"Give me some sunshine" But with a difference

I just finished watching "3 Idiots". I had thought that I won't like the movie much but I was wrong. Newayz, this ain't a movie review. I will leave that on more accomplished people. For me, it's enough that I present my version of the supposedly catchy and the inward looking song "Give me some sunshine" from the said movie.

I didn't like the song. Don't get me wrong. The song is good but I have learnt from my life that instead of doing postmortem and cry over what I couldn't do, I will rather have a fresh start. Its never late to go to the beginning. so, here's my version of the lines:

"GIVE ME SOME SUNSHINE
GIVE ME SOME RAIN"
I WILL HAVE ANOTHER CHANCE
I WILL BEGIN ONCE AGAIN

It has been quiet some time since when I have been intending to have a fresh start. More about that later. And you will hear about it coz writing a travelogue is part of that. Meanwhile, getting back to the movie, I may not agree with everything the movie showed, but what the heck. The movie made my mom realise what I couldn't for all these years. She said to me today that they should have allowed me to do what I wanted instead of pushing me to be an engineer. lolz.......... And this is the lady who took 1 and half years to accept my choice of the bride [even though when I kept on ranting that she is the best girl not just for me, but also for our family].

I had promised myself to keep this entry short. So, even though I wanna write so much, I will let that be for now. But before I end, I will recommend two movies for all you folks out there: Rocket Singh - Salesman of the Year and 3 Idiots. Go watch both of them. Ciao.

PS: The first two lines of the 4 lines mentioned above are in quotes because its taken from another source [The habit to acknowledge other's entry was picked during Engg and MBA times]

PPS: I am a dispassionate/unpassionate (whatever the word may be) guy, and I thank my parents to push me to do what I did. I just wish I would have done things seriously instead of thinking that my passion doesn't lie here :)

PPPS (if that means something): Damn Hirani for showing Laddakh in such beautiful way. Am sure my bride-to-be is gonna coerce me to have the honeymoon there only. Bye bye Seychelles :(

The final one – any positives?

The journey of analyzing torture genre movies comes to an end with this post, at least for the time being. There is one thing I have missed in this string of posts and that is to look at the profitability of the movies in depth. Hope I will write one for that later on sometime. But, that one will be more mathematical oriented analysis rather than a cerebral string of reasoning.

Now, before coming to the actual point of this post, I want to narrate a story. This is a story of an episode from my current favorite series “Boston Legal”. So, as it happens, there is this divorced guy who has issues with his ex and who has fantasies of killing her. As a person, he is a very docile guy and people don’t expect any such fantasies from him. Now, as is the fashion (or perhaps a necessity) in US, he has his psychologist who gets paid for hearing to this guy’s traumas and gives consultation. And this doctor gets into dilemma after hearing to the guy’s very violent fantasy and decides to tell the ex-wife. The lady obviously gets scared and wants to call the police but the doctor asks her to wait and just be alert. The guy comes to know of this and wants to sort the things and make it clear to his ex that he won’t ever do anything like that. He goes to the lady’s place who gets frightened on seeking him. And in the next scene, we see the police arriving at the place and the guy dead.

The above incident, though it’s a story from a teleseries, can very well be a real incident. Human brain is a very convoluted and dark place. There are lots of things which are social taboo and still a regular phenomenon in brains of people. And there’s a necessity for an outlet for these thoughts. Leave alone taboo (let me clarify that the taboo need not be sexual) thoughts, even the usual feeling of being left alone or being disparaged or laughed at, if not vented through some mechanism, may lead to very disastrous results. So, how bad is it if people who get violent dreams or who may have such feelings occasionally mustering in them get an outlet in form of the torture genre cinema? Isn’t it good if such feelings can get calmed down or satisfied watching a false torture scene than to actually performing such heinous act after getting frustrated?

I guess it’s not an easy question to answer. It’s very subjective and then, there is a total diagonal viewpoint to it too. I will touch upon it, but just a tad bit later. For now, let me relate the usability of such a torture genre movie to another profession – prostitution. I don’t carry a very strong view about the acceptability of the profession but from whatever little I understand I think that if somehow the atrocities and bad conditions can be removed from the profession, then, perhaps legitimizing the profession isn’t that bad. Sure, the class of prostitutes might be looked upon with but then how many of us are actually there who don’t look down a person we think aren’t as capable as we are? Anyways, apart from the social cause of legitimizing the profession and giving a chance to those women to not get subjected to horrifying life, I have a certain other rationale for legitimizing the profession. Once not long back, I read the news that two guys raped a fourth standard girl who would be barely nine years old. Nine year old girl getting raped? What the hell? Are these guys even worth being called men? Not that I support the rape of girl of any age, but how can one get stimulated by raping a nine year old? Well, perhaps that’s the problem. That the human brain just works in mysterious way. The frustration that builds up gets an outlet in very ugly ways sometimes. And somehow I am pretty sure that it’s not the age of the girl that played a part, but the opportunity of going after a meek organism. Not that I am unaware that there are pedophiles also walking the surface of this earth but it’s just my feeling that the rogue was sexually frustrated and he saw the outlet in a female who could not do much about his heinous act. Now, if that’s the case and had prostitution been an easily accessible and not so costly affair, perhaps, such an incident might not have happened.

