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Songs, which probably started as a ting of cultural flavour to Indian cinema, have become the driving force of Bollywood economics.

To make it simpler for non-Bollywood readers:

In west you have two sharply divided industries music and film.

In India there is a huge overlap. Both industries have co-existed and flourished riding on each others popularity. That is why India could never had a totally independent music industry. But it does not mean that India doesn’t have a strong music industry. It does. But it is just that it took a different rout to success.

So instead of making an audio album, and pumping of heaps of money in tis video and promotion, producers clubbed songs with films and tapped both markets at one go.

Probably culture of music videos’ started way before in India than anywhere else. The only difference was that instead of featuring the singer or a model in the video, Indian avtaar’s had top Bollywood stars dancing in them.

There are scores of movies in Indian cinema, which purely rode on its music to success.

And the idea of clubing two forms made huge business sense for the Bollywood producers. If the music of a film is good, producer’s can recover the entire cost of the film production just by selling music rights to audio companies.

Plus, songs smoothly integrates in the marketing plan of Bollywood films.

Producers normally launch the music a few months before the release of the movie. If the music is successful, there is a ready made hype for their film. Tapping the mood of the market, music videos will follow on the TV screens and once the hype reaches its pinnacle, film hits the theatre.

Many Indian producers/directors have mastered this craft. And their swelling bank balances prove that it is a hit formula.

Like many senior artists in the Indian film industry, I also despise the name Bollywood. I think the name, straight lift from Hollywood, trivialises the industry.

To the west, Bollywood only means a colourful cluttered screen with 100 dancers scampering for space. If I ask anyone here what do you like about Indian films, they can’t go beyond couple of words and the most common ones are: colour, dance, music, vibrant ambience etc.

HEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLOOOO

There are storylines, acting, cinematography, editing, sound, narration as well…look at them. Apart from a few of my professors, I couldn’t find anyone who would go beyond colour-dance cliché.

And the problem is, if you try to make them see something different like Black, most of them would say no to it, saying they want to see a regular Bollywood flick. It’s a double edged sword. So if a film offers a run-of-the-mill song-and-dance drama, the film fails to break colour-dance shackles. And if it tries something different, it is no more Bollywood!

I tried to find a parallel of Bollywood songs in Hollywood/western films. And I think it is “love making scene”. I think both forms have the similar frequency in respective industries.

If you want to understand Indian film industry, you have to understand the Indian culture as well. Songs and dance are part of Indian life. Everyone sings in India—good or bad. Every occasion has special songs for it.

Every traditional occupation had their songs. So every time a shepard, farmer, or a bullock-cart driver enters celluloid screen, most common occupation, apart from his job, would be singing.

Moreover, every occasion in India has its own song. So we have songs for harvesting, sowing, birth, marriage, morning, evening, night, sleeping, waking-up. You name it, we have it.

Plus, when there are festivals, what else can someone think of apart from singing and dancing. And above all we have Love. The eternal theme of cinema across the world. And love expresses itself most effectively through songs.

So what else do you expect from such country’s film industry…it has to be musical.

In the next entries I’ll talk about why colours are important to Bollywood and why it makes huge business sense to have songs in Cinema.

After coming to Australia I realised how lucky Indian media industry has been to have a language/culture insulation against the powerful US media conglomerates.

The pressure of US media giants on the media companies of other English speaking countries is unbearable. And the direct consequence is slow suffocation of native talent. Most of the media professional in Oz land either relocate themselves in US of A or keep fighting a loosing battle.

Having said that, I really believe that the there is a huge responsibility which lies in the way this country has handled its film and TV industry. One of the biggest attractions with any media product is ‘proximity’. If you offer me something which happens in and round my life…something with which I can identify with AND it is has EXCELLENT QUALITY, there is little reason I would go for something which is made in US and dumped at ¼th price in “second-grade” market for US products.

But unfortunately, Australian media companies have adopted an easy way out. Either they re-hash the popular US TV format or simply buy a TV series at dirt-cheap price and beam it for the local market.

The condition of Australian TV/cinema is somewhat similar to regional cinema in India. While southern non-Hindi speaking states have flourishing film industry, states which speak various dialects of Hindi could never face the might of Bollywood.

