The reason behind the initiation of a different trends in film distribution is to expand the channel for more diverse cinema to pass through, and not for a single film to pass through to a diverse audience. The purpose of the multiplex
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Delusion sells easily in Bollywood. The perpetrators of the myth become its most ardent followers, and the propagators of the lie become its most zealous supporters. Kareena Kapoor makes vehement claims as to Bollywood’s existence as an independent entity, separate from the influence of Hollywood, and completely self-sufficient, and then stars in a film which has as its prime promotional material; the flaunting of three out of work Hollywood actors whose services the producers of Ms.Kapoor’s film have proudly managed to procure. It is not so much the tendency to spread misinformation that renders Bollywood disgraceful; for that is endemic and typical of each center of power in the world – the religious zealots call it God’s own sermon, the politicians call it the manifesto, the corporate giants call it the credo and all the others call it propaganda – but in its tendency to become an innocuous victim, a blind follower and a recipient of that misinformation itself. In that, it displays a strange dual tendency – to first create mythical resonance around itself, and then to attribute it with the credibility of actual existence by being the most staunch believer in it. It is, thus, not only the victim of its own crime; but also self-delusional. If anything, the application of the multiplex model of film distribution in the nation is but a proof of the aforementioned process.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF WALLS WITHIN THE ROOM
The multiplex changed the cinema theatre from a Roman Colosseum, where the entire society would gather around the playing arena to witness the spectacle taking place in the middle, to the Wimbledon arena, where different people could let preference reign supreme as they filled the seats for one match and skipped the other. The essential difference between the two aforementioned sport arenas, except the obvious one in terms of their existence in vastly unlike periods of history (to which we can attribute the other differences between them as well); is in the number of spectacles each offers; and the subsequent variety of choices it makes available to the paying public. A multiplex, much like an amusement park, thus, was cinema’s commercial solution to the problem of an audience that refused to have its demands satiated by a common spectacle. Never before in cinema’s history lay the taste of the audience divided. Democracy and the luxuries it allowed its citizens to exercise had crept in the establishment of cinematic taste as well and audiences rejected the older model of merely being receivers of the new release in town; instead, exercising unprecedented influence through their esteemed position in the market chain – that of the consumer – over not only which/how the films were made, but also how the films were shown.
Even then, despite the multiplex’s original irrefutable nature as primarily a move guided by the fulfilment of financial motives, one similar to the Cinerama or the introduction of sound, it also remained a huge manifestation of the industry’s respect for their audience and its choice. While it was originally concieved as a profitable venture, it was also a manifestation of the the variety that cinema distributors now sought to offer the medium’s ardent followers; and as a rare occasion in cinematic history, not stifle or manipulate an audience trend, but play alongwith it by serving the increasingly segregated nature of cinematic taste – high brow and low brow, art house and commercial, world cinema and local productions, indie films or studio products – through the gracious feature of accomodation and opportunity, rather than an obstinance or resistance to change.
The multiplex was a positive trend, for it sought to convert the cinematic theatre, or now complex, into a museum from a road side show – for in the latter, the audience’s existence would matter only so far as they preserved their relation with the stage, or the performance area by sitting (or standing) in front of it, thus in a manner, being forced to sit through the performance for the lack of any alternative to it; but in the former, the only common spaces the audience was supposed to share was the box-office queue and the entrance to the multiplex, through which having passed, they could roam around the compound, savoring the various exhibitions inside, the variety of films playing nowithstanding – film posters, information about latest releases, the enormous options in terms of the exhaustive menus offered by the catering services; and the latest trend of the incorporation of a multiplex within a shopping mall (in itself being the updated version of the Baghdad street market, with its promise of an assortment of buying opportunities), thus opening an entire world of peaceful co-existence wherein the enthusiastic audiences of the larger spectacle (the bigger film) would not interfere with the zeal of the audiences of the smaller spectacle (the smaller film); thus promising a prospective trend wherein a small independent film wouldn’t have to seek refuge in art-house festival circuits and leaving the fans of the director of this film to launch extensive searches for bootleg copies of the film years after the release of the film.
