relevant even today.

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The Perils of Hollywood Depictions of Mental Health

Countless films in Hollywood and across the world – some of them quite acclaimed – have woven stories around one or the other mental health problem. From depression to schizophrenia, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, obsessive compulsive disorder, amnesia and autism, Hollywood has hardly left any mental illness untapped.

The problem with many of these films is that their portrayals of mental health patients are largely negative. Let me share a quick fact to mull over: out of 100 Hollywood films in a random list of films that depict ‘mental illness/health’ on IMDb, 37 belong to the horror or crime thriller genres. This says a lot about the perception that Hollywood has created and tends to create, intentionally or unintentionally.

But is Hollywood really that bad when it comes to showing mental health issues on the big screen? Let us look at what insights three cult psychological horror/thriller movies, that have entertained the world for many years now, can offer in this matter.

The Shining

The Shining (1980) revolves around a writer Jack (played by Jack Nicholson), his wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall) and their young son Danny. The family moves to a hotel so Jack can work as its caretaker during the off-season and also focus on his writing while doing so. However, the hotel has a horrific past involving the previous caretaker murdering his wife and two daughters before killing himself. To make things worse, Danny has “the shining”, a power that makes him have visions and helps him telepathically talk to other people who share the power but which Danny’s doctor calls as “auto-hypnosis”. Meanwhile, Jack had a drinking problem in the past which even led to him being violent towards his son once but has since been “on the wagon” for a “miserable 5 months”. As the family spends time looking after the large empty hotel by themselves in the middle of a stormy winter, Danny’s hallucinations get worse and even Jack starts having terrible nightmares that evolve into paranoia and psychosis. He becomes violent and wants to kill his wife and son because the old caretaker, who had killed himself, suggests so. Wendy is tormented by her violent psychotic husband and tries to protect her son and herself, succeeding in the end.

Shutter Island

Shutter Island (2010) is set in the 1950s and based in the titular island that houses a “mental hospital for the criminally insane”. The patients housed in this penitentiary are all “violent offenders”, who have hurt people and murdered them. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Andrew Laeddis, a patient in the penitentiary because he killed his wife Dolores, whom he loved immensely. Dolores, in turn, was battling manic depression or bipolar disorder, and killed their three children by drowning them. Andrew is not ready to believe that he killed his wife and that his wife killed their children which is why he ends up creating alternate versions of the reality without even being aware of it. He has hallucinations in which his wife talks to him and he sees his eldest daughter Rachel, though he does not recognise Rachel as his daughter because he denies ever having had children. The denial and the hallucinations make him violent and necessitate his commitment to a mental institution. Lead psychiatrist Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) and another health provider Dr. Sheehan (Mark Ruffalo) are trying to avoid a psychosurgical approach to treat Andrew. Instead, they take a mellower and safer approach where they build an alternate reality for Andrew, so he can come to accept the reality – that he killed his wife. They root for Andrew’s well-being and construct an elaborate scheme to help him, so they can prove that patients with mental illness can be healed and cured without cruel and dangerous lobotomies.

Black Swan

In Black Swan (2010), Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a ballet dancer who is chosen to play the Swan Queen in a show of the popular ballet Swan Lake. She is supposed to portray two diagonally opposite characters in the ballet – the sweet and simple White Swan, and the mischievous and seductive Black Swan. She thinks she is talented enough to do justice to both the parts, but her ballet instructor feels that she lacks the vision to play the Black Swan. Thus, her journey from the day of her selection for the coveted part to the day of the show is filled with mental stress, hallucinations and unexplained psychosis. She starts seeing rashes on her back and the skin above her nails shedding. She imagines that feathers of the black swan are sprouting out from her own skin. She sees blood when there is not any and thinks that another ballerina Lily (Mila Kunis) is in her changing room when there was no one else around. She tries to physically hurt her mother when she wants to help her with her psychosis and in the end, on the day of the show, she accidentally stabs herself with a shard of glass, thinking that she had killed Lily instead. Even though she gives a riveting performance as both the White and the Black Swans, the film ends with her stab wound leaving her dead.  