But Australia, as other Indian states, should take a leaf out of southern Indian states who have managed to build a flourishing TV/cinema industry. Though these states, like Bollywood, had the language advantage, people here generally understand Hindi. But it is not only language which retained it’s audience, it was quality of their product as well. And there mantra was simple — keep it local. Find a good story, tell it effectively and keep the native flavour alive.

Perhaps what English speaking countries like Australia need is right idea. There is no need to invest on huge sets and expensive production. All you need is a sellable product, which is made for local market. Once it is successful here, it is bound to find global audience. Bend it like Beckham and Munna Bhai MBBS are classic examples of this theory.

Probably, it is an oversimplification of the entire issue.

But what want to I urge is Australian cinema’s stress should be on idea, rather than stars or production values.

PS: For those who don’t know about Munna Bhai MBBS: It was a super-hit Bollywood movie which has been re-made in various Indian languages and recently Fox bought the rights to the script of Munnabhai MBBS.

This question has been floating in our class for quite sometime now. I tried exploring definitions for this genre, and there are loads of them:

“Presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter, as in a book or film.”

“A work, such as a film or television program, presenting political, social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner and often consisting of actual news films or interviews accompanied by narration,” defines dictionary.com.

There are a few more on the web, but most of them more or less rephrase “realistic presentation of event, people situation etc.”

These words raise a simple question—what is realistic presentation. Can’t drama be a real presentation of actual events? Why can’t Gandhi be called a documentary? It is a realistic presentation of actual events and the film keeps oscillating between plain narrations and depicting actual event.

To understand realism we can go back to the 19th century definition of realism “A nineteenth-century European literary movement that sought to portray familiar characters, situations, and settings in a realistic manner. This was done primarily by using an objective narrative point of view and through the build-up of accurate detail. The standard for success of any realistic work depends on how faithfully it transfers common experience into fictional forms. The realistic method may be altered or extended, as in stream of consciousness writing, to record highly subjective experience. Seminal authors in the tradition of Realism include Honore de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James. (reference)

Riding on this definition, every narration which goes nearest to reality will adhere to realism. And if a narration can come into the preview of realism, and if it based on real character and events it can easily fit the regular documentary definition.

I think we need realy need to broaden the definition of documentary. Moreover, when lines are blurring between TV/radio/film, there are little chances that documentary will retain its clear distinction or I’m just trying to be devil’s advocate .

References:
Various websites, periodicals and newspapers

I’ve been following this debate about bloggers vs journalists for quite sometime. Rims of papers and loads cyber space has already been devoted to arguments and counter-arguments.

So allow me to add my bit to this clutter.

The tsunami disaster has been the biggest news story in the life of many working journalists and perhaps one of the biggest events ever covered by the any global media organisation.

However, the collective might of global media giants was challenged by simple technology—blog. And the internet David did beat media goliath…comprehensively. And victory tastes sweetest when the praise comes from your competitor.

“For vivid reporting from the enormous zone of tsunami disaster, it was hard to beat the blogs, wrote John Schwartz in NYT. (Read report)

In all my journalism years, I preached and practiced objectivity. But in a disaster like this, perhaps it is difficult to stay objective. No one wants to be. And not even the most powerful writers can capture what the writings of an affected person could portray.

I think professional reporters, harden after moving from one disaster site to another, can not feel the pain with same intensity.

But can blogging be called journalism? May be, may be not.

The important point is flow of information…it is no more one-way-flow, and I’m not talking here of interactivity. It is about being the power to disseminate news and opinion. And that is where the actual shift is being witnessed. The media organisations are loosing sovereign control over this space.

A classic example was given by Jay Rosan: “When Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and a figure in the news, wants to speak to fans, players or the community, he doesn’t do it through the reporters who cover the Mavs. He puts the word out at his weblog. For the beat writers who cover the team this is a loss; Cuban hardly deals with them anymore. Here, however, the balance of power has shifted toward a figure in the news, once known as a source. A weblog helped shift it. (Blogs of a corporate executive, and an officeholder who have done the same.)
Does this mean are we in for democratisation of media?

Well it is too premature to make a sweeping statement like this. But we are in for an unprecedented change. And as someone aptly said, “Predicting future is a dangerous business. But perhaps it is what differentiates between a well anticipated turn and an accident.”

So let me tread this path as well.