THE CASE OF THE BIGGER FISH
However, Bollywood’s tendency to delude itself assures itself of the need to place conviction in the very myth that it itself constructed – that of absolute cultural dominance, and of its nature as the greatest cultural export that India can offer to the world. One may interject : But isn’t that true? Isn’t Bollywood truly India’s greatest cultural export? And the answer is no. Primarily because, as is often the case, the cause of a myth is served by other myths – which in this case, is that the world has woken up to the cinema that India seeks to offer, and yet, the truth remains completely the opposite – for even today, the world sees Bollywood as being synonymous with Indian cinema and its cinema as, as film director Dibakar Bannerjee puts it, “A three-legged cow at the fair, a freak that everyone is curious to catch a glance of, and even mock; but no one is interested in beyond these superficial reactions.” The second myth is one that Bollywood seeks to solidify with the assurance provided by a figure, and thus, it often shows its revenue running into billions to explain how such a figure could not have arrived at without the attention of the world being centred upon us; and yet, their statements are only a contradiction to the films they make, wherein each film is modelled to satiate the desire of the NRI living in far away lands to establish a reconnect with his homeland, where the most fundamental of human feelings – nostalgia – is exploited cleverly by Bollywood to fill its coffers. Yes, even outside the territorial confinements of our nation, it is the Indians who watch our cinema and no one else. To believe otherwise is self-delusion, and yet another myth that Bollywood seeks to propagate through the manipulation of the fourth column – the media – to the gullible audience who sits at home, waiting to lap up information and attuned to gifting the status of anything that features in the news, as being true.
And again, it is not Bollywood’s myth-making that is more harmless, for as aforementioned, each organisation that thrives on a need for constant power indulges in it sooner or letter, but its conviction in the myth itself, which leads to its execution of a plan that aims at the elimination and obliteration of all other types of cinema in the nation. A plan that Bollywood takes up to consistently confirm its hegemonic cultural authority as the only possible cultural export of the nation, and taken up by the privileges of that position, the bigger fish seeks to preserve that position, through the employment of whatever mechanism it takes to make that preservation possible.
As such, the multiplex, that prospect of change in how cinema is viewed in this nation of ours, has been converted into a citrus money fruit that is squeezed dry by Bollywood to explore all opportunities it offers in terms of making money. Therefore, the same multiplex complex that sought to afford the cinema theatre the status of a museum where people are given the authority of roaming around the space and affixing their attention onto a particular exhibit, has now been reduced to a salesman’s mini-trunk, which carries umpteen variations of the same product. In that, each exhibit is similar to the last, and each spectacle burns as bright as the previous one. And the mecca of accomodation that the multiplex could have been through the fulfilment of its promise to allow an independent film made in Maharashtra play in a theatre besides the theatre that plays a Karan Johar film; thus converting it into a video-art installation with screens being placed adjacent to each other; has now been transformed into the center of containment for the small film, and of expansion for the large film. Therefore, a model which promised an opportunity for the small filmmaker to let his film occupy one screen while the blockbuster down the corner occupies another screen, has given way to one where the big screen now gets two screens to feature its typical lack of ambition on.
RELENTLESSLY BANGING THE HEAD AGAINST THE WALL
And it is no surprise, for the Bollywood model is of bombardment. Of constaint uninterrupted refrain till a response is elicited from its target. It is reflective, completely, of how our society is at large in today’s world – a social structure that emphasises on accumulation and deposit. And the same two steps repeated again and again till accumulation is no longer possible, which is also when the process of deposition is replaced by that of measurement of the accumulated amount. Thus, the multiplex has become the steady tool for a bad Bollywood film to accumulate as much and as fast as possible, an avenue for it to finally stifle out the small independent film, and extend its earnings beyond just the old box-office, but into the ticket sales, satellite rights, music rights and merchandise.
A lots of film enthusiasts proudly claim the changing modes of film distribution in the nation – of the splurge in television movie channels, DVD distributors, Set Top Box Services that provide the option to watch the latest film, 30-rupee VCD’s, rent-on-demand service websites, and the possibility of a Video-on-demand channel in the near future– but what is there to celebrate if each screen in the film festival is going to play the same set of films again and again? The reason behind the initiation of a different trends in film distribution is to expand the channel for more diverse cinema to pass through, and not for a single film to pass through to a diverse audience. The purpose of the multiplex lies grossly misunderstood in the nation as of now; and with its reduction of the revenue-generation period of a latest film from jubilees earlier to a 3-week window, it has only enhanced the factory assembly line production like nature of Bollywood films, wherein with the expanded demand, the supply has to expand proportionally, thus resulting in close to 4.73 films releasing every Friday, and all produced by Bollywood. And then, we are supposed to be proud that we produce the most films in the world. How much cinema do we produce?
Tags: Bollywood, Cinephilia, Hollywoo, Indian Cinema, Multiplex, November Issue no-7 2009
Posted By Anuj | Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | Filed under Cover Story
