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It was important enough for us hear from Shah Rukh Khan as soon as he showed up on Indian soil, live, about his experience with US Immigration officials, but we still haven't had any Big Fight on why NCERT history text books do not contain any information on entire kingdoms of South India.
Whether covertly ignored, or overtly sidelined, in a backhanded way, it is perhaps a blessing to be untouched by the incompetent. How many more South Indian names can we have mercilessly mauled on TV? It could get embarrassing.
In a world of massive multiple media penetration, access, symbols, and intermingling loyalties, perception plays an exaggeratedly important role, and the perception of India painted by the expanded reach of Mumbai cinema and its convenient and almost exclusive cohesion with a powerful but myopic “national” media, needs to be carefully monitored.
For a moment, let's ignore the organizations trumpeting their intent to promote “Indian Cinema” without any meaningful representation from four South Indian industries! Let's try to deal with the fact that Mumbai cinema, unwittingly or under the dictates of a big conspiracy, has a corrosive influence on the perception of Indian cinema that needs to be questioned and corrected, clarified and articulated, for the well being of both.
Amongst the various film industries in India, Mumbai rightfully has the numbers to buy some bragging rights for say, Shah Rukh Khan to be hailed as India's biggest movie star, but the rest of India really should say “No Thanks”. This isn't an argument against the market value of the sizzling Khan, but indeed against the rest of truly Indian cinema that is slowly being sidelined or getting swept under the big “Bollywood” rug.
Since Mumbai cinema gets exported more than the rest of Indian cinema, it gets more attention, and it doesn't take much for the convenience store consumerist laziness of the West to swallow the most simplistic understanding of Indian cinema as being essentially contained in “Bollywood”. This word works great to market any Mumbai cinema product abroad, but the best of the rest of India, which usually is qualitatively superior pure cinema, and culturally distinct, doesn't have a chance against this perceptional juggernaut.
If and when Indian cinema reaches a place where it genuinely competes against cinema from all over the world, South Indian cinema would have done its prospects serious harm if we allowed Mumbai cinema to continue its ubiquitous and deliriously incompetent representation of Indian cinema.
There was a time when Amitabh Bachchan brooded his way into the hearts of teeming millions – he was larger than life, could carry dialogue like a king, could be flawed and noble at the same time, and heartbreakingly selfless. It was fun watching his movies with people who couldn't understand a word he was saying, but enjoying the show all the same.
Today's Mumbai cinema no longer appeals to this audience. Mumbai cinema has made the shift from a partially culturally rooted cinema to a bizarre, noisy, colourful, culturally amorphous, constantly dancing animal that has so much momentum it doesn't care whether it appears as a damsel or a monster anymore. It has the numbers where it doesn't have to worry about identity.
This is not to hint Mumbai is suddenly producing universally appealing cinema. Far from that, it is producing cinema that currently appeals to the new breed of upwardly mobile mostly young Indians – global in ambition, citizenship and buying power, fluid and malleable in cultural identity. In other words, they are rich and don't give a sh** where they belong. They want a bit of fun, and can hardly be bothered to tax their intellect or demand something of substance – they seem to be satisfied as long as it gives them something to cheer as “Indian”. They will buy silly, they will buy over the top, they will buy rubbish if it looks glamorous but most importantly there are enough of them around. This number has attracted all the Hollywood studios to Mumbai. Without a cultural foothold, however, they are bound to continue on the path of glitz, occasionally managing to stumble into a story that sticks.
The rest of Indian cinema, however, for most part, really has to care about the identity of each film. The majority of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam and other regional cinema audiences do not live in the fantasy world of stories woven for these global Indians. It isn't uncommon to see the occasional “Nayagan” being remade to “Khalnayak”, but it would be very hard to envisage “Blue” being released as “Neelam” in Tamil.
Mumbai cinema in the world of art, is a strange creature. The vibrant, buzzing city itself is the heartbeat of India's economy and with so much energy and scale, you can almost start believing that the rest of the country is simply Mumbai multiplied. Its film industry is clearly not a stranger to this energy, but it is unfortunately apparent there isn't much else it seems to tap into. The promos sizzle but the films fizzle out. Glitzy mediocrity oozes out of its veins, and it is giddy for more.
