The Convenient Absence of Quality

Vinnaithandi Varuvaya, a film by Gautham Vasudev Menon, is being hailed as a work of "class" in The Hindu by an ostensibly reputed reviewer. Karan Johar's My Name is Khan received 5 out of 5 stars in the Times of India.

What stands out is that both are mediocre films but have been released in an ocean of trash, making the ordinary seem exaggeratedly noteworthy. Thankfully, some of us have reference points that are wider than the collection of movies infesting our A city theatres at this given time, we are exposed to better fare than the reviewers that reputed newspapers seem to be able to get these days, and we can continue to have our honest opinions about mediocrity that comes packed in glitz - from pictures to pizza, literature to music. We don't have to be fooled. But "we" are in the minority and getting smaller.

This is the age of the salesperson, the consummate professional who can lie through her teeth, in complete ignorance or in complete shamelessness, and make it sound like a million bucks. There is a whole generation of consumers out there who can't tell the difference, and even worse, don't want to make the effort to see the difference. All they know is trash. But they can tell glitzy trash from dull trash. The marketing machine is here to add glitz to anything we want to sell, so if you can afford the glitz, you can produce trash and absolutely hope to get away with it.

An extended vaccuum in quality can actually lower standards, push down expectations, and finally result in a worse quality of life. Reviewers can be bought by the dozen today, a few crores of money spent in bending opinions doesn't seem to be money badly spent. Every advantage is to be had commercially by dumbing us down, homogenizing our viewpoints, and reducing the average level of knowledge and questioning of what we see, hear and are willing to be sold. The number one sellable after sex is "Freedom"! As soon as we're ready to measure our freedom in what we can afford to buy, we are suckers by the million. And we're being had royally.

Look at the number of times AR Rahman has done something ostensibly "patriotic" and it is easy to see why some wise men have opined that patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels. Even a lousily rendered "Vande Mataram" cannot be questioned for quality, because it is about something that is supposedly above reproach - his patriotism! Holy cow, YOUR patriotism! It is just like our inability to tell a lousy singer in a temple to stop torturing our devotion with the snarling effort of religious hysteria. We don't have a smoking chance against the power of stupidity, noise, and overwhelming ignorance. Patriotism takes advantage of all of these. All reason can be drowned by anything patriotic, especially if it sounds like an iceberg humping a mountain full of tin boxes.

India is headed towards a quality oblivion, quite simply because we are becoming a culture of reducing effort. We want to strive less, ignore more and be blissfully happy. The traps are all here - we truly belong in our own illusion of a great country when we obey, and only when we obey the machine that tells us so. After all, when all of your friends tell you My Name is Khan is a great movie, isn't it just cool to go along? Maybe they are right! Of course, this line of thinking is easy when you know only as much as they do, and all of you collectively know very little anyway. Our mob mentality is geared perfectly for dumbing down. Win over a part of the mob, and the whole mob will be yours! This is how the British took over the whole country! In any case, we're proud to belong to the Indian mob waving the same flag that some other rather original people held aloft not that long ago.

Access to information has not translated to access to knowledge as far as India is concerned. Our youngsters live in a deluge of information, dished out by other youngsters working for mindless media outlets that man the stations sending out SMS messages, advertisements, promotions, and a whole host of hideous, tasteless, unchallenged overtures of nonsense, juvenile sexuality, and sheer lies. We are also sold this constant message that India is on the "march forward" and our young clowns need only hear that they are as good as any in the world! It is a turnout of gargantuan amounts of ignorance.

We have the USA to look up to, for any reference we need on the level of dumbing down we are happy to subscribe to. If something is good enough for the Americans, we're okay with reaching anywhere near that. Why else would Vinnaithandi Varuvaya have whites and blacks dancing together behind our hero? This is our director not wanting to be politically inferior to any American film maker, as if anybody would notice this fool's film in a world panorama! But still Gautham Menon wouldn't want to hurt Tarantino's feelings, would he?! This disease is so deep rooted, he wouldn't even know if it was pointed out to him.