As always, I found a website which says most of the things I wanted to ….so I’ll just add a link here. Moreover, I just got a call from a friend. We are going for pubbing…Friday night after all.

Also, the link I’ve given is really well written and is really comprehensive. It covers almost all angles as well. I’m just adding some quotes from this write-up to give a decent shape to what I was writing…well that’s really the power of internet and blogging. Simple networking of thoughts!

As I’m the boss in thid place, the last word will always come from me. So…

I think for the first time in the history of journalism, the role of media organisations is under threat. And it is not only by a new technology, but by the same people who were supposed to be its audience. It is like AIDS (never wanted to find a negative example, but it is really apt). This disease attacks the very immunity system. In the same way, this attack comes from those who were supposed to be the basis of journalism.

Your audience has become your competitor!

And if media companies fail to come up with something to capture this trend, there coveted position of being informers to the society will soon be under threat.

***********Winner of Butch’s Best Blog Award Semester 1 2005 Master of Media Production****************

Last month I was talking to Rupert, our in-house porn genre expert, about porn-film revolution which happened in the 70s. After the brief insight into the colourful world of blue-films (popular name for porn film in India), I decided to do some research on the topic and found that first porn-film to be shot with something resembling a real film budget was called Deep Throat. ($24, 000, primarily Mob money and surprise surprise no record for Deep Throat in IMDB!)

At one point of time Bollywood was ruled by gangsters…i think they still have reasonable hold in the Indian cinema industry.

The recent revelation of the identity of Deep Throat of Watergate scandal fame chuckled me. Interestingly, both incidents happened during the same period. I tried finding any relation between them, but to my disappointment, I couldn’t find any connection.

Anyway, this chic porn was a fabulous thing and was started with Gerald Damiano’s ‘Deep Throat’ in 1972. It made the hardcore sex a popular genre. However, just thinking about cultural values and silver screen, cinema always portrays the popular culture. In the smoky 70s sexual revolution peaked and it broke all sexual taboos. How could cinema remain unaffected by it…so we had Deep Throat.

(BTW what do we have 2000…Star Wars…huh)

“After ‘Behind the Green Door’, ‘Deep Throat’ was the second hardcore pornography feature film to be released in the United States. It received an X rating as defined by the MPAA film rating system, which had been instituted in 1968. It was then shown in many mainstream theatres all over the US, starting a brief period of ‘porn chic’ when it was considered cool in some circles to go see porn movies, even in company.

Already in 1973, the movie was marketed on videotape. The film’s working title was ‘The Doctor Makes a Housecall.” (TOI).

The biggest impact of Deep Throat was that it had a PLOT (Read plot outline).

Deep Throat premiered during the summer of 72 and went on to become a phenomenon. “With it’s big budget for a porn film ‘Deep Throat’ began the phenomena of porno chic, with its high production values, acting sequences and comic moments, all be it bad jokes! It is reported to have grossed in excess of $600m”….guess what, I have just found a link which talks about everything which I wanted to wirte…so I’ll just link this to that site…and straightaway jump to my thoughts.

I think sex always sells…but it can never go back to its glorious days (70s). The seventies was a different generation all together…they had a unique history…a totally different from what world had ever saw before and we can only imagine. It was a generation which wanted to break free from any social shackling.

We don’t have any such issues…we are not bound by any shackles at all…we don’t need sexual revolution to explore sex…it is there…go ahead and explore it if you want to…you don’t have to be a doped-up rock-star or revolutionary to do it. This generation is exploring cyber-sex and some futuristic sex-stimulation video games…no wonder films like Star Wars define our generation.

References:

1. Times of India
2. clara.net
3. IMDB
4. marginalrevolution.com
5. www.fivefoottworecords.com

If you can’t appreciate what Mallika Sherawat has achieved, at least leave her alone. It is really surprising why the entire media is so negative about her. So what if she used a gimmick to launch her career, isn’t publicity-stunt a part of Bollywood package.

source: www.bollywoodsargam.com

And why media has double standards. If Bollywood’s blue-blooded heroine gets taped vulgarly kissing her toy-boy just before the release of their next flick, all media talks about is invasion of privacy. Why didn’t it investigate the possibility that the entire episode could be stage-managed to create hype for Fida.

Reports of flourishing romance between the lead pair before the release of their film is a common story in Indian film industry.

