Thursday, October 10, 2013

Smoke screens and jasmine blues

[Did a version of this for Business Standard]

I have mixed feelings about the anti-smoking ads that precede the main feature in movie halls. Mainly, they annoy me because they add to the already-considerable list of distractions before a movie begins: the line of trailers, Vinay Pathak swanning about in a bright red coat as he extols a bank’s interest rates. If you're punctual to a fault, and impatient to boot, these things can be exasperating. On the other hand, my sadistic side delights in the sound of pampered brats, insulated from the world beyond their velvety multiplex seats, groaning when the grislier ads play - the thought of people being faced with such images just before the glossy movie they have come to watch (and just as they are dipping into their gold-plated caramel-popcorn buckets) is a pleasing one.

I am clearer though about the idiocy of signs scrolling across the bottom of the screen while a film is playing. And as you probably know, the decision to turn every movie experience into a public-service advertisement hasn’t pleased Woody Allen either. His long association with absurdist comedy notwithstanding, the veteran director doesn’t see the funny side of “Cigarette smoking is injurious to health” signs besmirching his creations. Which means Indian viewers won’t see his new film Blue Jasmine on the big screen.

Allen’s stand – and the equally firm one by the censor board to not make an exception for him – has revived old arguments about societal welfare versus the self-centred impulses of the ivory-tower artist. (The conversation has already headed off into predictable tangents too: on message-boards, people are pointing out that Allen – given the many controversies around his personal life – is not exactly an exemplar of public morality; so why should anyone listen to his whining about such things?) Central to such discussions is the stated purpose and obligation of art. As Orson Welles (or was it Alfred Hitchcock, or Shah Rukh Khan, or Lassie?) said once, “If I want to send a message, I’ll go to the post office.” That line sounds facetious, but the implication isn’t that films shouldn’t convey anything positive or affirming – it is that a “message” or “idea” can be delicately embedded within a narrative rather than ladled out for quick consumption; the viewer might be required to do some thinking of his own. 


Of course, pedantry can sometimes serve a purpose too, especially in a society where a large number of people are under-educated and things occasionally need to be spelled out. But these anti-smoking tickers are context-free and indiscriminate, showing up with every glimpse of a cigarette (or bidi, or cigar). It doesn’t matter, for instance, that the sort of viewer who spends Rs 400 on Blue Jasmine is likely to be someone who already knows about the dangers of smoking (and possibly doesn’t care).

At times the ads are not just distracting or superfluous, but farcical. On two recent occasions I involuntarily snorted out loud when anti-cigarette warnings appeared on the screen. One was during Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, a film in which slaves undergo various forms of mistreatment (a few stolen moments with a pipe might be the closest some of these people come to achieving peace or grace) and pretty much every character is in danger of having his head blown off at any given point; arguably, rifles are a more pressing threat in this universe than cigarettes. Then there was the recent re-release of Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay, a story about lives lived on the edge of the abyss, or on the edge of the railway tracks, with the junkie Chillum (Raghuvir Yadav) constantly on the verge of throwing himself in front of an approaching train. He is an addict (and he is leading the film’s protagonist down a similar path) but the real drug here, the thing that is most “injurious” to the characters’ health, is poverty and circumstance.

Given this, there was something morbidly funny about watching Salaam Bombay in the company of a privileged audience, with anti-tobacco riders playing almost throughout. But then good intentions and common sense don’t always go together. If a Marx Brothers film were ever shown in our halls, there would be a permanent warning at the bottom of the screen, given the cigar attached to Groucho’s lower lip. A Jaane bhi do Yaaro re-release would have a similar ticker with the scene where Ahuja sticks a cigarette between the (stone-cold-dead) DeMello’s lips. Perhaps Woody Allen – whose recent films have doubled as tourism guides to the major cities of the world – could make a Mumbai-based movie about all this, and call it Shadows and Smog.

P.S. Anyway, as long as we insist on sticking messages on our big screens, why stop at tobacco? I propose the addition of the text “Feeding strangers may be injurious to emotional health” on prints of The Lunchbox.

16 comments:

  1. Woody Allen isn't being very hard nosed about it, is he? He's come up with something of substance after "Crimes And Misdemeanor", and now his standoffishness will ensure that many people are deprived of the movie. (Years later, he and Spike Lee will feature in a short advertisement against piracy, and Mr. Allen will have lost the irony of the situation)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh I think he's done some work of substance post-Crimes and Misdemeanors. But yes, he is probably at an age when irony gets missed a lot and peevishness takes over.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "You're sozzled too."

    Heh. You should write a post about the subtitle frenzy that has taken over the English TV shows and movies being aired these days. Wait, have you done that already?

