Bride To Be, Whether You Like it or Not

Gurinder Chadha fuses two worlds in Bride and Prejudice

Mike Hebert, Jntercamp (Grant MacEwan College)

“SPECTACULAR, ROMANTIC,
FUNNY wa SO SEXY”

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EDMONTON (CUP)—Bollywood
meets Hollywood, and it’s a perfect
match.

Yes, the preceding sentence is Bride and
Prejudice’s tagline, but while most taglines
serve as trite pap designed to mask a
movie's flaws, in this case the promotion
is right on the money. Director Gurinder
Chadha, whose Bend It Like Beckham was a
boundary-crossing story of a London
Punjabi girl who wanted to play soccer,
crosses the boundaries of several genres
with her latest work. Bride is neither a
Bollywood movie nor a Hollywood one,
but an intoxicating and colourful hybrid
of both genres. As if that wasn’t unique
enough, it’s also a throwback to the classic
musicals of old, where people break into
song wherever they are, for whatever rea-
son. It’s also got its own unique Indian
beat, and has Austen roots to boot.

Young American hotel magnate Will
Darcy (Martin Henderson) is in the coun-
try town of Amritsar, India, because his

best (Los?s
Andrews) is best man at a wedding host-
ed by the Bakshi family. Balraj is friendly
with the Bakshis, and Mrs. Bakshi (Nadira
Babbar) is hopeful that her four unmar-
ried daughters can meet eligible husbands
at the event. Balraj is immediately taken
with older sister Jaya Bakshi (Namrata
Shirodkar), and she with him, thanks to a
male-female flirty dance. However, when
Darcy sets his sights on middle daughter
Lalita (Aishwarya Rai), it’s oil-and-water
time. He makes extremely tasteless com-
ments about the backwardness of
arranged marriage in general, and
Amritsar in particular, and he’s more con-
cerned with a business call than with her.

Since Mom Bakshi is adamant that
Lalita marry somebody, she encourages a
union with expat-Hollywood mogul Mr.
Kholi (Nitin Chandra Ganatra), whom
she has conveniently invited to the wed-
ding. The man is full of himself, eats like
a pig, and has a laugh like a braying don-

friend Balraj Naveen

APGS = ald §=ENbEPHANMenG

 

key, so we know that Lalita will eventually
wind up with Darcy. But Kholi does pro-
vide inspiration for a standout musical
number with his “no wife, no life” catch-
phrase.

In Bollywood movies (so named for
the Indian film industry’s capital of
Bombay, now Mumbai), plot is not as
important as music and colour, of which
there ate plenty in Bride. The genius of
director Chadha is that she is able to
seamlessly meld the British and North
American interpersonal acting style with
the Bollywood way of playing to the cam-
era. The director also rivals Tarantino for
the sheer energy of her scenes and her
ability to stage them anywhere, even in a
Mexican restaurant. Considering what
Chadha did for current it-girl Keira
Knightley, expect more of the same for
Rai, who is beautiful without being sickly
thin. No matter what kind of day you’ve
had, you will leave Bride and Prejudice smil-

ing,

 

serpent-longued Sideshow

Lizardman waves his freak flag high

Nathan Sharpe, Meliorist (University of Lethbridge)

LETHBRIDGE, Alta. (CUP)—‘T start-
ed off by shoving a safety pin through
my ear,’ says Erik Sprague, the
Lizardman, as he smiles through his
pointed teeth. “I kinda liked it.”

The Lizardman is a_ full-time
sideshow artist from Texas, and is truly a
unique and gifted human being. He can
do an array of insane stunts you would
only see in a sideshow—anything from
standard freak fare, such as putting nails
in his head via the nasal passages, to lift-
ing weights from his body piercings.

The Lizardman can also scare chil-
dren and make grownups vomit with his
mental floss trick where he lets his pet,
Cricket, an American rough green snake,
slither through his nose and out his
mouth.

Something that is as shocking as his
split tongue, pointed teeth, Teflon sub-
dermal implants, and full-body tattooing,
is the fact that he holds a degree in phi-
losophy and rather than finishing his
doctorate, he decided to dedicate his life,

March 16/2005

and his body, to his art.

He says he chose his body to exhibit
his art because “it lends a greater impact
to [my] work,” adding that when artists
gather for a critique, everyone walks
away at the end. For him, his piece is a
total commitment.

“T wanted my work to be a little more
meaningful?’ Sprague says. “It doesn’t
end until I die, disappear, and fade from
memory.”

Sprague says that people are naturally
curious with his attempts at removing his
resemblance to human beings. He tries
to describe it by saying that people think
in relation to other things, and because
he does not look quite right as a human,
they are forced to create a new identity
for him.

“T get stared at a lot,’ he admits, but
he believes that people’s fascination is
natural. “That’s the point. Everyone is
interested and involved in my artistic
project.”

His performance piece was not an

overnight decision. It took him four
years to decide on the lizard style. Other
ideas included a gargoyle and a full-body
maze. Ultimately, it was his childhood
fascination with the Lizardman that took

priority. “I used to draw split tongues on
people,” he says.
Not everyone can understand or

 

enjoy the Lizardman, and some people
consider him a masochist. But Sprague
thinks that people with “severe precon-
ceived judgments” wouldn’t listen to him
anyway, and if they were to take the time
to talk to him, “They would see that the
motivations to what I do are different.”

Sprague describes his primary moti-
vation as simply making himself happy.

“TI am happy with what I see as the
benefits to what I have done [to my
body],” he says. “It only works because I
absolutely love it.”

When Sprague takes the stage, this
becomes as obvious as his tattoos.

He does more than shock: he makes
the audience laugh, scream, turn away,
and smile.

He believes that his modifications
will never fade from their taboo status
because body modification has been
around for a long time and it still shocks
people. Yet, “you can’t find evidence of a
human culture that has not modified the
human body,” Sprague says.

He nonchalantly admits that he is not
the only freak out there. “I’m another
drop in a fairly large bucket,” he says.
“T’ve worked very hard to become a
freak.”

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