Viewer’s Challenge

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

I had written (had is the key here as I no longer write about them) about movies for many years.  I have always enjoyed watching movies and as I learnt more languages, I have enjoyed watching them with more choices.  As I got older I enjoyed the movies more and also the multiple languages, sometimes even when I did not know the language just the celluloid was entertaining.  Despite my being away from home most of my life, I still like Telugu movies the most.  Every chance I get I watch the newer movies, and for the past few years I seem to be watching the same Telugu movie with different title and different actors.  The heroes glorified, the women in skimpy clothes and a bunch of guys get beat up and killed in the unimaginable way, and much of the movie shot in most outrageous locations that people really don’t care much about, with the ending of every movie gruesome to unimaginable violence.  The movies are no longer representing the age old good versus evil. They have become glorified tributes to really short guys who somehow have become super heroes, mainly because of their father or relatives or families belong to the film business.  Not just Telugu movies but all the south Indian film industry has been turned into some sort of a family business.  Father, son, grandson, uncle, brother, nephew and any other relative in the family is pushed up on the movie going public just because of the filmy background.  While there is nothing wrong with traditionally following the footsteps of a father in business, the south Indian movie industry has really become a cesspool of families forcing themselves on the movie going public.

Yes.  The father might have been a glorious actor for many decades.  That doesn’t automatically mean that his son or someone related from the family will be an automatic hero or a cinematic choice.  But we keep having one family after the other forcing themselves on us, the poor moviegoers.  The obvious monotony and monopoly of these families on movie making, distribution, exhibition and control on the movies is impenetrable for the new comers.  The public has little choice but to watch these folks forcing themselves on the moviegoers.

I just saw a movie and was really sad that I keep watching them.  Every frame I already knew what was going to happen next and what the words would be and actions would be, and when they would land up in foreign locations.  The movie is 100% predictable and ends with the dialogues on the selection of a girl simply based on the looks.  The entire movie was nothing but a glorified tribute to nothing, that ends up with an ending we knew before the titles.

There are millions of me, just like me.  We don’t have to live in India for these movies to be shown, they are everywhere.  There are everywhere to depress the hell out of people.

It’s the moviegoer that needs to be held accountable for such crap being thrown at us on screen.  We keep giving family titles to these guys and make a big deal out of them simply showing up on screen.  The movie functions have become such big fiascos with typically some woman who anchors the function glorifies these guys and praise them to the moon.  The glory of prayer we typically reserve for god is put to shame in these functions when these guys are praised in front of crowds and they have absolutely no shame in sitting and listening to the crappy accolades.

Sadly we are left with very little choice but to throng to the theaters to see these guys every week, while they do the same thing.  They stifle anyone from doing what they do, and allow little room for anyone else to entertain.

The age of entertaining cinema is long gone and it really doesn’t look promising for anything that can be called good cinema, where we wanted to go back to theater again and again.  May be I should just stop watching anything new in my language/s and stick to you tube watching old movies.  That certainly will save me the aggravation of glorified guys who really are not hero material and also save money.