Present Tense is The Swaddle Team's stream of consciousness response to the world's madness.

It’s been a little over a week since the war – are we allowed to call it a war? – and there is already a lot to celebrate that has nothing to do with it. Cannes! Movies! The no nudity rule – shocking! Also, a new Netflix show called The Royals, which is a show about hot people doing crazy things with money. Also, a Guns N’ Roses concert! Also, Kim Kardashian wearing diamonds to her diamond theft trial!

So glad the world is back to normal again. A few minor scuffles are to be expected though: They’re saying an Ashoka University professor is anti-national for posting his disagreement with last week’s war. And apparently, they’ve arrested a travel YouTuber from Haryana for allegedly spying for Pakistan. There is a tricolour parade outside, if you’re in the mood to celebrate this.

We haven’t checked in on Uncle Sam yet. Let’s see: Joe Biden has prostate cancer. P. Diddy’s trial has begun. A legally dead pregnant woman in the state of Georgia is being kept “alive” in order to comply with the state’s abortion laws. Ben Cohen, from Ben & Jerry’s, was arrested for talking about dead Palestinian children in the U.S. Senate. Justin Bieber is frequently brought up for various reasons – alleged drug use, alleged debt, alleged Diddy victim. Seems like it’s not a great time for them right now, which probably makes the Cannes film festival a great substitute Sisyphus, dutifully keeping the rock of culture rolling uphill against all odds.

A quick pitstop at Cannes: amidst all the screenings and last-minute panic about red carpet rules, some celebrities have talked about Palestine. Let’s consider that maybe we have come to a point in the timeline of humanity where something has to change. Like, big change. Like, a new-Age-with-a-capital-A change. So, when is that happening? People are developing parasocial relationships with AI and we still haven’t figured out how to stop genocides from taking place. Can we all collectively agree to stop everything else until we have fixed this? Can the celebrities who care about the issue focus on that for some time? Can we not have movie screenings and life continuing as normal? Is that a crazy thing to even ask?

Thinking about the meaning of culture during times like these sometimes does make you feel crazy. What is it? Is it art? Is it the thing that happens when we respond to new buildings and new bridges and new wars? It’s hard to tell, at times, whether such a thing as culture even exists in isolation. Is all culture in fact, propaganda? Hold on, it isn’t a bad word, it is simply a word encapsulating a social process: communication that is meant to influence people’s actions. And what better propaganda than film, music and literature, irrespective of their contents? The impulse to understand the meaning of everything explains why so much is always in the news, and everything gets a thinkpiece. The interminable wait for Rihanna’s next album becomes about the state of R&B as a genre, its cultural history as a Black art form, Rihanna being a Caribbean woman. The new Kristen Stewart movie says so much about the reinvention of Stewart as a serious artist, her queerness, the aesthetic of her directorial debut challenging the male gaze. The diamonds on Kim Kardashian at her trial, the significance of her Paris robbery, the spectacle it was to the world, the evolution it represents from reality star to planetary star. There is always an angle, a fascinating thread to pull on, but the question is how much do we pull before the whole thing unravels and we see what lies behind. If propaganda is meant to influence our actions, and our actions are to always analyse the thing in front of us and not the thing behind it, what does that say about culture as a whole? Not sure. Just thinking out loud.

Here’s something else that took place over the past week: we finally know the real magnitude of Covid19 deaths in India. In 2021, the government claimed that 3.3 lakh people died. This year, they have informed us that that number is short by 20 lakhs. This may not be news to the 23.3 lakh families who have lost somebody. But hey, that’s so 2021. The news cycle has moved on, there is so much culture yet to discuss.