Of My Moleskine Notebook

Hello, my name is Ainaa Azhar, I’m from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and I am currently doing a postgraduate research thesis on French Medieval Literature.Not.

According to Patrick Haggerty, a public speaking and humour coach; The Not Joke is a common favourite in American humour. That is infact what he told Borat Sagdiyev; the protagonist of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit of Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

My sister, George and I watched this movie a Sunday two weeks ago; and I completely forgot about it until my eye caught an article in The Guardian about Sascha Baron Cohen (creator, actor, director of Borat and Ali G) getting a flock of lawsuits due to the “mental anguish, humiliation, and loss of reputation” it has brought to the duped Americans. It’s funny, really. And since I wanted to blog about Starter For Ten, which my sister and I got to catch yesterday; I thought I might as well just make this a movie post and mention both movies.

Starter for Ten was absolutely fantastic. Not only was it funny, smart and just plain silly; I could actually relate to it. At certain dialogues and parts of the movie, I was thinking to myself, “that’s exactly how I feel! Exactly!”. Not to mention, two of my favourite actors are in one of the main roles, that is, everyone’s favourite faun, James McAvoy, for the lead role of Brian Jackson; general knowledge extraordinaire and Benedict Cumberbatch, best-known for his fantastic performance as Stephen Hawking in Hawking; playing an irritating mechanical engineering postgraduate.

Yeah, I know; Brain-Eye Candy.

The movie is about Brian Jackson, a first year student at Bristol University who for his whole life has a penchant for random bits of knowledge, facts, and subsequently, gameshows; one being The University Challenge, which is where the movie gets it’s title from. Starter for ten is a phrase which means the first question that goes for 10 points to start off the game.

Young, freshly enrolled in university, and ebullient, Brian tries out for the team, while going through the trials and tribulations of being young and (fairly and comparably) innocent to his fellow peers. The whole movie is about his obsession about being clever, and making the right decisions in other aspects of his life. And University Challenge; a show I never miss whenever I come to this country. I probably get one or two questions right, but I just love the whole adrenaline rush of remembering something in normal circumstances; pointless. Like remembering like what decade Isaac Newton wrote Principia Naturalis Mathematica or some bit of medieval history or shit like that.

The storyline may seem a bit trivial and normal in a sense. But I guess that’s exactly what it is I guess. A feel-good bestseller-turn-movie with idiosyncratic British humour type of feel, not one of ‘em arthouse films or film festival winning films that I seem to favouritise most of the time.

This sparks the question that I just ran my eyes over in an A-Levels General Studies textbook I was flicking through in the bookstore:

Is popular culture inferior to high culture?

And well, I’m not college student who has to adhere to proper context of debating such a question in essay-form -which Shao Min tells me she has to conform to in her General Studies class at Sunway- but not that I shall try to.

Back in the infancy of popular music, film, and mass publication of books for the greater part of the general public, only the rich, the academics, the artists, and the privileged few could enjoy what now everyone takes part in. In this era of fast information; everyone one is near equal in their plight for culture; but the want of superiority of obtaining the less known of such things is sadly still the same.

Well, let’s see. Why do people these days prefer indie-music to that of chart music? Maybe because they feel somewhat special in knowing about a band, maybe ’cause there are a whole load of unappreciated talents out there, maybe to be different and to rebel to the tastes of the general public, maybe as an act of superiority of knowing something most don’t or maybe simply because chart music is shit.

Why do I listen to indie-music? Because the bands are really special and unique in their own right. Because they’re different. Because the charts are full of shit made with polyphonic beeps and drum machines. And truthfully, also because subconsciously, music sounds better when you know some snot-nosed Mat-Rempit or Emo-Loser doesn’t listen or know about it.

Mind you, despite their genre, I enjoyed Panic! At The Disco tremendously when I first heard “I Write Sins not Tragedies” and “The Only Difference Between Suicide and Martyrdom is Press Coverage” (despite their horribly long near-pretentious titles) on BBC Radio One on Jo Whiley’s show in March. Then, when they exploded on the US Charts, subsequently the Malaysian radio and tv stations, getting airplay of three, four times every hour: my appreciation of them went down a bit. Then I heard the other singles, and the fact that they don’t sound too great live on the MTV Video Awards; and the thought of getting their album was brushed off my list; immediately.

In this pretentious era of ipods, literary reviews, specialist book prizes, what you know, listen to, watch, reflects what you are. Book critics and academics acknowledge obscure idiosyncratic books and ignore bestsellers. They look down on Dan Brown, box office movie spin-offs, and the ghastly, (breathe in now) CHICK LIT. Euurghhh.

Not to say that they don’t have the right to.

Same goes to film festivals; the quirkier, the better. Someone licking Penelope Cruz’s nipples in Almodovar films? Great. Girls giving a teenage boy a blowjob with a towel over his head in Me and You and Everyone We Know? Absolutely magical.

The general public’s response? What the fuck?!

Not that I’m saying film festival winning indie-films are silly; they are good in their own right. Most of them are great, touching and special beneath the shallow looking surface; take Lost in Translation and Garden State for one. They do have meaning behind them and are special in a way; but they are only great if you can relate to it and have the patience to watch through mostly silence and soundtrack because the writers decide on minimal dialogue to give a wider and general feel for meaning. You will love Lost in Translation if you’ve felt lost in a foreign country and found comfort and friendship in someone in a brief period. You will cry when watching Garden State if you’ve gone through the social displacement of growing up and leaving home and distance that you find from your family due to a feud or just leaving the nest.

High culture isn’t necessarily better than popculture, it’s target is merely less wide than popculture because not many have the privilege of money and existential enlightenment or the unfortunate experience of depression or death (though both starting to be startlingly “cool” due to arthouse films and bands with genius songwriters succumbing so); and human nature being that being in the minority due to the incapability of the general set (in this context, in not understanding), the people of this smaller movement take it upon them to seem special.

So there. Tell me if that didn’t make sense.

I shall end this post with a wonderful quote from Starter for Ten that he repeats a few times (to a skeptic; obnoxiously) to emphasise its truth. And which I (cliched) can really, relate to. I hope I got it right.

“Ever since I could remember, I’ve wanted to be clever. Some people are born clever, some way some people are born beautiful. I’m not one of those people, so I have to work at it.”

Amin to that.