The pursuit of sadness!

My mother cannot get away from Tamil serials on television. It is an addiction and a fairly harmless one, apparently. All her "great" movies are from an era of abject sadness and misery. Some works of art, no doubt, but the central tone of most of those stories is sadness. Sadness told, sadness sold, sadness left behind, and sadness appreciated!

How does that whole generation consume so much sadness? Now, what is unbelievable is that this doesn't stop with consumption of entertainment on the idiot box. It overflows into real life as well. My mother would rather choose to emotionally blackmail me into a decision of the smallest consequence rather than weigh a rational alternative. I have to think this has something to do with media influence that somehow sadness is valid, and must be given importance!

At the theatrical box office, thankfully sadness doesn't do very well. The recently flopped "Kuselan" being a case in point, despite the presence of SuperStar Rajinikanth! It was also a badly crafted movie, and that probably led to its demise, but abjectly sad movies don't do well. People don't want to pay for sadness. The Kamal Hassan starrer "Mahanadi" was another rather remarkable film that didn't go anywhere in the box office because it was sad all the way. It was much more than that, it was depressing.

It is the stories that beg for the sympathy of the audiences that I really hate to be sucked into. For, once they get my sympathy, I'd like to see them get my interest as well. More often than not, they don't. Hollywood is no less guilty of this crime. Bruce Willis just cannot be happy, can he? One of my friends said he has a "million dollar grimace" that never leaves him. When the rascal has to walk into a room and kill a bad guy, why does he have to get cramps in the stomach?

On Tamil television, sadness is being pushed through like hot cakes! Watch our soap! Our women cry more than the rest! I really don't know what mindset gets people to watch so much depressing negativity on television. Now, maybe this is the generation used to sad movies and they're just not going to the theatres anymore. The funny stuff comes from cinematic material edited for television, but none of the made for television productions touch anything funny.

Why so much sadness on TV? Because convincing sadness is easier to create than convincing comedy and convincing drama. It is a lame excuse, but people wallowing is brought about more easily than people making us laugh. We would imagine the reason sadness doesn't do well theatrically is because people don't want to go to the theatre and spend money to see sadness. That apart, the more accurate reason is that the people who do go to the theatre and spend money these days are not people who buy into sadness at all! We have a whole new demographic of happy Indian cinema consumers!

Years ago, somebody up north decided to inflict us with "Hum Log" and "Buniyaad" - some of the most depressing long running fare on television. Good lord! A competition to depress the masses! It is almost as if the government had a propaganda machine with the mandate - "Unleash sadness upon the nation! We don't want anybody to be happy or upbeat!". Indeed there were some brilliant comedies that came from those times of Doordarshan monopoly, but they didn't run as long.

Mumbai cinema seems to have hit the "happy" trail rather well. Some of the comedy that comes out of there is no laughing matter at all, but for most part, you can expect to not get hammered these days if you chose to watch a popular Hindi language film. As long as you avoid Star Plus, you can stay away from Hindi language sadness too.

It is strange that we go to theatres to find escape from our rather drab lives, and we go to television to see more of it! If media product has any influence on how people actually think and act, I would like to see much more upbeat television. Thank God we now have so much choice in television that we don't have to be subjected to mindless sadness. Not only has the nation's psyche become more positive in the last few years, thanks to the opportunities and the economy, we have also become a little more open minded and able to reject and stay away from negativity a little bit more. It hasn't worked on my mother yet, but I have hope.

I wonder why the rating system of any film industry cannot come up with a sadness index. Since violence and sex and everything else goes into determining the rating of a movie, why not have a rating that can potentially warn us about how sad a movie is. After all I would think if sex and violence can have a negative impact on our minds, sadness can do as much damage. If this rating system were put in place, Kuselan would be up there in the 8 out of 10 range. Mahanadi would walk away with a 9. And you and I could save a 100!