The curse of the uncreative

The argument, needless like most, comes up every now and then - Is
creativity an exalted kingdom very few people can be in? Or can it be
taught? We Indians are often anxious about what we are capable of,
and usually fancy ourselves more than we are really capable of. For
most part, India isn't a very creative country. It isn't known for
producing creative people, and we do everything possible to maintain
that proud tradition. We're not talking about the arts or cinema,
design of public spaces or architectural grandeur. We're talking
about how hard we find it to simply avoid clutter. The lazy amongst
us will call it Kitsch, but this isn't that. It is our u n c r e a t i v i t y.

Our children grow up under an attack of noise, messages, morals,
information, rules, and competition. How can we expect them to get
creative with anything, when they don't have space even to breathe and
perceive anything for themselves? Look at the hoardings vying for
space just outside the Cantonment Railway station in Bangalore. In
the thirty seconds or less that anybody spends there, about twenty
nine are going to be spent looking for an autorickshaw or taxi. Right
there - no less than thirty five hoardings clogging all visual space!
Maybe we think it is better to have noise than have nothing at all.

For some reason, we seem to mistake "cute" for "creative". Little
children dancing, flying kites, and singing - "Always, G for H,
Goldwinner for health!" -to advertise the goodness of gingely oil from
Kaaleeswari? What's the logic here? We like children, so we'll throw
a few kids' faces on the screen. Then we'll have them jump around to
show how healthy they are and how much fun they are having. Then we
will show a packet of Gold Winner Gingely oil, so people will run out
and buy this shit so that their children can be like these kids on TV?
A kid recommending a bar of chocolate, sure, but how retarded do we
have to be to listen to a kid telling us about cooking oil? Sorry,
that's not creative. It gets downright ugly when Pothy's tries to
sell clothes with kids doing weird things, while we're attacked by the
words - Jackson! Attack! Betty! Repeat! - Pothys! What the fuck!

It isn't doing something "different" either that defines creativity.
Here is a "different" approach gone horribly wrong, on this TV program
called "Life's Like That".

Why are there people sitting at those
tables in the background? Is there any motivation for that? And why
do we have this horribly uncreative shot where one of those background
fools, (on a long lens, with the same screen size as the subject), is
looking straight into the camera?

This isn't just distracting, and for heavens sake, this is not style. It is rank unprofessionalism in
a profession that demands some basic understanding of craft if not
outright creativity. This has to be one more manifestation of the
distinctly Indian u n c r e a t i v e.

Creativity finds solutions, often to mediocrity. That's the reason we
hate creativity! It demands that we move away from our rank
mediocrity in everything we do as India. We are a bungling, fumbling,
confused, overrated, underworked and noisy collective that can't get
its shit together in anything we do collectively. That is why we have
a disconnect between ambition and achievement. It wouldn't hurt to
wonder why there isn't much clutter around the greatest cities in the
world - the ones that people flock to see once in their lives. It
wouldn't hurt to humbly submit that we don't have a clue what we are
doing when we are required to use our imagination.

We have been brainwashed to serve well as slaves. From our education
system where students and institutions and employers bow to marks, to
our political system where everyone bows to the Neta or to money, we
have lost it. And we're not going to turn this around, either. It is
torture, to be living amongst millions of uncreative souls, who do
nothing interesting. It is a curse, and some of us will be lucky to
escape from it.

When a Xylo ad. shows up in the middle of an MGR film on KTV, where
his character espouses the greatness of our culture, model Indian
female behaviour and all the pretentious nonsense of our "culture",
how many people would rush out to buy a Xylo after seeing one very gay
looking metrosexual male hanging out with four designer models inside
one, asking us to have "the time of our lives"? All this on a very
Tamil channel called KTV, being watched by traditional Tamil women?
Please. Someone needs to have their head examined for blowing
Mahindra's advertising budget like this.

Creativity is about learning things from various disciplines, using
knowledge from various sources, and knowing how to apply all of this
towards a cohesive solution. We've seen how bad Doordarshan's
coverage of cricket matches was, and how Channel 9 showed us it should
be done. This has nothing to do with budgets and number of cameras
either. DD is still pathetic because it still doesn't have staff
members that know WTF the art of live sports coverage is about!

