A few days ago, we tried to stress on the lack of accountability on the part of viewers, with posters showing the difference in earnings of movies with popular actors vs those without them.
Driving the same point home is, late actor Irrfan Khan’s son, Babil Khan’s Instagram post.
He starts the post by saying that when he was going to study at a film school abroad, Irrfan had warned him about Bollywood not being respected in world cinema.
And that, he says, sadly turned out to be true.
Bollywood was not respected, no awareness of 60’s – 90’s Indian cinema or credibility of opinion. There was literally one single lecture in the world cinema segment about Indian cinema called ‘Bollywood and Beyond’, that too gone through in a class full of chuckles.
Further, he added that there was no serious conversation about the ‘real cinema’ of Satyajit Ray and K. Asif, because as audience we ‘refuse to evolve’.
My father gave his life trying to elevate the art of acting in the adverse conditions of noughties Bollywood and alas, for almost all of his journey, was defeated in the box office by hunks with six pack abs delivering theatrical one-liners and defying the laws of physics and reality.
This meant that movies with big names would get all the investment, and that is something we are to be blamed for.
Because we as an audience wanted that, we enjoyed it, all we sought was entertainment and safety of thought, so afraid to have our delicate illusion of reality shattered, so unaccepting of any shift in perception.
However, he said, a shift can be witnessed, even if its slight. And this time, ‘we must stand our ground’.
Ending the post, he noted that while it is unfortunate that Sushant Singh Rajput’s demise has turned into a topic for political debates, if a ‘positive change’ is coming out of it, we must embrace it.
This is such an important conversation. You can read Babil’s complete post here: