Monday, September 1, 2008

Mumbai Selling

The new ad. for "Khatron Ki Khiladi" on the new channel to come - Colors (notice the missing U?), warns that all the stunts are being performed under expert supervision in South Africa according to applicable regulations (Sounding very much like the Americans who love to write "This is not a toy" on plastic bags), and extends itself, huffing and puffing, to say "Viewers shouldn't try these stunts, especially children".

Now, either that means the stunts are really child's play and even children will want to try them, or our children would really listen to their parents yelling "Pinky! Leave the helicopter alone. You really shouldn't be following Akshay! No Chotu, you can't take the speedboat either!"

Are we hapless masses in India supposed to enjoy something being performed in South Africa with an American idea? How about talking in Polish with Korean subtitles, idiots? Oh, you want this to be a Hindi show? So, why isn't the show's name ever written in Hindi? Could it be because the people who can read Hindi would never watch this show? Or could it be you couldn't really come up with another name for "Fear Factor" that isn't equally dumb?

This is supposed to impress those of us who read in English, hear in Hindi, relate to American culture, and are willing to put up with South African regulations? Why not just show us the original show if we are this international in our taste?

It takes a bevy of beauties to go on some dangerous missions with Akshay Kumar? Fair enough. Television courting titillation is nothing new, but I would rather watch no TV at all than being forced to watch these unathletic acting career dropouts trying to hitch a ride to South Africa under some idea of "cool" invented last night. And these chicks telling us who they are - why? Who cares? To me, they all look the same, sound the same, and act the same. There is a serious business opportunity for a company that can invent and sell new types of giggles. And it can be called "Giggles for Dummies".

The show promises lizards and snakes licking these desirable nubiles - are we supposed to be scared of these creatures? We are still a nation where a large number of people are bitten by snakes on a regular basis, and yet, we do have any mortal fear of the creatures. We even have seven year old girls chasing away leopards with sticks and winning bravery awards from the President. Sweep all this under the carpet while watching another Whitey show ranking snakes for how deadly they are, and you are the perfect candidate to welcome the new White invasion of our culture, this time the mindsets.

Right on the heels of this one, we have BIG BOSS! A bunch of people in a house. So? The ads make this out to be some sort of macabre, extremely menacing proposition and we are supposed to be interested in who survives the rest of the loonybins in the house? Are we supposed to wait in trepidation to see where this next experiment in social engineering will take us? Or will we be spared the end of the season and have some actress cry foul and make news for herself while the show tops every toilet in viewerland?

What kind of Mumbai morons come up with these ideas to copy shows that are boring to start with? What kind of braindead, drugged out dopes are getting paid to come up with these ideas, and what kind of mediocrity marinated lunatic bosses okay these ideas?

We as Indians, have a long tradition of notions, as long as our history itself. These notions are complex and sophisticated, and we have never cared to explain or analyze any of these, because... we don't really care! It takes a lot to dumb us down, and while we might buy into a bit of dumbness once in a while, Mumbai trying to sell us the whole whale is out of the question.

Bottomline - we are not American, and none of the doped out foreign culture sucking assholes in Mumbai, from the uncreative bowels of their below mediocre television culture needs to tell us what we should like and what is cool. We're already cool and we don't really care about that either.

Which one of those dickheads is running Star TV in India? Somebody tell that knucklehead that we don't need to be told what is coming in the "Sizzling Summer" like the Asia Cup and Wimbledon, when it is pouring cats and dogs. Maybe these people are snorting dope all day long and don't even notice that summer is long gone for the 16 percent of the world's population that is keeping one of these sports alive!

That idiot on AXN who's been pronouncing Maruti as "Muhroodee" for ages - can someone other than the RSS tell this fool to get names right(especially those of Hindu Gods!), before letting his voice travel over the airwaves? I really wouldn't mind slitting the throat of the fool who approved this idiot's work, just for the incompetence it shows, or the indifference to Indian viewers who are being subjected to this nonsense.

It isn't as if a foreign culture has never made it to the shores of India. For thousand of years, we have been bombarded by things foreign. But this new phenomenon, of Indians telling other Indians how we must ape others, is new. And it is being fostered in Mumbai, squarely.