The very fact that some people believe they can learn to be creative
means they are too late. Truthfully, it doesn't matter. If you
aren't creative, you don't have to find a job that requires
creativity. No need to worry, for the work that gets outsourced to
India is never likely to ask for our creativity. Isn't that what it
all comes down to?

Sadly, and quite clearly, it appears you CAN find a job that requires
creativity while you can still supply none! A lack of athletic
ability can measurably set you back in the world of sports, and in
plain sight it is not hard to see we don't have a Michael Jordan in
India. Lack of creativity also sets you way back as a productive
community. Creativity is not just about beauty. It is about elegance
and efficiency. It is about implementation that works, communication
that is clear, and an experience that is interesting and never
confusing. It is about a mindset that tries a few different ways of
doing things, with clear motivations for each. It is an attitude, and
it demands clarity in the collective.

Stupid ads and outright lies!

"Thousands of pixels being chased by festive looking dancers. When they are about to catch up, the marauding pixels fly into a giant screen and arrange themselves to make the colourful face of a Kathakali dancer who makes facial gestures on the giant screen" - the brief for the Sony Bravia commercial couldn't have been very different from this yawn inducing, uninspiring idea meltdown. I hardly have a question about the uncreative nonsense that Indian ad. agencies almost always come up with. But if the brilliant colour of the Bravia TV is clearly visible on my existing TV, why would I want to buy the Bravia?

The latest ad for Timesjobs.com on television tells you you will find a better paying job on their site, and then goes on to explain in great detail, on the same site, how they are not responsible for anything in an "as is" presentation of information! http://www.timesjobs.com/popuphtml/Terms.htm#link14 In other words, there is absolutely no effort put forward by Timesjobs.com to ensure the jobs there are indeed the better paying jobs. Stretch that a little, and you will easily infer you could get the lowest paying job and Timesjobs.com will still not be responsible for their own advertisement in any way. How can a service that shouts - "Because you are worth more" completely absolve itself of that claim, after "better paying job" is the the only reason for you to consider their service? Absolutely nefarious.

This advertisement sells you an alternative to an employment agency, without any of the responsibilities you would come to expect. It is just a cheap reference, where the attempt is to cut out the percentage commissions of the employment agency and nothing more. Therefore it is an outright lie that you will find "better paying jobs" there. With subjective claims like "The tastiest Sambar in the world", you can let it go, but when there is something measurable like a person's salary, how can the media planners of Timesjobs.com be so stupid and assuming of people who end up visiting their site? Clearly they can, and I hope the recession causes some of these fools to be kicked out.

By now, even if you are a fairly occasional TV watcher, you must have seen the enormous disclaimers at the end of some ads. that flash for about a second, which nobody in the world can read, for two reasons - the print is too small, and there is just too much to read in one second. So, what is the point of showing the disclaimer at all, especially when everyone in their right mind should know the disclaimer is for dissing all claims made so far by the advertisement that a normal person can understand and trust.

Communication, the very point of advertising, is sometimes lost on me. Especially with car advertisements where the car flies through the air, skids all over the road, spins, and just about manages to find a grip of safety before vanishing into the horizon. I would think a car that throws itself about so easily would be the most unsafe thing to buy and the most unsound investment. Especially if the car is tiny like a Swift, I'd go all out singing its praise on how roomy it is and how solid on the road it can be. If it is all over the place, I kind of begin to feel it is flimsy and untrustworthy. Am I the only one who has this problem?

The ridiculous advertisement also has its place somewhere, except when you begin to wonder why a motorcyclist would hire a helicopter to throw him from several hundred feet high onto the top of a building. Motorcycles are not aircraft, and if you landed on the top of a building in one, and survived the fall, you'd pretty much have nowhere to go. Now if the building itself was your destination, what do you need the motorcycle for? Stupidity at its bleeding worst.

Then comes the sexuality crutch. Why would you think of sex when you are drinking a bottle of Slice, for heavens' sake? Aamsutra, my flaming arse! When I am thirsty I might reach for some Slice, and if I love mangoes, great! But sex is not something I associate with a fruit drink, no matter how much Katrina Kaif seems to be turned on by the thought of humping a mango or a Slice drinker. Jittu Krishnamurthy was right when he said, "In lieu of creativity there is sexuality". Most of the time, sexuality is what seems to be easily on tap for most of our ad. makers, and they don't even bat an eyelid about what the product is! If the fools working in advertising agencies are so bereft of ideas, why don't they just quit? Maybe we should make a Kaam Sutra ad. for them to get the hint? "Make way, not ads."

