Hindi cinema and us
by Asghar Butt
Our problem with the Indian movies is that (unlike the Indian army that we may be able to stop at our borders) these can come in unchecked and unobstructed. And as to why these can conquer and stay in our homes is that they speak the same language, depict similar customs and, except for religion, have similar emotional underpinnings. That being a fact of life the questions which have often bothered the policy makers in our country is: should we stop this massive onslaught on our cultural identity, our indigenous cinema’s financial viability and at a higher plane our claim to the two nation theory?
If the answer to these questions is that we should, then the next question is: Can we really stop their onslaught. One answer to latter is: We have tried but failed. We banned the import of Indian movies. These started coming in through video cassettes. We ordered raids on video cassette shops to confiscate and destroy them. The shop keepers hid them and gave them only to trusted customers. But then the Indian TV channels started showing their movies from Amritsar and Jallunder, both of which are close to our border. Their range being limited the policy makers, though worried, did not lose hope. They thought that except for the periodic damage to the cinema owners of Lahore and other border areas, the Pakistani cinema industry was by and large safe. But then came the satellite TV, which created a TV dish-making industry in Pakistan. That inflicted a grievous blow to our film industry.
This was followed by a rapid expansion of the cable industry here which created a new breed of entrepreneurs in cable-service. Their money came from providing foreign movies fare, including Indian movies. Government’s attempts at choaking off the Indian films from the cable service has at best been patchy. It is likely to fail completely in the days to come. That is bad news for our film industry. But before we end this part of our study of the problem we have to face a moral question. This question is of the influence of all foreign films on our younger generation. The younger generation is now able to see a large number of the Western movies (uncensored) as also the Indian movies. Which of the two can adversely affect the character formation of our youth more? Can we stop both or neither?
After we that come to the other side of the study, which is the future of our cinema. To begin with, one has to take into account the fact that despite a huge increase in our country’s population few new cinemas houses have been built. In fact many existing houses have been demolished or converted to other uses. Why? Because these have become less and less profitable. The cinema houses can remain profitable only if these are patronised by cinema-goers. And the cinema-goers will patronise them only if the film industry produces enough entertaining and interesting movies. The film industry is not doing that. It does produce a few movies of an acceptable standard but not enough to keep the box office market strong.
At least strong enough to meet the challenge posed by the onslaught of the Indian movies. That does not imply that most of the Indian movies are of a very high standard. They are not. Most of them are in fact unwatchable. But those that are watchable or good and are far better than those which are our watchable movies. Their technical quality, their story line, their music, their direction and their acting level is better. Granted that they spent a lot more money on each film than we do, especially on the cast, sets, production and music but for a story, direction and acting one does not need more money, only more brains and know how. Our cinema industry has not attracted real expertise or better brains.
Those who disagree with this thesis should have seen the Zee TV programme of film awards for Indian movies, telecast on the night of the 27th February from Dubai. Apart from a large number Indian film personalities some film directors, actors and actresses from Pakistan were also there. No harm in that. But when our people were invited by the hosts to speak on the occasion, the comparison between our people and the Indians in the level of education, command over expression, self confidence, stage presence, etc was so markedly in favour of the Indians that any Pakistani watching the programme would have felt embarrassed. Watching that show would also have explained where we miss out is in manpower quality. And without quality in manpower to hope that we will ever be able to compete with the Indians or anyone else will be futile. Our policy makers should keep that in mind.
Not that the policy makers can help our industry by shielding it from competition. It has not worked and it will not work. By shielding it from competition for years they only weakened its creativity. Pakistan’s inherent ability to fight back through developing its strengths in those areas where the Indians are not always that strong, was allowed to lapse. Our people could have worked harder on story lines, acting and innovative and creative direction and won. After all how much the Indian movie Baghban cost? Peanuts. And has earned millions. Can government policies do anything about it? May be. Many private universities in all kinds of fields have come up recently. The government could suggest to some one teaching of higher knowledge in some of those fields.
E-mail queries and comments to: [email protected]