So, what are these films really conveying about mental health? Shutter Island deals with grief, denial, hallucinations, tremors, psychotropic drugs, bipolar disorder, violence towards others and the standard of mental health treatment, though set in the 1950s. The Shining portrays alcoholism, hallucinations, nightmares, evolution of a mental illness and violence towards others. Black Swan depicts the ideas of hallucinations, psychosis, suicidal tendency and violence towards others and oneself. The common theme highlighted in these three films is violence.

The Shining strongly links Jack’s violent behaviour with his hallucinations. The previous caretaker, whom Jack sees and talks to in his hallucinations, used an axe to murder his family and then Jack uses the same weapon to torment his family. His violence turns lethal when he kills the hotel’s chef with his axe. Over the course of the film, the depiction of Jack’s rage and paranoia changes from a more facial expression of emotions to a more physical one.  Similar allusions to or direct depictions of violence by mental health patients are seen in Shutter Island and Black Swan as well.

Shutter Island is also filled to the brim with many stigmatising dialogues.When taking the ferry to Shutter Island in the beginning of the film, Mark Ruffalo’s character implies that the majority of the patients in the facility will be “just folks running around hearing voices and chasing after butterflies”. In one scene when the doctor (Ben Kingsley) is describing the humane method of treatment used at the facility, DiCaprio’s character finds it absurd and says: “you act like insanity is catching”, suggesting that mental health problems could be transmitted from one person to another by being around them. Words such as ‘crazy’ are also casually thrown around to talk the patients at the facility.

But before you hurl abuses at me for ruining your favourite films for you, let me say that not all is lost. The Shining does use its runtime to depict the evolution of mental illness, particularly with Nicholson’s character whose paranoia worsens as the movie continues. Similarly, Black Swan also shows this evolution. Even Shutter Island ultimately manages to create a positive outlook on mental health providers by making the doctors and psychiatrists particularly sympathetic towards Andrew.

Still, the net impact that these movies have on the minds of the audience members is the reinforcement of stereotypes that drive marginalisation of mental health patients. Thus, while these films are thrilling to watch, we must take their stereotyped depictions and dialogues with a pinch of salt. So, the next time, after you crack open that bottle of wine, pop that corn and binge-watch your favourite horror or thriller films, do not forget to ask yourselves: how sensitive and accurate were the depictions of mental health patients in the films that you so fondly watched from the edge of your seats?

How artifice in art can be revealing rather than misleading: Notes from two artworks by Parmigianino and Fragonard

I was recently going through my college art history notes and was reintroduced to two fantastic painters in a very new light – Parmigianino and Fragonard. This inspired me to present an analysis in this blog, even though I know I am diverting from what I typically write about. Let me know what you think.

Parmigianino’s Conversion of St. Paul (1527-1528) and Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Happy Hazards of the Swing (ca. 1767) are two artworks that were created more than two centuries apart in two different countries – Italy and France – that served as cultural centres in their own right. Parmigianino was a Mannerist painter while Fragonard used the Rococo style in his work. Yet, the two works are united by the use of artifice, whether through form, lighting or the activities being pursued by the subjects. I always considered artifice in art to be more of a deception device, used to trick the viewers into believing that something specific is happening in the scene depicted in the work of art. However, I realize now that artists can also use artifice to communicate different ideas – not misleading ones, but those that reveal intimate details about the art itself.

Before I attempt to reveal the similarities between these two artworks by Parmigianino and Fragonard, I must point out a fundamental difference between them. In Parmigianino’s work, something miraculous and supernatural is happening. The divine intervention by God appears to have an effect on all beings, human (St. Paul) as well as animal (the horse). This work was presumably supposed to be for public viewing, to spread the word about Catholic Christianity. Meanwhile, Fragonard, at the behest of a gentleman of the French court (the patron), painted his intimate piece of art that depicts the patron and his mistress in an intimate, sensual and almost scandalous situation. This work was clearly meant for private viewing.

However, even though the paintings were meant for different kinds of viewing experience (public vs private), they both depict something very intimate. The conversion of St. Paul is an intimate event for the apostle who saw God. In Fragonard’s work, the ongoing affair between the swinging girl and her lover in the bushes is an intimate event unbeknownst even to the older man moving the swing behind the girl. Yet, the viewer is made aware of both of these intimate events through artifice of different kinds.

