Jingoism & The Movies
Hullo Hullo Hullo. Been a while and well why I am writing on this?? Two reasons actually. One being that I was sent a “Gentle” reminder by the “OZ” (I know not what it is) that am going to be kicked out soon If I do not write and two was this is one topic that has sort of been discussed but not at length.
The definition of Jingoism as per Merriam Webster is
: Extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy
— jin•go•ist \-ist\ noun or adjective
— jin•go•is•tic \ËŒjiÅ‹-gÅ-ˈis-tik\ adjective
— jin•go•is•ti•cal•ly \-ti-k(É™-)lÄ“\ adverb
Well do we have this in the movies? Damn right we have it in India and like the US we have dollops of it in cinema and this is not like sometime but year on year there are various different versions of Jingoism in the movies. I will not talk about foreign policy like how it should be but rather how it gets demonstrated in Hindi Cinema by the quote below
Dhoodh Maango To Kheer Denge;
Kashmir Maango to Cheer Denge
These 2 lines sort of summarize the soul so as to say of some of the movies we have seen. The first name that comes in mind, when we talk of REALLY BAD JINGOISTIC movies are SUNNY DEOL. There was never a man who could SHOUT like him and I very much believe that there will never be one like him in the future also.
A lot of my friends and acquaintances know that I have a rather horrible problem of having to see a movie every week in the theater irrespective of how bad or good it is and this was one of the reasons I went to see Samir Karnik’s Heroes.
This movie had all the Khan brothers (oh yeah Arbaaz was not there) but the other 2 (Salmaan & Sohail) were there and this was a Patriotic version of Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya :-)
Now to this mess they also had added YES you guessed it Sunny Paji and Bobby Deol. The premise of the movie is excellent (a subject close to my heart.. Growing up and coming of age) but the script has been screwed, neutered, pillaged et al to suit the star’s needs and what we have is blatant Jingoism. 2 young boys are asked to deliver 3 letters from Martyred Soldiers to their families. I will at this point like to say that Preity Zinta’s acting in this movie was good but forget all that..The topic is Jingosim and by god we have so much of it you come out green in the face ready to hurl
Sunny Deol in this movie is a Squadron Leader who has lost his legs in the war and his brother his life. NO. Do not think that no Bobby and a physically challenged Sunny, what bad trouble can happen..Well you got to watch this move for his sense of patriotism, the fights in the bar, his love from his brother and of course for the Shouting…
Not to digress from the point, I just used Heroes as an example as this was released a month ago. So this has been a perennial problems that will simple not go away. This problem was very bad several years ago just after the Kargil war. Like bloody vultures a lot of the filmmakers across India took that war and made it their own and told stories that really make your stomach churn rather than tug your heart.
I am also writing this because I love my country. I know there are discussions where we are to state why country why a border and why not a world citizen. Well when I refer to a country here I refer to that piece of geography that gave me my basic identity, my toolkit, my thought and also my color. This is India for me and I love this nation, no 2 doubts about it. My dream was always to be part of the defense and had tried for NDA and also the IMA. I did not get in due to medical reasons and I still have a soft corner for the Armed Forces. This still does not make me want to believe the crap that our dear industry churns out in the form of patriotism.
Look at movies like LOC, Border, Maa Tujhe Saalam.. where is the pride..This is more Rabble Rousing..Wait…before you guys tell me that I have forgotten the greatest rabble rouser I have not and I consider GADAR to be the sort of bastion of bad jingoistic crap-o-rama that is dished out to the Indian populace.
Gadar had everything Bad and formulaic that could ever be seen in Jingo Crap movies. The bad Muslim and most important Pakistani father, the nice good Punjabi man who can remove a bore well from its moorings and beat the shit out of let;s say 200+ people and not get a scratch on him..you know why..Well of course he is Sunny Deol but also because he is a good INDIAN..What bull.
These movies all have a common thread. The worst are the ones with a war in between them There is a brave warrior who fights for his country, there is a minority candidate (forget all the different minority groups we have in India, it has to be a muslim) and he has to make a great long speech about how much he loves his country and then die in the movie. There has to be a sad song where we are shown hordes of bodies and then the families. Imagine if you had a soldier in your family and just imagine viewing this gunk.
It just has become a sham of a concept. Then there are these stylized movies which are patriotic and get worldwide appreciation like RDB. I did not understand RDB’s end and did not concur with the means they took up. I still do not know why the FUCK Shaman Joshi went ahead with them to die. He was not even involved in the plot. (Problem of taking a comedian in the beginning and not knowing how to handle him in the later half). This problem was there bang-on in Heroes also. The transformation was so quick, you could not help but laugh. The 2 spoilt brats suddenly developed a conscience and I did not buy it for one.
