News Headline- BCCI is by far the most powerful Cricket board in the world. A paradoxical one next to it says ‘IOC disqualifies Indian Olympics Committee’ and Indian Govt supports the ban. The soaring fortunes of Indian cricket are matched only by the disastrous ignominy of irrelevance that other international sports in India have faded into. I’ll not dedicate this article to my cricket bashing tendencies though.
Running the Indian republic is not a task for the faint hearted. There are a hundred things that have to go right for a pluralistic nation like ours with over a billion people, myriad cultures, dozens of languages and a sub-continental size, to sustain and survive. The overarching umbrella provided by the distinct ‘Indianness’ that has tempered our regional leanings, does come to our rescue in this loud, raucous yet a life replete with inaction and passivity. It was for this phlegmatic culture of 2-3% rate of growth that the nation experienced since Independence till 1990, was termed pejoratively as the Hindu rate of growth by the West.
When the slumbering elephant did shake itself up in the early 1990s, the world took note and reassessed its potential. The elephant since then has got lazier and more dissonant in its sense of purpose. But there exist some things that are going right to keep the Indian Elephant on its course to global significance despite the foibles of the ruling elite. Indian Films in my view occupy one of the slots.
Two things that India, a nation of over a billion, has surely got world beating potential are Cricket and Films. Such is the penetration of cinema as a medium in the Indian psyche that every other TV ad features a film personality, every famous product is sold by composition of a song in its praise, and being a film star is seen as epitome of success. It is therefore important for us to know what a soft power cinema constitutes and is capable of.
The global dominance of US owes it to its Military, Economy and soft power exuded by Hollywood. The pop culture perpetuated by TV shows based in US has shaped our psyche and our subconscious appreciation for all things Western, since childhood. The definition of success is conjured in our minds by the curry that producers of Sunset Boulevard fed us. We cheered for Rambo, when Russians were our allies. We were entertained by the fireworks that the American Tomahawks produced in the gulf war, knowing well we empathised with Saddam. ‘Wonder Years’ were pretty much a fantasy that every boy wanted to live. US won our hearts and we grudgingly submitted.
Hollywood has been the biggest asset that the US has produced as far as winning hearts is concerned. While subsidies, loans and aid packages keep the Governments happy, the masses are easily carried away by the popular medium. India has never practiced strict controls on foreign media unlike some other nations like china and therefore been open to influences from abroad. While this may sound creditable, I believe it’s more out of ignorance rather than a planned purposeful strategy that this resulted.
Cinema came early to India and we produced our 1st feature film not very long after Australia and US had done so. Over the years, Indian Filmmakers tried to bridge the technology gap with the west and kept us up to date with the entertainment. Graduation from silent cinema to Vocal, Black&White to Colour, and then projectors from 35mm to 70mm were the major landmarks. We are now in the digital age of Cinema.
The quality of pure joy a cinema lover experiences in a large screen theatre has changed over the last decade due to evolutionary improvements. The improvement in digital technology has made it possible to display movies in IMAX formats; the new high pixel content that has rendered redundant the class segregation of the old days viz, Balcony, Dress circle and Stall.
The next revolution to hit the theatres was the digitisation of film print. I remember those days in my school in 1990s, when on Saturday evenings we’d wait outside the school cinema theatre en masse, and look eagerly at the lonely road for the hourly bus from nearby town. For its arrival signalled the arrival of the Box of films. These films were then sequentially arranged and projected.
Digitisation has rendered all this redundant as now movies are stored in Hard drives and transmitted either physically or by internet to the theatres. Digital format has also increased the number of ‘prints’ that can be released and so cinema reaches the grade ‘A’ cities and otherwise simultaneously. This process has reduced the costs involved in making the prints as well making it a whole lot cheaper for the Industry.
In my younger days watching a film first day-first show was something only the very rich or the powerful could do, especially if it involved one of the so called superstars as the lead. There were talks of tickets in black, that sold for as high as Rs 1500/- (1998 rates) for a Rajnikant starrer. Thankfully those days are over and entertainment is more easily accessible. The first digitised film to arrive in India was a Malayalam film in 2006. Most multiplexes are digital now and theatres in smaller towns are in the process of converting the format, a procedure that involves installation of digital projector and a Server.
