BOLLYWOOD, OSCARS & SLUMDOG !!

Hello friends !!

This is my first blog & I would like to blog on a subject very close to my heart: Bollywood & also on the recent success of 'Slumdog Millionaire' & 'The White Tiger'.

I'm an ardent fan of movies, be it bollywood, hollywood or Korean for that matter. After viewing hundreds of movies of all genres & places, I can broadly hypothesise that if hollywood is known for its technically precise & thought-provoking conceptually brilliant movies, bollywood should be given credit for producing more than 500 films a year with most of them featuring songs & revolving around the diverse culture of India. As far as korean movies are concerned, they are too slow, but brilliant on the emotional front.

Being an afficionado of Bollywood, it really hurts to swallow the bitter pill that only 3 movies from India in the last 60 years have made it to Best foreign film category in Academy awards, popularly known as Oscars. These are Mother India(1957), Salaam Bombay(1988) & Lagaan(2001). Before the nomination of 'Slumdog Milionaire' for oscars & Man's booker prize 2008 being awarded to Aravind Adiga for 'The White Tiger' I never used to doubt the impartiality of Oscars & Bookers. But the recent successes of these 'hogwash potboilers' have forced me to think that way.

It's no coincidence that the only movies from India that have received critical acclaim from West revolve around poverty or depict India as a third world nation still sunk deep in the swarms of poverty. It seems that Danny Boyle & Aravind Adiga have found the new mantra for success: Present the filth, poverty & corruption of India to the west in an exaggerated way to the point of utter disgust in the name of so called REALITY & the West is ready to honour with bookers & golden globes. It's a win-win situation. The west is getting entertained seeing our squalor-filled country & the media (& most of us Indians) are going ga-ga over India's achievement.

I can't agree more with Amitabh Bachhan on what he said about the Oscars recently that Oscars are not the ultimate recognition for a film & Bollywood is far more creative than the West. He was spot on on his judgement for 'slumdog' as well which the media overhyped to give a negative image of Big B.

So, it's not that I'm craving for Oscars but it hurts to see such ridiculous films getting recognition while great movies like Rang De Basanti & Taare Zameen Par being kicked out of the Oscar race. India has produced far better mainstream movies than slumdog.. Had it been an Indian entry, nobody would have given it the hoopla it's receiving now & it would have been thrashed.

Slumdog, seems to me, is a caricature of India. It is made only to mock India & for voyeuristic pleasures of the West. Same goes for The White Tiger, it's even more disgusting & stinking. Salaam Bombay & City of Joy also depicted slums of Mumbai & Kolkata respectively but there was sincerity & honesty in their effort. But slumdog & white tiger seem to keep reality at stake just to please the first world.

It's high time we should have a reality check instead of gloating on the success of slumdog which ridicules & caricatures our nation.

Signing Off,
Anurag Gupta