17th March, 2010
How much money can you put in art without ruining it?
Posted by Navin Harish - 1 Comment
If you are old enough, you’d remember when Indian Television became more than just a movie on Sunday and Chitrahaar on Wednesday. We all have fond memories of TV shows at that time, be it the soaps like Hum Log or Buniyaad or smaller TV series of 13 episodes like Karamchand, Khandaan, Subah, Ados Pados to name just a few.
With fresh and original ideas viewers could connect to, we were actually very good as far as the TV content was concerned. No endless or useless dragging of the story, no typical Bollywood concepts.
In all this, the message that was to be communicated was lost and the content was reduced to fluff that exists only to hold a corporate wrapper around it and this is what we are left with as far as Television is concerned – shit in a corporate gift wrap.
One can’t stop but think if it was so good then why didn’t it survived. The most important requirement for survival is equilibrium. Think about it, you are unhappy with your job but not unhappy enough to quit. You have enough money to take care of your needs but not enough to retire right now and live peacefully. To make the economy work, you are required as a productive member of a society and economy has made provisions to maintain the equilibrium where it will give you just enough to prevent you from rebelling but never enough to quit the rat race.
In the “good old days” we didn’t have producers like Ekta Kapoor and the TV actors were also moderately paid and could only afford khadi to make a style statement. Equilibrium was required to sustain it, to prevent it from dying, to prevent the creative folks saying “To hell with it” and pursue something that paid better.
Equilibrium was required to keep good TV alive, to allow people to create better work and for that money was needed. The money was provided but a little too much and it’s been all downhill from there.
From a time in 1983 when DD charged for showing cricket matches to now when thousands of crores are spent for telecast rights of cricket tournaments, the Indian Television has come a long way. Everybody jumped in the bandwagon and there were way too many brands, too many channels who wanted to have a piece of the pie and they pumped in way too much money into it.
Equilibrium was required to keep good TV alive, to allow people to create better work and for that money was needed. The money was provided but a little too much and it’s been all downhill from there. In the recent years, instead of exploring new concepts, working on shows that are better, TV has adapted every single formula Bollywood has thrown out of window.
A few days ago, in an old movie, I saw Mala Sinha being insulted in a wedding ceremony because she is a widow and the same day I saw a promo of a TV serial where another woman was insulted in another ceremony because she is a “baanjh”. Now there are only two kinds of shows one where half of the people are trying to make the life of other half as miserable as possible and shows where people are willing to get down to any levels for 15 seconds of fame – they bitch about each other, let people treat them like dirt for the sake of money and are willing have a fist fight with the others around them.
Too much money has meant too high stakes which prevents most producers from experimenting with anything new. Too much money also means too many people to be pleased – actors with more substantial roles, channels with higher TRPs, sponsors with more exposure. In all this, the message that was to be communicated was lost and the content was reduced to fluff that exists only to hold a corporate wrapper around it and this is what we are left with as far as Television is concerned – shit in a corporate gift wrap.
Filed under: flossing, television
1 Comment
Rahul Goswami
March 21st, 2010 at 9:17 pm
The TV is crap. There is nothing worth watching on TV, even the news is aspiring to be entertainment.
Leave a reply