Not without choice, but without a clue, a lot of Mumbai cinema has been trying to ape Hollywood cinema for a while, without making any investments in developing true artists. The moment Mumbai cinema allowed itself to be re-christened "Bollywood", it publicly accepted its decay and its defeat, but it had the numbers to run with the branding advantages. By breeding a whole generation of Hollywood wannabes, Mumbai cinema has willingly or unwittingly lost its chance to be true to any cultural anchor, or to be original. (May the exceptions that are few and far between be excused from this generalization – they do not define the rule).
The glee on its actors' faces when they show up at some international film events like Cannes and the Oscars really glosses over how empty they are, even when they don't have a single piece of work worthy of any kind of artistic attention on a global level. But it does highlight how Aishwarya Rai's cleavage has done more for popularising Mumbai cinema abroad than the best of Amitabh Bachchan's work. It should necessarily irk the rest of India if this business of “show” that Mumbai is now notoriously good at, ends up being the umbrella ambassador for a “Kanjeevaram” or a “Dweepa”.
It isn't about whether Indian cinema is being represented – it is whether it is being correctly represented. There is absolutely nothing from a quality standpoint to support Mumbai cinema as an ambassador of Indian cinema. It can't simply be about numbers. Our national bird is the peacock, not the crow.
Notwithstanding the central government's thrust to make India a Hindi country, including BSNL in Erode, Tamilnadu, having a sign encouraging everyone to learn a word in Hindi every day, to the suddenly declared Hindi Diwas that will be celebrated on Sept 14th every year, there are obvious signs everywhere that the Hindi siege is on. What better way to carry out this agenda than by Bollywoodizing India? The devil couldn't have come up with something better than this! Homogeneity would mean a bigger market for Hindi products, less effort needed from Hindi speakers, and indeed, a bigger market for Hindi cinema, more bragging rights for Shah Rukh Khan, (which most of us wouldn't grudge him for), but at what cost?
The number of advertising messages that bombard us with Hindi words written in English letters should get us thinking, but they irritate to say the least. Why would I have to read something in English to understand it in Hindi, if this were not a really slimy way of getting me to learn Hindi sounds? Or are non-South Indian advertising briefs so myopic in their creativity that they think it is cool to mix two languages, one of which a lot of people would never understand? Either situation is below par for intelligence and below the belt in application. It would be a little more bearable if some people actually realized we do not have a culture of saying “Take care” in any language in India and it sounds really awful in Tamil when it comes out sounding like “lock your house” and feels like “protect your belongings”.
Conspiracies apart, and stereotyping forgiven for the moment, what exactly does Mumbai cinema represent? Russel Peters was right when he said Mumbai cinema (he used the B word) is all about looks. Mumbai's leading ladies have a way of presenting themselves very much like their Hollywood counterparts. They can all do their interviews, their glam shows, and their flirting with the public rather well.
But on screen, all of the liberated modern woman is gone. They still have to pout, cavort, be shrill and barbie sexy for the men, but wait a minute! It's no longer OUR men! Heck, they've even lost their curves and most of them don't even look healthy any more! Blindly follow the white man and the crazy notions of beauty that the multinational cosmetic and fashion industries have oversold. God bless them for the money they make, but can we expect an “Arth” shattering performance from any of them? Clearly, they do not represent any cross section of India, but they're influencing the wannabe Fair and Lovely crowd, with misleading messages and marketing muscle. It's not their fault, but without them, this mirage wouldn't exist.
The men? The six pack seems to be in fashion, so everybody seems to be getting one. The Mumbai cinema hero of today is hip and cool, he can run and fly, and dance and flirt and look and walk and talk with style, but for some reason, he can't inspire. The rascal just isn't real enough, and he isn't even rascal enough! Isn't anybody noticing? The metrosexual ant has killed the awesome masculinity of the Hero. Big B didn't need a six pack to be convincing, and his romance was meatier and juicier than anything today's over-managed clowns can pull off.
