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April 2002
Newsletter- April 2002
Talk @ Sarai: The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach
Dear Friends,
Sarai invites you to a talk on
"The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach"
by Daniel Miller, Professor of Material Culture, Department of Anthropology,
University College London
on Wednesday 10th April, 2002, 3:30 pm
at the Seminar room, CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 54
Daniel Miller is a keen observer of comparative ICT usage with regional
expertise on Trinidad & Britain. His recent book "The Internet: An
Ethnographic Approach" with Don Slater is one of the few regional studies of
the internet. It investigates how the internet has become part of people's
lives - from the middle class to squatters, from popular culture to ecommerce
in Trinidad. The book also offers a detailed account of the complex
integration between on-line and off-line worlds ranging from the effects on
relationships and the family, through the political economy of internet
supply to religious and commercial uses of the net and the specific
implications of email, chat and websites.
Daniel Miller has past research interests in material culture,
objectification, mass consumption, shopping value and political economy
internet use.
He has authored and edited several publications. Some of the recent ones
include Commercial Cultures (2000), The Dialectics of Shopping (2001),
Car Cultures (2001), Consumption: Critical Concepts (2001) &
Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors (2001).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Films @Sarai: A Cinema of Anxiety - Alfred Hitchcock
In a return to Sarai's `A Cinema of Anxiety' series, we feature some of
Alfred Hitchcock's less widely screened films this April.
Blackmail, 1930, released as both silent and sound film, begins with a
fascinating introductory sequence about police communication, surveillance
and intrusion, and the narrative then brilliantly plots a host of thematics.
There is the playful and dangerous trajectory of female transgression; the
strange duality of public space, combining relations of openness and secrecy,
where the glance, the chance exchange of objects, and the unexpected look,
weave together erotically charged circuits of knowledge and communication. It
also generates a narrative space, where street, shop and home are represented
as contiguous, opening privacy to strange tensions and unwelcome intrusions.
This continuum of space is wonderfully carried on in the other British
Hitchcock in the series, Sabotage, 1936, where key domestic scenes are housed
within a cinema hall, the home of the family which manages the theatre. The
manager ventures forth to engineer acts of public destruction for a foreign
power (recall that this was the period of British appeasement towards
Germany, and Hitchcock's paranoiac scenario forms part of a public opinion
urging change in government foreign policy).
The recurrence of spaces of public entertainment in Hitchcock's work
address the cinema viewing situation, and the awareness that generically,
the Hitchcock thriller plays with disturbing scenarios both remote from, but
often flamboyantly rendered within, the orbit of public space. In these
films, neither private nor public space is safe, not even in the idyllic
setting of family life in small town America.
In Shadow of a Doubt, 1943, Hitchcock turns his attention to the psychotic
serial killer, a charismatic figure who takes shelter amongst unsuspecting
relatives. Significantly for an auteur often associated with misogynist
drives, each of these films has a woman protagonist, and Shadow of a Doubt
functions both as detective fiction and a dark coming-of-age film for its
young female protagonist.
Finally, we have the minimalist The Wrong Man, 1956. Drawn from a real life
story about mistaken identity, the film uses the de-dramatized documentary
mode for its reflections on the structures of anonymity and
interchangeability of personality in modern urban life.
All screenings are on Fridays at 4:30pm, Seminar Room, Centre for the Study of
Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054.
The films are listed in the order of screening.
1. April 5, 2002
Blackmail, 1930, 96 minutes, b/w, VHS
Anny Ondra is Alice, the daughter of a shopkeeper in 1920's London.
