Stay tuned: Why TV has never been better

Let’s talk about TV.

As you may know from a casual look around this blog, I’m a pop culture buff. And heavily into films. I don’t restrict myself to just Indian or Hollywood and watch pretty much anything that interests me, whatever the language or country of origin.

As far as Indian films are concerned, there are films that can compete against the best in the world.

TV, not so much.

A pile of excrement has a better entertainment value than our TV shows. Maybe I’m overlooking something, but I can’t think of a single Indian TV show in the last 20 years that I’d willingly watch.

Faced with such a shitty situation, one must look elsewhere for alternatives.

And that is where foreign television series fill the void.

It is accepted that television all over the world is generally geared towards the lowest common denominator, and short on series that don’t belittle the viewers intelligence. Europe may have fared a bit better than America, but overall TV was generally seen as the poor cousin of films.

Films were daring, experimental, with complicated plots and morally gray characters. And TV in contrast used to be populated with inane series and dull sitcoms with predictable plots and horrible acting.

Not anymore.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, there has been a massive renaissance on TV, especially American. Starting in the early ‘00s, TV has gradually been building up stream and now, they are giving films a run for their money. Present-day series are edgy, complicated, with morally ambiguous characters, and extraordinary acting. No longer are TV shows treated as pariahs by Hollywood A-listers, case in point, Matthew McConaughey in True Detective, and Tom Hardy in Peaky Blinders, among numerous other examples.

The lines have blurred to such an extent that you can’t say that a certain subject is taboo for TV audiences and that it’ll never be made.

And even the much maligned super-hero franchises that are renowned for their childish plots and FX-heavy visuals have small screen variants that are critically acclaimed, e.g. Daredevil.

My theory is that this renaissance has come about, as individuals have realized the power of TV as a medium, and the opportunity it offers them to fully flesh out their ideas and not fit everything into a pre-set time limit.

Showrunners are more conscious of the fact that they need to end the series once they reach a certain point, and not keep flogging a dead horse just because it’s successful and has made them a lot of money.

More recently, streaming services like Netflix also play a part by giving critically successful series with low cable viewership figures a second chance. This helps keep alive series that might otherwise have been cancelled. They also encourage new and relatively off-beat content – deciphered using viewership algorithms - which otherwise might not get a chance to air on major networks.

These factors have, IMO, contributed to TV series becoming as creative and complex as films.

Of course all these factors by themselves don’t mean much, after all you need a sizeable audience that watches the content. The viewership figures would also serve as an impetus for the development of similar content.

It seems like a significant portion of the TV viewing audience has matured, and are seeking more from their TV than just mind-numbing reality shows. And this is reflected in the kind of boundary pushing series you are starting to see on TV. I’m by no means saying that all TV is now intelligent and perfect (far from it), however backed by an ever increasing, discerning audience, TV executives and showrunners are betting on intelligent content more than ever. TV is now starting to thrive on complexity.

Just take a look around, there are shows about an anthropomorphic talking horse, a Colombian drug lord, and a schoolteacher/drugkingpin. We also have a series on a Coen brothers film (reviewed here), a realistic crime series set in Baltimore etc.

As mentioned earlier, while European TV was not as bad as its American counterparts, it had a lot of awful shows as well. However, they seem to have stepped their game up, and now have a lot of brilliant series like Forbrydelsen, Les Revenants, Sherlock, War and Peace et al.

A pet theory of mine is that once certain things reach critical mass, they succeed and become the new norm. It’s not like there were no good American TV shows before 2000. It’s just that things coalesced around this period due to audience maturity, exposure through internet, and alternate viewing vehicles. Once TV executives see that their risks pay off and that there is a market for intelligent storytelling, they tend to take more of the same risks.

This is already happening with our films - with a more mature audience asking for meaningful cinema, and rewarding those that make them.

And it gives me hope for Indian television. Once our audience evolves, maybe a decade or so down the line, we will start seeing our very own Breaking Bads and Fargos.

Odds & Ends - 1

As with my other post today, the subject of this mini-post was brought to my attention by H. We're all probably familiar with reaction videos on YouTube. Random individuals post videos of themselves reacting to films, games, music videos and anything under the sun really.

These can get popular, and often a lot of these individuals amass subscribers in the hundreds of thousands. I don't need to mention that these individuals stand to earn mucho plata if they monetize their videos.

H, who's a pop-culture maven, told me that recently she's been coming across videos of white people reacting to Indian movies/trailers. That got us thinking. Of course, there are individuals the world over who are genuinely interested in world cinema, and take an effort in sincerely exploring the art forms of other cultures. However, a lot of these reaction videos could also be made by individuals who've figured out that they stand to make a killing by catering to an Indian audience.

