What has developed our inherent tendencies?
If we keep aside the linkages to religion and faith for a while and evaluate objectively … the ancient books that have become popular with Indian masses have had very strong “entertainment quotient” by way of : presentation style, narrative, storyline, characterisation, confrontation of good vs evil, deception, twists & turns, odd situations, surprises, profound statements, climax, anti-climax … and all elements that make a “perfect story”.
- That was perhaps the beginning of our society getting obsessed with loud and disproportionate dose of entertainment … later it grew into becoming an addiction and influenced the “natural” behaviour pattern.
- Over the ages, we have developed a liking for radical views, strong tastes, strong flavours, strong perfumes, opulence, larger-than-life characters bestowed with supernatural powers to do chamatkaars / miracles.
- Even in the matter of attire we tend to opt for generous use of gaudy & garish contrasting colours, glitter and bold prints.
- For us excellence means being grand or intricate-difficult-ornamental: be it in carvings, handicraft, music, dances, prose and poetry.
- Unlike western world we have not developed the taste for simpler, subtler, easier, succinct, subdued and “matter-of –fact” statements, expressions and even thought process.
- An English movie hero just adjusts his tie knot to convey his expression and intent while in Indian movies they must deliver a 10 minute long dialogue.
Our extrovert kind of kids learn to deliver profound dialogues and emulate star mannerisms rather than conversing and even thinking normally.
As a result:
- We spend disproportionate time / effort / resources for entertainment and squander opportunities to use them productively for something that would create value in real life.
- We have maximum number of satellite channels and WiFi resources catering to: entertainment, running eternal serials, news (which also has become more of entertainment), music, movies and of late … the brazen / liberal (abuse littered) OTT series.
- In contrast, there are hardly any likes of “National Geographic Channel” which propagate rare knowledge, wisdom and learning…What a colossal waste of immense potential that investment in space satellites and electronics has presented before the nation?
- We are a poor developing country … yet maximum number of Movies are made in India …. What for? What purpose do they serve? …other than engaging vast population into non-productive wandering into the “virtual world”, breeding unrealistic expectations and not helping them to deal with the challenges of real life.
- Movies did claim to propagate some social purpose, they did evoke strong sentiments – emotions, propagate melodies, gave overdose of unrealistic love / romance and promote noble virtues such as (adarsh) idealism, ( deshbhakti ) patriotism. Most of them depicted the hero-heroine winning finally not on account of upholding idealism & principles BUT by sheer luck, by grace of God, and by acrobatic acumen of beating twenty hoodlums alone. This made it amply clear to masses that whatever is shown there should not to be emulated.
Hangover and Side effects:
- Entertainment goes with lot of publicity and that makes us “publicity driven” … no wonder why we find film songs used in election rallies, marriages and jagraata-bhajans. What has happened to our traditional folklore?
- Cricket has overshadowed all other sport since it has been presented much more as entertainment than as a sport.
- We also gave too much importance to the movie stars and cricket stars beyond their performance in movies and sport … developing “Hero Worship” as a cult.
- “Hero worship” leads to our society into over-rating someone who rises to occasion and does a daring “fire fighting & rescue” … BUT we do not consider it important if someone does routine hard work sincerely, diligently and systematically so that there would be no fire incident.
- We have been seeking and mongering showmanship and sensationalism through entertainment, sports, news, media and even the style of Political Leadership.
There is basically nothing wrong with consuming entertainment as long as: it is in appropriate dose, it does not breed lethargy, it conveys the right messages, it does not adversely influence our lives, mind-set, value system, priorities and resource utilization.
AVINASH KHARE