The Wrong Cinema

Perhaps a common man is preordained with paucity of originality and the grit to lead. Hence is why, history is congested with atrocious leaders and preachers of platitudes. An obsequious ordinary man, confounded over his own style statement, follows the celebrities; He tries spikes because his favorite star did so, smokes/drinks because the brave brat in his favorite movie tried so and sometimes observes passions like singing/dancing purely because by doing so a hero in a particular movie managed to bag a sexy mate; perplexed or perhaps ignorant of his original mandate, blindly asserts views expressed in widespread media as his own.

Precisely speaking, a common man is deaf and dumb when it comes to possessing proto voice of concern. Since eternal times, leaders and preachers have utilized this as a tool to propagate their self interests. Any thing that is common amongst the commoners inspires them to behave over issues they are oblivious of and if that common thing is pumped with strategy, it can go a long way in controlling the thoughts of masses. Cinema is one such thing and Bollywood in particular has warped the way we live over the past decades

Personally, I consider Bollywood as another piece of shit, responsible for almost all the bad things that are happening around us. I would be dealing with how the wrong cinema changed our emotional sanctity and behavior which should have otherwise been original

The hard truth is that there is nothing inventive in Bollywood cinema. Post Independence, when there was an opportunity to rise from the ashes, it created blunders instead. Starting with the predilection for west, western concept of love marriages is the predominated theme of almost 99% movie garbage that our Bollywood produces. Arranged marriages were made to believe to be an orthodox Indian practice and lovers were depicted as real heroes. Indian parenting saw an all time low in the movies per se when parents were almost always prevaricated as the enemies of the young buds.

Similarly, a swimsuit wearing actress was supposedly more modern and a Saree clad woman was typecast as Sati Savitri. English speaking hero is progressive and pure Hindi is, still, spoken in comedy scenes only; where we proud Indians mock our own culture. Childhood version of the actor or the son of the actor always went to a convent school where the Christian father had a larger than Buddha image. Raheem kaka and D’souza aunty are always religious and humble together, while a pundit is always dhongi and greedy. This all has been typecast to such an extent that even the truth that - Christian missionaries are involved heavily in conversions and be it a Mullah or a pundit, anyone can have any type of character, seems to be camouflaged by these images in a common man’s mind.

Larger than life depiction of sentiments and anticipations has made us emotionally and enthusiastically numb. It is sort of a crime when you show false dreams to a poor man about snowy Switzerland wherein his love interests dances in shiffon Sarees, larger than Buckingham palace like houses and the stories of those who live in them, black-belt actor who manages to tackle 20 goons at a time and a young child who goes against the system and finally seeks justice by killing the villain who raped his sister/killed his father. Rather than showing simple real stories of a down to earth protagonist, our Bollywood movies were just making protracted exaggerations. All Indian women are largely progressive but Bollywood is mainly responsible for typecasting them as pati-parmeshwar-dependent-sati-savitri. Movies like “Water” highlight issues which were existent only for a small period of time but project them as key features of Indian Culture.

Someone might ask, public is mature enough to look behind the scenes. I would say a big NO. We all look for inspirations around and in the absence of a purified ambience and responsible parenting, which is generally the case, we look for ideals in celebrities. So even if being scantily dressed is considered obscene even today, we look upon Mallika as an ideal and are eager to meet her at some point of life.

When I was a child and had limited toys and little chocolates to boast of and when I saw movies where the actor used to fill an entire room with toys for his yet to be born ward, I often used to think that my parents don’t love me. As I became mature, I realized that my parents loved me enormously in their own simple ways. Nonetheless, a larger than life image ruined my childhood predomination. Similar is the thinking of a girl when she sees the actor singing senti songs at Rakshabandhan for her sister and expects nothing less from her brother. This happens and it’s natural. Problem is the way in which we present the cinema. Incessant emotional overdose makes Bollywood movies clumsy, and hence despite the reality that an average Indian man is shy in expressing his love, Bollywood makes songs where a son sings in praise of her mother, a husband sings an emotional shayari for his wife. This all stokes expectations of the counterpart and the frustration of the protagonist. At some point we all were clouded with the thinking that we are not able to live the right relation forgetting the spirit of uniqueness the God has endowed in each and every individual

Cinema-making is an art and upon watching Hollywood movies, one can sense it. Mention of realistic and motivating classics that came up occasionally and exceptionally in Bollywood has been deliberately avoided

The Crap That is Bollywood

The worst, horrendously lethal lie that I have ever come across in my life is “our movies reflect the Indian society”, as claimed by heaps of bollywood directors. Quite shamelessly they have been declaring so since decades and still continue to do so. Here I would be averring that this so called bollywood is nothing more than a crap meant to fool the Indian public and has nothing indigenous or original in it

The lack of originality starts with the name itself. The term bollywood is a copied version of Hollywood. Since ages this name was very fondly used till bollywood spread its business overseas. Bollywood personalities were mocked at the copied name and hence the new generation started calling it ‘The Hindi film industry’. But the amount of Hindi that is spoken in any award function would seriously compel you to consider the feasibility of this name. Very few actors in bollywood have a Hindi background nowadays and they are often found jibing classical Hindi and taking pride in inserting English words/phrases in their dialogues, songs and what not.

Now coming to the basic question - do our movies really reflect our society in general? Innumerable examples may be quoted. Let’s start with the basic composition of any bollywood movie – family and relations. Hot issues like rape, premarital sex, abortion etc have been dealt with such havoc in bollywood that every Indian learns this adult things right in childhood. I can bet many of us haven’t come across any such incident in reality and only face embarrassment while watching these so called family movies with family. Almost every movie in 70s’ depicted rapes under the pretext that we are showing what is happening in the society, but they only helped causing more rapes in the society. Shame on such movies and movie industry.

Most of the family movies sound more like an overdose of emotions and the irony is that the role of sati savitri is given to the most famous who** , meaning to say that actors are considered more for their face value and less for their fitness in the role. That is why you will find the great over actors like Sharukh Khan as King Khan in this great bollywood and actors like Irfan Khan, Nana Patekar, Om puri doing monotonous roles. Even good actor like Ajay devgan is rarely considered for some Yashraj banner pure romantic movie, since he is not chocolaty and wheatish people seldom love!!!

The only thing that they cannot show is some western trend of nudity or incestuous relationship due to society constraints Not astonishingly, even these have been attempted but could not create a success brigade as they got financially crippled. But thanks to Bhatt camp, one can find them again in our movies under the pretext of modern society/ young trends and other such bullshit. What about this one – even actor as old as Dilip Kumar has acted in a movie on wife swapping which is a completely borrowed subject. Hmmm, bollywood has been copying and presenting damn anything right from start.

To Be continued.........

( A very typical scenario found in every bollywood movie is the one in which young children of main lead actor or the childhood version of main lead actor is always shown being educated in some convent school under the aegis of a holy father. This scene manifests two blind assumptions at a time. Firstly, all missionaries give comparatively good character education and secondly, all aspiring youths go for English medium convents rather than some sort of Hindi medium vidya mandir. At this place, I would like that all readers should themselves probe into these blind, far away from reality depictions. One can take help of my previous posts to find out the truth behind mission of holy missionaries. So one can see how clearly our directors have been brain washing our minds to believe that whatsoever comes from west is better, no wonders why the middle class takes pride in mentioning their convent related background. Angrez chale gaye par apne kutte yahin chhod gaye. )