As mentioned in a previous post, a lot of Indians crave the white seal of approval, combine this with the fact that we have the fastest growing internet subscriber base, it all adds up to the perfect recipe for random white dudes to make a fortune by producing these reaction videos.

Something to think about.

Pizza: A review

Garcon, this is not what I ordered.

 After all the running around last week, and viewing a slew of foreign films at the Biffes, I decided to settle down with something homegrown. I picked a film that I had somehow missed on its cinematic release, “Pizza”. This thriller/horror, was a huge indie hit in 2012. It was the film that established director Karthik Subbaraj, and actor (and current indie superstar) Vijay Sethupathi, as artists to watch out for.

I’d watched Karthik’s brilliant “Jigarthanda” on its release, and loved it. That was a quintessential Tamil gangster film that also wore its influences on its sleeve. What I really admired about it was that when the current crop of Tamil and other Indian language films are trying and failing miserable to ape Hollywood crime flicks - with globetrotting dons and imbecilic storylines - “Jigarthanda” went back to the roots, and was a stylish gangster film rooted in Tamil (and Indian-ness), without insulting the audience’s intelligence.

As mentioned earlier, I’d missed out on watching “Pizza” due to combination of various factors. In the meantime, the film had been hyped up tremendously by the media, friends, acquaintances etc. This combined with the fact that I really liked “Jigarthanda” and wanted to watch Karthik’s earlier output, made me jump at the opportunity to watch “Pizza” when it presented itself. 

I started watching the film alone, at around 11 in the night, in a darkened room. The perfect setting. I must hand it to Karthik, parts of the film were genuinely unnerving, there is a large portion of the film that takes place inside a bungalow, with just Vijay Sethupathi (I’m a sucker for films – or atleast large extended portions of it – which are one-man shows, set in confined locations). In such cases, it’s hard to hold the audience’s interest and move the story forward. However, the “Pizza” team have pulled it off.

Michael (played by Vijay) is a pizza delivery guy at a restaurant. He is in a live-in relationship with his girlfriend, Anu, who’s a horror buff. She’s a huge fan of horror films, books, shows and even claims to have had a paranormal experience herself. This is in direct contrast to Michael, who is not really sure if he believes in these things, and is also a bit faint of heart. As the story progresses we learn that they are orphans and have known each other since school. We also learn that Anu is pregnant, and wants to get married soon. Michael is hesitant as he’s not really convinced if he would be able to provide for them with his meagre salary. He soon comes around and they marry, privately for the time being, with Michael promising a grander wedding once they have the money.

The film then introduces us to Michael’s workplace. We meet his colleagues, the cashier – Raghavan, and the chef – Srinath. We also meet his boss, Shanmugam, who’s shown talking agitatedly about some mystery product over the phone. Shanmugam also piques Michael’s and his colleagues’ curiosity by inviting a dishevelled, homeless looking man into his office.

It turns out that Shanmugam has hired the man - a medium/exorcist of some sort – to rid his daughter of a spirit that he believes has possessed her. Michael becomes aware of this when he goes to Shanmugam’s home to drop something off, as requested. Once there, he witnesses the “possession”, as well as the medium attempting to talk to the spirit.

The film keeps moving at a brisk pace. Shortly, Michael gets a pizza delivery order, just as he’s about to leave, Shanmugam calls him inside his cabin and orders him to deliver something to his home on the way.

Michael leaves for the delivery. The next scene cuts to Shanmugam arriving back at the restaurant to find Michael bruised, bloodied and in a state of shock, sitting on the restaurant floor. His colleagues from the restaurant seem to be in a similar state as well.

On being prodded by Shanmugam, Michael breaks down and narrates the tale of what happened once he left for the delivery.

The delivery was to an affluent bungalow (the same bungalow mentioned earlier in the article). Once there, Michael witnesses two murders, a child’s un-dead spirit (the same one believed to be possessing Shanmugam’s daughter), and numerous other paranormal activities. This includes an unconnected landline telephone that suddenly comes to life and starts forwarding calls that were originally meant for Michael’s mobile.

 We also soon learn that the bungalow is actually a dilapidated old structure, with a reputation for being haunted. It was also the scene of numerous unexplained deaths. There is also a twist - Michael’s wife is also supposed to have died in the same premise a while back.

The parts mentioned above, and the opening sequences set the story moving along nicely. I started wondering whether I’d stumbled upon that elusive holy grail – an Indian horror film that would actually turn out to be intelligent and genuinely scary, because let’s face it, where horror is concerned, our films are infantile and cringeworthy.

I cycled through various theories ranging from whether the whole premise was a prank being played on Michael by his wife and colleagues (as he’s a faint hearted guy who scares easily), to whether he was hallucinating the whole thing - as a form of coping with the fact that his wife might have actually committed suicide a few scenes earlier, to time warps, and other fantastic guesses.

