Hypersexuality

• This is the circuitous premise of Australian writer Anna Kate Blair’s debut novel, The Modern, set in contemporary New York and centred on the life, half-loves and near-loves of Sophia, an Australian research fellow at MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art).
• Review: The Modern – Anna Kate Blair (Scribner) Sophia’s engagement shakes out a constellation of loose questions about potential choices, possibilities and limitations.
• When Robert departs, Sophia meets the mercurial, filament-like Cara, an unlikely assistant in a little-frequented New York wedding boutique.

Is marriage modern?

• The question “Is marriage modern?” is less the fulcrum of Sophia’s personal narrative than, increasingly, a perplexing nonsense rhyme, or rhetorical question weighed down by its own glowering question mark.
• Is marriage modern?
• In the context of same-sex marriage, which Blair touches upon, marriage is modern, so long as you don’t drill down to its ideological underpinnings: the history of marriage as property transfer, its requisite reproductive labour, the spectacle of grim-lipped, decades-long resentments sustained under the oath of “til death do us part”.
• By what barometer might we gauge “modernity” in marriage?

Smacked in the face by a dress

• A flounce-ridden, gorgeously deep-red wedding dress in a Moonee Ponds wedding boutique window.
• For one second, I entertained the idea of a wedding, but only because of that dress.
• But the phenomenon itself – the overweening presence of the wedding dress in young women’s lives – remains under-explored.

Modern art ‘at every turn’

• If the novel’s central question is not answered or adequately dissected, questions of modernity in art are more fulsomely, if curatorially, examined.
• The Modern tosses “modern” artists and art at the reader at every turn, assuming a familiarity with art history on the reader’s part.
• The Modern overflows with ideas: musings on modern art, and on the masculinist orientation of art institutions, in which female curatorial assistants doggedly do the work their male supervisors put their names to.

Curated, rather than known

• She is curated rather than known; she’s a collection of iterations.
• Perhaps this is Blair’s intention: Hartigan as surface, knowable only through her work, her private self inured to the public gaze.
• But every character in The Modern feels somewhat like a bit-part: fleeting, insubstantial, or, in Robert’s case, downright wooden.

• These ideas date back to the British colonial era and have far-reaching implications for people’s everyday lives.
• The trailer claimed 32,000 Hindu girls had been converted to Islam by Muslim men with the intent of recruiting them to ISIS.
• Once the film came out, citizens tried to get it banned by sending a petition to the India’s Supreme Court.

Political fallout

• The figure of 32,000 women in the film’s trailer was immediately challenged by Indian political leaders and also debunked by fact-checkers from the website, Alt News.
• The filmmakers agreed to change the number and a new trailer was released.

Challenges in the Indian Supreme Court

• Some politicians decried the propagandist nature of the movie and in West Bengal, it was banned by the government.
• Politicians there said the film “manipulated facts and contains hate speech in multiple scenes” and they banned the film to “avoid violence and hatred.” The Indian Supreme Court lifted the state ban though agreed that a disclaimer on the film was necessary.
• The disclaimer indicated that the film provides “no authentic data” to support the 32,000 figure and that it presents fictionalized accounts.

Islamophobia from the 19th century

• In the 19th century, Hindu scholars and new religious organisations (like Arya Samaj and Hindu Mahasabha) began producing a new Hindu-centric version of Indian history.
• This history grew in response to British colonialism but at the same time, shared similarities with British colonial ideas.
• By the late 19th century, India was constructed around Hindu heterosexual relationships and family values in opposition to Muslim sexual deviance and rampant Muslim sexuality.

Challenges to interfaith marriage

• Love jihad’s centrality to Hindu nationalist politics has led to specifically stringent laws focused heavily on sexuality and marriage.
• Read more:
  India’s 'love jihad' anti-conversion laws aim to further oppress minorities, and it's working

  Hindu vigilantes, in partnership with the police, launch missions to separate interfaith couples.

• One response to the chatter about “love jihad,” is an Instagram channel called India Love Project launched to celebrate stories of interfaith love and marriages.

• "We're thrilled to have reached this milestone with McWin, and we are confident that their strong experience in developing businesses will translate to successful expansions of our iconic brands in Eastern Europe," said David Shear, President International of Restaurant Brands International Inc., parent company of Burger King and Popeyes.
• This is a big step in our ambitious expansion journey for these brands, and we're excited to keep growing our footprint acrossEastern Europe."
• "We are excited to continue to strengthen McWin's leadership position in Europe, where we see significant growth opportunities and incorporating strong premium brands in our 1,300 growing restaurant portfolio, such as Burger King and Popeyes," Henry McGovern, Co-Founder of McWin, commented.
• RBI owns four of the world's most prominent and iconic quick service restaurant brands TIM HORTONS, BURGER KING, POPEYES, and FIREHOUSE SUBS.