The attempt at the abstract - this is the genre that gets me really laughing. Like the ad. for the Tata Safari Dicor, that starts of about "lines", and how you can make your own "lines" with the ugly beast called the Tata Safari! What an idea, Sirji! How many customers actually think about buying a car as the same as buying a paintbrush to make lines with?! If I wanted to make lines, I'd find a thousand different ways without having to buy an SUV. Give me a f$#@%ing break. The abstract should be left to geniuses who can present some weird connection in a sane way, not to half drunk dopey eyed wanna be rebels turned washout creatives.

There aren't that many professions in which anything goes! Most of our India centric ads. are all about filling up the airwaves with noise. Speaking of noise, why does the volume jump up as soon as it is time for an advertisement? Right in the middle of a cricket match, which itself is fairly well controlled in terms of noise during a broadcast, the ad. will just blare its way into your life. My hand is invariably on the Mute button as soon as it is time for a commercial. So, I get to watch most ads. without sound anyway. No TRP machine will report this fact, and some advertiser somewhere is losing money and not getting value!

"See what happens when a CD begins to dream"??? Since when did inanimate objects start dreaming and we found out what they dreamt about? This offering is from Moser Baer, with ugly black wires morphing out of nowhere and hitting the roof, the floor, the model's hands, and what not, before becoming all kinds of electronic goods - simply unimaginative, uncommunicative rubbish presented with the finesse of a snake devouring a rat. I wonder how this gets past the brainstorming stage - assuming there are actually coherent stages to the process of unleashing a commercial on unsuspecting masses. Scarily, this commercial is a computer graphics lift from a science fiction movie. Maybe that is why we are asked to imagine what happens when a CD begin to dream? I'd like to see what miracles happen when our ad executives begin to think.

The Axe deodorant commercials seemed to be rather well put together until they came up with the latest one with the chocolate flavoured temptations. Apparently, only women fall for the smell of chocolate and will stick themselves to glass in pure longing, even when they cannot smell the spray! How retarded can things get? If a deodorant smelt anything like chocolate or reminded me of something to eat, I'd be completely turned off. Watch this product vanish off the shelves for being absolutely idiotic in conception, ad or no ad.

The stupid, stressed out woman who thinks her husband is dead when she finds him snoozing and is shocked when he wakes up, leads me to think she was hoping he was dead! After all, presumably, she would be the beneficiary of her husband's life insurance policy! Knowing fully well that "Life Insurance" is actually "Death Insurance", they don't really have to tell us how happy we can be just because we bought insurance, do they? I mean seriously, what the heck do we care once we are dead? Sure it must be the hardest thing to sell, but in all seriousness, if you needed Kal Par Control (whatever the crap this means, especially to those of us who cannot read English and end up understanding in Hindi), you'd work to make more money today, not spend a little more on an insurance plan! Moreover, if there is another company selling the same thing, telling you to let tomorrow lie and just enjoy today, what are you supposed to do? Very confusing, and might be better if someone would just tell us, "Look, someone is going to need this money if you croak". After all, how many of us are fooled by insurance ads anyway?

Now we have the very stylish PSAs, like "Save the girl child" that comes to us in the middle of a cricket match on Ten Sports. Hello? It isn't as if we are all about killing the girl child, and it certainly isn't those of us who understands English and can see the point of a poignant message that needs the message. So, what is the point of this PSA as opposed to the crude ones made by the same ministries? The direct ones in Hindi, that treat the viewer like a stupid villager are actually much more effective in communicating the point. Check out the one where the girl child in the womb talks to her father through a stethescope! Then there is the really thought provoking one that asks us to imagine a world without women. I thought about it, honestly and deeply, and really came to this - I'd definitely hate seeing fewer women around, but... Wow, wouldn't that be a good way to control human population?

Remember the Intex commercial, extolling the virtues of their speakers, especially the drop of the pin you can hear clearly while the older gentleman is clearing his ears? Well, if I can hear it on my existing set of speakers, I sure don't have any reason to buy Intex, do I? Am I the only one thinking out loud on this really base level of stupidity exhibited by fools who are paid to precisely not do this kind of work?

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.