Let there be light.
And no sound.
However, for those going to watch my favourite Captain’s ‘Neranja Manasu,’ let there be sound!
*Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaptaaaaaaaaaaaaain, Vaaaaaaaaaaaazhga*
*whistle whistle*
To quote my friend Cary, “Have a blast, don’t be a part of it!”
The movies we like to watch often reflect our morals.
At least, I think so.
Considering how violent I’ve felt after watching movies like Natural Born Killers, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, I’m glad I wasn’t brought up on a staple diet of movies like that.
Like many other Indians, I was brought up on a diet of Hindi films, for a major part of my life and upbringing. Yeah, it’s a chicken and egg story if you consider that films only reflect the morals of the society and the society follows morals from the films.
Not just films, even TV actually.
Thankfully, I was born in an era which has witnessed both the worlds — the holy world of Doordarshan and the globalised world post the cable and satellite revolution. Thanks to that, I know what we WERE, before we started believing that the guys in Friends lived no differently than us.
To test this theory, I considered a sample of people who grew up watching just cable TV alone… that would be people who are now 14-18. I’m seriously concerned about these guys. For they have grown up on American morals — Friends, Britney Spears, American Pie and hajaar other films and serials where sex is only the natural progression from dessert during a night out with a person of the opposite sex… at 16, do they know what they are doing?
Before you miss my point, let me clarify that I have no issues with consenting adults sleeping together, knowing exactly what they are doing and yes, as long as they are keeping it safe if you get what I mean. Yeah, like using a condom.
Keeping it safe is the last thing in the mind of someone who is 14 or 16 or 18 or even 20 in some cases. Check out the crowd at Bike and Barrel on Saturday nights and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Of course, thanks to the police crackdown, now they insist on ID cards before letting people in. But I think the damage had already been done. The young had already been introduced to alcohol, and now if one door’s closed, they are capable of finding another space (probably more private) to get together.
There are a few changes in the American society and the Indian which is why the morals from America cannot be applied here. The American society is a product of dysfunctional families, wrecked homes and peer pressure. The Indian society is still family-based protective and protected unit. If premarital sex is common in America, so is sex education and the quintessential free spirit. In India, sex means more than just an exchange of body fluids for pleasure. It’s a stronger bond that has to do with commitment and emotional dependency. Yes, there’s plenty of sex education happening in India, you may argue. True, there is. But how many people in the age group of 14-20 actually keep a pack of condoms in their pants? How many of these people actually have the courage to go to the corner store and ask for rubber?
But I’m digressing.
American films are the way they are, because of the lifestyle and the aspirational lifestyle the Americans have. Hollywood is steeped in American morals just like how Bollywood is soaked in Indian morals.
For example: Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge is reflective of the morals of the nineties when Shah Rukh Khan changes a drunk Kajol’s dress and only jokes about sleeping with her and explains to her saying: Ek Hindustani ladka hoke main ek hindustani ladki ka dil kaisey tod sakta hoon! (How can I being an Indian boy break an Indian girl’s heart?)
And the popularity of a movie like Hum Tum suggests that it is reflective of the existing morals when again, a drunk Saif Ali Khan sleeps with Rani Mukherjee who does not regret it the next morning because she knows it was not just sex. It was about two mature adults making love. Our society sure seems to be changing, so are the morals and so are the movies.
Morals are a little complicated to understand when you’re still the rebellious adolescent, which is why I have a problem with the young who have grown up watching just American programming and blindly follow the lifestyle. I’m not really worried about the erosion of culture or protective of it for culture is indeed a changing set of rites and rituals. But yes, I think age has a big role to play when it comes to comprehension of what morals are really all about.
Which is why I think parenting in the 2000s is going to be one hell of a challenge. The movies and TV programming that your child is brought up on are going to define what morals he/she inculcates. Because today, media and movies influence children more than parents do.
Coming up next. My take on parenting for the 2000s. He He!
Two absolutely wonderful people have started blogging of late.
One is a seventeen year old architect/journalist in the making.
She recently made a wonderful post about good old DD. Makes for very interesting reading considering the era we live in — scores of TV channels, conditional access system, DTH, pay per view and other things waiting to hit on your idiot box… Lets encourage this young blogger who has been pretty regular despite her daily college routine which as engineering students would understand is like going to a faraway picnic spot where you have long boring classes.
And the other is my paaji, the dashing dynamic dynamite of a pornstar in the making.
He’s a copywriter by profession, a babe magnet by confession … At times corny, always horny … with this hot gaai around, you search for cool dude ends here!
Btw, if any of you out there want me to add links to your site on my blog, all you have to do is ask. I no longer add people without their consent, cuz I understand some people would want their privacy. So just drop in a line and I’ll put you on Suderman’s web!
Cheers!
I finally watched 7/G Rainbow Colony.
It’s a very good movie that surely strikes a chord. It’s very realistic. It connects instantly with the heart. One small problem. It has the wrong morals. Which is why it is a wrong film. Which is why it should have never been made! Before you head for my throat, read on…
There is nothing heroic about the hero… an ordinary middle-class boy next door who does not have any super talent he can boast off. When he likes a girl or thinks he’s in love with the girl, he follows her, he pursues her, tortures her, stalks her, and even sneaks into her window when she’s about to take her T-shirt off… He has no self-esteem even after she slaps him, asks him why he’s begging for her love… He chases her like the Hutch dog…
And finally, the girl gives in!!!???
