Vasu
Reddy from Chicago
Throughout childhood and adulthood, I have lived a life of
my own. Essentially meaning that always
life in a hostel, shared accommodation, rented and shared apartment, life with
aunts and uncles, and my own apartment, home or condo. The ability to move from place to place,
share with schoolmates and friends, and eventually with family and
children. The moves and folks I shared
with my accommodation and food, have never impacted what I was and how I
behaved. I simply was myself,
irrespective of where I was and who I was with.
I am very sure there were times I was not the best roommate or a welcome
guest or the best family member, as I simply like to mind my own behavior, and
seldom wanted to involve in matters that of not personal. This might have been just the way I want
others to be with me, and I try to behave the same with others. I care and feel with my heart, and the impact
of life’s events are hard on my system to handle events, so I also try hard to
not be impacted as I suffer personally by taking things to heart.
In the USA if you lived if I have, there are many people you
come in touch with, your own family and friends, community, fellow nationals
and may immigrants just like you. They
are all like your own journey, working, students, families and relatives and
sometimes just friends. I have these and
a lot of new associates, acquaintances and new members of the vast and common
core of immigrants.
In all these years of being by myself, in India or outside
it has not been on mind to worry about who I associate with or who I wanted to
be friends with. I don’t think I will do
so in the future. What I have noticed is
that even the very well educated, well acquainted, well healed members still
show the imaginable thoughts on their affinity to communities. I notice this more with the freewheeling
comments on social networks. While we
are all entitled to opinions (I have mine at least once week on something), the
most well-established members of the community have prejudices of others with
different names. This has become more
obvious with movies and their content and names. People are becoming experts on the community
by writing their reviews (on community rather than movie) and somehow
associating to their displeasure on what others are. Lately the social media accounts and many
opinions on community and caste have become commonplace, but pertaining to
communities that are not their own.
Arjun Reddy movie is one such example, where the opinions have been so
much to just the name of the movie and how it was directed. I finally saw the movie, and felt it was
another movie with a simple story of love and physical and self-abuse, ending
with the routine ending of the lovers being united. Although critics and moviegoers find it
different, I found the movie a simple story of love with perhaps current Indian
setting. It was not a ground breaking or
trend setting movie, but was different than Telugu movies. The social media and the promotions have been
focused on the hype of the language and movie making, and how the actor/s are
taking the movie to the stage. I would
believe that creating the hype is to sell more tickets, and all the actors and
makers will probably have moved on by now to their next movie. What has been uncommon is how people have
taking extreme opinions on this single movie.
Especially for those in the USA, who have the luxury of so many various
languages and options for moviegoers.
For a cheaper price, your theatres have multiple choices. Anyone who likes movies have an enormous
choice of movies that you can imply pick to watch. Each movie is made with some conviction by
the makers and language and genre are simply a choice of the audience. Indian moviegoers should know this as we do
make regional language movies and many of them are translated (dubbed) into all
major Indian languages. And moreover,
they are of different concept and genre.
No one is asking the moviegoer to see a movie that they are unwilling to
watch. But the ability to write on
social media is allowing for everyone to find something negative to comment
on. It is a phenomenon that has no
logic.
First you are not forced to watch a movie. Then you interject the community or negativity
to the making of a simple movie. (we no
longer have pathbreaking concepts, just mashups). Then you put it out and a lot of your
followers then start to add their own take on it. Many of them not even watching the movie, but
just for opinion) and the trial of comments continue until they end up being a
critic of something the movie has nothing to do with. This typically starts with someone who is
educated and has been a part of a large immigrant community. Anyone who is reading this can associate with
my imagination, and start to write something good, something sensible,
something endearing, something encouraging, or simply don’t write. No one in 21st century America
should worry about last names, rather the future of their children and families
and their future generations. Not some
dumb title of a move or content of a movie.
You have better and more important things to worry about.
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