In Hindi Films, Strong Women Are a Formula That Works
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Version 0 of 1. In the hit Hindi film of the season, an architect cares for her cantankerous father, enduring his careful analysis of his own constipation, his contempt for marriage, which he claims is for “low I.Q. people,” and his appreciation for the fact, which he shares with others, that his unmarried daughter’s sex life is purely “need based.” In another Hindi film, a woman who is estranged from her husband flirts with available men, bringing much misery to their lives. The most popular Hindi films in recent months have been led by women: A clever fat girl marries a dimwit, they eventually fall in love and participate in a race in which the wife has to ride piggyback on her husband. A small-town bride who is stood up by her groom decides to go on her honeymoon to Paris anyway, alone. These films are not tributes to emancipation. Rather, they are just like the ones with men in the lead. And they have been made for the purest reason in commercial cinema: They make money. Pritish Nandy, the poet, politician and film producer, told me, “The dominant female is a formula that works right now.” The industry is setting out to win the affection of women, not only to profit by selling them tickets, but also to benefit from the fact that the appreciation of women is wildly infectious. The spate of such films is unusual and is chiefly a result of the desperate quest of the industry to survive the times on the shoulders of artistic talent. The old order has been collapsing and, while no one is clear what the new is, there is a consensus that the new is something that the old was not. There is much that is going on in the Hindi film industry as it seeks how best to evolve. Another winning tactic of the industry in transition is the portrayal of provincial life with its dialects, expletives, violence and ruffians of ambiguous morals. As Indians become more westernized, they are rewarding exaggerated reminders of their origins. For many, these are scenes they left behind when they migrated to the big cities or when the cities themselves transformed. One consequence of the phenomenon is the survival of the authentic Indian storyteller. For decades, storytellers who wrote in Indian languages languished on the fringes as the prestige of regional languages receded. Most of the English-language writers, who have inherited the influential mainstream, are indistinguishable from one another — as though they had been produced in a Western culture factory. But in the major Indian film industries, like Hindi and Tamil, the authentic storyteller is preserved and rewarded. A critical flaw in the industry is the predominance of a few people whose only claim to influence is that they are the progeny of the industry’s titans. For instance, almost all top male actors are offspring of other actors or filmmakers. The objective of any Indian family is to provide an unfair advantage to its own, and film families are no different. What has saved cinema is the boom in multiplexes, which contain smaller halls than single-screen theaters and pricier tickets. They have ensured that films without male superstars can still stake a claim to success. Despite the boom, India still has few multiplexes. Just about 2,000 of its 12,000 screens are in multiplexes, and competition is fierce among films to bag those screens. Over the past decade, producers have used a disgraced marketing device: the purchase of editorial space in the news media, chiefly in prestigious English-language newspapers. An interview can cost over $10,000, and a big-budget film typically spends about $90,000 on editorial coverage. But now, a public relations executive, who did not want to be named, told me, “more than 20 producers have ganged up” and are refusing to pay for editorial space. They feel such marketing has proved to be useless and that a concerted boycott will benefit all producers. They have realized that an excellent marketing idea is to make a good film. Follow Manu Joseph, author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People,” on Twitter at @manujosephsan. pagetwo@nytimes.com |