She secretly arranges a rendezvous with an artist and goes off to his
studio where he attempts to rape her. She defends herself but kills him
accidentally with a bread knife. When the body is discovered, John Longden,
a Scotland Yard detective is assigned to the case. While Longden is a
police detective, he is also Alice's boyfriend. He is determined to protect
Alice from the murder charge but unfortunately, a criminal who witnessed
the stabbing wishes to blackmail her
2. April 12, 2002
Sabotage, 1936, 76 minutes, b/w, VHS
Oskar Homolka is a London cinema-house manager who uses his wife and her
teenage brother as cover, for he is also working with a gang of foreign
saboteurs. Scotland Yard assigns John Loder to work next door to the cinema
to observe Homolka, but he finds himself spending more time observing his
wife (Sylvia Sidney). When a bomb destroys a city bus, killing her younger
brother, she uncovers her husband's "secret" and decides to put an end to
his murdering schemes.
3. April 19, 2002
Shadow of a Doubt, 1943, 106 minutes, b/w, VHS
Charles Spencer Oakley is a widow murderer, who decides to fake a surprise
visit to his family in Santa Rosa in order to escape from the police's
investigation. The whole plan runs perfectly, and even a wrong man is
unfairly accused of all the crimes committed by "Uncle Charlie", thus
freeing him from the constant pursuit of detective Jack Graham, who is
convinced of "Uncle Charlie's" culpability. However, his niece, Charlotte,
begins to suspect "Uncle Charlie" is not the kind of person he claims to be.
4. April 26, 2002
The Wrong Man, 1956, 107 minutes, b/w, VHS
`The Wrong Man' tells the story of an innocent man accused of a crime
committed by a close look-alike. Based on an actual incident reported in
Life magazine, the film is the only documentary-style film Alfred Hitchcock
made. The story begins as Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda) and his wife, Rose
(Vera Miles), decide to borrow on her life insurance policy to pay medical
bills. But at the insurance office, three employees mistake Manny for a man
who robbed them just days earlier. That night, he's arrested and charged
with a series of hold-ups, setting in motion an innocent man's desperate
attempt to prove his innocence. Fonda gives a strong performance, while
Miles powerfully conveys the psychological cost to the accused man's wife.
Warm Regards,
Ranita
The Sarai Programme
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054.
www.sarai.net
Talk @ Sarai: The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach
Dear Friends,
Sarai invites you to a talk on
"The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach"
by Daniel Miller, Professor of Material Culture, Department of Anthropology,
University College London
on Wednesday 10th April, 2002, 3:30 pm
at the Seminar room, CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 54
Daniel Miller is a keen observer of comparative ICT usage with regional
expertise on Trinidad & Britain. His recent book "The Internet: An
Ethnographic Approach" with Don Slater is one of the few regional studies of
the internet. It investigates how the internet has become part of people's
lives - from the middle class to squatters, from popular culture to ecommerce
in Trinidad. The book also offers a detailed account of the complex
integration between on-line and off-line worlds ranging from the effects on
relationships and the family, through the political economy of internet
supply to religious and commercial uses of the net and the specific
implications of email, chat and websites.
Daniel Miller has past research interests in material culture,
objectification, mass consumption, shopping value and political economy
internet use.
He has authored and edited several publications. Some of the recent ones
include Commercial Cultures (2000), The Dialectics of Shopping (2001),
Car Cultures (2001), Consumption: Critical Concepts (2001) &
Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors (2001).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Films @Sarai: A Cinema of Anxiety - Alfred Hitchcock
In a return to Sarai's `A Cinema of Anxiety' series, we feature some of
Alfred Hitchcock's less widely screened films this April.
Blackmail, 1930, released as both silent and sound film, begins with a
fascinating introductory sequence about police communication, surveillance
and intrusion, and the narrative then brilliantly plots a host of thematics.
There is the playful and dangerous trajectory of female transgression; the
strange duality of public space, combining relations of openness and secrecy,
where the glance, the chance exchange of objects, and the unexpected look,
weave together erotically charged circuits of knowledge and communication. It
also generates a narrative space, where street, shop and home are represented
as contiguous, opening privacy to strange tensions and unwelcome intrusions.
