There is a Hulk in each one of us. And whenever we are pushed in adversity, however meek we may be in our daily existence, the Hulk within us emerges to destroy everything that is trying to destroy us. And we all have it within us. Only thing is that like Dr. Bruce Banner, we never really want to expose this Hulk to the outer world – because if we do, the consequences could be disastrous for all, except ourselves.
This is picking up once again from where I left off with X-Men, the Last Stand, where I was speaking about comic book ideology and polemic. Comic books really are not what they are generically made to believe. They have an ideology, with by itself is a stark contrast to what we conceive them as. They are double intending literature, both to arouse fantasy and leave back a story. A story about the characters is my area of concern. The rest is just to express the means to that concern.
Each and every superhero has a story behind him. And this story is about ourselves, much magnified for the purpose of entertainment. But my very basic question in this matter, containing myself to the character that I am talking about now, the Hulk, is why is Dr. Bruce Banner always scared to unleash the Hulk, even when he is under attack from various quarters. That I believe is the moral victory of good over evil. We all have psychic imbalances – no one is free from that. But the question, as always is, which way are we more prone, or bent. That is what makes the difference between the superhero and the supervillain, or on realistic terms, between us and them. Some of the most iconic villains in this universe are after all beautiful minds, if I may put it so. Be it Osama Bin Laden, or closer home, our very own Charles Shobraj. But the fact is that they are bent over to the darker aspects of psychology and therefore, they turn to acts of terror. Had they been channelized in the other direction, I doubt it if we would ever have a problem with anything in the world.
But the show must go on. For every dark character in this world, there is a good. And good normally wins over evil, because the world has to go on. An anarchist can end our existence, but we can’t let that happen. We have been fighting for our survival since the days of the Amoeba. And now that we are animals with intellect, we have to survive at an even greater cost. It kinds of massages our ego. Thereby the social imbalance, tilting in the favour of the ‘good’. So we see perhaps, that even though Dr Banner wants to put the Hulk to rest once and for all, when the Abomination turns up, he cannot help but get back into the flesh of the Hulk to go and save mankind. That is why the Hulk is a superhero and not the other way round. And the good always comes out in the face of adversity. It happened here, and it always happens under every circumstance. Whenever the world is on the verge of destruction, heroes come up – now they may be shown as Captain America, Daredevil, Wolverine or even Spiderman, we just have to take the cue from them.
And this is the demarcation that people are expected to make. To understand the good guys from the bad. If the bad can come in any package and we are ok about it, then the same professional courtesy needs to be offered to the good as well. We may all look like anything the other person can imagine, but the fact of the matter that differentiates us from the other, is what lies in our heart. If people around us cannot understand that, then truly it is very sad.
There is another legend too that I will need to speak about when speaking of the Hulk. It is the much fabled, Prometheus story that we have heard from our very births. The Hulk, I feel, is indeed a modern day Prometheus. Dr Bruce Banner tried to alter the fundamentals of nature, to control it, but he turned into the Hulk. Now the good or bad Hulk is something that we just spoke of, but the fact again comes to the fore about temperament. Yes, there is a match obtained here with a legendary lore, but should that really be a factor of denial? Should we say that the Banner deserved what he got because he tried to experiment? Do we treat him the same way as the Gods treated Prometheus? Or do we want to make him a hero for trying to do something? We are actually rather content with the way things are. We always talk about changing the world, but we won’t even bother planting a single plant in our own backyard to combat global warming. We just want the whole thing done for us and we’ll just come in there to sweep the glory. That never happens. Therefore, we need a Dr Bruce Banner, who has it in him to find out ways to change things, to develop something for the betterment of all humanity and then, and then if he fails, he channelizes his new found powers again for the betterment of humanity. That’s the way it’s done.
The Incredible Hulk I’d say was a much better movie than the first one. For starters, it has one of the greatest actors in cinematic history playing the much demanding role of Dr. Bruce Banner – Edward Norton. I know that most people have not even heard of his name (at the most, if we see him, we say, “Oh! The Fight Club guy”) but he is truly at league with the best of the world. He understands the whole medium and that is what makes him such a great actor. Don’t get me wrong. Eric Bana was also pretty good and he did try his level best to save that film. But it never really got to it. I did miss Jennifer Connelly in the second movie, but Liz Tyler was alright, nothing to write home about.
And unlike the last movie, here we actually see the Hulk trying to defend the world. The last one was a personal feud between General Ross and Banner. This one feature the Abomination in the sexy climax. It brought in all the ingredients from the comic book – which is very important when trying to make a superhero movie. It should be something that all readers can relate to.
Overall, give it a shot. It’s a cool film, even if you don’t see it the way I did.

Defiance: n. Open disobedience; bold resistance

How true. This definition could perhaps best sum the whole effort. The whole effort which makes miracles seem fragile. The whole effort which allows one to believe that to be human is to be everything; the whole effort that allows one to understand the complexity of actions, the menace of situations and also offers the hazardous solutions.

This happens to me quite a lot. It happened after I saw Schindler’s List and it has happened now once again, after watching Defiance. It leaves me really with no words for the movie. Because in these cases, the movie itself becomes obsolete and redundant. It is the story itself which speaks. And this one more that the other that I just mentioned. Because this was an example of raw courage, of absolute heroism, that, if romanticized, makes the whole effort futile. But purists will scoff at what I said. How could I?

