Heights of insecurity!
Hi there,
As I was discussing with a friend on the shallowness of thoughts promoted by the popular media, the insecure nature of modern "art-forms" dawned on us.
The modern "art" (any modern media extension that we pay for) functions with an ulterior interest of having its patrons addicted to it. In other words, its idea is to retain its clientele and also ensure that its clients do not get enticed to other forms.
An intriguing (but, equally astonishing) fact: Have we have ever seen a character reading (a serious book or even a paperback) in any of the recent movies, or dramas staged? Speeches covered in the popular media are devoid of references to any literary works.
The plot beneath is truly shocking. The common-man's media happens to be television and movies. And these two forms of media have made it a point to jointly decided not to promote any other art forms. Reason: Serious art would expand the mind, and the days of pulp fiction content would be numbered. Also, pulp fiction is easy to produce. So, if minds get expanded, satisfying expanded minds is pretty tough. Hence the maddening rush to produce, patronize and worship mindless content.
The only two movies, I could think of, that had some reference to must-read authors are Life is Beautiful and Nanba, Nanba. The former pays homage to Schopenhauer (in an implicit mode) and the latter shows one of the characters reading Elia Kazan's Understudy. Watching a character reading Understudy (that too, in a Tamil Movie) came as a rude shock to me.
It is time we woke up, questioned our habits and came out of our mindless addiction to our modern day anathema (read: popular media).
Luv,
Vijay
As I was discussing with a friend on the shallowness of thoughts promoted by the popular media, the insecure nature of modern "art-forms" dawned on us.
The modern "art" (any modern media extension that we pay for) functions with an ulterior interest of having its patrons addicted to it. In other words, its idea is to retain its clientele and also ensure that its clients do not get enticed to other forms.
An intriguing (but, equally astonishing) fact: Have we have ever seen a character reading (a serious book or even a paperback) in any of the recent movies, or dramas staged? Speeches covered in the popular media are devoid of references to any literary works.
The plot beneath is truly shocking. The common-man's media happens to be television and movies. And these two forms of media have made it a point to jointly decided not to promote any other art forms. Reason: Serious art would expand the mind, and the days of pulp fiction content would be numbered. Also, pulp fiction is easy to produce. So, if minds get expanded, satisfying expanded minds is pretty tough. Hence the maddening rush to produce, patronize and worship mindless content.
The only two movies, I could think of, that had some reference to must-read authors are Life is Beautiful and Nanba, Nanba. The former pays homage to Schopenhauer (in an implicit mode) and the latter shows one of the characters reading Elia Kazan's Understudy. Watching a character reading Understudy (that too, in a Tamil Movie) came as a rude shock to me.
It is time we woke up, questioned our habits and came out of our mindless addiction to our modern day anathema (read: popular media).
Luv,
Vijay
posted by Vijay at 10:42 AM
1 Comments:
the past week, i spent thinking about why india doesn't produce any inventors (not many), or extra-ordinary scientists. I also wondered how when these indians migrated to other countries, contributed to the world of science. The answer, i concluded, was in the indian media. has any movie these days or those days centered on inventions or discoveries. all they talk about is love, elopement, dowry, marriages, aduthathu ambujam, women's liberation then, men's liberation now. if u look at the general themes in movies, it's the same. in tv, it's much worse. how would a child brought in such a society think about even going further from college. that's why they elope or get married right after that.
how many schools actually let children experiment all by themselves in the lab. even if they did, it's the same old experiments and laws. nothing original. even writing is memorized writing. where was the quest for knowledge or thirst for books implanted in the children..or rather when.
so how could they grow out of the box. somewhere something has to be changed. these media people learnt to use the written laws and memorized them in schools. when they grew up they read books from languages or watch an english movie and copy the script or story or both from it. what else can we expect?
if change is possible we should make the change. if not we should change and appreciate their monotonous effort in portraying the same image in different forms. that requires great skill too.
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