By Somdeb Roy

Don’t draw out your guns, swords and trolls. This piece isn’t about the ruling party. This isn’t about the leftists. This, by no means, is about the people who get offended on somebody else’s behalf. The title was a clickbait because that’s all it takes to create uproar in the modern era.

The Indian population is a crazy dynamic. I’m in the second paragraph of this article and you’re still judging this article as a rant against BJP. Spoiler alert, this piece has no such content. If you’re reading on your phones, check your facial expression. Most of us look somewhat like this while reading:

The most fatal mistake a human can make is to foster a delusion of knowing everything under God’s hot sun. In the Indian film industry, the makers tend to know everything; well almost.

“Cater to the audience!” screamed the producer when the writer tried to inject something fresh into her story. The producer had invested huge money and that entitled him to a handbook of mass understanding. That’s what he believes.

The Hindi film industry works less like a craft circle it is supposed to be and more like a marketing company that thrives of patterns and mixes that run its products and services. Hop back to a decade and half. We were into late 2000s and people were still making the 1367^th iteration of either Dil Chahta Hai or Rang De Basanti. These two films were the flag bearers of change and everybody wanted to grab the proverbial brass ring that had ‘pioneer’ engraved on. The brutal part, however, was that neither of the films had any objective intent to transform the society or sterilize the film industry. Dil Chahta Hai didn’t quantify the number of reunions and Rang De Basanti didn’t encourage people to go and grapple Manu Sharma for Jessica Lal’s murder case. But the films were universally appreciated by the audience, you see. A formula was born.

Now, In 2018, we can pick a handful of films based on tier-II cities, middle class musings and sweet-cuddlish love stories. These stories remind most of us of either our adolescence or because in small towns, love happens when you’re not equipped for the purpose. Nostalgia, relatable content, buzzwords which are fed to us to buy more such stories.

While there’s no harm in choosing a certain universe for a story, this is being done because the people in studios have found a new pattern to ‘cater to the audience’. Most of the films have small towns shoehorned as that’s the IN thing to do.

I sound like some anti-people guy, right? I’m not. I’m one of those pawns amidst the 1.3 billion, who is used as a statistic, an excuse to hide from the fundamental flaws decaying the industry and craft altogether.

The nation doesn’t want to know anything through Arnab. And the nation hasn’t enlisted any factor for the industry to make films on. The synthetic fear of going against the audience’s will is phoney and full of dishonesty.

People have clamored for and criticized Shah Rukh Khan for doing incompetent work as actor. They badly anticipate him to replicate the mood plan and caliber of Chak De! India. He, thus, hasn’t been able to live up to anybody’s expectations for well over a decade. An absolute ZERO.

Here’s a neat fact. Chak De and Om Shanti Om, both, released in 2007. While Om Shanti Om isn’t remembered very fondly by people, Chak De has achieved the status of a cult.

And here’s the kicker. Chak De grossed just over 50 Crores in the domestic market and OSO cruised over 78 Crores. Umm, perplexing.

The point here is, we, the audiences, are used as database to forward anything the business team of a studio wants to forward. The possum of Om Shanti Om making more money serves as a template of what runs and what does not, sadly. The catch here is, the audience is indifferent to all of the jargons, the entirety.

Films in India serve as a subjective topic. It is impossible to zero down or conclude a moviegoer’s reason to watch a film. For some, it’s a weekend respite, for some a manifestation and many other things for million others. Chalking down what the audience likes or wishes to, is complete nonsense.

From the industrial end, people have to understand that films aren’t the most important thing in a civilization. Films, no matter how good, bad or wasteful, are just a part of human life: meant to fill in a space and in some cases, a void.

The audience has never been specific about what they love or would look forward to see in a film, TV show or any audiovisual service provision. They have other things to do as well.

India, majorly, isn’t a cinema loving country. This works inversely and in favour of the makers if taken as a gate pass. The chunk of India’s movie going population isn’t into cinematic critique. There resides a doorway to try new things and create spaces. They haven’t put out demands or requisites to fill.

Whenever someone blames the audience for a dismal outcome or failure, it becomes a lost purpose, a self-defeating policy. People at the movies are like attendees of a marriage reception. They’ll eat, appreciate or loathe whatever you serve on the table. Every wedding has an uncle who is over-analytical about everything. Films alike have those groups.

Nobody is making a Pan-India film. Productions and studios are churning out genre specific films for a certain belt or demographic. Every film is a niche product for a niche it has carved. Anurag Kashyap fans will never prefer a Baaghi 2. Tiger Shroff and Salman Khan fans consider high on content cinema ‘Jhelu’. There is no middle cinema. Films have subdivided the audience and it doesn’t fit the ‘cater to the audience billing’.

Different people have different yardsticks of evaluating films. Some rely on film critics, some on word of mouth and some on the hook a trailer or teaser renders. You cannot judge what a person likes or dislikes. You can’t force them either.

What this pandering has done is detrimental in the long run. People were being trolled for not liking Pad Man. The film had such a good purpose and eventual intent that disliking the offering is a sin. No, it’s not. Cinema isn’t for purpose either. If films were made to strengthen the society and bring reforms, tickets would’ve been for free. It is a business that sustains on mass consumption.

When you mislead the audience into believing that you’re doing it for them, somewhere down the line, they’ll get habituated and lean onto a discipline. What looks like a buzzword or a campaign to you, might turn into a gospel for the internet-driven audience.

Remember Padmavati? Uhh, Padman Veet. Erm, Padmaavat. The film was clobbered by fringe groups prior to release and despised by women who didn’t sit well with the Jauhar sequence.

Films aren’t designed to coincide with our perspective about the world. It was and will always be about what the director/writer wants to make. Films have been brought down to content based on crowd pleasing rather than content that would please the crowd. There was never so much mathematics in film making. We, the audience, can only applause or reject a film. That is eloquent enough to make a statement for the people in the trade and craft to brew new beans.

If you watch WWE, you’d know how cornered the company is in 2018. Roman Reigns is the guy they want to push because Cena was a money minting machine as the good guy who catered to children watching the product. Cena, by the way, is John Cena for the uninitiated. The guy who starred in the first installment of The Marine and the only installment of Trainwreck. Oh, he’s also despised by Hollywood’s highest paid actor, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Roman is hated because he is the next Cena prototype. Designed for children, he overcomes all the odds and is a hero you’d look upto. But a portion of the audience is there to watch hardcore wrestling and not a guy who struggles on the microphone. This has led to WWE, adamantly pushing the guy so much, that an entire match climax was changed to avoid 70,000 people at WrestleMania 31. Roman didn’t win. Some loved it. Some frowned. Roman has improved immensely as a wrestler, but people have had enough of him being shoved down their throats.

Why am I talking WWE? Well, our films are a shade of Roman Reigns. The hustle of making films work is so brutal that the actual purpose has been long forgotten.

Now, WWE pander to the internet darlings by pushing wrestlers popular on the online community. Sadly, there are wrestlers like CM Punk and Cody Rhodes who had lost the love for it and walked out of the company.

The pandering and passive aggression upon the Indian audience is such that one day, we’ll find another alternative or lose love in this thing. Like a CM Punk, we will wipe out all the drama and perhaps Netflix and chill.

Viewership is like a bow-arrow equation. We are the arrow. The closer you pull us, the farther we go.

And that’s how the cookie crumbled.