The obsession with the freedom of sexual expression in India
0 Comments Published by Indyman on Friday, December 16, 2005 at 4:44 AM.
The movies of old time Bollywood were clean and meaningful. Comedies were actually funny. Drama was actually well done. Not so anymore.
What happened was, slowly, the movie directors found that you can draw a bit more audience if you have something spicy, something racy. Nothing wrong with tryin to make a bit more profit. So we saw Madhuri dancing in the rain wearing a wet saree. Okay so far so good.
But the gimmicks only work so far. After a while the people who contributed to the tiny (or maybe large, the point still remains) rise in the viewership, those people are no more interested in watching the same amount of skin show that was shown in the previous year's movies. So you see a dip in the numbers. Fortunately, if you keep increasing the degree of crowd-pulling measures - aka increase skin show - you keep drawing the audience.
Its a cat and a mouse game. Sort of like the computer industry. The hardware keeps getting better. So operating systems and other applications keep getting more and more bloated. To keep supporting the bloat in the software, the hardware must continually evolve and keep getting better. Just compare the memory requirements of today's latest games. Somebody is already working on making a graphics chip which has more memory than today's best graphics chip. And somebody is already beginning to code out a new game that probably won't work on today's best graphics card either.
Whatever. The point is, movies have gotten just worse. Skin show and sex is used as a mere crowd puller. Without any meaning to the story. There are no more real comedies. Can you even think of a recent movie that compares with Golmaal or Andaaz Apna Apna? Movies have become awefully dry. And boring. Well Everybody knows that.
My question is, where is it going? Will it just stop after a while? And why has the media in the nation become so obsessed with covering India's newfound freedom with sexual expression. For instance, indiatimes.com, a site I used to go to everyday to check on news four years ago, has at least one link which is a cheaper-than-anything-can-get feature that mentions "SEX". And that too under its "Top headlines feature". Don't believe me? Go check it out yourself. Or check the current snapshot (below). Why do we have to deal with complete nonsense and degradation, not only in the movies, but also in the media. I used to respect Times of India. The Times group overall. Not anymore. Why, oh why?
What happened was, slowly, the movie directors found that you can draw a bit more audience if you have something spicy, something racy. Nothing wrong with tryin to make a bit more profit. So we saw Madhuri dancing in the rain wearing a wet saree. Okay so far so good.
But the gimmicks only work so far. After a while the people who contributed to the tiny (or maybe large, the point still remains) rise in the viewership, those people are no more interested in watching the same amount of skin show that was shown in the previous year's movies. So you see a dip in the numbers. Fortunately, if you keep increasing the degree of crowd-pulling measures - aka increase skin show - you keep drawing the audience.
Its a cat and a mouse game. Sort of like the computer industry. The hardware keeps getting better. So operating systems and other applications keep getting more and more bloated. To keep supporting the bloat in the software, the hardware must continually evolve and keep getting better. Just compare the memory requirements of today's latest games. Somebody is already working on making a graphics chip which has more memory than today's best graphics chip. And somebody is already beginning to code out a new game that probably won't work on today's best graphics card either.
Whatever. The point is, movies have gotten just worse. Skin show and sex is used as a mere crowd puller. Without any meaning to the story. There are no more real comedies. Can you even think of a recent movie that compares with Golmaal or Andaaz Apna Apna? Movies have become awefully dry. And boring. Well Everybody knows that.
My question is, where is it going? Will it just stop after a while? And why has the media in the nation become so obsessed with covering India's newfound freedom with sexual expression. For instance, indiatimes.com, a site I used to go to everyday to check on news four years ago, has at least one link which is a cheaper-than-anything-can-get feature that mentions "SEX". And that too under its "Top headlines feature". Don't believe me? Go check it out yourself. Or check the current snapshot (below). Why do we have to deal with complete nonsense and degradation, not only in the movies, but also in the media. I used to respect Times of India. The Times group overall. Not anymore. Why, oh why?
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