I might get some brick-bats for this but there is a similar transformation scene in Swades when Shah Rukh buys water from the boy and drinks it on the train. This is not the first but a final to a large buildup of scenes which show his slow transformation. In the real world we all do not behave like idiots and then feel transformed because of one incident. It takes time and coherence which sadly our films do not have.
So we get these instant fixes of jingoism and we all are supposed to walk out feeling great and warm about our country. I for one do not buy that….
A feeling of belonging comes from more philosophical and ethereal things rather than those highly demonstrated messages we see in films.
Now to those other films like say a Lakshya, Vijeta, Upkaar, TLOBS..what would be the answer? Do we need them or not? I for one would love to see such films that actually demonstrate some pride for your country as would a person of that time behave.
I use a quote to explain this – “One man’s Revolutionary is another Man’s Terrorist”. Bhaghat Singh was 23 when he died. He could not have at that young age adopted a moderate version of Gandhi’s ideas and would have leaned towards a more violent/extreme mode of attack. I understand that and like watching movies about him as long as they are not rabble rousers but a truer or at least near truth version of his life. Why? Well we need Heroes more than anything now. We have generations that seem to assume that we all were born to NEO of Matrix and some form of identity is required. Secondly we all go through a stage of self discovery as shown in Vijeta and to some extent in Lakshya that we can relate to. Also the armed forces needs people and that’s us. I know what if there is no war, then we will not need it..Till we reach Utopia we will have a military and we will need people…So We will need movies which demonstrate pride but not sad fervor which can kill the whole premise
Manoj Kumar had it to some extent in his early films but man after early 70’s he lost it and if you do not believe it, then watch Clerk where Ashok Kumar gets out of a heart attack as soon as he hears “Kadam Kadam Badayega” and actually starts a quasi march past dance to the song.. Fuck!ng hilarious
So we will always have these really bad jingoistic crap but I still feel we will need movies on pride and a sense of identity but then there is a fine balance and we need to ensure that is kept. If you cannot keep a fine balance and feel its going to be bad then just do not hire Sunny Deol and all will be well :-)
This is my rant on Jingoistic Crap and well comment on fellow travelers of the net :-)
Cheers & Good Night
Deepak
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
“I might get some brick-bats for this but there is a similar transformation scene in Swades when Shah Rukh buys water from the boy and drinks it on the train. *This is not the first but a final to a large buildup of scenes which show his slow transformation*.”
So are you saying it was good or unnatural and sudden?
I was referring to it as Good..The transformation here took time but it was good..My opinion of course
as far as the swades transformation is concerned, you said it yourself its not a single moment but a series of moments. . And the waterboy train scene is just a part of his epiphany. . .the character does not transform overnight he goes back to the states, decides to comeback but does not become a social worker. . He says he’ll continue to work in space research at the vikram sarabhai space centre. . Swades is anything but jingoistic and is the most honest potrayal of one man coming to terms with his own identity. .
I love Swades and had used it as an example of how good a plot transformation took place. So I agree with you Abhya on the characterization and am not sure if you got what I was trying to write. This is one of the few where the transformation is shown well and in other movies its quite quick and not well explained.
so why mention the brickbats et al? You thought people would curse you for praising swades? I might have misread
Deepak, Really nice post. Liked the post.
Especially SWADES & RDB’s SHARMAN incident! I never figured it out. Thanks! :D
What a coincidence!
I was watching ‘Gadar’ last night.
I saw it a while back. Forgotten most of it.
Only got up to the intermission. Yet to finish it.
Yes, Muslim father, bad guy etc.
But, equally the Sikhs are shown to be just as destructive.
20 Sikh guys tormenting a Muslim Amisha Patel, chasing her whilst she’s injured so that they can rape her, did NOT show them to be in such a great light.
Her Muslim father looks like a saint in comparison.
I’ve yet to finish it.
Let’s see…
The Sunny Deol thing I totally get!
It’s ridiculous!
Always emphasis on ‘punjab da putter, makki di rotti, sarson ka saag’ etc!
What saag does he eat??
I want some!
Even Popeye must feel left out!
I’m not even gonna go into the Great-script-murdered-on-celluloid ‘Heroes’!
Sunny had given some great performances in Arjun, Dacait, Ghayal, Damini, Ghatak which were not too loud, and totally understated. For eg in Damini, the scene when Meenakshi Seshadri first runs into him, he does not speak anything, but just glares at the goons chasing her. His eyes convey so much, that you are not surprised the goons ran away.