Coming from the new age Indian upper middle class family is the bane of all originality - it is not encouraged at all. Parents who have "set up" their children for the future have no chance of producing any offspring that are capable of any truly original thought processes. Protection from all the insecurities of life can only lead to dead emotional intelligence. That is where most of our mediocre crap comes from. But then, that is where the reviewers of that crap come from as well - get a good school education, get a good college education, get a half decent hold of your English language presentation, and guess what!? YOU decide what everybody like you should be watching! The market is full of fools like you, so who can question your abject ignorance?! When we're adding forty million people to our middle class each year, and are being taken aim at as one of the most reliable "growth" markets, we are ripe for this sort of dumbing down.

We have enough arrogance to think this sheer game of numbers actually gives us a right to feel powerful in some way. We are, but we are not empowered. We're simply "available" to dumbing down and being sold stuff to. The easiest thing to sell to us is the absolute right to be lazy, in thought and action, or thought and inaction! Everything is justified since we have collectively registered some undeniable "progress" on some global scale. But how have we grown when we have managed to put agriculture out of whack as a self sustaining industry, but are happy that we can call Dominos Pizza any time of the week in any Indian city? Dominos isn't even the best pizza we can make for half the money we pay those monkeys, and the lunatics they hire to deliver their crap ride their bikes on the wrong side of the street! What investment would the franchise owner make in the quality of work they put in, as long as they can ring their numbers in. This is India for us. And we're proud of this?

It is HARD to build a quality country, so we're doing what we know very well - build a quantity country. It is all about quantity. From our population to the measure of accomplishment. 99% of the money we have made through software development for the computer industry is about slave labour - doing other people's grunge work. Our creative content industry is busy making copies of movies made by other film makers in other countries - and not high concept action films either, but family drama! This is supposed to be our strength, our family system and our values and what not., but we don't have one thing any more - sincerity! We don't have a quest for truth that is at the core of all art! We are liars and thieves and crooks in the world of art and we won't be coming out any time soon, especially in cinema.

The absence of quality is pronounced and upon us, but it is not going to go away anytime soon. No producer is going to bet his balls or his money on a film that asks us to be intelligent, sophisticated, or even remotely thoughtful. We all have no chance but to actively contribute to more dumbing down. After all, when stupidity is conveniently available to everyone and it can be sold and made money from, why shouldn't we celebrate the convenient absence of quality!?

Controversy's children

It was only a matter of time before it happened - Deepa Mehta and
Salman Rushdie coming together for the mother of all controversies
designed from scratch - a movie called "Midnight's Children".

Salman Rushdie didn't do the world of literature any great favour by
writing "The Satanic Verses", but the silly narrative gained a lot of
traction by courting the unmistakable ally of poor art - controversy!
It was no masterpiece, but it got plenty of publicity, by getting
banned, criticized, and by managing to get the author a fatwa from the
Islamic world!

Deepa Mehta made a lousy film called "Water". It should have been
called "Drain" for what it did to the viewers, but it picked up
plenty of controversy along the way, and it is really only poor art
that CAN pick up this kind of controversy, because people who react
quickly and take to the streets by perceiving an attack on their
culture aren't going to fall for sophisticated points of view that can
actually be thought provoking.

So, it is perfectly expectable that terribly overrated artists would
provide enough ammunition to start the next controversy, and please
don't be surprised that such controversy is easier to kick up in the
Muslim world either.

If you are a fairly neutral consumer of books, you will see no great
literary value in The Satanic Verses. So, the best way to sell the
book to you is to get you really curious through controversy. Deepa
Mehta is a perfect ally to Salman Rusdie now with Midnight's Children.
For an author who is reasonably good at best and a film maker who
can't tell a story to save her life, a venture of this nature was
inevitable.

Don't show them any sympathy, but know that a paucity of creativity
can be exploited and substituted by an abundance of controversy - as
far as the marketplace is concerned. It is one thing when a work of
art aims to debunk theories humanity has subscribed to, asks questions
that make us examine our convictions, and provides perspectives that
shock us out of our stupor - that is the power of art. The
controversies that follow such works are a fallout of the effort and
merely a part of the journey.

