CINE PORTRAYAL / IMAGING / IMAGINING
Obviously, I am caught
in a labyrinth of confusion -as to what suits the idea that I try to convey to
our readers. It all begins with ‘imagining before an image is portrayed or
presented in celluloid. When the attempt succeeds, the man [The Director] hits
national fame and is sought after by a range of movie producers. He feels on
top of the world and presents ideas that seem to be ‘off- beat’ in
suggestion. It cuts ice with most
audience; after a reasonable measure of success, the man seems to run out of
both ideas and steam together before he turns irrelevant in a few years.
Little does the Director realize that fresh ideas cannot be incessant unless
you ‘lay off’ for a while before a new venture. Such Directors who had a clear
perception of how to win over the audience, manage to stay in limelight for
long and retain their reputation for originality. So much being the requirement
for ‘success’, it is an uphill task to sustain
high quality all through. If some rigid parameters of assessment were
clamped, most of these Directors would be declared ‘unfit’ for the task.
Movie-making being a private domain with no specific stipulations on quality or
attainments, the so-called Directors parade as popular faces in the society.
How does it bother us would be a logical interrogation. It does bother us by
view of the innate inabilities of movie directors in portrayal of socially
relevant or significant professions as teachers/ Professors/ Doctors/ Nurses,
Scientists and government officials.
School teacher/
Professor
Movies try to project
them as butts of ridicule; they are clad in comic attire, ear studs, wielding a
slender cane -a tool to punish erring boys. A Professor of Physics would be
discussing Tamil poet -Valluvar or Avvaiyar -the lone zones known a bit to the
Director. As portrayal of supreme scholarship of the Director the most popular
formula on black board for English / geography is E= MC2 . Often the
movie character[Teacher] is well dressed but keeps interacting in classroom in a
language that fails to evoke any respect for the profession. On the audience,
the heroine of the movie would be seated in uniform and uniformly exchanging
glance with the hero -also on the audience in class XI or II year Degree [both the artistes are
in the age bracket of 30+, a grand depiction of scholarship pursuing that level
of study for their age] ridiculing the
teacher presented on the screen as a dull head or a muff.
Scientist
Cinema scientist ought
to be a male member; never any woman scientist is possible in their screen
play. By default, the scientist sports a beard just below the lower lip in a
cluster easy to snatch by any passer-by. Being a scientist, calls for a
mandatory spectacle, as in the cinema-reckoning a man with normal vision can
ill afford to be a scientist. Despite pursuing science, he would be vigorously
pursuing a girl [casting science to the winds] romancing near Eiffel tower/ Niagara
falls / Trafalgar square. Picturising romance in these places is
rendered logical by making the hero -a scientist on an official mission to
these places. [Romancing is the full time mission and any science is incidental
or is it accidental in this case?] He would come out with a bizarre scientific
achievement of augmenting high energy of ‘lightning’ into a safety pin and
using it, half of NEWYORK could be set ablaze. Impressed by its explosive
productivity, US President would host a dinner to shower encomia on him; our
Director is rich in paucity of idea and makes the hero himself don the role of
US President while Kamala Paul would play Amala Harris the VP in the movie. All
of them sing in unison the pride of Tamilian and the auditorium bursts into
flame by sheer clapping for this achievement. The president clinches a deal
with the scientist to make warheads with high energy pin derived from lightning
without polluting the land /air / water. What a screen play?
Police officials /
Temple priests
Though these two
personnel - mind their duties, our playwrights / Directors take delight showing
them as anti-social beings and are not society-friendly. Movie Directors -so
conscious of society, values, upright morality etc., seldom bother to remember
how severely they pollute adolescents by displaying natural contours and shapes
of human anatomy in a bid to fill their coffers even as they empty the human
minds of any respect for members of the opposite gender. Idiocy is a way of
life for them.
Prof. K. Raman
A first-generation learner's idea about college is only through movies and needless to say that the respect/regard for the lecturer/Prof they carry reflect, typically, what they see in the movies.
ReplyDeletePortrayal of temple priests especially Brahmins in Tamil films in a bad manner is very common.
ReplyDeleteIn the film Parasakthi a priest trying to mollest a girl is shown in a bad shape. May be this one is a Dravidian model. Ridiculing Brahmins is a common sceneses in Tamil films. (Vedam puthithu)
Likewise depicting all police officials as corrupt is also common.
Always teachers are shown as poor In many films.
It is very common that a poor and a rogue marrying a rich girl in Tamil films excepting a Zamindhar marrying a poor girl in Nenjam marappathillai.
Going to the college is to love a girl and not to study or viceversa is depicted in most of the films.
Above all in many films the hero fights with hundreds of opponents without any arms is ridiculous.
In the film Shivaji the hero becomes a millionaire in a day or two.
All nonsenses are shown in most of the films which I don’t like.
K.Venkataraman