I was in Geneva last week and watched a nice movie called “Van Helsing”. The film was about a man called Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) who battles monsters such as vampires and werewolves. An interesting scene in the film showed a laboratory run by Van Helsing’s employers (a secret church society) where devices and weapons are developed to help this sort of a 19th-century James Bond fight the monsters.
What was interesting about this scene is that a deliberate point was made of there being scientists from other faiths such as Buddhists and Muslims working side by side with Christian priests to help battle evil as represented by the monsters.
This is a good development if it is sustained by the rest of the Western film industry. It will help repair some of the damage done by decades of, one cannot but believe, deliberate negative stereotyping by that industry. We can see some of the results of this character assassination of Muslims in the savagery shown toward Palestinians, and more recently Iraqis, by Western forces.
The attempt in this movie to change this policy comes at a very important moment when we are all poised on the brink of a clash of civilizations. It is also important to consider the global demographic trends occurring around the world. This may lead in a few short decades to Muslims becoming caregivers and nurses to an aging Western population. The situation is rich with irony. Pure self-interest should lead to an amelioration of this barrage of negativity from the Western film industry. At least, let’s hope so.
On a different matter:
The victory of the Congress party in the Indian elections is highly significant. It is clearly a rejection by the Indian electorate of the Western capitalist economic model. This model has been exposed all around the world as merely a system of distributing wealth unfairly by making those who are rich even richer while increasing the poverty of those already poor.
The siren call of high-tech and the Internet, thankfully, seems to have failed to seduce the Indian people. This rejection has made it impossible for Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, despite the respect and high regard with which she is held by the Indian people, from becoming herself prime minister of India.
It seems the Indians could not stomach being ruled by a Westerner, no matter how honorable.
