Comments on: I’ll Have a Pint of Your Finest

By: wunderbar

wunderbar — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:15:00 +0000

6 and #7 put a completely different light on the entire exercise.

Some figures like Tendulkar, Lata Mangeshkar and even M Night Shyamalan seem to bring out a great deal of hostility in some quarters. It would be interesting to see an analysis of why this is so.

By: delurker

delurker — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:20:24 +0000

"But this isn't a bloodthirsty exercise in publicity. Sachin's DNA profile is actually meant to help trace his genealogy. It's just on the first ten copies though, each of which is expected to fetch about a crore in a charity auction."

From tendulkaropus.com/press

By: delurker

delurker — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:14:18 +0000

If I’m not mistaken, the limited edition copies were auctioned for charity and proceeds or part proceeds will go the charities supported by the Opus publishers and Tendulkar. Their website lists the charities they support.

By: Dr Amonymous

Dr Amonymous — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 11:15:04 +0000

Also, you might be interested in some of the stuff that Thomas Frank has written and the Baffler in general. I would (and did!) start with Commodify Your Dissent.

-s

By: Dr Amonymous

Dr Amonymous — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 11:14:04 +0000

Yeah, gross.

But also, it depends who does it and for what purpose. If Doctors Without Borders or a network of South Asian NGOs had put this together, aware that it was purely for pragmatic reasons, and made something like $350,000 or on it, I would take it as an uncomfortable reminder of the constraints of the world we live in.

However, as it stands, I see the phrase ‘luxury publisher’ and I want to throw up. But it’s not just disposable income or even commodification- there’s a good essay in a Subaltern Studies volume on how Gandhi was deified. Which still continues. And there’s Obama, obviously, Mother Teresa, and a whole host of other people you sell you hope to varying degrees and people lose sight of the fact that they’re people, they’re not perfect, and they’re not going to solve anything by themselves. It’s the rare person I’ll show such sraddha to

By: Uma

Uma — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 00:01:03 +0000

Ew.

By: Darth Paul

Darth Paul — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 22:54:01 +0000

Gross! Is the world going Catholic or something?

By: sanya

sanya — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:35:13 +0000

omigod I just watched iruvar for like the 50th time yesterday: – un roja poo mugathil naan mutham kuduka engugiren – karunanidhi to mgr at the end. flabbergasted at the ‘oratory’ of that time. I am sure there were worse examples – rathathi rathame sounds awesome.