Clearly, both paintings are meant to not only be viewed, but also be experienced by the viewer. Parmigianino achieves this by providing the viewer the direct frontal view of St. Paul, his body and his face. He grants access to the character so the viewer can feel what St. Paul feels when God presents himself to him in the form of light. Parmigianino uses his individualistic style Imparmiginare that involves the depiction of subjects in an elegant and delicate manner, which is what we see in how St. Paul has been shown in his work. St. Paul appears to be an otherworldly entity ‘placed’ on the scene very elegantly, almost as if the event of his falling off the horse was supposed to be presented to an audience. The viewer is guided into the painting’s world through Parmigianino’s use of wave-like curves. For instance, the horse, with exaggerated anatomical features such as the neck, is shown on its posterior two limbs, while the anterior two are raised to form an S-curve. Many other wavy curves are seen in the form of the horse’s mane and the saddle cloth on the horse. Even St. Paul’s fingers are placed such that they form an S-curve. These features of the painting make its viewing a more intimate experience.

Similar curved ‘S’ and ‘C’ forms were also a characteristic feature of the Rococo style, and thus we see them abundantly in Fragonard’s painting too. The soft curves of the tree and the girl’s dress pull the viewer into the painting. It helps that the foreground is empty and available for the viewer to stand in and view the events taking place, something which is also true for Parmigianino’s painting. However, the viewer does not have full access to Fragonard’s subjects, because they are engaged in an interlocking erotic gaze with one another. To help the audience in this situation, Fragonard also uses light and dark shades and the interlocked gaze to guide the viewer’s experience in a very specific, guided and directional manner.

We also see the use of artificial lighting throughout Parmigianino’s painting, albeit for a different reason. The horse’s anterior left limb is very bright, while the right one is dark. However, the painter does something else with horse’s torso, with the right side shown as being brightly lit. Similarly, the sword underneath St. Paul’s extended right foot is not lit at all at its pointy end, even though the artificial source of light seems to be located in a plane in front of the painting. The purpose of this dissonant artifice could have been to communicate the supernaturality and divinity of the event taking place, once again making the viewer an intimate observer within the painting.

Similar intimacy is achieved by Fragonard’s placing of the two statues in his painting. The cupid and putto are looking at each other, with the cupid gesturing silence with his finger on his lips. This placement is also artificial and conveys the idea of an innocent but sensual conspiracy. It communicates to the viewer the shared secret that the painting’s subjects revel in, in a carefree and frivolous manner.

Through the examples of these two artworks, we can begin to understand what over-stylisation and artifice achieved in two different periods in art. The use of artifice makes sense for both the periods that the artworks come from. These were eras when nobility, courtliness and aristocracy were on the forefront of social life. Mannerism, through its highly stylised art, allowed the artists and the viewers to make sense of otherworldly and supernatural events. In a similar vein, Rococo artists attempted to make sense of social proprieties and improprieties through styles such as Fête Galante. Both sought to draw the viewers into the art and make them the subjects’ accomplices, revealing their secrets to enhance the viewers’ experience. Given the contexts and purposes of artifice in the paintings discussed, I believe that artifice in art can be quite revealing rather than misleading. This is a rather insightful revelation for me and certainly changes the way I will now be looking at art. Since I like to try my hands at art every once in a while, I believe that this knowledge about artifice in art will help me in my new projects as well. Leave a comment below to share your thoughts in this regard!

Bollywood Singers and Typecasting

In the unforgiving flood of remakes in which Bollywood is drowning in present times, it’s a pity that Neha Kakkar’s immense potential has suffered by being limited to singing cheap and soulless versions of old classics. Chamma chamma, Yaad piya ki, Dilbar dilbar are only a select few among a host of such songs. Neha is not to blame here, typecasting is. She is a brilliant singer with an amazing body of work that goes beyond her remake era. One look at her YouTube channel and you would know why she undoubtedly deserves to be the next sensation in Bollywood. Her covers of songs such as Hasi ban gaye and Aapke pyaar mein show just how much we need her to be offered such songs in movies. Why we are being denied the pleasure of listening to this one-of-a-kind voice in quality original songs is beyond me. I hope our music directors get the sense to use her voice in mellifluous romantic numbers too.

