The Roads Less Travelled …

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?“

Translated as “Who will guard the guards” or “Who will watch the Watchmen”, this question was first asked by Socrates and described by Plato in his Republic. The society Socrates foresaw relied on laborers, slaves and tradesmen, with a guardian class for protection and the implementation of laws. But then who was going to guard these protectors; ensuring that they do not supercede the very law they are protecting or harass the very people they are protecting? This question is at the heart of the rise and the fall of every system of power and state that humankind has ever conceived or will conceive of. It is this same question lies at the heart of The Watchmen.

Alan Moore’s universe is not one set in the future. It is instead a creation of an alternate reality of the current times; much like the works of Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle comes to mind immediately).  The year is 1985 and the US of A has won the Vietnam War and Nixon is still the president. Russia and USA have continued to stockpile nuclear arsenals. The
world seems to be a button away from destruction, caused by the mutual
fear between the two superpowers. In this world numerous vigilantes of justice once roamed the city fighting crime (or what they thought was crime); but now they have been forced into retirement. Two of them, The Comedian and Dr. Manhattan, are active but only in the US government’s service. Another one of them, Rorscharch, is now a hunted felon by not giving up his mask when asked to and operating independently. Those who have given up shedded their masks (Night Owl etc) are now trying to fit into the monotone of a normal existence; not able to forget entirely their pasts and not fully embracing the present. The spectre of their own alternate identities continues to haunt them.

In this environment, suddenly the ex-vigilantes lives are threatened. The Comedian is murdered and by strange sequence of events Dr. Manhattan exiles himself to Mars. An attempt is made on the life of Ozymandias. Rorscharch, the still-active-in-underground vigilante sees a possible conspiracy to get the world rid of all its protectors before unleashing a violent bloodbath on the planet. He has a hard time convincing his fellow masked-men on the veracity of his claims but the curious turn of circumstances bring together the old friends at the time of the final showdown and the masked men (and women) back to their masks. All very standard and nice; kill the villain; save the world; maybe even get the chick.

Except that, nothing could be further from truth (except maybe the last statement). The Watchmen is an exploration into the psyche of the masked men and women; their lives, follies and aspirations. Those who set out to save the world and yet over their journey are consumed by their blind zeal and lose their humanity. Enraptured by their successes, surrounded by their fears and prodded on by visions of a half-baked utopia, they are dehumanized; becoming more like the people they are fighting than the people they are protecting. It is often stated that comic book heroes, especially those without superhuman powers (Batman for example), are the propagators of the fascist ideal; where one world view superior to all others and those opposing are the enemies. Frank Miller’s reinvention of Batman (The Dark Knight Returns and therafter) was based mostly on this mental tussle between the humanatarian Bruce Wayne and essentially fascist Batman. In Dr. Manhattan, Moore creates a character with true superhuman powers and his cold rationality and approach to justice serves as a mirror for the other characters exposing them as merely human.

Over 12 chapters, Moore grapples with the question that came at the beginning of the post. Moore’s world is in a way self-contained; its own God (Dr. Manhattan) included. The Deux ex machina does not come in here at the denouement to help tie the threads but is prevalent throughout. After all when you have a character capable of playing with atoms, the very building blocks of this universe, one does not need an external agent to wrap things up. Moore’s solution is essentially the same that Plato proposed, albiet proposed reluctantly and giving the reader enough space to derive his own conclusions. The guardians have to be convinced of their superiority. They must never fear the humans or the fact their power is contigent on any external factors not in their control. In essence they must become true superheroes.

Does killing millions to save billions make sense? Is perpetrating a gruesome horror justified in the name of awakening the latent goodness in all of us? Can only a false specter of  superiority, prevent the protectors from turning oppressors? These questions, and not the answers that Moore provides for them are at the heart of The Watchmen. And in this world, when certain individuals on the strength of the offices they hold are taking on the mantles of protectors of justice, freedom, democracy and all the good sounding words, they are more pertinent than ever.

