Excursion in Bollywood
My friend Jay initiated me to Bollywood movies. Here's the deal so far.
( Read the reviews...Collapse )The wrap-up: what's funny about all this kind of indian movies is that traditional culture is so controversial that the authors avoid ever discussing any specific of it, particularly so with two main opposing religions and zillions of sects that could gather violence against the authors of any movie that would go past censorship. This leaves western civilization as the culture by default of indian movie: something neutral, that doesn't force any belief upon you, and is thinly wrapped in little enjoyable bits of local folklore. No, there is no open defense of western civilization, of its actual culture, of its values; it is just civilization winning by corrupting the mores of backwards tribes with the technical advances that liberate individuals.
By trying to be consensual so as to sell more,
filmmakers are forced to avoid evil
-- to the point of lying in a historical movie.
The largest the market, the least evil they can afford,
because all evil has victims, and all victims are diminished market.
Of course, sometimes, seeking justice against yet unpunished criminals also creates victims
of sorts,
which means a diminished market, and so movie-makers will never actively seek justice against bad guys;
they might just spit on bad guys who have already been punished --
or on good guys too good to make any opposition.
Thus, mass-market movies are seldom the vanguard of good,
they often partake in some limited insidious evil,
but they are mainly the average bulk of a civilizing process.
The same can be said of all mass-market things:
the average bulk of an immensely good process -- civilization.
