India's 'comfort zone' is not the Oscars

Ang Lee receives his award with a namaste

As is the tradition, I did not sit through the Academy Awards or even catch glimpses of it.  Except for Life of Pi, I have not watched any of the other films, yet. I’d like to, though. This is not about disdain or being highbrow; I catch quite a few Indian soaps.

However, there is no escaping the event. The host Seth MacFarlane has come out with several new notorious feathers in his cap, and I say this because the Oscars may choose politically-correct films, but the show wallows in a sophomoric need for attention. It conforms to the pattern of being mainstream, and in Hollywood you are mainstream if you are a bit sexist, a bit racist, a bit of a victim-predator.

You’ve already read about the wardrobe malfunctions, the gowns, the jewels, the asinine.

It is the India factor that interests me.  As no Indian film or nominee got an award, we did what we do best. It was so very amusing that a little town in Chandigarh was celebrating, distributing sweets because of Zero Dark Thirty. It did not strike them as ironic that the place had recreated Abbottabad, a Pakistani bazaar to be precise, all to trace the end of an Arab who was the nemesis of the West. Osama bin Laden brought a good deal of business to this town in Chandigarh.

It is business.

The same goes for Puducherry (Pondicherry) where the initial portions of Life of Pi were shot. These were locales that Yann Martel had written about in the book on which the film was based. Indeed, the background sounds and a lullaby were Indian contributions, but was it an Indian film?

Director Shekhar Kapur declared in his usual pompous fashion: 

“An Indian film will win an Oscar when it is good enough. Danny Boyle and Ang Lee have opened the gates for Indian filmmakers. It’s up to the filmmakers now. Do they have the courage and the desire to conquer international markets or do they want to continue playing in their comfort zone?”

The Oscar is not the yardstick for good cinema, although it has sometimes recognised fine independent films by outsiders. What is Mr. Kapur’s yardstick for good? Surely, he has been exposed to Indian regional cinema, to quite a few offbeat Hindi films, as well as experimentation within the framework of Bollywood, of which he was a player.

How have Danny Boyle and Ang Lee opened the gates for Indian filmmakers? I think there should be a clear demarcation between the two. Ang Lee, while exploring spiritualism, did not overly emphasise on Indianness. The main characters happened to be Indian. But, it was an international film made with those sensibilities in mind. Fine, he accepted the award with the Indian greeting of 'namaste'.

Boyle was also catering to a foreign audience. As I wrote in an earlier post:

Danny bhai can rest happy that he did a nice helicopter version of struggle and hope. Next time he might like to hang on to one aspect and embellish it with some detailing. This is merely a filmic tourist brochure of the other side of India.

This obsession with international markets seems to demean indigenous work. Did the Africans start discussing about how ‘Our of Africa’ would make them big players? Did the Japanese consider themselves fortunate to have ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ take their cinema overseas?

Satyajit Ray, Akira Kurosawa, Godard, Fellini, Costa Gavras have had more courage than a Shekhar Kapur and they did not seek out Hollywood acceptance, and the Oscars are just that. Everything else is a satellite.

As regards being happy in a comfort zone, it is rather superficial to ignore that most of the films that reached the Oscars were within their comfort zone. There happen to be differing levels of what varied cultures are comfortable with. The form of expression is bound to differ. We have films that deal with edgy subjects; some succeed, others don’t.  There is also some self-conscious attempt at ‘being different’ just for the heck of it, or to go to Cannes, which has sold out to Hollywood.

At least we do not choose White characters to portray Hispanic, Brown and even Black characters in our films.  

Bollywood is escapist. It has never claimed to be otherwise. And let us not look down on the audience or decide to improve their tastes. The same people who gave a thumbs-up to Dabangg were not as enthusiastic about the second one. Same actors, same gimmicks. They know what to like and what to reject. That is their comfort zone. 

(c) Farzana Versey

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More at What about Slumdog Millionaire?  

and a light take at An hour at the Oscars

One-leg Standing: Beyond Parodying Jolie

Angelina Jolie would have been an enigma, except that she chose to take the road to everywhere. Her leg flash is only the latest ‘phenomenon’.