This continuum of space is wonderfully carried on in the other British
Hitchcock in the series, Sabotage, 1936, where key domestic scenes are housed
within a cinema hall, the home of the family which manages the theatre. The
manager ventures forth to engineer acts of public destruction for a foreign
power (recall that this was the period of British appeasement towards
Germany, and Hitchcock's paranoiac scenario forms part of a public opinion
urging change in government foreign policy).
The recurrence of spaces of public entertainment in Hitchcock's work
address the cinema viewing situation, and the awareness that generically,
the Hitchcock thriller plays with disturbing scenarios both remote from, but
often flamboyantly rendered within, the orbit of public space. In these
films, neither private nor public space is safe, not even in the idyllic
setting of family life in small town America.
In Shadow of a Doubt, 1943, Hitchcock turns his attention to the psychotic
serial killer, a charismatic figure who takes shelter amongst unsuspecting
relatives. Significantly for an auteur often associated with misogynist
drives, each of these films has a woman protagonist, and Shadow of a Doubt
functions both as detective fiction and a dark coming-of-age film for its
young female protagonist.
Finally, we have the minimalist The Wrong Man, 1956. Drawn from a real life
story about mistaken identity, the film uses the de-dramatized documentary
mode for its reflections on the structures of anonymity and
interchangeability of personality in modern urban life.
All screenings are on Fridays at 4:30pm, Seminar Room, Centre for the Study of
Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054.
The films are listed in the order of screening.
1. April 5, 2002
Blackmail, 1930, 96 minutes, b/w, VHS
Anny Ondra is Alice, the daughter of a shopkeeper in 1920's London.
She secretly arranges a rendezvous with an artist and goes off to his
studio where he attempts to rape her. She defends herself but kills him
accidentally with a bread knife. When the body is discovered, John Longden,
a Scotland Yard detective is assigned to the case. While Longden is a
police detective, he is also Alice's boyfriend. He is determined to protect
Alice from the murder charge but unfortunately, a criminal who witnessed
the stabbing wishes to blackmail her
2. April 12, 2002
Sabotage, 1936, 76 minutes, b/w, VHS
Oskar Homolka is a London cinema-house manager who uses his wife and her
teenage brother as cover, for he is also working with a gang of foreign
saboteurs. Scotland Yard assigns John Loder to work next door to the cinema
to observe Homolka, but he finds himself spending more time observing his
wife (Sylvia Sidney). When a bomb destroys a city bus, killing her younger
brother, she uncovers her husband's "secret" and decides to put an end to
his murdering schemes.
3. April 19, 2002
Shadow of a Doubt, 1943, 106 minutes, b/w, VHS
Charles Spencer Oakley is a widow murderer, who decides to fake a surprise
visit to his family in Santa Rosa in order to escape from the police's
investigation. The whole plan runs perfectly, and even a wrong man is
unfairly accused of all the crimes committed by "Uncle Charlie", thus
freeing him from the constant pursuit of detective Jack Graham, who is
convinced of "Uncle Charlie's" culpability. However, his niece, Charlotte,
begins to suspect "Uncle Charlie" is not the kind of person he claims to be.
4. April 26, 2002
The Wrong Man, 1956, 107 minutes, b/w, VHS
`The Wrong Man' tells the story of an innocent man accused of a crime
committed by a close look-alike. Based on an actual incident reported in
Life magazine, the film is the only documentary-style film Alfred Hitchcock
made. The story begins as Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda) and his wife, Rose
(Vera Miles), decide to borrow on her life insurance policy to pay medical
bills. But at the insurance office, three employees mistake Manny for a man
who robbed them just days earlier. That night, he's arrested and charged
with a series of hold-ups, setting in motion an innocent man's desperate
attempt to prove his innocence. Fonda gives a strong performance, while
Miles powerfully conveys the psychological cost to the accused man's wife.
Warm Regards,
Ranita
The Sarai Programme
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054.
www.sarai.net