Hindi cinema is a business – but should it be a junk food store?

December 23, 2024 13:42 IST

First published: 23 Dec 2024 at 13:41 IST

Written by Kaveri Pillai

The smell of buttered popcorn. Red carpet interior elegance. The contagious anticipation that fills the air in the auditorium. Cinema theaters are magical, giving cinephiles a chance to watch stories on the big screen. The movie-going experience is very unpredictable on small phone screens or non-Dolby television audio systems. And in 2024, audiences are given a chance to relive old movies and throwbacks with reruns of old Bollywood films. Scrolling through BookMyShow and social media shows that theaters are capitalizing on the desire of audiences to watch or re-watch, like movies. Life will not come again (2011) and Chak de India (2007). But beyond old films of old films, there is a more pressing question: As rescreenings of films engulf audiences across India, where do we rate new releases?

It’s no surprise to frequent fans that, in recent times, with Bollywood dominating regional cinema in the country, moviegoers have preferred stories from the South. While rescreening is not foreign to the movie industry, with prestigious Dilwale will take Dulhania (1995) is still running in a Maratha temple in Mumbai, leaning on Bollywood as a source of revenue and relevance shows the extent of its current woes.
The current existential crisis that the industry is facing – has Bollywood done away with original storytelling? Not only is there a lack of originality, but also an increase in artifice that disconnects from creativity, the core of filmmaking. A preference for lazily using formulaic scripts over spending resources on diversity is another deafening truth – the McDonaldization of Bollywood.

Coined by sociologist George Ritzer, McDonaldization is a phenomenon where the principles of fast-food restaurants have come to dominate the food industry and many global markets. It is sobering to see how the principles of uniformity, cost control and portion control, originally intended for McDonald’s, have found their way into Bollywood. Audiences are forced to buy a monotonously assembled standardized selection, void of any creativity, to prioritize efficiency, predictability, and control. Quality equates to quantity, meaning the same but on an increasing scale.

The entertainment industry is transactional in nature. Turning stories and actors into consumable film bites and selling them to the audience to “eat” becomes even more infamous when hundreds of films come out in quick succession. Combo meals give you the “very best” of selection. What quenches your thirst? A long drink of Punjabi rap songs written by Badshah or Honey Singh or item songs and hook steps choreographed only for its social media audience? The initial hype, or fizz, wears off over time and what you’re left with is a flat musical score with little recall value.

Would you like a side of fries with that? How about tired and recycled side characters who are always short, overweight, or at best, caricatures of a minority community, so that your hero can shine.

And how do you like your burger? Your plot – rare, mediocre, or overdone? Bollywood is now entering its cosmic era where all spy or horror movies are connected. Characters feature in 30-second cameos, with inside jokes bouncing from one film to the next. Bollywood’s tired “reuse, reduce, recycle” consciousness makes room for tired tropes and molds and, unfortunately, gets rid of creative risk and experimentation.

If films are the opium of the common people, the middle class people love to go to the cinema hall to escape from their dreary reality. So is it fair to use the principle of the first-food chain in film, a medium that should be egalitarian and representative? Art is a business, but it doesn’t have to be a burger.

The writer is an intern at The Indian Express

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