Jolie’s sorties into being different are really sharp tactics, for after a while one can only do so much with goldfish lips or pillow mouth or whatever they call those. She has in the past worn her former partner’s blood in a locket, a ‘pure’ exchange that ended the way most such relationships do – in a mess. She has spoken in a rather incestuous manner about her brother. She has mentioned her lesbian outings, her promiscuity, her fidelity, and just as passionately in what might be seen as a different attitude about her ‘rainbow family’. The world of the underdeveloped became her haunt from where she got her motherhood. Her idea of of it is often questioned as is the modus operandi she uses to go about procuring kids.

Jolie does not need attention. She parks herself in the central square and puckers her lips to speak or to be silent. So, why has that Oscar red carpet moment captured the imagination of so many who have seen her legs, and many legs, and more?

She was playing to the gallery as much as to herself. This is typical behaviour of someone who has to prove she still has it. It can arise from boredom, from insecurity, from sensuality that has been suppressed willfully or has not had the opportunity to be unleashed. This might sound surprising. There is so much of public display of lust, romance and even family bonding. Why is she then behaving like a bored housewife at Chippendale’s, seemingly whistling at the boys but really at herself?

She has caught on to the fact that people don’t live for posterity moments. Her leg is as much or less as Pippa Middleton’s butt was. The latter has capitalised on it; Angelina does not need to. Her trip is to “gather ye rose buds while ye may”. The flash is like a card for flash memory span. That pose was a pose in more ways than one.

Its digitalised imprints have found place everywhere. Unlike a diva one might expect to be deified, she is being caricatured. Some may think that the spinoffs are a tribute. Indeed, much as Hitler’s moustache is, which symbolised so many things, Jolie’s leg does not. It is an appendage, especially since the pair has been reduced to one.


However, some of the reworked pictures can be analysed, whether or not they were meant to. Here are a few thoughts:

Used in well-known art works, it is pop culture superimposed on classicism. In Michelangelo's famous ‘Adam and the Finger of God’ could it be Eve’s intrusion, a leg-up to the spare rib? A feministic statement?

On political figures, it can mean different things – Angela Merkel has already exposed a good deal of cleavage and been part of an advertising campaign, so it is probably to only sex her up; Hitler in a trench coat with a leg showing comes across as part humour, part an expression of a softer inside or an openness of a streamlined approach to ‘whiteness’.

Barack Obama getting a kick in the behind is less an insult and more an almost gratifying gesture; I am quite sure that this is the work of a Democrat who clearly believes that the President is a fun guy in the sack, even as his bending down conveys humility. The black stiletto is just what the doctor ordered after a hard day’s night morning after.

On symbols like Christ, the Pope, or even the Queen of England, the leg appears to humanise them. Some of those photoshopping would probably not have thought about it – it is likely that for them it is an “everything goes” attitude. It does not, and that is the reason there is an element of sobriety in the ‘leg’.

The Statue of Liberty has been so often imagined – much like Monalisa – that to give it any spin is difficult. Perhaps, it is America liberated from itself?

All the images eventually turn out to be about us. How we perceive monuments, people, totems – of the past or the present. Angelina Jolie is merely an asset to bank on. There is a clause here, though. Her time out might well be recalled occasionally, as do wardrobe malfunctions and drunken brawls. More than all that is the fact that now even the famous hanker after fifteen minutes of fame.

End note:

Professor Stephen Hawking visits sex clubs in California. It’s become news. Of how he is accompanied by his nurses and assistants and they have even watched as he lay fully clothed in the ‘play area’ as girls danced naked over him. Fine. Nothing unusual. Is it his fame or his physical debility that has drawn more than its share of attention?

His commercial agent Robin Morgan put out a statement: “Stephen has a wicked sense of humour!”

Frankly, is this the way he enjoys a good joke? An honest response would have been, so what? Or, yes, he likes what we all do. But, no. The girls are for laughs. Of course, because of his huge intelligence and the fact that the women are ‘performers’ no will call him sexist.

