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Nobody wants to read what you write, so make it easy for them.

Bollywood films suck. In other news, the sun is a yellow ball of fire.

For people who like going to the movies, Bollywood films are mostly boring and kitschy. For most of the western world, kitsch is all that is Bollywood. People IN Bollywood mistake this “so disgustingly bad its good” attraction towards Bollywood for serious approval of their ouevre as a film industry. Every article written about it has to mention the amazing strides Bollywood has made in the new century, like the retard at the special olympics who gets cheered for being the last to cross the finish line. Wanting praise for doing your fucking homework is a sign of a serious need for attention. Getting it is an obvious sign that you’re on a sinking boat full of back-patting retards.

Still, its a moneymaking industry that gets by. There’s no one else for the people to turn to. The DVD market has already been cornered. Store owners are afraid of stocking real films, and those that do charge backbreaking prices for it. When an attack of sheer numbers (900 in a year) fails, censorship prevails. Store owners and distributors are afraid of showing western films, either on religious or obscenity grounds. The diluted product that results from the censorship of films, both domestic and foreign, ensures that the public will never be weaned from their addiction to the cyclical song and dance routine. Of course, the same films also get the widest releases possible. The public may demand paisa vasool, and it may demand time-pass. Nevertheless, the public eventually grew wary. So the old whore put on new make-up, went vilayati, and got plastic surgery.

Remember that scene from the Silence of the Lambs? Goodbye horses? “Would you fuck me? I’d fuck me. I’d fuck me hard.”
Now the demanding public, with their growing dvd collections of kurosawa, spielberg, coppola, tarantino and fincher, got realism. Bollywood veered away from the fantastic, and focused on the dramatic, emulating all the great arthouse films, television soap operas and music videos that dared to take away their audience. An expatriate demographic, tired of recycled storylines and “third class films (the kind rickshaw-wallahs watch)” forced Bollywood into a corner. The corny, masala film got a spit-shine, repackaged as family drama. They even took out all the action and spent all their stuntman insurance on million dollar sets and costumes. The masala action film, reviled and ridiculed for years, now got a second life as the shining example of what not to put in a film i.e. cutting a bullet in half with a switchblade. The cultured, urban masses could enjoy a film that properly reflected their lives, without every worrying about escapist bullshit like jumping from a 20 storey building. Real, hardcore, edgy films, about their relationships with their friends, fuck-buddies and families, and what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting real. Glamorously real, that is.

Heyyy…Watching films is a fun activity. Don’t get so serious yaar.
“Fun, like sex, can persuade you of something that wouldn’t otherwise stand on its own merits.”

What is it with the engineers and doctors and lawyers that fill up our demographic charts, that they can’t even fathom a simple movie plot? Why does everything have to be so fucking easy, or fun, or time-pass when it comes to watching a movie.

If you can’t understand the intricacy of a film plot, just give up. Go to your garage, turn on your car, and just give up living.

And please, please please please, in the name of science, keep your disgust to yourself. That I-can-do-better-than-him attitude is ruining it for the rest of us, and provided us with cinematic gems like these.

The tragedy of versimilitude
Modern fantasy has drained the myth and the beauty, and replaced it with EMO characters, who sole motivation for crying is to gain audience sympathy, who linger in navel-gazing self pity, all in a desperate attempt to pander to some esoteric demographic. Realism is applied liberally where needed i.e. meaty backstories that redeem every character, my-daddy-fucked-me-so-i’m-evil-but-i’ll-be-your-friend-in-the-end and so on. Thus, the vilayati babu (extolling the wonders of america, while he rapes his own country) and the angry young man who would rend the world in half for the injustice done to him became the protector of Indian values. You can track the change to one single movie: Pardes. The cigarette smoking, alcohol swilling Shahrukh Khan becomes Arjun, hero-incarnate, who must protect Ganga from the dark-colored Rajiv. Rajiv is the last of his kind, the demonic, rapist NRI. Why, he even likes to bite. An entirely satisfactory movie, for the entire family. The elders rapidly nod in succession when Arjun saves the day and Ganga saves her virginity and behaves like a “proper indian girl”. They make that clicking sound with their tongues…tch tch tch…if only Rajiv’s parents had taken him to the temple more often. Humanism is replaced by middle class sentimentality, and nostalgia filled with ignorance.

Stories about real people, that tackle real situations like blindness, battered women, old age or extramarital affairs. Such self masturbatory, self serving and misanthropic plotlines can also be found any time of the day on the oxygen or lifetime channels. No questions asked, and none answered.

“Why try to play Mozart when it’s easier to play Rodgers and Hammerstein?”
Of course, today’s films are almost nothing like this. Modern bollywood (circa 2004-present) is “casual, cooler and hipper” according to the posterboy of “glamorous realism”: Karan Johar. In some of these films, people actually go on dates, and some even have extramarital affairs. The bad boys and girls, the heros of this raised standard of filmmaking are revolutionary, crazy and off da hook. By the film’s end, the crips and bloods all put their guns down, and act like the conventional, boring, behaved and obedient sheep they are. Their NRI parents sigh and long for the days of yore when everyone had arranged marriages and walked 10 miles to school everyday. They want their own progeny to behave like the successful heirs of the fucked up, repressed and victorian society they themselves escaped from in their youth. Our sons and daughters will show all those third class indians back home how we in the western world are able to retain our sense of cul-churral identity. We couldn’t raise you in India, on account of it being a dirty, filthy, corrupt country, but at least we were able to assuage our own self-loathing and self-guilt that we never cared for the damn country in the first place. Now get out there and spread the message. India shining baby.

These films purportedly answer questions that are relevant to society, and break taboos, making things like blindness, mental retardation and extramarital affairs acceptable in a country where these things don’t really happen that often. It is deemed necessary to surround such issues with “glamour” and song and dance, making it digestible for indian people. Let’s tell everyone else how to live their lives (”remember kids! get acceptance from an elder before you fuck your neighbor’s wife”) but let’s not apply the same standards to us. The gaurdians of society can’t be bothered to live like everyone else. That’s the perks we get for the tips on how to deal with corruption (”go shoot a politician kids! You’ll be out of jail in a 30 second montage”).

Bollywood: social and political problems solved in 2.5 hours or more. No refunds on wasted time or hours shaved off of your life.
The only lesson learned is to disregard any genuine message, clouded behind a veil of music and color, and by association, dismiss the real world problem as well. They don’t mean anything, other than meaningless red herrings. Evade all consequence of your actions, and constantly get yourself off the hook with a well placed backstory. We didn’t start the fire. Religious riots, not our fault. Poverty, not our concern. Honesty, not our policy. Its the public’s fault the movie flopped. The script wasn’t good. The marketing department is a bunch of shitheads. The star making the cameo gave a bad performance. We’ve always followed the rules, so the mistake isn’t from our side. We, the public, have always accepted the moral boundaries imposed by society, and will go on doing so. Keep yourselves and your kids in this bubble, and blanket their eyes with black cloths, lest they see what a real woman looks like. Stifle anyone with a real opinion, and put the stamp of obscenity over their faces. Protect your country, protect your state, protect your town your tribe and your family from dangers of the real world with unfettered ignorance. No individual is above the state, except those who run it.

Be different, but only in the way we tell you. Make revolutionary films, but ensure that they don’t contain any unpatriotic sentiments or obscenity. By the way, let THE MAN decide what is obscene.

Love, emptied of sex. Vengeance, void of merit. Obscurity, played for depth. Thank you. I feel so much safer now.

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