Ace singer Sunidhi Chauhan also became a victim of typecasting early on in her illustrious career. It is sad that even today, most of us only remember her for singing Ruki ruki si zindagi (Mast) and Sheila ki Jawaani (Tees Maar Khan). I am not taking away anything from the effort that went into creating these songs, nor am I complaining about their existence. I just feel fortunate that I have got to hear Sunidhi sing mellifluous songs like Bhaage re mann kahin (Chameli) and Mere haath mein, tera haath ho (Fanaa) and more recently, Lae dooba (Aiyaary). I sincerely hope that more such songs come her way.

Even in this infectious age of typecasting, some singers have been able to successfully vaccinate themselves against this career-ending disease. Arijit Singh, for instance, has sung a wide variety of songs in his career so far. His exquisite voice has breathtakingly fit songs such as Tum hi ho (Aashiqui 2), Sooraj dooba hai yaaron (Roy), to Binte dil (Padmaavat). The last song even won him the National Award. So well deserved. It would be so great if more singers of this generation snatch at the opportunity to show their amazing range of talent. Till the time that happens, Neha Kakkar will remain the only singer who can make me get up at 1 am to listen to even the worst remakes ever made.

Where is the Poetry in Bollywood Songs?

Gone are the days when you heard songs like ‘Phoolon ke rang se, dil ki kalam se’ (penned by Neeraj for the 1970 classic Prem Pujari), or ‘Kaaton se kheench ke ye aanchal’ (Guide, 1965; written by the legendary Shailendra) or ‘Aji rooth kar ab’(Arzoo, 1965; written by the inimitable Hasrat Jaipuri). Its almost like Hindi and Urdu have changed completely over the last 40-50 years. Now, our ears are subjected to songs like ‘Swag se karenge sabka swaagat’ or ‘Coca cola tu’ or ‘Psycho saiyaan’. I have deliberately refrained from naming the eminent lyricists here because I do not wish to shame them.

Songs such as ‘Rozana’ (Naam Shabana, 2017; penned by Manoj Muntashir), ‘Ishq de fanniyar’ (Fukrey Returns, 2017; and penned by Rakesh Kumar) and ‘Ye moh moh ke dhaage’ (Dum Laga Ke Haisha, 2014; written by Varun Grover, won the National Award for the best female playback singer for Monali Thakur that year) provide some solace amongst the wound-incurring songs that are made today. From around the same time, I also love the song ‘Soch na sake’ (in Hindi: Airlift, 2016; written by Rakesh Kumar). While I have not yet analysed the differences between the Punjabi and the Hindi versions of the song, I think the version that I have heard more often personally (the one in the movie Airlift) is brilliantly written. I am sure the original song is just as beautiful and meaningful. I am a huge fan of the line ‘aankhon ki hain ye khwaahishein, ke, chehre se tere na hatein..neendon mein meri bas tere, hi, khwaabon ne li hain karvatein’. Such a brilliant line. It pains me a little every time I listen to the Coke Studio version of this song, because Harrdy Sandhu mistakenly sings ‘chehre se teri’ instead of ‘chehre se tere’. I know, I am annoying. Another breath of fresh air is drawn when you listen to Gulzar’s ‘Yaaram’ from the movie Ek Thi Daayan (2013). This masterfully penned song is filled with contemporary loan words from English that are as equally a part of the Hindi language now.

While you may enjoy dancing to the tunes of ‘Tooh’ (Gori Tere Pyaar Mein, 2013) when you are massively drunk, in the end, Bollywood music is not only about the music itself, but also the soulful poetry and expressive singing. I am sure such songs are atrocious to the ears for many listeners. Additionally, people like me who tend to sing along when listening to a song face another problem. More than a dozen times now, I have had to search for the lyrics of a song because I just could not understand the words that the singer sang. I might as well have been listening to a Finnish song (just the first language that came to my mind, which I don’t speak or understand. No disrespect intended.).