Digitisation has produced another parallel revolution in the world of television, where in the old CRT based TVs have been replaced with digital LED screens in the latest iteration. The screen sizes have also been altered to suit the 70mm films instead of the 35mm format that the CRT screens were ideal for. Television is evolving towards becoming a full-fledged computer in its own right. Pirated DVD rips are commonplace on the www they along with digitisation of the cable TV network is now fuelling the increasing TV sales. One can enjoy cinematic experience in the comfort at his own home using pirated downloads. DVD market akin to that in US has never caught up in India owing to poorer regulatory and policing norms.
India is globally the largest producer of feature films with an average of over 3 films released every day of 2012. It stands 6th in terms of the revenues generated. The top position in terms of revenues is with US followed by China at a distant 2nd. India however has the largest penetration of cinema and is reflected by the number of tickets sold. A special statistic in Indian context is the number of Cine stars who chose to pursue a career in politics and the number of fan clubs that exist in southern India. I suppose Arnold Schwarzenegger as the governor of California is an exception, who proves the rule.
The mushrooming of the multiplexes has evinced mixed feelings in me. While they have provided us with neat and clean surroundings, thus doing away with the seedy aura that the traditional cinema hall engendered, not all is hunky dory in these modern day megaliths. Multiplexes have increased the options one has in terms of range of cinema available, but also reduced the screen sizes in most cases, and driven us towards a culture of eating Western fast food. The INOX that I visit frisks people for eatables that they might smuggle in and doesn’t permit even water from outside. While drinking water is available inside for free, the rest of fare that’s on overpriced menu in the kiosks consists of hydrogenated pastries, trans-fat containing Burgers, inconsolably cold and tasteless samosas, sugar replete Cola and the likes. They do not allow one to leave the premises in the mandatory Interval (even if the length of the film doesn’t warrant it), lest they eat something outside.
So other than actually spelling out the word ‘torture’ they nudge you in every possible way to that feeling. Call it packaging or call it pressures of cost cutting. The timings printed on the ticket are not the actual time the film starts; it’s the time the screen is lit up. This follows about 10 minutes of boring advertisements about jewellery, jeans and INOX wind which is followed up by a Govt of India mandated harangue about ill effects of smoking and tobacco use. By this time, one is already at his wits end but to no avail. The films these days are made in multiple way financial tie-ups and hence we then encounter a long list of vote of thanks, media partner, radio partner, lengthy computer graphics of the production house almost making one regret the decision to have come to the theatre.
Hollywood despite its mammoth budgets, worldwide promotions and astronomical plots hasn’t been able to unseat the native film industry from number one slot despite no protectionist action by Govt of India unlike China which allows only ten foreign language films to be released in mainland China. The lengths to which the govt goes into not letting the mind of the people get ‘polluted’ can be gauged by the fact that the Jackie chan produced 2009 film, titled ‘Shinjuku Incident’, wasn’t released in China as it purportedly had lot of bloodshed. Having viewed the film, I can vouch that the real reason was that the film shows people of Japan in reasonably good light. Such is the tight control China exercises on Film media recognising it as a soft power. US Military on its part is known to have branches dealing with liaison with Hollywood and I suspect there might be some sort of financial support included to films that portray US Military in good light.
The Indian populace is largely uneducated, limitedly learned, and very malleable by the cinematic medium. Our film industries have been industrious over the years to entertain us with popular plots, naive simplicity and reinforcing stereotypes. Debates in recent times have pointedly blamed the Films and TV for having contributed to diminishing social status of women despite improving economic one. The irony of sugar coated misogynistic videos featuring a skimpy clad woman in a group of fifty burly men being allowed into bedrooms nationwide under the guise of an item number and another film dealing with social condition of a minority group being banned even from theatres makes an interesting point in the short sightedness of our sensor board.
While targeting the filmmaker is not a solution as film is in most part are merely a reflection of the society, a nationwide policy needs to be evolved with systemic reforms in dealing with the soft power of Films and television in order to use it as a tool for propitious nation building. Expecting this from politicians with life’s horizons extending 5 years into future might be a tall ask. As a viewer and admirer of cinema, I believe we can make a tiny little change by promoting good cinema and admonishing cheap ones.