Come on, Selvaraghavan… do you know what you just did?? You’ve just given all those millions of people in the state HOPE. You’ve given them reason to tease, chase, torture, stalk and pursue a girl, who has no interest, no end, out of the sheer hope that one day she will see your love. Watch the movie and think if you’d like anyone do that to your sister, if you had one. I would kill the bastard! And not sympathise with him.
If you love someone, don’t force yourself on them. Give them their space.
Have some self-respect and have the girl love you for what you are. Think of the consequences of a relationship born out of begging and pleading. Are you ready to continue living with that equation… a master-slave equation? What was Selvaraghavan thinking?
If 7/G was a bad movie, I wouldn’t be complaining cuz people would be able to see through the indulgence of the director while making his autobiography. But here, the guy has made it sooo damn realistically, incorporating every possible thing an average Joe would do to woo the girl and in a way made the people in the audience believe that there is hope for them. If he’s trying to say that ugly losers like Ravi Krishna could bed a girl like Sonia Agarwal by the end, by just chasing the woman no end, it is a very scary proposition considering the impact a powerful film has on society. 7/G is a more than powerful, brilliant film that has raw appeal.
And our society is rich with these middle class lovestruck road romeos who follow women without realising that today’s laws consider this as sexual harassment. One movie like 7/G would make these road romeos believe that they are heroes. One movie like 7/G could give them the courage to chase any pretty woman on the road and continue even after the drubbing they might receive in the process. One movie like 7/G could change a road romeo into a psycho obsessed stalker.
Which is why it is a dangerous film. A wrong film.
Our country isn’t ready to handle realistic cinema yet. Simply, cuz people absorb morals from every film, and sometimes the wrong ones cuz they think they are real.
True, our cinema reflects our morals. But the morals from 7/G aren’t the ones we want our society to have.
I woke up yesterday with this theory on dreams. And I thought I must blog it before I forget. Cuz dreams have very very short term memory spans. So short, that most of us don’t remember what we really dreamt. We don’t remember faces or locations…
I have always been curious and fascinated about how and why dreams happen. Explanations like Extra-sensory perception and the magic of the supernatural have always failed to convinced me. But last morning, I think I came up with a theory which at least I’m convinced about.
At least, it’s a little scientific.
Brief Background: About four years ago, I attended this workshop on Creativity and Brand building when this gentleman from South Africa explained to the audience on how brand recall works and how the brain functions.
The brain, he said, is like a supercomputer with millions, or probably billions and billions of neurons, which are like files which hold information. Each thought and each idea is stored in one neuron. So our supercomputer is soooo smart that it sorts, analyzes and groups similar information and bunches the neurons together… So everytime I hear Coke, the brain sends signals to those bunch of neurons which already have information on Coke… So, it’s like this big folder called Coke and this folder has different folders depending on nature of information received… There could be this folder with a label Coke is Good, under which all information, thoughts, experiences that you may have had or heard is stored… You probably remember that bottle sipped in scorching heat and felt refreshed as a significant memory… big file size… maybe high resolution picture if you remember clearly… And there could be this folder with a label Coke is Bad.. where you have all negative experiences, information, thoughts pertaining to Coke… pesticides, Pepsi’s new cool commercials which make Coke’s commercials look substandard, Coke as an abbreviation for Cocaine and similar thoughts…
There’s a similar folder for Pepsi too with good and bad information stored depending on your experiences, information which you have heard or read… So when you are at the point of ordering a softdrink, you’re brain at a subconscious level makes that choice for you, whether you say Coke or whether you say Pepsi, purely depending on which is a dominant file size in your memory and which has given you more pleasant experiences or which you think will give you a pleasant experience. Sometimes, a chilled bottle of Coke kept right in front of you or a picture of it, might make you utter Coke even if you had a dominant Pepsi folder cuz this present memory of seeing the chilled bottle and your impending thirst immediately form a high resolution pic that makes Coke the more dominant file.
Which is why a point of sale wall hanging and posters are such a significant tool for marketers…
So what does this theory on brand recall have to do with dreams?
Well, the file logic… We all have separate folders for everything we’ve heard and every person we’ve met and every experience we’ve had. We have folders of neurons for our worst fears, darkest deeds, wildest fantasies… things we want to do, things we don’t want to do, things we want, things we don’t want, people we want to meet, people we don’t want to meet and so on.
Now, some of these are small files cuz you have not had similar neurons grouping up to form a big chunk… so that’s the subconscious. Every night when we go to sleep, the body goes a shutdown process when it relaxes you, it rebuilds tissue and does maintenance work, basically.
So in this process of cleaning up stray neurons which aren’t grouped, the brain flushes out random information and most of the time the brain before throwing away stray information, sees if it can group it with any of our immediate concerns or fears or wants or people we care about. Sometimes these stray neurons are about perfect strangers, which is why we don’t have adequate information on wat they look like, or what location the dream took place… its a low resolution image, small file size neuron… Which is why we see the things we see.
And when the neurons get flushed out of the system, we forget it totally. Sometimes, the brain sorts it out and decides the information is important, depending on how you react to it when shown to you in your dream… it’s the brain’s way of asking… should I keep this file or dispose it. If it isn’t important to you, you don’t react even when you sleep. If it is, you react… if it’s horrible, you move in your sleep… if it’s really bad, you wake up… if it is good, you smile… if it appeals to your sexual urges, you… you know what! he he!
Well, it’s convincing to me. So I thought I’ll share it with you people out here.
Okay, more on this later!
Cheers!
MADRAS INK. 