IT MATTERS, NASEERSAAB
“I don’t know why we hanker
after this Oscar business,” says Naseeruddin Shah. Yes, let us not “hanker”,
but let us not be dismissive of a global stage either
By
Anna MM Vetticad
Two
important — seemingly unrelated — events occurred on the Indian entertainment
scene in the past month. First, the National Award-winning Marathi film Court
was selected as India’s entry for the race to the Best Foreign Language Film
Oscar next year. And Quantico — the American serial that marks Bollywood
superstar Priyanka Chopra’s international TV debut — finally premiered in the
US and then India, following a several-months-long publicity blitzkrieg in both
countries.
One
involves a cinematic work, the other a teleshow. One an annual occurrence, the
other on an unprecedented scale.
What
is the connection, you ask?
There
is one. It is the question that surfaces each year around the time India, like
most other countries, chooses its Oscar entry. And that question is: why do we
care?
This
year it came from one of India’s most respected actors. When asked about Court’s
chances at the Oscars, Naseeruddin Shah reportedly said: “I don’t really care
about the Oscars. Court is one of the finest films and in fact the best
film to have released in recent times. I don’t know why we hanker after this
Oscar business… I think it should be enough for makers of Court that the
film has been liked and much appreciated in our own country and that is what
matters.”
As
Uriah Heep might have said, I would like to ’umbly disagree with Naseersaab.
Acceptance
from your primary audience is obviously important, but unless an artiste
chooses to limit herself, why should anything be “enough”? Wider reach matters.
A global stage matters. It matters not just to individuals, but also to
societies as a whole, not just because a larger audience means more money, but
because it translates into several long-term benefits.
Film
artistes are influential due to the reach of cinema. And so, every time an
Indian film artiste speaks on a platform in another country, she has the
opportunity to demystify India just that little bit abroad. Every time an
Indian star performs in an overseas production that is worthy of her stature at
home, she could endear India just that little bit more to people of other
nations.
“Worthy”
is crucial here. The idea is not to be a token brown-skinned prop in an
inconsequential role or to play a part in pigeonholing an entire race. I
remember Anil Kapoor telling me that between Slumdog Millionaire and the
TV series 24, he turned down several scripts requiring him to play a
stereotypical, caricaturish Indian. Last year, Chopra told me she absolutely
would not accept a role abroad that would “cater to the stereotype of what
Indians are like”.
Over
the years, Team Slumdog, Anil on 24, Shashi Kapoor and Irrfan
Khan in their multiple ventures abroad (not counting Khan’s embarrassingly
marginal appearance in The Amazing Spider-man 2, Om Puri in East Is
East and Nimrat Kaur in Homeland, among others — sometimes playing
Indians, sometimes not — have served to unobtrusively remind some of the most
powerful countries and moneyed audiences that Indians are not ETs. You know,
like Apu from The Simpsons?
Complementing
these artistes’ work on the global stage are those whose internationally
acclaimed home-grown creations have taken Indian culture abroad, from Satyajit
Ray, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Mira Nair to youngsters like director Neeraj
Ghaywan, whose Masaan won two awards at 2015’s Cannes Film Festival, and
Chaitanya Tamhane, whose Court earned two trophies at Venice 2014. India
needs more of them, familiarising foreigners with who we are in ways that a
career diplomat would find hard to achieve.
The
obvious pay-offs are enhanced bank balances and exposure for Indian artistes.
Less obvious is another effect: the potential of a country’s cinema to make the
culture of that country attractive to the world. US embassies and businesses —
from clothing chains to pizza joints and fried chicken — owe much to Hollywood,
which has been America’s most effective brand ambassador across the globe.
This
is why it is important for India’s film industries not to have a
frog-in-the-well attitude, but to work hard towards improving their
international distribution and marketing. As long as it is done with dignity,
there is no shame in promoting a beautiful film like Court at the
Oscars. After all, a win at the world’s most-watched film awards function is
every film-marketing professional’s dream.
Besides,
you can’t put a price tag on soft diplomacy.
Could
there be a more effective effort at de-exoticising India in American minds than
Aishwarya Rai responding to this question from talk-show host David Letterman
in 2005: “Do you live with your parents? … Is that common in India for older
children to live with their parents?” Sweetly, yet with a knife-like thrust,
Rai replied: “It’s fine to live with your parents, because it’s also common in
India that we don’t have to take appointments with our parents to meet for
dinner.”
Today,
as sections of the Western media use India’s remarkable anti-rape movement to
tar the entire country with one brush, there are few better illustrations of
our social complexities than an Indian woman — Chopra — telling CNN.com in the run-up to Quantico: “My Dad always told me, ‘As a girl, you should not
be someone who tries to fit into a glass slipper. You should shatter the glass
ceiling,’ and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
So
please, let us not “hanker” after global recognition, but in the global village
that we inhabit, why “should” any space be considered “enough”?
(Anna
MM Vetticad is the author
of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)
(This column was first
published in The Hindu Businessline newspaper on October 10, 2015)
Original link:
Photo caption: (From top) Priyanka
Chopra in Quantico; and a poster of Court
Photographs courtesy:
(1) Quantico: https://www.facebook.com/QuanticoABC/
(2) Court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_(film)
Note: These photographs were not
sourced from The Hindu Businessline
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