{"id":3710,"date":"2003-11-18T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-11-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/11\/18\/2003-11-18-the-league-of-extraordinary-gentlemen-what-do-hindus-think-of-this-movie\/"},"modified":"2003-11-18T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-11-18T12:00:00","slug":"2003-11-18-the-league-of-extraordinary-gentlemen-what-do-hindus-think-of-this-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/11\/18\/2003-11-18-the-league-of-extraordinary-gentlemen-what-do-hindus-think-of-this-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: What Do Hindus Think of This Movie?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.lxgmovie.com\/\">Source<\/a><\/P><P>LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, November 18, 2003: A reader in Malaysia has alerted HPI to the Hindu aspect of the hit movie, &#8220;League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,&#8221; starring Shan Connery. The movie is based on a comic book series of the same name which brings together a variety of fictional characters from past literature. Among these is Nemo, a Hindu, who is a variation of Jules Vernes&#8217; Captain Nemo of &#8220;20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.&#8221; He is the villain in the movie, and has a spectacular submarine (see the movie&#8217;s website at &#8220;source&#8221; for the short preview of the film) which has Hindu appointments and, our reader pointed out, a very realistic Siva Lingam as the huge submarine&#8217;s conning tower. One can see it as the sub surfaces in the preview. It is also a weapon of some sort, though that part isn&#8217;t entirely clear to HPI. Our reader complained that the sacred icon was being used as a weapon, and also that in certain parts of the movie, the characters are standing on it. HPI contacted an expert, Jess Nevins, on the comic book series (&#8220;LXG&#8221; to aficianatoes), and he explained that Nemo was a survivor of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 (or &#8220;India&#8217;s First War of Independence&#8221;) and spent most of his time attacking the British. Jess said, speaking only of the comic books, &#8220;Nemo, as an Indian survivor of the 1857 Rebellion, would be the worst fear of the British empire: a well-armed, technologically advanced soldier who hates the empire. And so his submarine is full of symbols and statues of various Gods, Nemo professes himself a worshiper of Siva, and Nemo, given the chance, gleefully guns down dozens of British soldiers. It is a kind of racist portrayal&#8211;but it is exactly the kind of racist portrayal which a comic book published in Britain in the 1890s would have contained.&#8221; The comics are a modern production, but Victorian in style. If you&#8217;ve seen the movie and would like to comment on it, kindly e-mail ar@hindu.org.<BR><br \/>\n<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SourceLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, November 18, 2003: A reader in Malaysia has alerted HPI to the Hindu aspect of the hit,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}