Politically Correct Untruth : Mere Pass Maa Hain
iView Author: RAM V (Banglore, India)
Email: With Held
Content : Politically Correct Untruth : Mere Pass Maa Hain
Sex is Taboo
Mainstream cinema’s self-righteousness is forcibly bequeathed to the national culture. What is exactly India’s culture? Are we keeping sexuality in closet in a nation whose culture boasts the only available sex manual written by mankind? We even have a temple which proudly details the methods of the act.
The only movies which exhibit love making are raunchy potboilers dealing with infidelity or pornography. The tasteless filmmakers who fill up the screen with colorful aesthetic material forget that the most beautiful of all visuals that god created is that in which a man and woman merge as one in the union of love.
Good guys are not horny
When interacting with female co-workers in office, the good guy puts on a face of the perfect gentleman. While in the pantry, the same guy says, ‘ Arre yaar, kya scent maar ke aai thi. Mein tho khada ho gaya’. (‘What a perfume she had put on, I was immediately turned on’). I don’t propose to disclose your feelings immediately to the girl, which might result in your termination from the services. But I write this to bring it light, the real self that we possess.
We have been scampering all these years with hero’s libido shown in a positive light, where as the villain sexual impetus is evil. Let’s slow down and analyze the fact. The world and we as a nation follow many leaders, religious and political. Few of them are the best of men, the most intelligent, or the most integral, who at the same time are extremely horny; a few are homosexuals, some impotent and even pedophiles.
That does not belittle their greatness. Our cinema cannot take this truth head on.
Speaks no evil
If one has to be creative there is no choice but to be honest. Osho, the great master, once gave a discourse on the word ‘Fuck’ . It’s even more hilarious when we hear it in his voice, with all the modulations. I have a friend who can live without eating or sleeping for several days, but cannot spend even an hour without once spitting out ‘Bhen Chodd’ or its more impacting ‘Madher,,’ version.
All said, he is one of loveliest, most reliable person on the earth.
But in our mainstream cinema, he would be the worst villain. How can a hero be so sacrilegious? We need good boys who respect women, firmly footed in cultural ethos , those who don’t even open their mouth to utter a single curse save ‘ Kutte’ ( Dog) or ‘Kameene’ ( Rascal) ‘ Main tera khoon pee jaaonga’ ( I will drink your blood). Our heroes represent the pseudo-righteous society that we attempt to be.
God Fearing and Homely
Most of the women leads are as described in our matrimonial columns, the ‘Fair, Slim, God Fearing, Homely’ girl. Which righteous Indian young man would marry a girl if the matrimonial read ‘Dark, Plump, Atheist, Firebird’, even if she had a gem of heart, and extraordinary intelligence. Dark men/women are diplomatically placed as ‘wheatish’ in the matrimonial columns. If that was too much of a exaggeration, visit any pub in Mangalore. You might bump into one of these fair/wheatish homely women.
Barring a few rare exceptions, the Hindi cinema and most of mainstream Indian cinema strongly resort to the matrimonial while sketching the character of their leading lady. Even if they wear nothing, they are homely, at the end of the day, when it matters most.
The Good Poor and the Evil Rich
The communist party has miserably missed the opportunity for the last fifty odd years. Such socialist propaganda cannot be found even in their bible, Das Kapital or the psalms, Communist Manifesto. Each one of the major super hits followed the same theme, the megalomaniac rich egoist cruelly exploits a benevolent and ‘gold-heart’ poor. Ultimately, poor love and integrity wins over the rich atrocity
Good and bad people don’t exist. It’s a combination of the context, social environment and intention that decides whether a person’s action is good or bad. Point of reference, logic and depth of reasoning take the pillion seat while time tested emotions and factionist agenda drives away in our mainstream flicks.
“Cinema must never become simply a mirror in which the audience sees itself, recognizes itself and is thus satisfied. It should be rather a deforming mirror, that allows you to look behind reality” said Gabriele Salvatores as quoted in threemonkeysonline.com (acclaimed director of ‘Mediterraneo’, ‘Marrakech Express’ and others).
There are exceptional cinema made in India which break this barrier where the protagonist is a womanizing, drunkard professor of economics who believes all relationships are founded on physical needs or the gangster’s lieutenant who exclaims that ‘ Apni kismet gadhe ki ling se likhi hai’ ( ‘Our destiny is written with a donkey’s dick’, pardon my translation skills) or the guy whose only aim is to make money and at least once sleep with the his dream girl who in turn would willingly spread her legs , not even for her husband , but only for her communist lover who works with the poor in Bihar.
These are exceptions, not examples. Rare gems in a sea of soap stones. Many regional cinema and offbeat Hindi cinema from India has trespassed these forbidden boundaries often, but went relatively unnoticed due to lack of proper exhibition channels and general reluctance shown by Pan India audience, industry giants to accept different and regional cinema.
Does this mean that only the bad mouthed movies which have love making scenes reflect the real society? No. It means that all aspects of the society have to be addressed in the portfolio of cinema that an industry output contains.