In the end, all the theories turned to damp squibs. It turns out that Michael and his wife had concocted this story as an elaborate scheme to dupe Shanmugam. What actually transpires is that when Michael leaves for the delivery that fateful night, he accidentally stumbles upon the “something” that Shanmugam had asked him to drop off at his house. That “something” is also the mystery product from the earlier scenes – priceless gems. Just what Michael and his wife need to make a new life for themselves and their baby. They hatch this grandiose scheme to fool Shanmugam, playing his own beliefs and superstitions against him, and thus procure the gems for themselves.

I personally felt that this film was a disappointment. It could have been so much more.

My main problem with it is the fact that the film would have worked a lot better if Karthik had actually shown Michael narrating the happenings in the bungalow and then gave us the big reveal, rather than showing what he experienced in a flashback-mode, with a lot of visual trickery, as if it were real. That would have made the film intellectually honest as well as make it a seamless whole (But I guess that wouldn’t have had quite the visceral impact the director wanted, and instead he settled for the easy way out).

I get that we, the audience, are listening to Michael tell the story, and we are as much in the dark and as taken in as Shanmugam. However the means of telling and employing a certain device to tell that story rings false to me. If Karthik had chosen to go the other way (of showing Michael narrating the story, instead of showing it via flashback), we would have had an extremely intelligent, “talky” thriller with horror elements, comparable with the best in the world. To me, the version he decided to go with feels like a cop-out and rings false.

I didn’t even mind the ending where paranormal incidents are suddenly introduced after it was established that there was actually nothing spooky going on. I do however mind uninspired trickery.

This film felt like I had ordered a plain margherita, and instead, got a pepperoni pizza.

I was left feeling disappointed with this film. However, I do have high hopes for Tamil (and maybe Indian horror) a few years down the road.  Although, there are large logic holes in our horror flicks, “Pizza” and “Maya” (released in 2015) show that filmmakers are focusing on atmospherics, pacing and a more mature way of presentation, rather than juvenile Ramsay Bros. type of crap that Indian horror was synonymous with in the past.

Coldplay or: How I learned to Let Go and Chill.

Coldplay released the video for their track, “Hymn For The Weekend” a few days back, and all hell has broken loose.

I personally don’t give a shit how India is portrayed by a couple of has-beens, however I’d like to tie this in with a larger narrative that the Europeans have built up over the years, and one which the Anglosphere is continuing, so I thought that I’d weigh in with my two cents.

(Before we start, why are you still listening to Coldplay in 2016? :p)

The whole controversy revolves around the fact that the video has typical elements of Indian life and culture that the Caucasian loves. Gratuitous shots of crumbling infrastructure, broken down means of transport, poverty porn, “technology” that still seems to be stuck in the 15^th century etc. However, in the middle of (and in spite of) all this the “natives” are happy, and sing and dance, and celebrate life. 

“We natives really know how to live, we don’t need none of that materialistic shit yo! See how we are all totally fucked, but still stay so upbeat and happy. Learn our deep, mystical secrets bruv”.

This seems to be the message from a quick glance at the video. Another thing you can pick up from all these videos shot in the "Third world", be it Asia, Africa or South America is the multitude of people thronging around the sole white guy(s). The evolved white guy(s) comes to the 3rd world to meet the faceless multitude and embrace and revel in their way of life and seek enlightenment. Usually the white guy is the only one you can identify with, whereas the "other" people are reduced to a faceless, anonymous group. All these images reduce a living, breathing, complex people to a 19th century trope of the mysterious, one-dimensional mystic Indian, and in the process maybe massage the white guy's ego. 

 I’d like to point out that Chris Martin (and a few other Coldplay members, if I’m not mistaken) played an impromptu gig in a Delhi pub, so it’s not like he isn’t aware of the other facet of India. I was also reminded of an Iggy Azalea video from a few years back - which was very similar to the Coldplay video – with all the clichéd elements in place. I’m damn sure that had the camera panned a few inches to the left or right, you would have seen gleaming new buildings and a modern looking neighbourhood, but no, we gotta stick with that poverty porn, yo.

I’m by no means saying that we are perfect or that we have all our problems sorted out. Far from it, huge numbers of our population live in poverty, open defecation is a problem etc etc. So frigging what?

One aspect of life doesn’t negate the other.

India is messed up in many ways. India is awesome in many ways.

Shall we use the same yardstick and stereotype all nations equally?

Oh UK? Damned miserable country filled with paedophiles. Overrun by fucking Chavs and people in housing estates. Binge-drinking alcoholics who throw up everywhere. A bunch of thieving lowlifes who got rich by looting and colonising other countries. Worse than the Nazis when it comes to millions killed. Yet have conveniently whitewashed history to portray themselves as a civilizing influence on “savage countries”, and not the mass murdering lunatics they actually are. 

