Honestly speaking, I am not a fan of Indian Cinema at all, I believe most of the people my age and near my age also won’t be. The reason behind this, the way Indian cinema has evolved and started producing meaningless superficial films. Specially those who had a taste of Western cinema, which now a day’s most of the people have ( thanks to Game of Thrones!) will understand that the level of content that Indian cinema brings up is really degraded.
Bollywood films have just a single factor to keep them running, and it’s the star (that’s what we call the actors and I do not understand why!) power. I have seriously started visualizing films as comedy shows to just laugh off at, which should not be the purpose of cinema at all. Cinema, when initiated, had a purpose of delivering meaningful messages and thoughts to the wide outreach of people it had. Remember the starting days of television when only Doordarshan was there and the stuff it was telecasting was relevant, mostly news and religious shows. No, I am not saying that our cinema should start making religious films only, not a religious community member in disguise! But that was what suited the taste of people at that time. So does that mean that the kind of films that our cinema is producing is because of the taste of people in entertainment these days?
It can be said that it’s true because that may be the reason only why Housefull 3 earns 60 crores and Aligarh earn 2 crores. It may also be because people have started looking at Indian Cinema for just giving them a two hour time pass stuff and occasional laughs. But this seriously does not justify the purpose of cinema at all. The starting phase of Indian cinema is praiseworthy. Films, with a meaning, a purpose, theme and with songs that are still remembered and sung all over. Films on Patriotism, unity which did suite that contemporary conditions were made, Raj Kapoor brought Indian version of Charlie Chaplin, there were occasional comedies also. What we have today is, No theme, no story, 3-4 songs ( lyric less, meaningless, and not even pleasant to ears), 2-3 star’s names attached and a location on which crores have been spent. We don’t even remember a film after 2 weeks.
I am not being excessively critical about Indian cinema, I am just stating the reality. There has to be reason why we can’t even touch Oscars, Why a regional Gujarati Film gets selected over Bollywood’s Barfi (which is still much better than how usually other films are) and how Indian Theatre makes more sense than films. Another very big problem with cinema these days is how the actors are put on a pedestal! What is it that film actors do so that people start idolizing and even prays them. What is it that attracts thousands to Hansraj on the arrival of Shah Rukh Khan there (believe me, I didn’t even bother to read the whole message even once). We bath Rajnikant’s poster with milk, why not Nobel Peace prize winning Kailash Satyarthi who brings hundreds of children back home, and doesn’t waste milk on him even and many more disgusting things.
This shows where Indian Society is actually heading. And it’s a very serious issue to be thought about. Cinema provides us with a big platform that can be and must be used for a purpose.
Priyanka Dudeja,
Content Writer – DU Times.