It is entirely another to NEED a controversy in order to bring some
sort of recognition to an effort at art. Those are the props true
artists should never have to have. Whether it is a Danish cartoonist
or a pretensive Indian painter, their expressions are not richer for
having controversy carry them to recognition. Know the difference!

Here is the prediction - clear as day. The moment this film goes on
the floor, and you bet it will do that in India - there will be a
protest against it. And from then on, Deepa Mehta will continue to
roll the dice exactly as terrible artists are prone to - focus on
everything except on her lousy film making ability. In Water, I still
remember with disdain the scene where the long yearning lovers finally
come together before their flight into the promise of the unknown -
the birds being released from the cage. And they came together like
two dead bodies, bereft of all emotion, and made me wonder what
unfeeling, soulless creature would create a mess like this!

The same creature is about to unleash another rotten stink upon the
world of cinema, and it is called Midnight's Children. She should not
be stopped, definitely not for any fear of her great art influencing
anybody's thought process or culture. She is nowehere near capable of
that. That dopey Salman Rushdie should not be stopped either, for he
is, just like her, a child of controversies, and nothing more.

And the Oscar goes to ... our heads?

At last it is official!

A R Rahman has won two Oscars! What a moment of joy!

Now, finally, there is every chance that we won't be inflicted with his overrated music as much as we have been. Has India been saved? I hope he gets abducted, seduced and entrapped by Hollywood studios and kept there for as long as he is alive.

So, a bunch of Indians got work on a British film. A foreign director came with a foreign script, and a foreign cameraman, shot something in India, and it made it to the Oscars - exactly like GANDHI. Great work cannot be slighted, so here is a hearty congratulations to the entire Slumdog Millionaire team! You are fantastic! For a little known film to climb so high is incredible and deserves more accolades than a film like Gandhi. So, let's all clap and cheer.

But let's not suddenly imagine that Indian cinema has come of age in some way. Completely the opposite, this is a left handed slap across the face of Mumbai cinema, which for the amount of money being spent there, hasn't produced one great film in a long, long time. The half decent films show up, but somewhere, in some way, Mumbai falls apart.

Now, on TV, it is being mentioned that India hasn't won an Oscar in 27 years! How many Indian films have we sent in to compete for the mainstream categories, in this period? NONE! Well, duh! More importantly, when did India start needing Oscars? We'd be more affected by Mumbai losing power for 27 minutes than not getting an Oscar for the next 27 years.

So, who the bloody hell cares? International acclaim! How can you not know the value of that? I can hear the screams already. So? Hitler was Time Magazine's "Man of the Year" and Mahatma Gandhi was never nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee is under scrutiny for accepting favours from potential winners, and we should know by now that the Miss World and Miss Universe affairs are total shams for selling shampoo to new markets. So, will I be dancing on the roof with an Oscar or eight for Slumdog Millionaire? Hardly.

We Indians are great slaves. We have proved it time and again. We do good work under capable masters, but terrible when left to ourselves. Look at any country where Indians have done well and it is clear that the collective is controlled by somebody else and we Indians willingly function to the best of our abilities under those conditions. We will gladly slave for somebody else but won't do our best for ourselves!

Slumdog Millionaire is exactly that - Indian slaves working hard for a British master. A R Rahman is by no means India's best music composer, definitely a copycat, and is left miles behind in the originality race by someone like Ilayaraja. Ilayaraja thankfully, will perhaps never vie for an Oscar. But what is true is that his music from Annakkili sounds great more than thirty years later, while Rahman hasn't done any work yet that can truly be termed "timeless" and indeed quite a bit that can be called "crap" (Example: Karuthamma).

Indians who don't know a rat's fart from music will now actually believe Rahman is among the best of Indian music composers - because the white masters have spoken! What was Indian about Rahman's Jay Ho show at the Oscars? This is the kind of pandering that we Indians should feel insulted by. If someone of true genius had got this Oscar, I'd be worried that he might leave our shores and we get to enjoy less of him. For Rahman, I have nothing but hearty congratulations!