May I then, in jest, refer to his great work as the Brief's History of Time?

An Hour at the Oscars

“Did you watch the TV?” asked my newly-exported friend from Ludhiana

“Yes, yes. Tanu weds Manu promos all over.”

“No, no, stop being so desi. We are world players.”

“I cannot watch the World Cup matches because Shane Warne is predicting everything before.”

“Don’t take that Aussie man’s name. He pataoed Liz and took away our woman.”

“Our woman?”

“She was married to tycoon Arun, no?”

“What tycoon? Anyway, what am I supposed to watch?”

“The Oscars!”

“It was telecast at 4 a.m India time and then 7.30 a.m…”

“If you can wake up early for that thing…you know what you like doing…your stupid writing…then this is international. You are so desi.”

“Right, but why are you so excited? I know who got the awards, so my general knowledge won’t suffer. Have you watched any of the films? What were your favourites?”

“Films? Who cares! There was one fellow who was like stuttering, then this woman who was doing some ballet-shallet, then some fighter, and even Facebook fellow was there. Hai, that was nice because all my relatives are on it, so we are all family.”

“If you have not watched any of the films, then what are you so enthusiastic about?”

“It is the whole atmosphere. The red carpet, the gowns, my, such lovely ones.”

“I saw this event on an entertainment channel and they went on and on about those stupid maxis, sorry gowns.”

“What is stupid, hain? Even Aishwariya Rai wore one and Mallika Sherawat wore one.”

“Oh, so they wore one each, that’s interesting. Did A. R. Rahman wear one too?”

“Don’t be mean. Bechara did not win this time, serves him right for leaving poor slumdogs, but he is so modest, he just kept smiling like a buddha.”

“You mean like the Buddha.”

“Oh, whatever. His wife they say was wearing Indo-Western fusion and carried a designer clutch.”

“I saw her wearing some thick dupatta. The western part may have been hidden.”

“What did you think of Ash and Mallika?”

“I did not notice what they wore. I was concentrating on their accents. Mallika spoke as though she was at a baseball match rooting for Rahman and Aishwariya said something about how nice it was to be ‘celebrating cinema like we do back home’. Very funny.”

“Chalo, this is global talk. You really must understand. I think Halle Berry’s nude was lovely.”

“I wish that was how she’d have been. She wore some ruffled stuff.”

“Ah, tell me more. I like to hear desi opinion on all this.”

“Sure. Even our media discusses it as though they were there and they are them, the same language, the same encomiums, the same kind of dissing. Heck, if the foreign press says it looked like table cloth, ours' modified it to table napkins. Original. Here, I have patience only for a couple of them. Penelope Cruz was in something shiny and looked a bit plump. And Cate Blanchett wore an atrocious dress with a yoke that looked like an upturned baby’s bib. Most were in red and most gowns looked either like some armour or like slips that needed something to be worn over them.”

“Wait baba, I must correct you. They have to show cleavage and their bodies. It is open society and even in India everyone is showing off.”

“True. I have no problem with revealing clothes, but they looked not quite complete.”

“This is high fashion, the best designers.”

“Is it about cinema or fashion? Why do these super actors have to announce which designer’s clothes they are wearing? If they have paid for them, then it is theirs.”

“Labels, darrrling, labels. You don’t understand.”

“I have seen some of the nighties on Linking Road and a few long kameezes at Crawford Market that don’t look much different.”

“This is desi mentality. It is the cut, the lines.”

“And the bulges. But why are we discussing this?”

“Okay, tell me about the speeches.”

“Speeches? Ooh-aah, I dunnowhattosaythisisjustsoaahsomepinchme…aah,sniff,owkhay, Imustthankgodthemazingteamthatmadeitpossible…ooh, Istillcan’tbelieveit…blah.”

“I am ashamed of you,” said my NRI friend. “As an Indian you should understand emotions.”

“Haan, butwhatemotionsarethereifyousoundlikeyouaresquirtingforthefirsttime?

“Whatttt arrr you saying?”

“Just being global.”