But how could they? How could they keep recruiting Jews to defend them, when they had nothing to offer. Just a few days more maybe, as the way they put it. And in those few days, they lived and surged along, allowing people to make new definitions of miracles, and more importantly of the word freedom. Three poor brothers, smuggling themselves into ghettos, only to smuggle out some more Jews? What more can you say about them. That they were the real Moses? That they were the stories that build myths? That they were the stories that offer an absolutism to theology?

And this is where the profane blunder always happens. By making them messengers of God, we ruin their whole effort. We do not do justice to their deeds. We bring in the hand of a mere abstraction, just to wipe away what is the real in front of our eyes. If we were to just believe that these people were human, we increase our own standards to newer levels. We allow ourselves to believe that really, nothing is impossible. But that is to arduous a task to take up. That is too much work for ourselves, we who are born with silver spoons in our mouths and we who have never faced a crisis in our sheltered life. We believe taking a bus is a struggle, we believe walking in the sun is a struggle, we believe not drinking coffees at Baristas is a struggle. We really do lead charmed lives and never once do we realise that when the moment ever comes, we will be found wanting. Because from there to here, we have learnt nothing, but perhaps to dust matters under the carpet. We as a social, humanitarian being have dissolved away into obscurity. We are critical today of the breath we take, not realising for once maybe that it is because of heroes like these that we breathe any air today. That 1200 people saved through these incredible chapters of human history now allow ten million people to inhabit the world today.

The day when we again know how to get off our cushions and the day when we can know what being brothers to each other is like, maybe that day, we will then learn that our revenge is the fact that we live. That is our defiance.

Freedom: n. 1 condition of being free or unrestricted. 2 personal or civic liberty. 3 liberty of action (freedom to leave). 4 (foll. by from) exemption from. 5 (foll. by of) a honorary membership or citizenship (freedom of the city). b unrestricted use of (a house etc.).

His name is Robert Paulson! He is the middle child of history, no place or purpose... he has no great war to fight, he has no great depression. His only war is a spiritual one, his only depression is his life.

Is it just him, or is it us all?

What a thought... that only in death do we have a name! A name that will be etched on to our tombstones! That is all that we amount to at the end of the day. That is the only mark that we leave behind. And that is the only way that we are ever known by other people. Not unless we do something big. Not unless, perhaps, if we let ourselves flow along with what we really want to be.

Positivity and negativity are really two sides of a coin. As far as I can understand, it will be absolutely a cardinal sin if we look upon these terms as absolute. It is just the way we want to make the whole story out ourselves is what really adds that dimension to the whole picture.

I know that most people would love to call this a negative nightmare. One that Edward Norton claims to have had. But like I say, it should perhaps more be looked upon as a negative dream. The word dream is always ascribed to something that is considered to be negative, isn’t it? And when we get up all sweaty and scared, we claim it to be a nightmare – a negative imbalance. However, as I was just saying a few minutes back, if the terms are null and void, then the prefix doesn’t amount to shit.

That was my opinion when I finished with Fight Club. Make no mistake about it, not just me, everyone loved it. Because this may be the only movie that we have all seen in a while, which allows us to negotiate answers from the questions we prop. It allows us to gather a vent to the most problematic delusion that we all face in the world today.

We so badly want to be someone today that we never really realise what we are right now. The present is sold for the future, leaving us just with the gory past at the end of it. We do not know what we are doing, we cannot sleep; we live like a consumer product because we are all so full of them that we have become them.

Not unless we all display the potential courage required to unleash the Tyler Durden in us. He’s the man that we all have inside us, the one that we all confide in and the one that we all want to become. Only that we do not have the guts to be anti-establishment. We are all, somewhere or the other, escapists. We all want to have the hottest people around us, we want to fuck the sizzlers, but seldom do we realise that we are nowhere close to getting that – because we are no one in ourselves.

We are all so bothered about living the ‘right’ life that we forget the third party intrusions in our life. And we are so normal with that, that we do not even realise that we are no longer ourselves. We all want the best in life, without being bothered about the fact that we really don’t deserve it. We all think that we are so god dammed talented that we can do anything that we want – only that in the process, we end up being able to do nothing. And yet that does not dampen our spirits, because when people ask us whether they’re talented or not, we generally offer condolence lines, because who want to be known as a party pooper, even if the response in a few light years away from the truth.

Fact be told, we all are living a life of utter confusion, but such normalised confusion that we are not aware that there exists any confusion within us.

But not anymore! Now we all know about Tyler Durden. And if we want, we can invoke him to come to our rescue. For that we need no one else, just to be ourselves at the end of it all. But that is really the most difficult part. Because then we have to tread a rather difficult path. And if we knew how to do it, then we all wouldn’t be in this mess, would we now? Oh yes, there will be ten people who after watching this movie, will start hallucinating that they are Tyler Durden. But he was just a prototype. To become what he is, we have to all try and be a little different. That is, we all have to be ourselves. Never mind if that overlaps with someone else, but as long as it is YOU, till then it’s all fine.

Now if you look at it positively, you will be able to see Tyler in yourself and make the final push towards the envelope – else just look at it as a morose affair and get rid of the whole feeling.

Whether you want your name to be remembered because of what you did when alive, or whether you want to become a tombstone at the cemetery, is something that you will have to decide for yourself. The choice is yours...

(PS. If you ask me though, I would perhaps have preferred to see Mathew Perry in the shoes of Edward Norton. Not that I think that the latter was bad or anything in the movie, there is just something that tells me that Perry would have been able to balance the dopey look and the button pusher role a little more charismatically. That is the only observation that I have from the movie that could perhaps have been given a second look. Otherwise, it was off the hook!)