What would Bachchan do?
Amitabh Bachchan lashed out at the award winning (more like award sweeping) movie "Slumdog Millionaire" on his blog. Here's a slightly misinterpreted report on that on BBC News.
"If SM (Slumdog Millionaire) projects India as [a] Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations," Mr Bachchan wrote in his blog.
"It's just that the SM idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative [Golden] Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not."
I'm not sure if I understand Mr. Bachchan's concern here. The real India does have a huge dirty underbelly - among the world's largest, actually. Hiding it from the world is not going to make it go away - in fact, exposing it might just kindle the kind of awareness that brings in its wake political pressures as well as targeted charitable investments, both of which are badly needed to attack this problem at its roots. As Mr. Bachchan rightly pointed out, such an underbelly exists in the most developed nations. Maybe he should invest some time exploring the cinema of the UK, Japan, Italy, China and also the non-blockbuster movies of the US - and he'll find that artists in these countries don't soften any blows when depicting the wretched life of the downtrodden.
I can't agree more with Mr. Bachchan's implied message of movies getting more acclaim in award shows like the Oscars and Globes if they're produced/directed under a western name. My first stark realization of that was the failure of these academies to honor the brilliant Shekhar Kapur movie "Elizabeth", while showering the very average "Shakespeare in Love" with accolades in the same year. However, rather than whine about why the western shows that we Indians idolize so much don't idolize us back, I'd expect someone with Mr. Bachchan's maturity to realize that these awards are not as much about quality as they are about popularity, marketing skills and political clout.
I'd expect a man of Mr. Bachchan's stature, influence and talent to spend some time being a part of reform in Indian cinema. Here's an Industry that has at least two major hubs, a dozen major production houses, employs hundreds of thousands of people, turns over millions of dollars every year in revenues globally and guides the lifestyle of a billion people. Yet, it doesn't have an award show of the calibre of the Oscars, leave alone better than the Oscars (the best we have is a lousy imitation). There's little popularization of great regional movies from Tamil and other cinemas to mainstream hindi-speaking audiences through subtitles, etc. There's absolutely no heed paid to screening or popularizing other asian countries' cinema (especially that from Hong Kong and Japan, which turn out very high quality social and action movies).
Mr. Bachchan's 1999 effort to find the hottest star in India gets an honorable mention in the BBC news report. It falls short of mentioning that due to poor management, the production company had to pull the plug on that show without paying dues to some of the participants. Being closely associated with one of the participants of that program, I know that some of them were driven to that same underbelly of India, taking up drugs and working as escorts to pay for them. While that shouldn't be logged under the list of Mr. Bachchan's follies, he's certainly going to have to try harder than this diatribe to project a better image of India.
"If SM (Slumdog Millionaire) projects India as [a] Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations," Mr Bachchan wrote in his blog.
"It's just that the SM idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative [Golden] Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not."
I'm not sure if I understand Mr. Bachchan's concern here. The real India does have a huge dirty underbelly - among the world's largest, actually. Hiding it from the world is not going to make it go away - in fact, exposing it might just kindle the kind of awareness that brings in its wake political pressures as well as targeted charitable investments, both of which are badly needed to attack this problem at its roots. As Mr. Bachchan rightly pointed out, such an underbelly exists in the most developed nations. Maybe he should invest some time exploring the cinema of the UK, Japan, Italy, China and also the non-blockbuster movies of the US - and he'll find that artists in these countries don't soften any blows when depicting the wretched life of the downtrodden.
I can't agree more with Mr. Bachchan's implied message of movies getting more acclaim in award shows like the Oscars and Globes if they're produced/directed under a western name. My first stark realization of that was the failure of these academies to honor the brilliant Shekhar Kapur movie "Elizabeth", while showering the very average "Shakespeare in Love" with accolades in the same year. However, rather than whine about why the western shows that we Indians idolize so much don't idolize us back, I'd expect someone with Mr. Bachchan's maturity to realize that these awards are not as much about quality as they are about popularity, marketing skills and political clout.
I'd expect a man of Mr. Bachchan's stature, influence and talent to spend some time being a part of reform in Indian cinema. Here's an Industry that has at least two major hubs, a dozen major production houses, employs hundreds of thousands of people, turns over millions of dollars every year in revenues globally and guides the lifestyle of a billion people. Yet, it doesn't have an award show of the calibre of the Oscars, leave alone better than the Oscars (the best we have is a lousy imitation). There's little popularization of great regional movies from Tamil and other cinemas to mainstream hindi-speaking audiences through subtitles, etc. There's absolutely no heed paid to screening or popularizing other asian countries' cinema (especially that from Hong Kong and Japan, which turn out very high quality social and action movies).
Mr. Bachchan's 1999 effort to find the hottest star in India gets an honorable mention in the BBC news report. It falls short of mentioning that due to poor management, the production company had to pull the plug on that show without paying dues to some of the participants. Being closely associated with one of the participants of that program, I know that some of them were driven to that same underbelly of India, taking up drugs and working as escorts to pay for them. While that shouldn't be logged under the list of Mr. Bachchan's follies, he's certainly going to have to try harder than this diatribe to project a better image of India.
posted by Anurag Batra at 9:32 AM
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