It neither begins nor ends with this arbid fiction film world called Bollywood (oh, what a coincidence it has taken to this name with love!). It spreads rather unceremoniously to news channels as well. The 11th of July bombings in Mumbai were shamelessly referred to as the "Seven Eleven" bombings, just so it rhymes with the white man's violent castration of sorts caused on "Nine eleven". When in India did we ever use the month before the day in mentioning a date?

I have heard we have monkeys in Hyderabad, who celebrate Halloween! Halloween, for heavens' sake! What does India have to do with Halloween? One can understand Valentine's day as an opportune moment to woo someone who has already fallen for that one, but Halloween!? I can only say to those who celebrate Halloween in India - to borrow from Mumbai cinema - that they really mustn't have drunk their mother's milk!

The number of advertisements in India, especially for high end clothing, that carry white faces - yet another disgusting low. Why ever should we wear something made here because a white man is ready to wear it? And the number of corporate websites that have pictures of very unproductive but cute looking white faces will give you an idea where India really doesn't want to let go of imperialism, even if we were not the imperialists to start with.

Just so we are not perceived as being racist in our blindness, look at how many avatars Abhishek Bachchan has taken up where he wears clothes like black rappers and moves his hands like he was a tattooed, just released from jail black man expressing himself on the streets of Chicago? I wonder if he would love to get sodomized in an all black jail in the USA, just so he can boast of having "been there, done that".

It isn't as if all copies are incapable of merit and success in our own context. Kaun Banega Crorepati is a much better show than its original, impersonal American version, but it was Big B that made the wonderful warm difference. Indian Idol is indeed a good opportunity for young talent to get picked up to good futures in the entertainment industry although I wonder how many people would recognize Prashant Tamang here than they would in Nepal!

The biggest question to ask is - why doesn't Mumbai copy the best of others' work? The master film makers today, in unabashed open view and in the greatest truth of the marketplace, are mostly white and from Hollywood. India has no Clint Eastwood, no Spielberg, no Terrence Malick, and no Scorsese. Mumbai doesn't have a Leonardo DiCaprio, and we most certainly don't have a Denzel Washington. (India has a Kamal Haasan, but he doesn't work in Mumbai)

The answer is - it's hard work being good. So, if you're not willing to work hard to create something original, and if you have no cultural roots to give you a sense of who you really are, if you are willing to take little crumbs of copied semi-original material and leave it to the marketing machine to make you, then you would do well in Mumbai. But if you are one of these, keep your shit to yourself and don't unleash it on the rest of us who can still tell the difference.

There are many actors and actor wannabes in Mumbai who can swear by the amazing actors Hollywood produces. Great actors come from great material. No screenwriters since the days of Salim-Javed have produced tight screenplays in commercial Mumbai. We will forgive the exceptions like Govind Nihalani for now. There simply is no respect for great writing, and indeed no demand for it. Some of the scripts that get approved for production have absolutely no potential to be "great" in any context, except maybe as recycled paper. All that Mumbai cares about now is "packaging" and as long as that sort of "packaging" has worked in the West, it is happy to ape, rape, and expect us to gape.

Deserving mention are the actress wannabes that show up in Mumbai, dressing and making themselves up like Western women, slimming themselves down, and throwing themselves about just like the women they watch on TV. The same mannerisms, the same attitudes, and the same level of fake confidence. All good, till they come to pronounce "sandvich" or having to understand the interviewer who asks a question longer than five words. Then, in one instance, all the glam falls away, and the villager is exposed. God bless them for their dreams, but what animal are they trying to ape? White western women, of course!

Salma Hayek doesn't hide her native English accent, and no European stars really worry about their identities while having to operate in a foreign language like English. So, what is wrong with us? A really deep inferiority complex? Just hating being Indian? Both? Pathetic.

And what's up with rampantly using the Indian flag and patriotic rubbish to sell products? Do you rascals really have to be that much of a sell out? Mind and body, heart and soul, your creativy is up the pole.

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