Connoisseurship is Sham

Connoisseurship in India is sham. Connoisseurship in India is a propaganda of the so-called elitists to control audience. India must be the only country in the world where there is an ongoing lobby for class divisions in the name of cinema. The self-proclaimed protectors of “good cinema” condemn people who watch movies for entertainment, but the same elitists have no qualms when people revel in T20 cricket for entertainment. Why is honourable to watch cricket for entertainment but unpardonable to watch cinema for the same? What’s wrong with varied cinema? Why can’t feel-good films co-exist with austere films? They can, but the elitists don’t want that. They want absolute control. The biggest problem is their khap mentality.

Sangh Parivar and their honchos tell India to shun western culture but they deride Indians who don’t like Hollywood films. They ridicule people who don’t like American television shows: anyone who doesn’t like Breaking Bad, Dexter, or Game of Thornes is called uncultured. What kind of a deranged, self-contradictory mindset is this? This aptly describes the confused, conflicted state of mind of Indian audience. In the 2000s when lip-syncing songs reduced, Indian audience whined, calling song-and-dance routine a part of heritage. Now again they are again embarrassed of songs. These days they hate South Indian remakes of masala films. But they were the ones who made such films fashionable at the first place by fanatically supporting cinema like Wanted, Rowdy Rathore, Ghajini, Golmaal 3 etc. How confused can Indian audience get? It’s about time that the rabid organisations stop thrusting their personal quirks on society.

Indians are more fervent about Hollywood than U.S. itself. In U.S. if anyone didn’t like The Dark Knight trilogy, it wouldn’t be given a second thought. But in India any such Philistines are ridiculed and browbeaten by power brokers. Indians crave for realistic fight scenes. But the same scholars don’t spew any vitriol while watching even B-grade Hollywood movies like Shoot’em Up and Cave.

The pampered film critics of India moan that henchmen in Hindi movies are cheerful compared to the joyless henchmen in world cinema. Clearly, their information library is licked by termites of mental slavery. Way back in Sholay, Veeru was a humorous outlaw, while Jai was a silent, solemn man. There was a reason why Amitabh Bachchan was known as the angry young man in 1970s. In recent times too, Ek Villain — a drab film nonetheless — showed a joyless henchman in the lead role. These critics throw tantrums that films are detached from reality, yet they don’t complain when Indians themselves are detached from reality in real world. How can a privileged Indian show such callous indifference to the poverty and social inequality around them? How can an average Joe ignore the 2002 Gujarat riots where 2000 people were massacred with impunity? In other words, they want realism in cinema but not in real life. It turns out that that they are the ones who are detached from reality.

‘Hasee To Phasee’ — Cricket’s Perversion in Popular Culture

In Indian popular culture, IPL or Twenty-20 has become a superseding synonym for cricket. The movie Hasee To Phasee, despite being refreshingly unconventional, pays pimping service to T20 cricket with shameless sycophancy. Is it a mad scientist’s influence or the director’s kinky predilection? It is a great example on how popular culture indoctrinates the impressionable minds of Indian audience.

In a scene set in 2006, the girl supposedly prophesies that cricket should be of twenty overs, hence finishing in three hours. Three hours? The length of cricket is three and half hours, not three as fiendishly proclaimed by her. Secondly, the scene is supposed to show her innovative tendencies and foresight. But in truth, twenty-over cricket was England’s invention, already in existence at that time. But of course that’s overlooked in the film. Another subliminal message given there is that T20 cricket is for intelligent crowd only.

After hearing the girl’s sick views on cricket, the boy proffers some creepy ideas about the game:  a total of thirty-three players in a team — eleven separate bowlers, batsmen and fielders. (Why would anyone need eleven specialist bowlers and batsmen in a short twenty-over innings? Eleven bowlers would be too many even in a timeless Test. Eleven specialist batsmen would be wasted in T20 game. What would this stupid rule do to all-rounders?) Then he vomits a rabid suggestion that cricket should be played on a revolving ground and have two (literally) flying fielders in the inner circle. According to his sick mind, it would complete the evolution of the game. How? What? Why?

Are these mad scientists a part of the cabal formulating the tenets of cricket? No wonder why cricket nowadays is run by bolshies like Srinivasan and his rabid sycophants.

How can any sane human being spew such militant ideas on a sport? Although it’s the girl who is shown to be a “mad scientist”, in reality it’s the boy who is unhinged. Under the facade of worldliness, he is a craven and insecure flagellant. Under the delusion of pragmatism, he is a martyr of masochism. He lives in denial of not loving his girlfriend, which he professes for stability. He considers domestic violence a connubial norm. He dutifully bears abuse and blackmail from his disagreeable girlfriend, who threatens to jilt him at the drop of rain. In return, he grovels at her to save their bondage-domination relationship. He gives up too easily on his ambition of becoming a police officer because he is too lily-livered to stand up to his father. Bankrupt of self-respect, the bootlicker frequently implores his prospective father-in-law for money. He is a crackpot who blathers on asinine business schemes as an escape from his miseries. Since he has no control over his personal and professional life, he conjures a fantasy world filled with sick drivel on cricket.

The girl’s malevolent schemes for cricket are at least offhanded. It’s easy to make allowances for her because of her rough childhood, of being abused by her demonic patriarchal uncle. However, the boy is not worthy of any sympathy. He is such a rabid bore that it is difficult to blame his girlfriend for being a psychological browbeater. How can one expect her to stay attracted to that yellow belly? How can her animal instinct let her respect that doormat? It’s no wonder that she keeps him on his toes.

Every astute entrepreneur snubs his loony business propositions. (Why would a common entrepreneur be bothered with the laws of cricket?) Then he squirts his diabolical schemes about cricket to a shady businessman who looks more like a pimp. It’s no wonder that the delusional pimp — possibly a drug addict — loves his drivel. (What that pimp has to do with cricket is a mystery. And again, looking at the draconian state of contemporary cricket, you wonder if such pimps are really controlling cricket.)

Watching this movie makes one realise that this is what happens when mad scientists run the show. There are rabid suggestions that LBW rule should be eliminated since it is based on conjecture. Some fanatics recommend that boundary scores should be changed to five and ten (instead of four and six), ensuring a rounded metric system; an over should be of five balls, making T20 game a total of 100 balls instead of 120, ensuring an easier calculation of run-rate. (How stupidly they forget Tests and their pet ODIs). There are proposals for split-innings ODI matches, as if the current changes weren’t enough. A crackpot journalist, Rob Steen, made a hideous suggestion that an Ashes series should incorporate all three formats. (It happens in women’s cricket, but one must understand that women rarely play Test matches; hence it makes sense for the women’s Ashes to be sprawled across all three formats.) People like Steen are sick power brokers, in other words: trans-national pimps, who would stoop to any level for their perverse pleasures. As much as I dislike BCCI, I can’t help but thank heavens that at least BCCI isn’t infested with rabid minds like these.