Sadly Gadar turned him into a caricature. Post success of Gadar, every one wanted him to scream out loud, thrash a 100 baddies, indulge in jingoistic rhetoric. I really wish for the Sunny Deol of pre Gaddar days.
In fact Gadar was good for quite some time, especially the Partition riot scenes, the scenes where Sunny shows his tender side, his love for Amisha, were really well done. But the minute Sunny goes to Pakistan, to get Amisha back, the movie goes totally downhill, and the climax was atrocious.
Swades was one of the best flicks in recent times. But people did not get its message. I had the misfortune of watching this in a theater with some of my office colleagues, and most of them were just making fun of the movies, the characters. And some were calling it a documentary. I felt sad, seeing the reception it got. It was a movie that deserved much more, and one of SRK’s best performances.
Pinjar was another really good movie, a very poignant look at Partition. The performances from Urmi, Sanjay Suri, Manoj Bajpayee, Sandali Sinha were just brilliant. The scenes between Urmi and Manoj were especially brilliant.
sunny deol was understated in damini? Lol. . Dont you remember tareekh pe tareekh
I agree with you Ratnakar that Sunny is not a bad actor at all.Its just that his choice of films(that too for a long time now!!!) has been terrible.I even liked his performance in Dillagi which was directed by him.Sunny-Rajkumar Santoshi combo was perhaps on of the best actor-director in hindi cinema.Its sad that they parted.Only thing Sunny needs now is good directors and for god’s sake no Guddu Dhanoa or Anil Sharma!!!!
sunnyD was fantastic in Border; well in control and never over the top. it all depends on how the director/writer creates the scene. he was atrocious in ‘jo bole so nihaal’ and ‘maa tujhe salaam’. it seemed more like the laziness of the writer/director who just wanted to cash-in on the jingoism bit, post Gadar.
Good write-up Deepak and completely agree with you:)
Swades was brilliant in its sincerity and simplicity of depictions. Absolutely loved the movie and the only one where SRK was jhel-able
Miss Sunny of pre-gadar days :(((
Liked Lakshya too for it no Pak-bashing sequences.
Yes, ‘Dillagi’ was alright actually.
I think someone should do a post on Sunny paaji now!
I guess all the loud stuff has washed away his earlier work.
‘Heroes’ was just….. Satya-naash man!
It’s all just plain ignorance ,common folk going to the multiplexes would like to believe that everything is hunky dory in every corner of India and the filmmakers dish out their imaginations to them ,that’s why we see happy soldiers ,happy people and the enemy is always some pakistani who is a glorified version of the villain from the past where everything was black and white ,no grey shades there….
Also I think that the government censorship is so tight that movies which dare to show the reality might never see the light of the day ,which is why movies on north-east insurgency and the problems affecting that region never get shown ,all kashmiris are always shown as patriotic Indians and what not….all this is bull.
Why so many movies on Indo-Pak war and not many on Indo-China war ,why ? because we made huge goof-ups there ?Infact 90% of the people whom I talk to don’t even know that India lost the 1962 War and has over 90,000 kmsq of Indian territory with them.
That’s our opium sedated Indian Junta for you.
I agree with you Ratnakar that sunny is very good actor but the only problem is that these days he is not getting right scripts and good directors. I think biggest problem of sunny is his association with guddu dhanoa.. His work in ghayal, ghatak, damini, arjun, dacait,yateem, border and even in gaddar before going to pakistan his performance was excellent. I use to big fan of sunny and even today i use to watch his every film, hoping that i may see old charm of sunny. I hope that sunny and rajkumar santoshi may come togather once again in future.
I lost all genuine enthusiasm for Sunny Papaji movies after Gadar. After that, he was the Incredible Hulk whom you don’t want to see angry cos he can take anyone out with Hand Pump!
Watch Indian to believe it. When he beats the crap out of Mukesh R, MR sees Chandrasekhar Azad in him. ROTFL Moment!
Main Indian hoon, Indian…yeah right. Same thing happens in Big Brother or Jo Bole…
I think his back injury kept him back from doing more roles but I wish he can do encore of Arjun or Ghayal.
Having said all this, nobody beats a man better on-screen than our very own Papaji.
A movie defines its own jingoism.
Damn!
U guys were right!
All of u…
I really wanted to challenge u lot on ‘Gadar’ as I liked the first half.
But just turned off the 2nd half.
Nah! Can’t sit through that at 2am!
They just went and murdered a pretty good film!
And who told Amisha Patel that she can act??!!