We are still in February, but I can nominate the Person of the Year already. She is Philomena Cunk, from the Netflix show, Cunk on Earth.
Philomena Cunk is the prophet of our times. She is the personification of, among other things, a certain kind of social media voice. She can claim the most outrageous, factually incorrect things to be true, with the supreme confidence and authority of one who has absolute faith in one’s own self. It is the kind of faith that can make one first believe and, then, state that Ganesha is proof that Indians (meaning Hindus) have been practising plastic surgery from thousands of years ago.
But she is incredibly funny (without being aware of it) and she does not care enough for political agendas. Or any agenda. She does not care enough beyond anything that she does not know, and her set of facts, which she uses like a weapon to bludgeon anyone in her path who happens to contradict her or even suggest an alternative viewpoint, seems to be derived entirely from tittle-tattle and popular culture. Anything beyond a minute or two and asking her to think anew bores her pretty, completely uninterested face. Incidentally, she is a hotshot journalist, who began life in a show on a British television channel, namely, ahem, BBC, as an investigative reporter and is one still. In the current show, she is travelling widely, especially to historical places. She meets real experts and, fixing them with her stare, asks them pointed questions on aspects of history, culture, art, literature, from a startlingly contemporary and challenging perspective, throws them off balance and demolishes the foundations of civilisation in the process.
“Which was more culturally significant, the Renaissance or Single Ladies by Beyonce,” she asks an eminent expert, who struggles to find an answer. “Galileo’s full name was Galileo Figaro Magnifico, wasn’t it?” she asks another. Her questions usually end with a “wasn’t it”, which is dropped like a barricade blocking all exits. The expert in this case says, politely, he is not sure. “That’s what it says in Dominican Rhapsody,” Philomena answers. “Are you thinking of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’?” asks the expert. “What was his name then?” challenges Philomena. “Well, as far as I’m aware, his name was Galileo Galilei,” says the expert. “That’s like me being called Philomena Philomenei,” she says. The actress who plays Philomena, Diane Morgan, delivers all of this with a perfectly straight face and its effect is as devastating as her wisdom.
The message is clear. History and civilisation, as we knew it, are dead, flattened by Philomena and her people. Thought processes, blah! Expert knowledge, pah! We are only to look at things, take pictures, and ask questions that reconfirm what we already know. At this point, perhaps, we could nudge Philomena towards Adele, as she sings, in the Bond film, Spectre, “This is the end…”
Philomena possibly has not turned her attention to Adele yet. Her starting point, in any case, is usually high culture. So she has a question about Beethoven. Beethoven wrote that song that goes ‘Da da da dum, da da da dum’, she says, singing the opening notes of Beethoven’s “Symphony 5”, and asks what do those ‘lyrics’ mean? The expert says that with Beethoven’s symphonic music, it is all just instruments, so there are no words to these pieces at all. No lyrics? Philomena is aghast. “How’re we supposed to know what it’s about if it doesn’t have lyrics? It’s literally meaningless.”
Her focus so far has been on Western civilisation, more or less, though she has shown curiosity towards the Great Wall of China and ancient Egypt (were pyramids built from the top? she has asked). She is cult material. I just hope she does not come to India. If she does, I think she will be immediately recruited to look for more lingams or claim that cow urine cures cancer. That way she will become really dangerous. And unfunny.
