Devil’s Advocate is a rolling column that sees the world differently and argues for unpopular opinions of the day. This column, the writer acknowledges, can also be viewed as a race to get yourself cancelled. But like pineapple on pizza, he is willing to see the lighter side of it.
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While watching this year’s Oscars — an unusually tepid affair barring THAT incident — it would have been hard to predict that the one thing Indians would be most upset by would be the In Memorium section. Actually, no, not tough to predict at all.
We seem to care a lot more about the legacy of the dead than the functional existence of the living. There was an Indian film at the awards, and though it did not win, our collective train of thought had already shifted platforms to the more common, and yet embarrassingly low-bar, outrage we manage to churn out every time white people forget to think about us.
Where was Lata Mangeshkar in the Oscars tribute?
And then where was she in the one at the Grammys?
Acknowledging third-world talent has now become a white man’s burden. And really, we can only blame ourselves for this undue veneration for the westerner’s attention. We can do a lot worse than undermining the arts and what it represents, and we do that by being embittered by the lack of attention our greats receive beyond our borders.
To be honest, the ‘In Memorium’ section from the Academy Awards this year was dour and underwhelming. How hard can it be to get people to momentarily care about lost icons of cinema? So maybe it was not exactly the kind of missed opportunity that we should feel the need to moan about.
Further, feeling disappointed after a native great fails to make the grade of a one-minute reel of people we ourselves know nothing about is like pretending to care about a marriage you only go to for the food. Even the most ardent followers of cinema struggle to recognise the names and faces from the memorium section. Yet, thousands of miles away, in a different country with its own burgeoning industry, for some reason, it stops making sense that not all loss and tears are shared. Some obviously feel more personally than the other. Except, this disappointment has nothing to do with the intimacy of Lata Mangeshkar’s relationship with her fans back in the country. It has do with how we view the foreigner’s vote of confidence, or in this case, empathy.
Indians suffer from a crippling inferiority complex that makes offshore recognition a thing in itself.
Western audiences have been debating about the significance of the Academy Awards. and here we are, throwing fits because we feel ignored or belittled. The Grammys are worse. Does anyone in this country – including professional musicians – really understand how this particular ceremony functions, is curated or is subsequently decided. The Grammys have always felt like our own personal film awards that have countless categories, each an excuse for the other.
The problem is two-pronged really. On one end, we seem to place unjustifiable amount of credibility in the Academy Awards and what they represent for global cinema in general rather than actually trying to create something global through our native instincts (think Nordic crime, South America set Noir, or the new wave of K-dramas). Second, and perhaps the bigger problem, is that we have not helped engineer anything as remotely patronizing and authority-hogging as the Academy Awards. It takes more than just a village to do so.
The Filmfare award meant something a couple of decades ago but now, it is a misstep in the evolution of something austere and authentic. The National Film Awards, though respected, are hardly ceremonious or iconic the way the Oscars are. Pageantry, after all, is an ally. There would be not dearth of that in our industry, but in a cinematic culture where we throng theatres early morning to watch the first full shows of some of our favourite superstars, does it really matter if an arbitrary club (The Academy) declares itself the adjudicator of all that is great in cinema? Does it really matter if we pass by their rules of engagement or not?
Even though a lot of our own stars and technicians are part of The Academy’s member list, we have this strange fetish for spotting our ilk on the red carpet. Yes, it is auspicious, but it is also because for generations, it has been sold as such. Despite the farce that the ceremony this year was, you cannot argue with the elite nature of the ceremony that has come to purport a certain gravitas over the years. It is how the Oscars are seen, and therefore marketed, more than what they actually mean or stand for.
Frankly, for the deliriously cinema-struck culture we are born into, anything The Academy or the Grammys does or does not, should not matter. We should instead try to dust off some of our own institutions, legitimise their existence by creating a community around cinema rather than families, clans, and dynasties. One of the reasons the West seems like a haven for creative artists is because they collaborate without ego or spite – barring this ceremony of course.
Rather than look for a word of attribution or acknowledgment in the white man’s diary, we would be better off writing our own and abandoning the thought that it matters how we look in their imagination or their memory.
Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.
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