Song-and-dance routines

The American movie Ghostworld opens with Mohammed Rafi’s song Jaan Pehchaan Ho, being played in an apartment. The camera zooms in on Thora Birch dancing to the number. The song-and-dance routine is how the movie introduces Birch’s weirdness to the audience. 

Indian movies’ song-and-dance routines have been considered weird and symptomatic of the crazy head-bobbing culture, by the international audience.

A Nigerian friend of mine  claims that Indian movies are the best, except for the songs which he hates. “Why can’t you make movies without them?” he asks. 

I have a theory: songs in Indian movies do not belong to the main storyline, but are instead set in alternative spatial and temporal dimension, where the characters express emotions uninhibited. To draw an analogy, song-and-dance routines are the “show don’t tell” of emotion in cinema.

The Corporation That Changed the World

I have been reading the book ‘The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational’ and after setting my ethical issues aside, I find it fascinating how a group of merchants could control such a large area despite resistance from the local populace. This can be explained by Game Theory (specifically Prisoner’s Dilemma) where cooperation between prisoners (local kings and caste groups, in this case) is not a dominant strategy.

On a different note, the extractive institutions created by the Company such as the use of labor for sourcing raw materials and non-production of  industrial goods is a legacy that has been hard to dodge.

Image: Vinča symbols [Source: http://bit.ly/1jZcRhs]

I have been reading the book ‘A History of Writing’ by Steven Roger Fischer, and reflecting upon the assertion that the development of writing had been accelerated by ancient Sumerians for commercial reasons; the Sumerians improved the existing system to keep better track of animals and commerical transactions . 

Later on Johannes Gutenberg reinvented movable type and printing press, to print works faster and keep up with Europe’s increasing appetite for books. In the past few decades, the growth of the internet has partly been fueled due its emergence as a platform for commerce.

Commerce has been trying to make our lives better since times immemorial, for a profit, of course.

Theory: Cinema of Europe and India

[Warning: Generalization]

When we immerse ourselves in a European movie, we feel part of the story and feel connected to the characters. But in an Indian movie we cannot shake off a feeling that the characters are exaggerating their mannerisms and this prevents us from immersing ourselves in the story.

This is due to a difference in the European and Indian approaches to cinema. 

In European cinema, the camera, which is used to shoot the film, is like a voyeur and places itself invisibly in the characters’ lives and follows them as the story unfolds. The characters, unaware of the camera’s presence, carry on with their lives.

Whereas in Indian cinema, the characters are aware of the camera's presence and their awareness of the intrusion creates a tension, where they have to choose between acknowledging the presence of the audience and carrying on with their lives. This results in exaggerated mannerisms and the viewer is unable to sympathize with the characters and is unwilling to be put into their shoes.