By Tinky Ningombam
I am a big fan of theatricality. I am enthralled by it. Hence, it is only logical that artistes intrigue me. And be it a musician, an actor, a street-performer. Last weekend, I was fortunate to meet with an intriguing mind reader, performer and an illusionist, who outsmarted us more than once. It does leave a mixed bag of feelings, the spectacle of the performance but also the frustration in trying to outsmart the outsmarter on the trick and trying to solve it.
Entertainment shows are played out mostly based on a common understanding and knowledge, which means that the trick/show has to be culturally relevant to you or performed on the mutually understood common belief system. Common belief systems hence dictate any form of theatricality, be it magic, movies, drama, art and even sports and extends to humor, jokes and so on. One needs to have a common shared memory or a belief system that is mutually congruent to the participants and the observers. Which no doubt leads to the popularity or non-popularity of that form of entertainment. And it is exactly in these premises that I tried to understand the power of innuendos that performers use to engage audience.
And moving to the contemporary and popular form of entertainment art, we have the new age movies of today. While some ages ago, one just needed to wear a police uniform to depict a cop, now one gets into the detail of performing the role to the T. But of course, we still have movies with bad scripts and equally bad actors who makes it virtually impossible for us to believe the plot. Popular roles of broken-hearted lead protagonist becoming IAS officers who walks into an office with a laptop and says a few words in English. Well, that takes the cake. The moral of the story being the fact that if your girl dumps you, that is motivation enough to study harder and become an IAS officer. I would love to see where that true-story inspiration came from.
I am tired of stereotypes in movies. People have exhausted ideas for movie plots, I conjure, now that commercial movie are on a high. We have the much popular plots and roles : the rich girl – poor guy plot, the scheming uncle, the manipulative rich father figure, the innocent girl, the comic helper, the junkie villain. And like everything else in entertainment, I am exhausted with the predictable characters. Why can we not have the un-assuming innocent looking girl turn into a serial killer? And in the similar way, we can have the junkie drug-addict being a super-hero.
But why don’t we do it? Well, simple, because, we think, it will not be believable. We are not ready for such unlikely roles. We still believe that the alcohol drinking, red-lipstick wearing girl who wears a “western” dress has to be the vamp, just as we think that the good-looking, good natured, saver-of-all-mankind guy (who eventually turns out to be the IAS officer) to be the hero. And perhaps that is why I wonder if we have richer roles in Theatre and Drama then in contemporary movies because it is more real and in-the-moment. And the performance is somehow more seriously portrayed.
I do not however discredit good movies, however farfetched from reality or realistic it be but with Theatre, even the audience comes in with an expectation of some “serious performance” which sadly is missing in the mindset of the movie-audience. This analogy was perfected by a good friend of mine who is researching Manipuri plays who has rightfully quoted that “Even though people make fun of popular figures, even politicians, the cops or prominent people in the society in our popular “Shumang Leela” (form of regional theatrical arts) , even these people do not get offended by it because Shumang Leela is not considered as serious art, sadly. So even if the audience relate to the political or personal satire, they do not get much affected by the message/moral as would a movie or serious Drama” .This observation however personal it may seem does brings home simple truths. And as part of an enthusiastic audience for new-age entertainment forms, such analysis can help in bringing a better environment for artistes and the art-forms alike.
We have a rich and unique artistic history. And we have the artistic talent pool. We have only touched the tip of the ice-berg. We are happy with some mimicked song-and-dance sequence in movies and theatre, most obviously made in a way to get back some box-office returns. Except for a handful of serious artistes who try to create a world-class product, we have these random run-of-the-mill popcorn art. While I do understand the popular demand for commercial art forms, but we sometimes forget in creating something unique, different or thought-provoking. I believe that when artistes and producers fail to create something unique to us, we will not be able to sustain it for the future.
And coming to the simpler example that I know of especially, that of the commercial movies of today, if they are indeed depicting the real lives and real people, I am in awe of the kind of racist, sexist and stereotypical comments that are passed in the dialogues. Its about time that we make it culturally relevant. We should get passed such stereotypes and instead aim higher.