Apart from its obvious attractions to the philosophically inclined, The Watchmen is eminently readable. Moore relies on a narrative that is reminiscent of cinema more than literature. The kid reading The Marooned issue of the series The Tales of the Black Freighter takes the viewer back and forth amongst worlds; each seamlessly blending into the other, conveying the same basic ideas. The reader is merely the part of another world where the same words and ideas would fit in. Dave Gibbons also relies heavily on the cinematic language in terms of his frame designs when the narrative shifts in time and space. If they ever made a movie of this, it would have the highest number of match cuts.

After reading V for Vendetta, I was not sure what to expect from the Alan Moore work. Yet another defense of anarchism, a regular comic strip with villains and world-dominating schemes or soemething else. It was something else, allright; but I never imagined this. Whatever it was, it will definitely figure when I make another list like this again.

technorati tags:comics, watchmen, graphic, novels

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“The name is Bond. James Bond.”

A line etched in cinematic history, this line encapsulates the essence of the 007 canon. Suaveness. Panache. Above all a surety that with Bond around nothing can go wrong. The villain has to die and the girl has to fall into his arms like a limp, rag doll that most of the Bond girls are portrayed as. That these are Daniel Craig’s closing and not opening lines in the new Bond offering Casino Royale is an indication that this is not the regular kill-the-world-order-threatening fiend and bed-the-hottest-chick-in-the-show flick.

Casino Royale is the story of James Bond coming of age. His receiving the 00 status at the beginning of the movie provides the viewer a clue that the Bond we are going to see is not the indestructible character, Pierce Brosnan essayed over the years. Daniel Craig’s Bond is naïve. His Bond is human. He pummels victims to death. Gets blood on his starched white shirt. Falls in love. And gets his heart broken. Heck, he almost loses a poker game and does not care if his martini is shaken or stirred. Bond enemy here is his own heart; his humanity; his ego. And he has to crush them in the road to become the perfect and indestructible James Bond, we all know.

Casino Royale lacks the fancy gizmos that viewers have gotten used to. Q does not even make an appearance. It takes its inspiration not from the last four movies in the series but the first four. His opening interaction with Vesper Lynd contained the typical tongue in cheek Bond humor that has been lost to viewers ever since Sean Connery passed on the mantle.

Vesper Lynd: I’m the money!
James Bond: Every penny of it!

[Was this an allusion to the missing Miss Moneypenny??]

Vesper Lynd: Am I going to have a problem with you, Bond?
James Bond: No, don’t worry. You’re not my type.
Vesper Lynd: Smart?
James Bond: Single.

And yes there is, all said and done, a considerable amount of the mindless violence, destruction of fine cars and impeccable display of markmanship by the new Bond. These too are an integral part of the Bond canon. But this movie reiterates they are not the only things. And that is what makes Casino Royale, amongst the finest Bond movie to come out in years (in my opinion the best after The Spy who Loved Me).

technorati tags:bond, movies, casinoroyale

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“Who are you?”

To this most existential of questions, you can have a number of answers; from the name that your parents gave you so lovingly and that your friends have dissected and bisected over the years to create unique and sometimes embarrassing nicknames to an equally enigmatic answer of “How does it matter?”

However, when you stand in the well of a classroom at IIM Ahmedabad rubbing your sweaty palms with anticipation of presenting your half-baked analysis of a case, the above question raises a scepter that is far more forbidding than its avatars in other contexts. It throws you at once into this whirlpool of numerous possibilities.

You are of course you. The fact that you are probably thinking that waking up on the right side of bed or seeing Jennifer Lopez latest crassly made video is the cause of your current misfortune, makes it impossible for you to be anyone else. However,you cannot, as the manager in the case cannot (he might have fought with his wife the previous day), allow such trivialities to affect your judgment; in effect while you cannot be you, you cannot also not be you. You are in my favorite catch, Catch 22!

Compounding this is fact that the entire class’s eyes are riveted on you; the sacrificial lamb for the day. Of course, everyone empathizes with you and everyone is your friend but do not ask anyone to take your place. After all, would you have if it was one of them? You have become for sometime both the savior and the sinner,but not one of them.

