Bollywood is a top down, mostly alien parasitic industry
Bollywood is the stranglehold of Punjabis, Pathans and associated ethnic groups from Pakistan. Bollywood serves as Pakistani colonization of the Indian cultural landscape. Why else would south Indian weddings feature bhangra? The Hindu Punjabis promote Islamic culture such as shayari, ghazal, tehzeeb, clothing and the like. Pathans need not even bother from their end. Heck Sanjay Khan made a TV series glorifying Hanuman. How many Kapoors have done anything similar?
Kapoors ,Khannas and Chopras go around making bizarre nonsense such as Henna, Veer Zaara and Mission Kashmir positing a moral equivalence between India and Pakistan and even going so far as subliminally praise Pakistan and hope for political reconciliation and dismiss terrorism as either fear mongering by the Hindu right or due to genuine grievances of innocent Muslims.
What is really dangerous and contributes to a lot of psychological and social dysfunction is the promotion of fair skin as good looks as people from that region are fair skinned. This leads to a sort of colonization and heirarchy of good looks and hence the attendant popularity. To be clear, I dont believe that fair skinned people are somehow unIndia or foreign extraction such as say Huns, Scythians or Persians though many are. Fair and dark skinned people are both representative of the general Indian population. But in general Indians are dark i.e coffee with a dash of milk complexion. And its best for films to provide greater representation to people with these looks. It is doubly important for women as women suffer more from complexes as their self image is often more tied to media ideas of beauty.
But the Kapoors, Khans, Khannas etc won't have that. Never mind them even south Indian industries prefer fairer skin even European actresses to portray Tamil characters. The absurdity of it all. Though I think much of this is simply due to the prevalence of the casting couch and desire of the producer or some other big wig to have a mistress on the side. Either way this is a top down imposition and the damage over the past decades is considerable.
As it fair skinned people insist on grabbing pretty much any role worth getting . Characterization and screenplays being a joke in the industry helps them do this with out any stigma. The great director Werner Herzog who often cast the abuse and vile Klaus Kinski in his films was asked as to why he put up with this character. Herzog felt that casting could make or break a film, if an actor wasnt right for the role ,no amount of make up wizardry, elocution lessons or directorial tricks could make up for a deep and glaring flaw in the film. Obviously no in Bollywood feels this way. Hence Priyanka Chopra shamelessly accepts the role of Mary Kom and Bollywood pats itself on its back for its "diversity". Akbar who resembled more an almond eyed Central Asian and only spoke Persian is portrayed by green eyed Hrithik Roshan by the hack director Ashotosh Gowariker who never met an episode of Indian history he didnt wish to butcher.
The Indian film industry is a racket- that itself doesnt really bother me. Whether they wish to make money selling low IQ fare to artistically obtuse NRIs in the West or silly Middle Easterners is their concern. But what is disturbing is that they willing to perpetrate serious psychological damage on the populace just to line their own pockets and feed their ego and glory. This is unsustainable and has to end.
Bollywood is shit in all ways imaginable. What is worse is that they turn everything into shit.
ReplyDeleteI do not watch films at all now. If anything, I prefer to watch documentaries on NGC like Mayday Air Crash Investigations or read about the earth's climate.
If anything, we need to make documentaries like Mayday and also Megastructures and those on factories. They offer so much insight and knowledge that it can help us more than those stupid Bollywood movies or Netflix series.
But how can we end Bollywood et al., without going full Sisi? We need somebody like Egypt's dictator in order to end it all.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/egypt-media/
Personally I do not mind going full Sisi on them but what will happen to the economy if people are afraid to invest due to a police state in power?