Oh USA? An obese paranoid country with a mass-murderer lurking on every corner. Overrun by trailer park thrash and ghettoes.

And so on, for literally every country on this planet. See how stereotyping works? Now assume that Indian media and content was all powerful, dominant, and in demand across the world, and whenever they portrayed the UK or the USA, these same stereotypes were recycled over and over. Pretty soon it becomes THE image of the country to the rest of the world, and consumers of that content would be conditioned to associate those two countries to the stereotypes.

But that’s not the truth, right? UK, in spite of its faults is a decent country. The USA, in spite of its defects has contributed much to the world.

And thus with India. And this is what irritates a lot of people.

As I mentioned before, the issue is not just with this particular video, it’s with the Anglosphere’s overall narrative of India in the media. It was the same with China in the 90’s and early 00’s (before its grudging admission to almost developed status). Forget China, If I mentioned Nigeria and a few other countries in Africa, what would be the image that springs to mind? More often than not, it would be one of extreme poverty, and random vultures chilling out near some emancipated kid. But that’s not the case, parts of Africa are very well developed, clean and doing well for themselves. But that’s not the image you see in the media.

When cases like the Flint water crisis occur, the reaction from the average western individual is, “Hey, we are developed, this is just a one-off thing” (in spite of the fact that there is now evidence that this is happening across various low income communities). But if this had been in India (or any other non-white nation), “Lol, what a shit-hole country”.

I remember as recently as the late 90’s and early 00’s, puny Britain lecturing us on Kashmir, self-determination yada, yada. Really? The same country that ruthlessly colonized half the world, and still oppresses the population of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Talk about hypocrisy.

But we listened.

With this particular video, I think a lot of people are pissed off because they think that Coldplay have seen the other side of India, and still resorted to stereotypes. The anger seems to stem from the fact, “Why won’t they acknowledge that we are developed, and show that side as well?”, this again taps into the national psyche, where a lot of us still see the “White Man” as perfect and desperately crave his approval. From the craze for skin lightening creams, to the way we talk to them (I’ve witnessed several instances of this personally, with people fawning over them), to how we refer to our film industries.

This could be due to our colonial past as well as the predominant image of the white man and culture in popular media. Hollywood and other Anglosphere media almost always portray good looking white people, in immaculately clean houses and streets. Even the poor and “ugly” people portrayed on screen appear relatively attractive and not so poor. This is the general image in mainstream pop culture.

This is all a make-believe fantasy, in reality, accurate representation is glossed over. The problems facing the west, the atrocious living conditions in cities, ghettos and trailer parks and rural communities are not shown. This is propaganda. The West is great, fuck the rest.

This even affects the way that Caucasians are portrayed in our media - as good looking, wealthy, cool et al, when that’s not the case. There are equally as many ugly, poor and nerdy white people, as well (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Thus, it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.

This same message keeps getting repeated ad-nauseam, no matter what the incident, thus building the narrative that the West is beyond reproach, and India is an undeveloped country stuck in the dark ages.

This is not to say that the West is a horrible cesspool. Far from it, they are well-developed and prosperous, but my contention is that the West focus only on our negatives and gloss over our positives, whereas they focus on their positives and absolutely gloss over their negatives.

So, you may be wondering, what’s the point? How do I change the prevailing narrative? The answer is clear. You can’t. Just grab a beer and have fun. India (and the rest of the non-white world) would always be portrayed as lesser, not fully civilized beings (do you really think Mexico is as underdeveloped as how they portray in Sicario and other popular culture? Or all Latinos, thugs and gardeners? Well, if you do, I’ve got a plot on the moon to sell to you)

These are all media the “white guy” has made for himself and his people to make themselves feel good and superior, and subtly show the rest of the world just how awesome they are. If you want to watch it, develop a thick skin.

You can however build a counter-narrative.

I mentioned earlier, about seeking approval. The simple truth is you shouldn’t. As an individual or as a country, you shouldn’t seek approval, that would mean giving others the power to judge you.  Respect and stand up for yourself.

Read up, gain knowledge. Figure out how the world works, how a narrative is built and perpetuated. 

As the generation born during and shortly after independence fade away, so will the current approval-seeking mentality. I have high hopes from those born post the late 70s – early 80s onwards. Already there is a change in mentality (visible IRL, online and in new media), acknowledgement of past injustices and a desire to change the present. Keep working, keep developing. Don’t let the stereotypes affect you.

History is a cycle, and soon we will be back in a place to build our own narrative. Till then, quit bitchin’, who cares what a bunch of white guys think?.

Disclaimer from the brown guy: The term “white guy” just flowed better, and thus the use. I’m not racist, and do not condone racism. And I’m by no means implying that the entire population of the Anglosphere is racist or are engaged in building this “narrative”. I was referring to those in charge of creating and producing the content.