Worldwide scores of filmmakers like Goddard and Almodovar have repeatedly questioned the depriving sensibilities and increasing intolerance of mankind. While films like Little Miss Sunshine and Life is Beautiful explore the other end of the horizon. Mainstream Indian cinema is no where in this spectrum and turns up the same sanctimonious yarn every other time.
We as a society have to throw away this pseudo-puritan hypocrite gentleman mentality borrowed from our imperial rulers and learn by marching further backwards to the free thinking nation, culture that we once were. If Indian cinema has to sustain and win the race against television, web media, which feed equally good and sometimes even better nonsense, in the long run, then it’s high time the film makers stand up and speak the truth, even if it is politically incorrect to do so.
Tags: Almodovar, Bollywood, Goddard, Life is Beautiful, little miss sunshine
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
“Good and bad people don’t exist.”
Too Good Ram,a TRUE VISIONARY article !!!
And watch Gabriele Salvatores’ Venice Winner “DENTI”,U will be pleasantly surprised.
GK
Nice article….could not agree more. In fact the moral ambiguity of its characters is what makes “Hazaron……” such an endearing piece of cinema.
“drunkard professor of economics who believes all relationships are founded on physical needs…..” may I know which movie are you talking about?
Wow what an article! Mind blowing. A slap in the face.
In recent times, hindi cinema has seen some ‘morally indifferent’ movies: OLLO, DevD(to an extent), and now Gulal.
Thanks G K Desai, I would definitely check out DENTI.
@avn. The film I was talking about in that case is one of my favorite Indian movies of the last decade. A malayalam movie called ‘Ore Kadal’, it stood above almost all the movies I have seen in the recent past. a truly universal Indian movie
Sad fact is that very few people outside kerala have seen it.
@Holycow. Thanks man. I did not intend it :-)
@ Sumeet, I agree, but, ‘Morally Indefferent’is a wrong choice of words, according to me. As morality changes. for the good or the bad, as we evolve as a species. I would say, these movies were ‘Morally Relevant’ to the current times.
@avn, you can get more inf about ‘Ore Kadal’ in this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_Kadal
@ Ram V-
Good article. But one should understnad that in India Movies are a means of escapism from truth. So any movie which show the dark/grim realities of life wont be accepted by audiences;even if they are well made movies.
For example- Main Hoon Na was a humongous hit, but if they had showed SRK’s parents who have been seperated since a long time; “living-in” with others- m sure it would have bombed.
Couldnt agree more about the whole sketch about matrimonial colomns
@Shreyansh.Thanks and you are spot on in your observation. I was just pondering around to seek the cause of this behavior..Change is inevitable….this medicority has lasted too long…too long for sense to prevail….
@ Ram V
Change is Inevitable- but it might change 4 d worse. Just have a look at the top grossing films in India and the Classic B grade movies would top the list.
A movie like Reader- which shows nudity/lovemaking as normal as it can be; wont have any takers in India. I saw it in PVR Phoenix with only 15 people in the theatre!
Show a raunchy movie on cable or in Tier 2 or 3 towns and it will do well.
Unfortunately, i find and i really believe- people get the entertainment they deserve!
@Shreyansh. It is cyclic, as I see it, like anything else. As you sow, so you reap. The audience has been made into the moronic lot it is by these same film makers. Now, we as a nation, which includes Filmmakers and audience, have lost the ability to think beyond the instructions of quasi-moral society leaders. It is unfortunate, but not the end…a revival, for the good or the bad will occur…its already started, you and me are part of it.
@ Ram
Well put. Do contact me on neel219(at)gmail(dot)com
Looks like the inspiration of this post (or lets just say context) is Gulaal.
Very well written and sensible Article. I sometimes wonder why Kamasutra & Khajuraho is not banned in our country yet ? Because they are ‘Made in India’? But some people are enthusiastic to ban dance bars and ‘vulgar’ cinema made in India too.
If you notice carefully, morality and such ‘rules’ mostly appliy to visual arts ( Cinema, painting, sculpture, signboard, poster, book cover etc etc) than literary or other art forms. Is ’seeing is believing’ the truth or such arts has stronger impact on the audience ?
Also I find it quite interesting to observe in Hindi cinema ‘Bloody Bastard’ , ‘Son of a bitch’ and ‘ Maa ki aankh’ are an acceptable gali, but ‘chutiya’ and ‘randi ke aulad’ are seldom used.
As an offshoot of your article, ‘Profanity in Indian Cinema’ would be a great topic to discuss on a dedicated post may be. It will have more response for sure ;-)
Btw, your translations skills are not bad at all
Cheers!
~uh~
@Neel. I will drop you a mail.
@~uh~. I am yet to check out gulaal, loads of work, planning to do this weekend. But there are a few movies before Gulaal that have been true to their context, some of them have be indirectly quoted in the article as well. Agree with you on the galis…its strange that the galis that one uses/hears in daily routine seldom appear in the movies…The translation, though, was not too elegant :-0. There was a poetic refrain in the last two words.. :-).