I guess it’s perhaps pretty clear what I intend to say from the above – the same thing about providing people with an outlet for their emotions; the emotions which are hard to accept, not very common and which when realized lead to disaster. Now, going back to my story of the guy fantasizing of violently killing his ex, there’s another small thing to ponder over there. The guy gets killed because the wife gets afraid knowing about his fantasy even though in reality the guy is pretty non-violent which even the wife knows. But then, that is how we operate, isn’t it? If we get a dream, we link it to some sub-conscious feeling we may have and extrapolate it to predict our behavior. In a very similar way, if we get to know that a person enjoys sadistic behavior and enjoys watching a cinema of torture genre, we tend to have a very negative view about him or her. I have experienced this with myself too when I got disgusted that how can one enjoy such gruesome killing scenes and such plots where torturing people and killing them is seen as something enjoyable. In a similar vein, suppose you get to know that one of your same sex friend is gay, won’t you get wary of him or her? But is it that since you are a hetro, you are interested in each and every person of opposite sex? So, why this extrapolation? Well, I guess it is so because a person simply isn’t defined by what he himself is, but also by the mirror of society in which his image develops. And well, then, there is another concept of risk and return playing here too. How risky is it to maintain a relationship with a gay friend in lieu of the returns (emotional or otherwise) you will get? Well, I guess if it’s a close friend the risk of you being subjected to some gay love is pretty underplayed but if it’s the risk of losing your life and that too after being subjected to a sadistic unearthly torture, then, the risks just multiply manifolds. And perhaps that’s one of the reasons why we (people who keep away from torture movies) form opinion about people who love torture cinema. And though, we can’t 100% say that the person is sadistic and will kill someone but the probability certainly is higher than a person who doesn’t like it.

Now, the diagonal viewpoint about what’s bad in these kind of movies. Well, I guess they are more than obvious and need no explanation. With the violent video games taking over the world and killings reported by children, it’s no news how these kind of movies can very well effect the people enjoying it. So, I will refrain myself from delving into it. As it is, the entry has already gone pretty long :) . And with this, I will conclude my string of write-ups about the torture genre movies with a hope that these sort of movies actually do some good which goes on unreported in media but helps the society to exist in peace.

Context

What’s life without purpose? What’s journey without motive? And what’s a movie without story? The answer is “a boring waste of time”. So, let’s have a look at what kind of scripts do the torture genre movies apply. I should have written about this quiet earlier but perhaps it kept on slipping my mind somehow.

It’s said about bollywood cinema that they follow a set pattern which is known as formula. Another phenomenon about Bollywood cinema is that once a movie becomes a hit, then there are strings of movies that release on similar formula. A similar concept can be applied for the various genres of movies too. Every movie in romantic, action, horror, thriller or drama genre can be categorized in fixed set of underlying ideas. So, let’s see what these sets of ideas for the torture genre are:

· Revenge saga: The oft repeated and the widely used formula. Something very very horrible thing (like rape, rape of girlfriend/family member) occurs with the protagonist and then he or she takes the revenge in the worst possible way.

· I’ve a physical defect; let me take it out on you: A place is deserted because of some nuclear testing in the area or some toxic chemical plant in that area. There are inhabitants left behind with pretty less to eat. And now, they have grown into cannibals eating humans who have unknowingly come in that area. Though, you see, the killing of humans has to be in style. They can’t be killed with poison or bullet or a knife. No no, they have to be killed in some gross way so that the killed humans have almost become inside out.

· The psycho kills all: Well, this one doesn’t even need a reason. The guy is simply a psycho and loves to indulge in some harmless simple fun like capturing a guy or a girl and then experimenting over it to know what all ways are there to kill a person in the most gruesome way.

· We need to do an experiment: Haven’t found many movies on this. Have read about one, named Salo. It is one gross movie even to read through. And deals with some sort of storyline with Nazis conducting experiment on children related to sex and violence. It has some pretty graphic scenes and some very unthinkable sort of stuff.