Now, coming back to your initial quandary, you must have realized by now that you are trapped. Thereis no escape. So all that is left is for you to do is to do your best. You can be silent. It may project either your inability to understand simple English or your deep understanding of the nature of identity that you know that everyone knows about you (given that you are in IIM A this can be slightly difficult to pull off). Alternatively, you can advertise your ignorance by blurting out whatever your name might be.

Your best chance however, might be in falling back on the age-old tradition of story telling in the first person (a euphemism if there was any). You draw the picture before the class; bring out the financial, marketing, production, moral, ethical and marital dilemmas of the manager into the class. Telling his story, you become him, though always being yourself. In tradition of all great storytellers, you take the case to a point, where the threads seem intertwined as snakes biting into each other tails. And then, the denouement – snip. A seemingly brilliant piece of analysis on your part (oops manager’s part) unravels this most complicated of tangles into individual parts whose solutions is mere child’s play.

The class is stunned and the professor impressed. You return to your seat amid the generous thumping of desks like a king after a long string of conquests. Finally, you can be your own self again, wondering whether talking to the pretty girl you wanted to talk for so long, earlier in the morning was a cause for the recent turn of events.

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“Hey have you seen the latest episode of Friends?”

I roll my eyes and with a shake of my head manage to convey the negative message. It’s like the entire world sees and enjoys Friends and I am the only one who is left out.

Had I been born, a couple of decades earlier (making me a forty plus gentleman now, or so I suppose), my only choices would have been to see whatever my friends and the world was seeing and hearing. No weird Scandinvian metal bands, unheard Latin American authors or unknown European auteurs. But today I have a choice of either watching Friends or doing something else that may not so mainstream but equally enriching for me.

Internet as a medium has democratized choice of the individual; freed it from the tyranny of mainstream picks or the hits. It is now feasible to effectively target the entire demand curve across all tastes and not only to the majority. And as result, it has opened up for the businesses of the future a entirely new vista; a way to tap those customers who were previously too niche to be effectively targeted by a hit driven market. It is his phenomenon that Chris Anderson terms as the Long Tail. As opposed to the Short Head of hits where the focus is on selling things and services that the majority wants, the Long Tail model works on the principle that every market can divided into niches, each of which caters to a specific taste. And that all of them can be satisfied at the same time.

The 80/20 rule i.e. 20% of the products bring in 80% of the revenue has been the hallmark of the existing culture. In this it is important to choose wisely the 20% of the products that you intend to sell. The constraints of physical retail space as well the time of the consumers forced businesses to weed out anything out of the mainstream. Anything that did not fit nicely into the category of a hit. The advent of Internet and other technologies and techniques however has enabled online retailers such as Amazon to circumvent the problem of physical storage and the associated costs, thus allowing it to have an virtual inventory that cannot be envisaged by its physical counterparts. As a result, the importance of identifying the 20% of the HIT products reduces considerably. For the end customer, it translates into greater choice and a higher probability of finding something that exactly suits his needs. Anderson challenges the myth that greater choice is not necessarily better for the customer, arguing that it is not the plentitude of choices but the lack of information about them that peeves the customer.

Internet, however, did not create the Long Tail. It has always existed; often dubbed as the underground. Freed of the constraints of physical space, Internet has just made it much easier to access this market. Using examples of Amazon, E-Bay, Google, Netflix and Rhapsody, Anderson outlines the basic tenets of his framework, constantly reiterating the point that concentrating on the Long Tail allows an organization to expand its source of revenues and customer base. The history of the long tail, in fact, does not start with Amazon or the other online players. The author traces it back to the days when Sears and Roebuck opened up the first centralized warehouse and started delivering orders to the American hinterland via mail. They were tapping into a market that had till then been starved of choice and by offering them that, they were able to effectively tap the same. The basic principles of operating in the Long Tail have remained the same.

