A Short History of the Undercut Or How I Unwittingly Followed a Nazi Trend

There is an epidemic underway. Correction. There are multiple epidemics underway. As H1N1 plows through the population and dominates headlines, I have taken it upon myself to draw attention to the epidemic of the Undercut. It’s everywhere. It’s the hairstyle where you pretty much buzz the sides and keep the top long. It has many variations and has been around for a while but if you’re living in New Delhi or Mumbai, you would have seen the style percolate down to the unwashed (hipster) masses somewhere in the last year.

Then as further proof, yesterday Arjun Kapoor Instagrammed a photo of himself sporting it.

And I decided, now that Bollywood too has succumbed to its charms, I must trace the evolution of this trend.

It started in the 1930s. With Hitler.

To further his plans for world domination, Hitler set up an army of youthful Aryans called ‘Hitler Youth’ who followed the hairsteps of their idol and popularized the haircut, till it came to be known as ‘The Hitler Youth’.

So when Ralph Fiennes had to play Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List, which fascist trend did Spielberg turn to?

The trend spread to American soldiers. So Brad Pitt sported the Undercut while playing US Sgt Don “Wardaddy Collier in the World War II saga Fury.

Of course it’s not a legit trend till David Bowie has endorsed it. So in the 80s Mr Bowie spread the Undercut virus to UK where it also came to be known as ‘the synth’ owing to its popularity amongst major synthpop artists of the time.

From music, the Undercut now mutates and jumps to sports. Who is the most influential hair icon for this millennium? David Beckham. And Mr Beckham has been flirting with the Undercut for a while now.

Then it unleashed itself on famous Justins. Timberlake and Bieber.

And famous women could not resist its tentacles either.

Now because Bollywood is late to pretty much every party (except a success party), this is where we are at currently.

Why Bollywood is Turning to Kumar Sanu, Altaf Raja and Bappi Lahiri (Firstpost)

Is the resurgence we are witnessing of almost-vintage voices, a reaction to the anodyne singing that fills Bollywood today?

Why Bhumi Pednekar’s debut as the overweight Sandhya in Dum Laga Ke Haisha is a double blow to the patriarchy in Bollywood.

The Iron Lady (2011): Margaret and Meryl- A Poem

MARGARET AND MERYL

Meryl Streep is a mimic profound

(Remember she passed off as Julia Child?)

But why must Meryl

At her own peril

Always change her hair and her sound?

For Meryl’s is a talent so rarely found

That her Sophie’s choice is clear

If she didn’t resort to mimicry

She’s be playing grandmoms for years.

See, she tried her hand at dancing

And even a rom-com was tested

But even though she wore a Prada

Mama Mia! It was complicated

But Margaret is more than Meryl’s equal

And the film is not a biopic

It only begins at Margaret’s end

(So there will be no sequel)

Margaret was once the Iron lady

(Now she has turned a little rusty)

She feels displaced but can’t erase

The memories of her so-called crimes

Because to be a woman and also be old

The difficulties are just manifold

Granny be cuddly! Granny be kind!

But Granny please don’t speak your mind.

Margaret lies alone

Convinced that she need not atone.

To not care much if one is hated

Is an end to which most leaders are fated.

A Dangerous Method (2011)

A Dangerous Method is the black swan of period films because its deeply unsettling till the very end. Aren’t period films supposed to comfort us with their velvety quaintness and tell us that, all of what has happened in this story is in the past and the present is a tidier placer now, far removed and wiser? Or have I just watched too many Jane Austen adaptations on screen?

David Cronenberg directs the film and he brings to the movie his interest in the beauty behind what is generally considered grotesque. This is a director who made a movie about a human being that accidentally cross breeds with a housefly and then later made a film about people who were sexually aroused by car crashes and its victims. Nothing is off limits and with Freud, can anything be?

As a hysterical Keira Knightley, playing Carl Jung’s(Michael Fassbender) patient number zero Sabina admits to finding pleasure when her father thrashed her as a 4 year old, Cronenberg shows us a glimpse of how Freud and Jung first showed us the complicated nature of our desires. And that most of us even today would be hesitant about openly confessing to visiting a therapist professionally, is some indication of how truly radical these ideas were then.

Freudian is now a word, like Kafkaesque and it’s a measure of the man and his ideas that even people who have not read a single text of his, know the gist of his legacy. Set in the early 20th century, A Dangerous Method is the story of Carl Jung , Freud’s brightest disciple, who broke rank when he felt the restrictive clasp of his teacher’s theories on psychoanalysis.The movie is filled with deeply intelligent characters like Freud, Jung and Sabina, all clutching their own neuroses and trying to show others a method of reinventing themselves. Watch it if you think you have the stomach for it.

The Descendants (2011)

Matt King played by George Clooney in The Descendants has many things:

1. A comatose wife

2. Hell-raising daughters schooled in the tradition of the anti-Dakota Fanning daughter-prototype

3. 2,500 acres of land

4. A clan of cousins who will become millionaires if that land is sold.

What he doesn’t have, is a clue.

This movie has ”Oscar Bait’ written all over it and I was already preparing myself to watch the uglification of Clooney but here he is completely believable as a middle-aged guy disoriented by life. All traces of Ocean’s Eleven and Italian suits will fall by the wayside very fast.

His portrayal of Matt King is so well-rounded that even the way he runs deserves an award of its own. There is ultimately no George Clooney in Matt King and that is a wonderful thing. (He’s already directed ‘Ides of March’ this year, I mean what does a man need to do to get an Oscar around here, for god’s sake. Be Gary Oldman?)

Middle-aged, clueless and well-off guys are something of a specialty with director Alexander Payne who also directed ‘About Schmidt’ and ‘Sideways’. Mr Payne seems to be of the opinion that the mid-life crisis is not an event, but the start of a long process that continues till you die. It’s a depressing thought at the surface of it, but Payne has a knack of revealing the humor that lies at the bottom of despair. I now eagerly look forward to being devastatingly sardonic when (and if) I hit 50.

Alexander Payne’s universe is somewhere between the eccentricity of Wes Anderson and the hyper-articulated one of Diablo Cody. If you liked ‘Rushmore’ and ‘Juno’, chances are you will like this too. It’s just a hunch. Check it out.

Footnote: at some point in the middle you will see a man who looks a lot like Jeff Bridges. Don’t be freaked out like I was. It’s his brother Beau Bridges.

Category: Films