If you are furious over Mallika lying about her martial status, than probably we need to look into the history of Bollywood. It has been done in Bollywood for ages. From Dharmendra to Juhi Chawala, everyone has supplied similar ‘lies’ to masses.

All Mallika is guilty of using a gimmick which Bollywood is not used to. Let’s give credit to the gal of being totally original about it.

And let us face it; this girl knows how to use media to her advantage. When her first film Khawaish was released, she went around the town defending the 17 smooches and the hot love scenes. She made shocking statements and print medium and its visual counterpart lapped up every pearl of wisdom that the Murder mademoiselle uttered. The Indian middleclass loves to be shocked and Mallika gives them what they want!

www.despardes.com
Plus, look at what all she has achieved in her less-than-1-year-short film career. I’m sure every Bollywood heroine would have given her right hand to be Jackie Chan’s seductive Indian Queen in The Myth.
Moreover, Mallika achieved what queen Ash failed to do in Cannes during her first visit to the festival. Embellished with Rs 4.5 crore worth jewellery, Mallika Sherawat dazzled at the Cannes film festival as the `Exotic Princess from India. Undoubtedly, she was the most popular Indian visitor at the annual cine-gala.

However, the best comment came from last year’s Lady-dampener Aishwarya Rai: “What was the need for her to wear, or not wear, clothes that left nothing, and everything, to the imagination? The foreigners are hardly going to be bowled over by a woman’s sharp cleavage content. You need much more substance to grab attention at a jamboree like Cannes,” Aishwarya said reacting to Mallicka magic. (www.indiaglitz.com)

Well, a statement like this sounds funny from someone who could only manage cynical reaction for her weird dresses at Canes last year. On the contrary, Mallika Sherawat won a number of fans worldwide at her first visit.
Attending the Cannes to promote her new film THE MYTH, the actress found praise coming her way from none other than the reputed Time magazine.

Writes Mary Corliss in Time, “We also met Mallika Sherawat, the Bollywood bombshell [her steamy musical ‘Murder’ was India’s top-grossing film last year], who will co-star with Jackie in his new film, ‘The Myth’. Articulate, friendly and forthrightly ambitions, Sherawat impressed the two visiting Americans. The weather and the film selection have been cool this year, but Sherawat instantly raised the temperature.”

Writes another journalist Richard Corliss in Time: “HOTTEST PAPARAZZI MAGNET: Bollywood bombshell Mallika Sherawat, whose warm smile and tight dresses restored Cannes’s rep as a showcase for steamy glamour.”

“Bollywood glamour has gone global with an international magazine anointing Mallika Sherawat as the sex goddess who ‘once again’ showcased Cannes as a centre for ’steamy glamour’.

The ‘unbuttoned movie glamour’ of the so gorgeous, so curvaceous, so genial Ms Sherawat — now pouting, now pirouetting, as though she was to the Red Carpet born — has been compared to the lusty charms of Brigitte Bardot who set the Riviera on fire, almost 50 years ago….When she was just 18 and husband-director Roger Vadim brought her to Cannes with And God Created Woman, the film which was condemned by the Catholic Church’s Legion of Decency but which went on to make her Europe’s most famous pin-up girl of the mid 20th century.

Till today, she is to Europe what Marilyn Monroe is to America. And may we add — what Mallika Sherawat might end up being for Indiaah!” (timesofindia.com)

Love it or hate it, but let’s face it, Mallika managed to hog the global media attention. She used the Cannes platform to promote herself in a way that none of her other Bollywood colleagues ever managed before.
And her efforts are bearing fruits.

Recently, Mallika Sherawat performed My Short Skirt, a daring skit among the many bold skits of The Vagina Monologues. That is the latest twist in the script for the provocative play authored by American playwright Eve Ensler. The Backstreet Boys are wooing her to add fizz to their forthcoming music video. White Noise director Vinta Nanda has signed Mallika for her next flick.

Probably, renowned journalist Riz Khan summed-up Mallika rightly by dubbing her as a youth icon in an interview for CNN news. She is indeed a youth icon…young, brash, confident, unapologetic, and go-getter…that’s Mallika for you.

Love her or leave her.

References:

1. Time
2. IMDB
3. Rediff
4. The times of India
5. indiaglitz.com