The story? What story? There isn't one script out of fifty that gets made in Mumbai that has a recognizable head or a tail, leave alone a spine. And people wonder why movies flop? Well, duh! There simply seems to be next to nobody in Mumbai who can take an Indian story and give it the full, evolved, cinematic treatment, which will end up making it a universal story in any case. With more corporate structures coming up, and the inevitable college educated freaks with nothing but rat race life experience taking over story development duties, Mumbai is set to make even more fluffy, cute, chocolate filled rubbish with cosmetic companies in tow. Yet, these are people who won't waste anytime telling the world that “Indian cinema” has its own identity!
Aha! Identity! That is where the rest of Indian cinema, particularly culturally strong cinema like what comes out of Tamilnadu and Kerala, can and must do everything they can to never be seen under the "Bollywood" umbrella. Singeetham Sreenivasa Rao's "Michael Madana Kama Rajan" is brilliant in its own right, in its own space, to its own audiences. The movie is a riot, and no wonder it was a hit. No white man will ever understand head or tail of that movie in the way a South Indian can. And from the same director, we have "Pushpak" which the whole world will always follow and applaud in its own identity.
What identity does Mumbai have in world cinema today that the rest of Indian cinema needs to associate with? Zilch. What cultural identity does Mumbai cinema have in India today that Indian audiences can identify with? Zilch. And that is the bankruptcy that the rest of India does not have to be a part of. The rest of India simply does not have to associate with an animal that has no root or standing, culturally or artistically. They don't even have the same markets!
People who study the market for signs of a new product may argue that being recognized as part of a phenomenon may have some advantages, but this new "phenomenon" is only in whitey's head! The B word may be the buzzword, but again, we have B-wood cleavage to thank for that. (if one may be forgiven for not sufficiently applauding the rare brilliance of a “Lagaan”).
God bless the material wealth, fame, noise, and notoriety that comes with getting international attention, but it is harder to copy the work of a whole team of people making "Monster" than to copy the red carpet swagger of the actress on the awards night and be done with it. After all, we have a whole culture of people who love to watch how good one looks at the finish line. A whole generation of NRIs is still somehow feeling second class, and what better for them than to see one of "their own" on the same stage as the white skinned pixies who are considered so hot? "Look, today we are equal to whitey!".
It isn't as if Mumbai cinema has suddenly found itself mimicking the West. From the black and white era, we have seen umpteen instances in the movie stories where the lead actor plays the piano while men in suits and women in saris and a variety of clothes dance to the tune which thankfully is very much Indian. But the salutations to the white man's culture are there for all to see. It would be a good subject for a research student to get a Ph.D. on - why Mumbai cinema ever needed to ape the west – even when its market was primarily culturally Indian and continues to be! Not that MGR never appeared in a ridiculously western suit in a Tamil film, but regional cinema, particularly South Indian cinema, never sold out on its cultural flavour.
Mumbai isn't making any better cinema today than it was ten years ago, and it doesn't have to, because its market dynamics do not demand that it make anything good in terms of pure cinematic merit. But it knows how to sell itself, and god bless the millions it brings in. But once the romance is over, then what? Isn't it already looking pretty hollow?
Mumbai cinema must take a deep breath and find its own voice – again, and again. It cannot afford to alienate itself from its core audiences in the long term, and it must not try to become the Hollywood of the east. The rest of Indian cinema, however, and particularly South Indian cinema has everything to gain from evolving itself separate from the caricatured and untruthful, very “Bollywood” propagated homogeneity of “Indian cinema” projected by organizations like the IIFA. Indian cinema doesn't need to be Bollywoodized any more than Mumbai cinema needs to be Hollywoodized.
Mumbai cinema can do the rest of India a favour, a big one at that. It can state at every available forum that "Bollywood" is not a representative of any complete image of Indian cinema, it is merely Mumbai cinema. Indian cinema minus Mumbai cinema has several very good identities, and they are all true and real, worth maintaining, no matter how small, as much as any of our languages. If we pride our unity in diversity, we should bloody well make sure we have our diversity intact in order to contribute to that unity.
India, as a culture, as a country, most certainly must resist being Bollywoodized.
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