The earth's climate is a matter that needs a lot of professional discussion, if you ask me. Too many outlets including Discovery and NGC tell us there is a climate emergency when there is not. People who really matter, like Michael Shellenberger, Patrick Moore, Roy Spencer, Anthony Watts, Dr. Susan Crockford, Dr. Ned Nikolov, Karl Zeller, etc., are blanked out and we are forced to hear the vapid ramblings of Greta Thunberg and now an 8 year old girl named Licypriya Kangujam (I suspect her dad and other adults are firing over her shoulders just like Greta).
ReplyDelete"But how can we end Bollywood et al., without going full Sisi? We need somebody like Egypt's dictator in order to end it all."
Actually we need someone like Harvey Weinstein hahahaha. I heard an analogy of Weinstein to Saddam Hussein, though both were monsters, they kept things in check and made things happen.
All Weinsteins fall due to sexual depravity and aggressions Hollywood seems to be falling apart. Actors are like sheep who when not playing someone else and taking their clothes for others entertainment are doped up on drugs and alcohol. They are easily led around by figures of authority such as producers and directors. Weistein himself a leftist would have told the actors to cut out their leftist activism as it turns off more than half the country. Now that he is gone, actors dont know how to manage their public lives and go around saying stupid crap and starring in terrible films.
Bollywood needs a few producers with good taste and vision. They would need to go against the grain.For this they would have to be rather unpleasant individuals. But when the country's reputation and future is at the stake the so called self respect of actors is a small price to pay. Chanakya thought of actors on par with prostitutes. Proceed accordingly.
Bollywood is more or less a lost case ,over time I think the state level movie industries will start shining . I am already seeing a revival of deeply intellectual movie themes through some new Bengali directors of this generation,no doubt most of them are somewhat of leftist bent,but who isn't a closet leftist in Indian entertainment and TV industry ,batting maybe Sudarshan channel and aastha channel content creators :P ?
DeleteAnyway I guess this pattern runs across other state level movie industries as well ,since Bollywood is consistently peddling nonsense and the viewer population on being increasingly connected to net and info overflow,is getting aware of the glaring deficits of mainstream Indian movie rhetorics . Also Hollywood is playing a crucial role,more and more people are connecting to Hollywood directly,through net . This will force Bollywood to reform if it wants to survive .
Ok. I suggested Egypt's dictator because of the Rabaa massacre of August 2013 that effectively ended the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and with that Egyptian democracy. Plus he is also arresting and jailing all remaining opposition leaders and other people whom he perceives could pose a threat to him. He is even going as far as arresting family members of those he wants to get to, if he cannot get to them. But thanks to his endless repression, Egypt ratcheted up more than a trillion dollars in debt since 2013.
ReplyDeleteThis is the problem with a dictatorship. Sure, things get into order for a short while, but the biggest problem with dictatorship is that, well it is a dictatorship and subject to the whims and fancies of the dictator. Things eventually get out of hand. People who live under tyranny for a prolonged period of time eventually become immoral.
But I actually agree with you. A Harvey Weinstein would whip Bollywood into line. But are not BJP and RSS doing that now, with all the patriotic films coming out? I mean, films like Baaghi 3 would have been unimaginable a decade ago. I realize it is stupid, but does that not mean something is changing?
There have alway been patriotic films but they have been rather stupid and nonsensical. Even the recent Sye Raa with Chiranjeevi is a near Singhamesque masala. Does anyone take Baaghi seriously.
DeleteYou cant expect a pro democracy activist to come out of nowhere in Egypt. The catch 22 with democracy is that any one who is democractically elected in these countries will be elected to carry out an Islamist agenda which is dear to the masses. Once they get elected, they suspend elections ala Hamas and carry on as if there is no opposition.
Egypt did have these joke elections where there was only one candidate- the incumbent and guess what 99% victory. Gee, what were the odds.
Let Egypt etc learn the hard way. Starvation ,civil war and genocide does wonders for common sense. I may sound cruel but really some people learn only in this way. Look at Rwanda now, one of the fastest growing economies in the world with clean prosperous cities with great infrastructure and utilities. I may add all of which are vastly superior to any Indian city.