· The realistic ones: No storyline. No screenplay is the motive here. And the one that falls in this category is Cannibal holocaust and its remake coming in 2009. The protagonists are a group of people who venture into woods to make documentary and come upon a tribe of cannibals who get afraid on seeing them. These so-called urban people rape their women making the viewers wonder who is more uncivilized. And well, the documentary goes on with the climax of the protagonists getting killed by the tribe and various other scenes depicting very gory actions.

· The intellectual ones: The new breed of Hollywood cinema has seen a very unique trend of movies going deeply intellectual. The most effected cinema of this wave are the ones which perhaps didn’t have an intellectual leg to it namely the superhero movies and even the latest Bond movie. This intellectual cinema crept in torture genre too with the making of the movie Saw. It was further followed by three sequels. What’s the intellect of this movie? Well, seems that a dying person (who can’t possible save his life) intends to make people understand the meaning of survival and of the term “survival of the fittest”; he wants people to appreciate their lives. And, how does he make them understand about that? Well, read it at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387564/plotsummary . Now, who said that not everything can be justified? :)

Well, that’s that about the various storylines that the torture genre uses. Whatever may be the storyline, the movies of this genre mostly focus on the torture and gore part. That’s what gets the audience coming, not the storyline. Anyways, this is the penultimate entry in this thread of blogs. In the next one, I will conclude with my few paisa thoughts over whether this kind of cinema helps the society in any way or not. If you have any thoughts over it, do drop it in the comments.

Fata poster, nikla terror

The title simply means that the terror will come out of the poster by tearing it out. Yeah, you guessed it right. This entry is on the other promotional tool used by movies – posters. For this post, I thought of giving you people a taste of the few screenshots that are used for the torture genre. And as an experiment I thought of comparing it with the posters of some movies of horror genre which I don’t categorize as the torture genre. That is, the plain vanilla horror where the ghosts, demons and zombies come and terrorize people instead of people themselves torturing other people or animals. Well, did I find some real revelation? See for yourself.

Posters of the movie Hostel:

A poster from the sequel of the above movie:


I dare not put other posters of this movie. Too horrifying to put it here. And I guess I have shocked my readers enough to do it at that extent anymore.

A poster from the vintage torture movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre:


And now, Cannibal Holocaust. The first one is the original poster whereas the next one is the poster used for re-release in USA.


The above looks pretty simple, isn’t it? Wait for the next one:


Is there a similarity you find in the pattern of these posters? Yes, there are similarities, glaring similarities. All are dark and depict a pretty horrific picture. Another similarity is the use of props like tools which can be used for doing some serious damage. The intention of these posters are very clear – to inform the viewers that the movie has gone some real gory scenes and to make them think if the poster is so horrifying, how much more would be in the movie itself. Oh, and by the way, I haven’t put some of the worst posters here. I simply couldn’t put up the courage to post it in public.

Now, let’s contrast the above posters against some of the ghostly horror movies. I have chosen few of the very famous and widely recognized horror movies for this.

Poster of The Omen and The Amityville Horror:


Poster of Shining and Shutter:


Well, do I even need to contrast the two separate style of horror movies? In one of my earlier blogs, I had asked if devil would be wondering that humans have surpassed the devil itself when it comes to torture. And I guess with the above posters we have a clear answer. The moviemakers certainly tend to portray the torture part much more evidently when it is done by the humans rather than when demons inflict the trauma on us.

And after having researched for this particular blog, today I am pretty sure that the target segment of the torture genre of movies cannot be same as that of normal horror movies. It simply can’t be. Atleast, not in the eyes of movie makers. The positioning of the movies is too contrasting to believe that the target segment is same. It certainly is possible that the target segment of normal horror genre is a subset of torture genre target segment but it can’t be the other way round.

Disclaimer: All the posters taken have been copied from sites allowing for the copy and I have assumed that there are no copyright issues.

Can a movie go too far?

In coming couple of weeks, the great RGV’s Phoonk is going to release. It’s a horror movie and there is a challenge supposedly in which any person who watches it alone in a theatre completely will be awarded a sum of 5 lakh rupees. On knowing this plan, the first question that came to my mind was who was going to pay for the rest of the seats in the empty theatre because obviously every next guy will perhaps want to make some quick bucks and the theatre owner can’t possibly allow so many empty shows on his own cost. Anyways, on a similar line, there was one yester-year movies by the name of “Jaani Dushman” also which had thrown such sort of challenge to the viewers. I wonder if such sort of promotional gimmick is also played in Hollywood or other woods.

