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‘Masaan’ director’s new short film practices inverted misogyny

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By Subhash K. Jha
Mumbai, Nov 24 (IANS) It is easy to rave about a film that champions the middle-class housewife’s cause with such intense enthusiasm. “Juice” is the new film — or short film if you must insist — by Neeraj Ghaywan, who made the wonderful “Masaan”, and also a heartwarming ad on the life of a transgender mother.

This time, Neeraj’s vision is on the war-path. His camera prowls confidently into a dinner party scenario in a middle-income home where the man of the house, played with vehement integrity by the wonderful Manish Choudhary, sits with his office colleagues in the tiny living room, while the wives busy themselves in the kitchen with the endless supply of food that the men require to replenish their appetite for small talk.

I have to admit that this living room-versus-kitchen politics is not unfamiliar to me. However, its existence is on the wane now. Wives do not run into the kitchen at such get-togethers. Cooking and kitchen work is no more the incriminating legacies of patriarchal tyranny that they used to be 20 or even 10 years ago. Ghaywan’s film, though brilliant with its eye for topographical and emotional detail, must be seen in the context of the nostalgic rather than the contemporary.

This is a claustrophobic view of a domestic despotism that grabs the cult of misogyny by its arms and tugs hard. The men in the living room (all played by accomplished actors) babble hard and loud about Hillary, Obama, emails and females, while the wonderful Shefali Shah playing the hostess of this noisy evening, shuffles in and out with plates of fried chicken and other snacks.

Shefali makes her presence felt even though she plays that near-invisible entity that housewives in middle-income homes used to be in the last millennium.

Watching “Juice”, I was reminded of what Satyajit Ray had said about making the young Soumitra Chatterjee’s character in “Charulata” a progressive feminist as a way of making himself feel like a progressive feminist.

In “Juice” (why juice???), one late guest walks in with his pregnant wife and tells his hostess, “Bhabhiji, take her inside. She has learnt some new recipes.”

To these men, their wives acquire a definition only through their culinary skills. That seems terribly unfair to the working class Indian male, specially at a time when in the recently released “Tumhari Sulu” Vidya Balan’s husband, right out of the milieu that “Juice” recreates, was shown to be so encouraging and supportive .

The men in “Juice” are uniformly apathetic. But you feel the strong presence of the invisible Liberal Male in the director’s perception of domestic tyranny. Ghaywan fills up the tiny apartment home with more people eating (in the living room) and being fed (from the kitchen) than Jennifer Lawrence was shown coping with in the recent horror extravaganza “Mother”.

Tyranny, specially patriarchal tyranny, makes for compelling cinema. Neeraj Ghaywan’s “Juice”, though engaging in its detailing and its rigorous quest of misogyny, ends up seeming misandrist.

Why “Juice”, you may well ask. See that glass of beverage in the housewife-protagonist’s hand at the end when she decides to join her husband and his friends in the living room? That’s orange juice.

So, there.

Three stars for this film.

–IANS
skj/rb/bg

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Casino Days Reveal Internal Data on Most Popular Smartphones

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CasinoDays India

International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.

Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.

The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.

Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile

The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.

CasinoDays India

The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.

“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.

Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings

Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.

 

CasinoDays India

Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).

Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.

The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.

Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.

Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities

The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.

On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.

Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.

“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.

The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.

 

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