1G4T. (read as originality)

Shitty title, I know. I choose it coz I am to depict something similar in today’s cinema. Specifically Tamil cinema, generalized on basis of the majority, leaving out the exceptional few. To start with, I would like to define a tamil movie. It’s a movie which is produced by a banner with its office at Chennai, directed a director from mainland Tamilnadu, starred by a hero who boasts of a blood is supposedly impregnated with “tamil mannu”, and a heroine imported from neighboring states or from Mumbai and the music scored by sons of erstwhile big shot music directors and has a English title like RED (acronym for revolution education and development) etc.
Each one of these is an action flick as well as romance and has a full length comedy track that has nothing to do with the movie’s non existing main stream story. It has 5 songs in all, at those situations which least warrant a song. 3 of them will be short on the streets of Eastern Europe. Usually it’s a fast number where the hero wears a lungi slightly revealing his pattapati trouser, and irrespective of the ambient temperature the bulky heroin will be scantly clad. The dance steps are stolen from the traditionally “in-front-of-the-corpse” dance. Next time u see one such a song, observe the onlookers expression. They will carry a confused look on their faces, whether or not to throw the coins at then. Some wonder if the dancers are beggars, some wonder if thatz a dance or simply 2 people experiences fits. What a way to market Indian taste for art.
Then there is one soporific song. That is when the supposed twist in the story gets over. Surprisingly one can guess the end and the twist right at the second scene. Wonderful direction I should say. All such twists are sad somehow.
The last number is mandatory an item number; pole dance performed by vamps with absolutely crappy lyrics. One simple wonders the though process of the lyricist. A woman is compared with internet virus, code bug, and bottle of illicit liquor, coconut from Polaachi town, beetle leaves from Tanjore district, mango / mangoes or oral (an instrument used to beat rice).
Lyrics are the most comic / tragic part of the whole movie. For the fast number, which is targeted at the youth, carries words like, cappuccino coffee-a Sophia, internet, ipod, virus, website, .com, playboy, Bill Clinton, Osama bin Laden etc. To write one such a song, they randomly choose some words like this and then fill the remaining space with tamil words. On the whole, the message to the society here is, “I don’t know poetry nor do I know what these words mean. I am just an idiot who tries to impart some implied lewd innuendos through these senseless statements. Yet I did get felicitated with titles like King of poets, Savior of Tamil etc.”
Then comes the dialogues tailored to the suit the hero worshipers. Yeah we worship all sorts of heroes; we steal money from our family (which btw is starving) to pour 100 liters of milk for the 40 feet huge cut out for the hero; we have built temples for heroin and masturbate imagining them later and towards the end of her career, which she becomes a political leader we call her our mother and all this for art’s sake!! We worship the hero coz they dare to say anything the rhymes. A cinema is made by first choosing a hero, then listing down what all he can blabber that would rhyme (it’s an advantage if it borders political intentions). And then bring in a heroin for duet’s sake and a villain for getting beaten and some men here n there. Even if he craps, we fans will whistle, if he pees on us we think we attain Moksha. Yeah we are ardent fans and we are proud of it. Our hero acts in all kinds of moies which are remade and have proven its worth in other languages (worth = box office collection), our hero act as police officer in all his movies, our hero always plays a role of a beggar who turns into a multimillionaire coz some gal told something to him, our hero has been playing the role of a college student for the last 50 years, he has danced with an old actress, her daughter and her daughter’s daughter and we wish him all the potency into the next generation as well.
Then comes the music. We shamelessly pick the BGMs from Hollywood movies. Our movie trailers themselves will have the track stolen (not even remade) from Matrix Revolution, Gladiator and Terminator Judgment day. Neither do we have the capacity nor a music sense. The music directors themselves sing some songs which will put donkeys to shame. We the people don’t even realize that the same tracks has appeared in more than 6 movies now, coz we were busy ogling at the evanescent heroin cleavage clip in the trailer. We steal from pop albums directly and we think we are robin-hoods. We steal and give it to the masses and the masses have no sense of creativity and don’t criticize us. 99% of our population doesn’t know what a cappuccino is, 50% doesn’t know what internet is, but they sit and listen to our crap when we compare the females to these things. Aren’t they simply wonderful?
All this we do, without an iota of social responsibility. We pander to the masses, we sell shit coz that is all that we produce and give the viewers. In effect we are burglars, who steal through the clichéd route. A movie requires nothing original, its all the same just the mixture is revisited, we have nothing to do with originality, expect for the titles we give to ourselves without the least bit of shame. :)