Drawing the line

A Mumbai based lecturer I hear has moved the courts to make it binding on all Cable wallahs to show only that stuff on TV that are passed by the Censor Board. He is perturbed by the unwarranted ill effect that such programmes cause on the children. Contrary to what you may presume I support this.

It has now been established that visual medium has long-term effects on child psychology. I am not going to pen an essay on the merits and demerits of the idiot-box here but I know that violence and nudity on this household medium has been increasing everyday and there is absolutely no control on how much of it percolates to children. No child-lock can guarantee that. You cannot police your child round the clock. Talking of the impact, I remember that while watching some Hindi movie my parents used to recall, "you were a kid when we went to see this movie in a Cinema", I would hardly remember it, but many times it happened having seen a scene depicting violence, the hero being dragged by a rope by the villain riding a horse and the like. My mother says that they could not watch Sholay in entirety and had to leave the hall midway, as whenever Gabbar would come on screen I would start crying. If you don't believe how seriously I take this, I must mention that I removed my cable connection soon after Tanmay was born. My wife and I decided that in order to curtail the impact we must first teach ourselves to be away from satellite TV. I only watch DD at my home and I am able to see its impact already which my mid mocking the "Apang, opang, japang" commercial of Horlicks and glued to the set without bashing his eyelid whenever the "school chale hum" promo is being played.

Coming back to the subject, it is true that while movies in India have to get a CBFC certification the same yardstick does not apply for TV (or for that matter also for Internet). By the night Cable wallahs open doors for unheard TV channels or play their own TB-6 shows under the very nose of Government. Some channels do show program ratings before showing them but I have seen mature programs (take "Sex and the City" for instance) being telecast at Primetime. With the onslaught of Internet never kids are exposed to porn like never before. Can you be sure that while your kid is surfing the net, the guy next-cubicle will not be surfing any porno site? Can you sure about your own kid? Now, I would not debate on "censorship" here but Why not allow cafe-owners to erect closed cubicles market "A" meant for adults (lest that goes on to become some other kinda trade)?

I know these issues are touchy. We are in a free-market economy; we want to be hip like the west. But then, the lines need to be drawn somewhere.

Clever Versions!

Bajaj is using the voice of radio doyen Amin Sayani in a television commercial for one of its vehicle range. Though this advertisement might be a complete unit in itself but the commercial plays a different combination of Indian language stanza along with the Hindi opening lines from a popular song of Adnan Sami for the Hindi movie Saathiya. What you consequently get are different versions of the same advertisement. In another commercial, again for an automobile, shows a bike rider who forgets the name of the Product (Petrol) while visiting a refuel station. The guy at the pump is able to guess the right word after the rider provides an assortment of clues. This commercial too has many versions, and sometimes various versions are shown during breaks of the same programme.

Now for the industry I am associated with maintaining various versions of a product is not uncommon (infact you need other software products to maintain/control these versions), but for the Indi advertisement industry probably this is a novel concept. AFAIK memory retention is one of the key factors for the success of a commercial. I remember that the commercial for Vicco Vajradanti shown on TV and Cinemas has hardly changed over the years in terms of the jingle and concept. May be this is true for products with large market share but for the ones that have to fight it out, cold-drinks for instance, we usually see new advertisement often with new celebrity brand ambassador one or twice a year. Commercials have had different versions based on the regional demands, a Pepsi commercial showing Akshay Kumar works in the Northern belt but for South the compulsions would be to go for an action-start popular there, say Chiranjivi. The basic treatment at the script level seems to remain the same withal.

Speaking of Bollywood, people have been making various versions of the stereotypical love stories mocking geometrical figures. Script is basically at the beck and call of Box-office and market considerations. It's said that following the recovery of Amitabh, Manmohan Desai's Coolie's script did a complete volte-face as far as the climax is concerned and Amitabh shown to live on. Many Maniratnam flicks have also had their regional language versions. In post 80's Gulshan Kumar started the notorious trend of creating cover version of popular songs finding a loophole in the copyright acts, which has now percolated into today's raunchy remix-videos with well-ventilated dancing ladies. Anyways, back to the subject.

What I meant by all this is that different versions of storylines with different closings are a rarity. Though I remember "Run Lola Run" was a movie where situations change for same set of events giving an unexpected plication to the story. Zee TV too experimented with the interactive show called "Aap kahein haan to haan, Aap kahein naa to naa" based on a Brazilian TV show, where the turning points in the story are based upon viewer responses. Imagine your local video library having a version of "Ek duje ke liye" with a happy ending. Grapevine is, Ramgopal Verma is also working on a movie that will have tow different climax sequences. I don't know whether he plans to release these distinct versions based on regional tastes or whether the same cinema hall will be showing a different version in various shows. In the effort of to do something new the conversion of the visual media into an interactive medium is indeed a laudable effort.