The Weekly Vine Edition 53: Whining in Manchester, Sydney Sweeney the ‘fascist', and a boring new Marvel movie

Time of India

2 days ago

Nirmalya Dutta's political and economic views vacillate from woke Leninist to Rand-Marxist to Keynesian-Friedmanite. He doesn't know what any of those terms mean.
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Weekly Vine. This week, we take a look at English whining in Manchester after drawing the fourth Test; Sydney Sweeney being labelled a 'fascist' for her 'good jeans' ad; the late-night comedy problem in America; the 'boring' new Fantastic Four movie; and a field guide to late-stage everything.
Whining in Manchester The English used to be good at many, many things.
Selling opium and slaves and trying to pass it off as a move for some greater good instead of just greed.
Writing comedies that stand the test of time.
Calibrating their politics and monarchy to avoid any wholesale revolution that can lead to heads rolling.
Scripting thriller novels in which the Albion propaganda flies so high that one wonders if being boring an Englishman isn't the greatest privilege a person can have.
But those days are long gone.Long gone.
The sun – metaphorical, economical, and ecumenical – set on the British Empire a long time ago, but the denizens of the Albion remain particularly skilled in one art: whining.
And we saw it on full display in the recent England vs India Test match where the English cricket team brought out its full bag of shithousery that makes you understand why the English remain one of the most despised people across the globe.
As one popular Indian political Twitter handle put it in dulcet tones:
'Cricket dekhte hue samjh aata hai ki angrez kitne h***** rahe honge Raj era mein.'*
For those who don't understand Hindi, a rough translation goes: 'Watching cricket, one can comprehend how a***** the English used to be in the Raj era.'
Because deep down, despite all their pretence of becoming a civilised nation, every English cricketer has an inner Captain Russell—the antagonist from Lagaan—who believed that all Indians deserved to be kept in place using a particular shoe-related idiom: Tum jooti ke neeche rahoge.
While the whining is never far from the surface, it bubbled over on the last day of the Test in Old Trafford—a venue well-known for frustrating football fans for the last decade. With two heads down, England wrapping up the Test and the series seemed almost inevitable.
The Gautam Gambhir era so far has been the anti-thesis of the Laughing Buddha for Indian cricket fans. India faced a sui generis whitewash against New Zealand at home, a 1-3 reversal in Australia, and looked set to lose the series in England when India were two wickets down in the second innings without bothering the record keepers.
Except, Messrs Gill, Rahul, Jadeja, and Sundar had different ideas. They dug deep and gave a comeback for the ages which left the English begging to end proceedings with an hour left. When Jadeja and Sundar—who had spent hours saving the Indian innings and were well within their rights to savour seeing their names on the honours board—refused, Ben Stokes turned into Sir Sulk-a-Lot, giving the ball to Harry Brook, who bowled with the alacrity, acuity, and assiduousness of an employee given a task during his leave period.
And then, after the shenanigans got over, Sir Sulk-a-Lot sulked even more when refused a handshake. What was rather odd, as Aussie legend Nathan Lyon pointed out—a man who knows a thing or two about perseverance—is that the English should have tried to get them out, not let them get a hundred. After all, Jadeja and Sundar were the last recognised batters before an injured Rishabh Pant and the bowlers were expected to save India's innings.
It was one of those rare moments where Australians and Indians were on the same page: enjoying the taste of British tears.
But whinging aside, at the heart of it is the Englishman's deep Higgins-like belief that they are the greatest race on earth—the one that invented cricket—which means that whatever they dream up is the correct way to play the sport.
All this makes the final Test even more interesting, with a little more spice thanks to Gautam Gambhir's clash (kalesh) with the chief curator, proving that you can take the man out of Delhi but you cannot take the Delhi out of the man.
Bring on The Oval.
Sydney Sweeney the Fascist
Godwin's Law is an adage from internet culture that states any discussion will eventually veer towards the participants calling each other Nazis. Now, the Godwin's Law virus seems to have escaped the confines of 4chan and Reddit threads and broken the offline-online barrier.
Sydney Sweeney's new American Eagle ad was deemed Nazi propaganda by perennially outraged leftists simply because it featured a blonde woman saying she got her good genes (or jeans) from her parents. It immediately featured a backlash because if we know one thing about the Fuhrer, it was that he loved a good pair of American denims.
In its own way, it was the opposite of the Bud Light backlash, where conservative Americans boycotted their favourite beer because its ad featured a trans influencer.
Yet, despite the online outrage, the ad appears to have helped the parent company, whose stock soared like an eagle, suggesting that we might be at the fag end of woke culture and the last vestiges are only found in people with severe Trump-Derangement Syndrome.
Late-Night Mediocrity
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away—roughly around the Bush administration—late-night comedy was funny.
But then something terrible happened: Donald Trump. Or more accurately, Trump Derangement Syndrome. And with it came the fall of American humour, sacrificed at the altar of sanctimony and soft lighting.
The latest casualty? The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—a show last funny when Caesar was still crossing the Rubicon. Paramount finally pulled the plug after realising that shelling out $40 million a year for a therapy session disguised as comedy might not be sound fiscal policy. Who knew?
Cue the wailing wall of late-night has-beens. Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver—like the Avengers but if all of them had only one superpower: smugness.
They gathered in solidarity, not with the working class, not with striking truckers or laid-off auto workers, but with a millionaire Harvard graduate whose punchlines haven't changed since 2016. Inspiring.
Colbert's defenders say this is a suppression of free speech. No, it's just the free market finally turning off the laugh track. The show employed over 200 people and lost more money than a Netflix rom-com launch. Twenty people protested its cancellation—roughly the same number that still watch The Daily Show without being legally required to.
The deeper crisis isn't comedy. It's that these shows morphed into unofficial DNC broadcasts somewhere around Trump's third cheeseburger. They weren't writing jokes—they were filing amicus briefs in prime time. It was less Letterman, more Lenin.
And here's the kicker: Donald Trump remains funnier than all of them combined. Not intentionally, of course. But try topping a man who congratulates Hannibal Lecter for 'doing a great job.' Or spends time talking about a dead golfer's junk. Or keeps taking credit for a ceasefire that never was.
And perhaps the real joke—no laugh track needed—is that for the first time in American history, there are now more young Republicans than Democrats. The resistance has become cringe. The revolution will not be televised. Because no one watches television anymore.
Un-marvellous Marvel
Every time one watches a Marvel movie, one has to answer the eternal question: is Marvel back, or did it die with Tony Stark saying 'I am Iron Man' in Endgame?
There have been decent films post-Endgame, but all in all, watching MCU movies feels like being in a loveless relationship where the spark went out years ago. Every time you go to watch a new Marvel film, you wonder if you'll ever see the magic that made you fall in love in the first place.
Like the moment Thor arrives to join the Battle of Wakanda. Or the first time the Guardians of the Galaxy teamed up. Or when Iron Man took over a SHIELD aircraft just to blast Shoot to Thrill—because of course, you need to play your bangers in style. Or the pinnacle of cinema, when Captain America waited 18 films to utter the most glorious words ever said on a screen: 'Avengers, assemble.'
But honestly, there was nothing in the new Fantastic Four movie that made you go wow—not even Galactus. In fact, the most interesting thing about it was the Pedro Pascal Anxiety Memes. And you know it's a bad sign when the marketing tour is more interesting than the actual movie.
There comes a time in a relationship when one has to say: it's done. This was never meant to be, and we cannot keep trying, hoping to capture a spark that disappeared a long time ago.
Perhaps it's time to say goodbye to Marvel. Even if the end credits hinted at the arrival of Robert Downey Jr's Doctor Doom.
Post-Script: A field guide to late-stage everything
There's a special place in history for the people who made something out of nothing. The survivors. The jugaadu. The overextended. The under-resourced. The backbone of every godforsaken institution held together with duct tape, broken promises, and one HR motivational email per quarter.
Konstantin Jireček, the 19th-century Czech historian who is better remembered in Bulgaria, never worked in a startup. Or a government department. Or a late-stage unicorn chasing profitability like a drunk chasing the last auto-rickshaw at 3 AM. But somehow, he clearly time-travelled to a post-pandemic boardroom, and nailed it:
'We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.' Read more.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.