The key to this newfound ability of organization to cater to the demand down the tail is due to three primary reasons: significantly lower barriers to entry for producers implying much greater choice available to the end consumers, the development of better technological/human filter mechanisms and most importantly almost zero distribution and holding costs if you are holding bits and not atoms. Further technological advances have made it possible for a large amateur workforce to compete/collaborate with the professionals delivering products/services to the final customers. Leveraging the power of the network has never been easier.

In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson makes a pertinent point on how the businesses of the future need to reasses their view of what constitutes a target market and how to effectively access it. It also is a wake up call for organizations who continue to disregard the contuining shift in the locus of power from the producers towards the consumer. All in all, an excellent and highly recommended read.

technorati tags:longtail, books

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Few sportsmen become stars. But very few amongst them become the symbol of an era and a nation. Ferenc “Galloping Major” Puskas was one such sportsman. He will remain always the icon and the mascot of the great Hungarian team of the 50s. The one that defeated England at Wembley. The team that showed the world what Total footbal was before Rinus Michels even coined the term. The team that would probably beat the Oranje under Cruyff as the best team not win the world cup. The Magical Magyars.

Puskas was short, stocky, barrel chested and overweight for most of his life. He could not head and could play with one foot. His right was worst than Beckham’s left. But apart from that he was magificient. Blessed with probably the best left foot in the history of soccer, Puskas was also blessed with that rare asset; a supreme footballing brain.

Of all of us, he was the best. He had a seventh sense for soccer. If there were 1,000 solutions, he would pick the 1,001st.
[Hungarian team-mate, Nandor Hidegkuti]

Captaining the “Magical Magyars”, he conquered all before him before falling to West Germany in the finals of the 1954 World Cup. 20 years later the same West Germany would cause the demise of the Total Football Oranje. The thwarted Hungarian revolution, caused the disbandment of this great team and for some years Puskas roamed around Europe trying to play footbal till he was signed by Santiago Bernebau to play in the “Dream Team” of Real Madrid. Playing with Alfredo Di Stefano, Gento and Kopa Puskas went on to conquer Europe all over again winning the first five editions of European Cup. Puskas won everything that a player could in a lifetime but the wish to lift the World Cup made him play for Spain in the 1966 edition (12 years after his first WC) but he was 35 at that time and clearly was not at his best. The ultimate prize eluded him.

After his playing days were over he took up coaching where his finest moment came in guiding Panathainikos to the European cup finals loosing to the great Ajax team of early seventies. He was seeing the birth of Total football as we know today. But his proudest monent was probably when he went back to Hungary in 1993 to become the caretaker manager of the national team. The hero finally returned home. On his homecoming he said,

When I left Hungary and received the FA and Fifa ban, I swore to myself I would never return. I felt bitter at such treatment, after so many years giving my best for the nation. But after 25 years I did go home. When I arrived at the airport it was packed with people who gave me the most warm welcome I could wish for. It was unbelievable. There were people screaming and shouting as if a pop star had arrived. As soon as I could, I visited the Kispest cemetery where the graves of my parents lay. I had never visited my mother’s before.[Puskas on Puskas]

In this day when soccer stars are for us beings from another galaxy, Puskas is remembered by those who knew him first and foremost as a good human being.

Although he was a famous footballer he seemed very normal compared to today’s modern stars.
He lived in a modest flat below ours and was very generous. He often brought home footballs from training for the kids in the block to play with.
[A former neighbour in Madrid]

Just how good was Puskas? I have never seen him play apart from the video clips and one full match of that magical evening in Hampden Park where Real Madrid played the greatest game of soccer. But in all he did one thing stood out. He was not the fastest nor had the most fancy tricks in his repertoire. Nevertheless he had the mark of a truely great player, to do the simple things simply; a trait that many of the superstars of tomorrow would do well to imbibe. And those who have seen him play or have played with or against him put him in the bracket of the best the world has seen. The opinion of Stanley Matthews and Alfredo Di Stefano is good enough for me.

technorati tags:soccer

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