What I'm trying to understand is this - the whole of last year, I haven't seen very many Indian films worth the hundred rupees I paid to get in. This year hasn't started off very well either. Now I see a British producer and a British director come in with a script written by Simon Beaufoy (could this be a Tamil name?), albeit an adaptation of a book written by Vikas Swarup, make a film called Slumdog Millionaire, and it wins Oscars and we're celebrating this as an Indian win of some kind? Even the slumdog kid himself is "Indian" only in ethnicity! What is wrong with this picture?

Let's celebrate good cinema, and Slumdog Millionaire is definitely good cinema, but the part that Indian cinema played in the creative process that created this motion picture is not by any means big enough for us to take credit for as Indians.

The last "Indian" film I remember that was nominated for a mainstream Oscar was Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay, which also was set in the slums and in Mumbai. So, it behoves us to maintain our slums years exactly as they are till atleast 2036? Jai Ho Indian cinema! Who wants to be a millionaire when you can be a slumdog and be so happy!?

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.

Money Back Movies

Do you remember the last time you went to a movie and felt thoroughly disgruntled within no time, but somehow grit your teeth and took it quietly? Seriously, does it have to be like this?

So, what is it with movies, that you lose money by taking a risk, while you have no minimum guarantee of satisfaction with what you paid for? After all you're the paying customer and the movie is the product you are buying, so if you are not satisfied with the value you are getting for your money, you should be entitled to a refund, right?

There is only one stupid impediment to this simple logic being carried to the just and fair next step of implementation. You can REturn a coconut that was rotten on the inside. You can REturn a stereo that doesn't work, but you cannot UNexperience a movie, and more often than not, you cannot prove in measurable ways, beyond doubt, that you didn't quite get what you were promised. So, "no contract"! It is the "nature of the business" gleeful producers will tell you.

However, if you didn't already know about this, you can actually walk out of a movie theatre before the intermission and get a full refund of the ticket. This is a right that not many people obviously exercise. It is a simple procedure that should be encouraged to the maximum.

When the moneybags hurt is when we will get better cinema. Up until now, the first week's movie goers are the ones taking the hit, taking the risk of being subjected to the damage our films can inflict upon our senses, our sensibilities, and upon our minds. The insult of watching a "typical" Mumbai movie is far too intense to be ignored. And yet, a lot of people are brave enough, and compassionate enough to our film producers and film makers to make a beeline to the box office.

Is there a single producer out there who can put a simple "Money Back Guarantee" on his product? I bet you not. But just because it is not the norm doesn't mean this nonsense has to continue, where the paying public pays in full before they know what they are getting into.

If you are at an art exhibition, you can definitely experience the beauty or the ugliness of every piece of painting or sculpture before you want to cough up the money to own it. Now, cinema cannot be exclusively owned like other pieces of art, but then moviegoers are not interested in exclusive torture either!

If you bought a medicine for headache and it gave you a bad stomach as a side effect, you can sue the pharmaceutical company for not warning you. And the warning better be on the product wrapper, right where the consumer can see it. How often have you and I been to a movie hall, where a Statutory Warning greeted us with - "This movie makes no claim of great entertainment value. Audiences are warned that boredom, disappointment, and in some cases, watching this movie may result in undesirable physical consequences like nausea and headache" or atleast a really humble, "Amateur cinema. Patrons are warned not to expect cinematic greatness"?

In some cases, especially in movies with big stars involved, the promos are abject LIES, and there is absolutely nobody to question the validity of some of those outrageous claims of good art. Ah, art! Now that is a big illusion to hide behind, isn't it? Yes, as long as your art doesn't need my money for its survival.

All it takes is a few hundred people demanding their money back from movie halls, and the ripple effect will hit where it matters - at the pockets of producers who don't know a rat's arse about cinema, and at the careers of pretenders who call themselves film makers! After all, it isn't as if an enormously successful movie and huge profits encourage producers to give discounts to audiences that come in for second viewings. So, let us as consumers punish a lousy product no matter what industry it comes from.

We would create a whole new generation of films that advertise a "money back policy", and we would be treated to a minimum of effort in understanding that we, the audiences, don't appreciate being treated like cattle, when we pay AND give our time to something that is supposed to be fun.

India deserves this, our cinema begs for this, and in all fairness, we deserve to keep our money intact until a good movie shows up.