“Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1
The movie - C U Soon
Saw this amazing movie named C U Soon2 on Amazon Prime. The movie format was unique. Most of it was shown through video conferencing and chat. One gets to know the characters and their lives through chat messages and dialogues that happen through video apps. Chat and video have become the main medium to keep in touch with friends and family who are increasingly living in different parts of the world. That was portrayed beautifully in the movie. Clever movie-making shows cinema as not merely imitating life but extending it.
As a viewer, you need to be more involved in it than a normal movie since you need to read the chat messages fast, look at the expressions of the faces of the characters as they talk to each other through Duo 3. You also get to see the extreme multi-tasking that the young people of the current generation are used to (or subjected to). Jimmy, the main protagonist, is not only talking to his client at work but is also looking at the financial metrics and chatting with his girlfriend at the same time. It is like doing three things in parallel. Sometimes he even chats with his friend at the same time. Chat as a medium allows us to do multi-tasking, communicate with multiple people as well as do other things on the computer/phone.
Parallel Lives?
Also, I think Gen Y has truly embraced the concept of “bringing your whole self to life”, which a generation back, was quite uncommon. People kept work and life separated and their true personalities and beliefs disjointed with work (Reminded of Wemmick in Great Expectations “The office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me.”). As a generation that was born in the age of the Internet with mobile phone usage and social media being the norm, they embrace technology and live naturally in the digital world. The virtual world, many times, diverges from the real world, and sometimes people can be shocked at the reality in the same way Jimmy is shocked at finding that the real Anu is different from the online persona. I think the same thing happens to people who are living in a world of books and movies. They might be living in the Victorian age of Jane Eyre4 or thousands of years into the future in the world of Paul Atreides5. One expects to be living in an age of enlightenment and suddenly sees BLM protests and burning of buildings, it is tough to come to terms with reality.
Fahadh Faasil
I was super impressed by Fahadh. Every movie of his that I’ve seen in recent times has been thought-provoking, and I can’t but feel that he is a true genius. The last 3 movies of his that I saw - “Trance”, “Natholi Oru Cheriya Meen Alla”, and “Kumbalangi Nights”, were each unique and offered perspectives unlike anything else that I’d seen. Trance was probably one of his best movies, though I haven’t seen all of his movies 6 yet. His movies cover so many aspects of human life that one can talk about each for ages. The movies cover wide-ranging themes like love, addiction, religion, commercialization of spirituality, hypermasculinity, patriarchy, poverty, rural life, city life, daydreaming, communism, and so on. Kudos to Fahadh for being the producer and playing the role of Kevin to perfection.
The Key message
Though the movie depicted many facets of today’s life - online interactions, forming a relationship without meeting a person in person, living mostly indoors, the ability to hack into someone’s digital profile to get information that they didn’t give, the shock of dealing with real-life challenges, etc., the key take away, the moral of the story, so as to speak, was about human trafficking. People being duped with the promise of a job opportunity or better life prospects and taken to a different country to be made slaves, is the modern-day abduction. Legally or illegally, if a person goes to another country and is trapped and abused, and cannot talk about it, he/she becomes a chained non-citizen.
The Chained non-citizens
A non-citizen is “any individual who is not a national of a State in which he or she is present.” 7 If a person is taken to a foreign country and if passport and other legal documents are taken away, then the person loses the freedom of choice and is no better than an illegal non-citizen. The person has been ‘trafficked’! Many people who get into the trap of trafficking are in the ‘jumping out of the frying pan to the fire’ situation. They have come to that point in life, probably because of the culmination of a series of misfortunes. It is like you’re at the edge of a cliff of despair: no money to live, poor parents, possibly a sick parent, mounting debts. You feel checkmated from all sides, and the only option is to trust a stranger and go abroad for work. There are millions of people who are victims of trafficking worldwide. My wife is on the board of a non-profit8 that fights sex trafficking, and the stories, facts, details, and statistics that she shares with me fills me with sadness about the human condition itself. But it is not that people are facing misfortunes; the biggest tragedy is that there are always people who take advantage of such people in dire situations.
Some statistics of trafficking are below -
- At any given time in 2016, an estimated 40.3 million people were in modern slavery.
- Out of the 24.9 million people trapped in forced labor, 16 million people are exploited in the private sector such as domestic work, construction or agriculture; 4.8 million persons in forced sexual exploitation, and 4 million persons in forced labor imposed by state authorities.
- Women and girls are disproportionately affected by forced labor, accounting for 99% of victims in the commercial sex industry, and 58% in other sectors.
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Why does trafficking happen?
Trafficking is one of the ailments that has made the story of humanity miserable on earth. Why is there so much misery? By all accounts, things should have been so much better. Books like The Better Angels of our Nature10 and Factfulness11 do point out that the standard of living has become far better than a century ago. That the hopelessness we feel when we read about war and trafficking is due to information being more accessible. Even then, I feel that with the technological progress that humans have made, things could have been much better.
It is a complex issue, and there are so many causes, but the main issue could be the disparity of wealth distribution and accessibility to technological advancement and modern science. There are still places that lack the infrastructure or where basic living conditions are not good enough. Poverty and lack of basic amenities could turn people towards a life of crime to have a fighting chance to live unless they are helped. People could get pushed into poverty due to a variety of reasons. It could even be environmental issues like floods, forest fires, diseases, or even mental issues. I’m not sure if we could even say that man is born free (referring to Rousseau’s quote above). Many people are already in chains depending on the place of birth. The journey of life could be a the path to freedom or further enshacklement.
Is there a solution?
There are so many philanthropists and organizations at work to help people out of poverty, but the effort seems to be not moving the needle on a large scale.
Is a belief system the solution? If a large number of people believe that human life is the only chance that our soul has, to understand God, and to be virtuous, the only path, will that reduce misery? It has been proven over again that human beings cannot stick to a specific belief system as new ideas emerge in every generation. Religious zealotry creates more problems than it tries to solve.
The solution probably lies within the human intelligence itself. Technology could be advanced to provide food for every single person on earth. World hunger can be and should be solved. I think Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs can be met by technology/machines sooner than later if more people become self-aware, understand the concept of life better, and respect each other. A lot of time and energy is spent on negativity and fights all over the world. Covid-19 proved that governments can give money to each citizen if needed. Universal basic income is not such a remote concept after all. The view that people may not be motivated to work if basic needs are met is so antiquated. All the progress that the world has seen in the last 100 years is mostly due to the relative peace that existed in the world. Peace cannot exist in a divided world. I guess I’ve come back to the same ending as the previous post on the merits of a positive and generous worldview.
Image Credit - https://flic.kr/p/9xSTCc (Maria Charitou)