For those of you who have no idea about the brilliant songs that were written and sung back in the early decades of Bollywood cinema, I urge you to watch Javed Akhtar’s series ‘The Golden Years’, in which he discusses the golden era of music in Indian cinema (1950-1975). The show has a great format where each episode is dedicated to one year of Indian cinema. While watching the show, I felt privileged that I got to hear and appreciate so many things that went on behind the scenes during the making of songs that have literally never stopped playing on the Indian radio stations. The series is now available on Netflix too. I crave to hear lines such as ‘nigaahon se chhup kar batao to jaane, khayalon mein bhi tum na aao to jaane’ or ‘Rajnigandha phool tumhare, mehkein mere Jeevan mein’, or ‘aane wala pal, jaane wala hai’ in contemporary Hindi songs. I hope I live long enough to see a time when we go back to creating songs that belong with the era of such golden songs.

The Genius That Was Hrishikesh Mukherjee

I watched Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Chupke Chupke (1975) for the 33rd time today. For the uninitiated, the movie is about a professor of Botany (Parimal Tripathi, played flawlessly by Dharmendra) who falls in love with Sulekha (brought to life on screen by the epic Sharmila Tagore). After certain plot twists, Parimal, now married to Sulekha, decides to visit and prank Sulekha’s brother-in-law (Raghavendra, played by the evergreen Om Prakash), pretending to be a car driver who speaks standard unadulterated Hindi with such perfection that Ragahvendra is extremely annoyed by him. The thing I like the best about Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s movies is how each time you re-watch them, you discover a new piece of brilliance depicted in the direction or screenwriting or acting. Some scenes may seem unimportant from the point of view of the narrative, but still add so much to the characters and the movie-watching experience. For instance, towards the end of Chupke Chupke, we are shown a dialogue between Parimal and Sulekha’s brother (Haripad, played by one of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s favourites David). Dharmendra’s character is concerned that he was making fun of a language, and that too, his mother tongue Hindi. To this, David’s character brilliantly replies, ‘Bhasha to apne aap mein itni mahaan hoti hai ki uska mazaak udaya hi nahi jaa sakta’ (‘Language is such a great entity on its own that one could never make fun of it’). Such was the sensitivity displayed by the several screenwriters who worked on this movie, one of whom was Gulzar. This dialogue was not particularly necessary to drive the narrative of the movie forward. However, the addition of this dialogue just shows that such thought-provoking discussion happened among the screenwriters behind the scenes. Not one Hindi-speaker could take offense after the clarification this scene provides. Rumour mills suggest that Rajkummar Rao will play Dharmendra’s character in a soon-to-be-made remake of this classic. One can only hope that the director and the actors would do justice to the breath-taking beauty of this priceless piece of art.

There is a similar scene in another one of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s classics, Gol Maal (1979). Ratna (Ramprasad’s sister, played with stirring innocence by the talented Manju Singh) and Ramprasad (played by a contained but effortlessly effective Amol Palekar) are sitting in their dining room listening to a song that Ramprasad had recorded. In the middle of the scene, Ratna gets up and starts cleaning up the room a bit before settling down again while Ramprasad continues soaking in the music in his chair. Now, some might suggest that this scene could easily have been edited out as it did not guide the narrative. I would argue that just this one shot spoke volumes about the dynamics between the Sharma siblings. Hats off to the director!   

Hrishikesh Mukherjee also seems to have been a fan of the movie-within-movie concept. One gets to see this concept in Gol Maal when Deven Verma’s character is an actor in the movies and inspires Ramprasad to play a double role in real life to save his job. The concept is also quite evident in Guddi (1971) – which is understandable because the entire movie revolves around how people (in this case Jaya Bhaduri’s character Kusum aka Guddi) may sometimes misinterpret cinema to be the reality of life. In both these movies, you see cameos from several film-stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Aruna Irani, and Asrani among others.

What is even more inspiring is that the male protagonists in these movies were very respectful of the women. They never even chased after them. The female protagonists made independent decisions. For example, in Guddi, Guddi chases after the guy towards the end. Similarly, in Chupke Chupke, Sulekha makes the first move. It is no coincidence that in Gol Maal, Urmila (played by Bindiya Goswami) does the same thing. These are strong, empowered and independent women portrayed on the silver screen at a time when most Indian women were still blinded by the ghoonghats they were forced to wear. If you are among the rare few Hindi-speakers who have not watched the path-breaking cinema of Hrishikesh Mukherjee, watch these movies now. They will drive you towards a happy, much-needed change from the toxic masculinity, inappropriate songs and insensitive dialogues that are on display in present times.