    ReplyDelete
  4. " for instance, that the sort of viewer who spends Rs 400 on Blue Jasmine is likely to be someone who already knows about the dangers of smoking "

    If you ask me, it is exactly that kind of customer who needs a reminder of the unhealthy life style he or she is leading. Ensconced comfortably in an imported chaise lounge, sitting on his balcony in his South Delhi bungalow, overlooking the deer park, being served aloo parathans made in imported margarine from a west-aping mall by his poor, yet fawning servants, who come from abject poverty, but join their master in that moment of hedonistic joy as he chews the first morsel of the parantha dipped in organic yogurt, and in the joy, not noticing the layers of cellulite around his abdomen--it is exactly that kind of customer who would do well to heed that warning. Alas, Mr. Allen wouldn't provide it--no, not on his time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. As Orson Welles (or was it Alfred Hitchcock, or Shah Rukh Khan, or Lassie?) said once, “If I want to send a message, I’ll go to the post office.” That line sounds facetious, but the implication isn’t that films shouldn’t convey anything positive or affirming – it is that a “message” or “idea” can be delicately embedded within a narrative rather than ladled out for quick consumption; the viewer might be required to do some thinking of his own.

    While I can see where Orson Welles is coming from, "messages" do get reinforced explicitly if the society deems it necessary. Nothing can stop the zeitgeist.

    For eg: Back in 1800, it was possible to have a "debate" on slavery or child marriage just as one is having a debate on cigarette smoking or subsidized healthcare today! People who wrote in favour of slavery or against child marriage abolition weren't "bad or evil people". They were basically conservatives of their time who did not want to compel moral choices. However by 1840 or so, the moral climate in England had changed so drastically that it was impossible to defend slavery anymore. What was debatable in 1800 was anathema by 1840. That's what the zeitgeist does to artistic expression.

    It is impossible to draw the line on what's acceptable and what's not that holds for all eras. These things keep changing with time, often in illogical ways.

    You and I can enjoy the movies of Anthony Mann, Ford, Boetticher and others who often handled explosive, politically blasphemous ideas in their films. Because we can put ourselves in a time machine and adjust our lenses and ideas of morality.

    However most people around us are incapable of this. That's what necessitates these "statutory warnings".

    ReplyDelete
  6. Cinema is truth 24 frames per second

    ReplyDelete
  7. I wish they'd be a little bit more careful when it comes to the anti-smoking scroll on tv. As an avid "food shows" viewer, I find it distasteful (!) when I see a scroll appear, as if on cue, when there's any kind of smoke/steam on tv. I don't think the steam arising out of a steak requires an anti-smoking scroll. I mean, come. on.

    ReplyDelete
  8. On a lighter note, did it occur to you that some of us actually love to see the trailers on the big screen (a reason for me to make it before time for the movies)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Sid: yes, of course I know that. I have watched films with people who groan in dismay if the main feature begins before they have had their fill of trailers.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hannah and her sisters had ravishing cinematography of New York city, would you call that a tourism movie? Or is your guideline - anything Europe is touristy? For the first time I saw a point of view on this blog that is rather pavlovian.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I didn't call even his recent films "tourism movies" - I said they doubled up (as in, performed a side-function) as tourism guides. And I didn't mean that negatively anyway. (Manhattan is one of my favourite films, but I think of it as a lovely NY-promoting film too.)

    ReplyDelete
  12. I read the post again, apologies, I missed the context. Maybe I was conditioned:)
    Thanks for your response.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I don't see what's wrong in promoting New York through a movie. I can pause Manhattan anywhere and each still would be a perfect b/w photograph. If a city can look that beautiful, then, hell, it deserves to be promoted. As a side-function or otherwise. If he is in love with the city, it has got to show.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Watched Blue Jasmine today (I don't live in India, btw). I was hoping to see wonderful shots of the Bay area, but interestingly, except for a few shots, it shows the most rundown areas of San Francisco (as per the story-line, of course). The movie is excellent (in layman's terms:)!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Last month I saw a young adult Bengali movie called "Mishor Rohoshyo" (The Egypt Mystery) based on a Sunil Gangopadhyay story. There was a very funny take on the cigarette warning message in there.

    (SPOILER ALERT)

    A character played by Rajit Kapoor avoids getting assassinated because of smoking (think De Gaulle in Day Of The Jackal). I am pretty sure the director Srijit Mukherjee (same guy who did Autograph, on my favorite recent Bengali movies) planned that sequence with the message in mind :-)

    Jai, back for a hiatus. Have a lot of catching up to do here.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Back *from* a hiatus. Looks like I need to take another one to get my grammar to catch up :-)

    ReplyDelete