This and the following few posts will be dedicated towards the various promotional tools and strategies used by the torture genre movies. This particular post will look into the taglines used by these kind of movies. The tagline is normally a catchy phrase which intends to make the reader curious about the movie. And at the same time it has the task of delivering to the reader what he or she can expect from the movie. Going forward, I am going to enlist some of the tag lines used by various movies.

Let me start with my favorite one which I am not sure I should categorize as horrifying or funny. This tagline is from the remake version of a movie named House of Wax and stars Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton perhaps needs no introduction and if there is a rating for few of the most hated celebrities, she perhaps will definitely come in the top three. And the movie promoters perhaps wanted to utilize this particular wave to promote their movie. Check one of the tagline:

a. On May 6th...See Paris Die!

Below enlisted are the various selected taglines along with their movie names. I have selected few of the taglines which perhaps are not as usual and which might dare the readers to try on the movie:

House of Wax (the original one, made in 1953):

b. UNLIKE ANYTHING YOU'VE SEEN BEFORE! (original print ad - all caps)

c. Nothing that has gone before can compare with this!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

d. What you know about fear... doesn't even come close.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

e. Banned for over 7 years! Now finally released INTACT! UNCUT!

f. Who will survive and what will be left of them?

The hills have eyes (2006)

g. The lucky ones die first.

Hostel (2005)

h. Shen mer tsui huai neng fa sheng (What's the worst that could happen)

Paidia tou Diavolou, Ta (1975)

i. The lucky ones simply got their brains blown out.

j. The movie that the censors don't want you to see

Cannibal Ferox (1981)

k. They must pay for their crimes with blood and pain. For what they have done, Make Them Die Slowly

l. The most violent film ever made!

m. Banned in 31 countries!

The Incredible Torture Show (1976) – Yes, you read it right. That’s the name of the movie

n. Join The Fun!... Human Dart Boards... "Home Style Brain Surgery"... Dental Hijinks!

And finally coming to the last movie: Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

o. Ripout! Barbeque! Devour! How long can you take it?

p. They eat and they are eaten!

q. The most controversial movie of all-time

r. The most savage and brutal film in modern history

s. Can a movie go too far?

t. Better to rest in peace in the warm body of a friend than in the cold ground

u. The men you will see eaten alive, are the same who filmed these incredible sequences

v. You won't believe that what you're seeing could have happened!

Cannibal Holocaust perhaps alone is sufficient to engulf all the types of taglines that are used for such movies. And the above are only few of the taglines used for the movie. What’s common in the different taglines is their nature to dare the reader, to make question the reader if he can really take it. And to make him curious about the movie, e.g. all the tag lines telling about the controversy or ban makes the reader think what exactly could it have been that it created such controversy or was banned. Well, atleast that was what sucked me into going from one link to other researching on these movies and trying to find out what was picturised in the movie. Tell me, won’t you get sucked in?

Child is the father of man

“Child is the father of man” – so someone great had said. That makes a child more mature than a grown-up (taking the statement literally, don’t bash me up :) ). Well, if we really try to understand the human psychology, we will perhaps find that there is a child in all of us and perhaps for many of us the child may even overpower the grown-up inside. We may pass ourselves as mature person and term “jealousy”, “competitiveness” and such behavior characteristics as kiddish but in reality we all are a part of the above sentiments. Whether we show it in front of others or not is a different issue. For that matter, whether we show it to even ourselves or not is also a very intriguing question to ponder on.

Now, why this question of being a kid? Well, that’s because I am trying to find out the reasons behind the consumption of the torture genre movies. Na na, don’t get me wrong. I certainly don’t think that watching such movies, by any long shot, is a kid’s job. It’s definitely not. It will take a lot and lot and perhaps a bit more lot of guts to watch such horrific scenes being enacted. And when it comes to a movie where you are not even sure whether what’s going on screen is an enactment or a reality being picturised, then, it’s no mean feat to consume it. So, where does being a kid feature in all this? It features if we try to look at the segment of “curious on-lookers” and “daring challengers”.

Curiosity is a feature which perhaps won’t be termed kiddish per se. But what if the curiosity gets the better of you? What if the curiosity is related to an unproductive thing which might not be of much help? Yeah, now you got it right. We grown-ups do everything thinking of a goal in mind. And there are times when we forcingly generate our curiosity in things that we aren’t even curious about because that will accomplish something for us. On the contrary, kids are curious about each and everything around them. (I was an exception though :) ). And this is the streak that I feel overpowers us when we are curious to know what a certain movie of this category shows. It’s not something usual. It’s not something that happens all around us. And it’s not something that can be experienced easily. Then, what is it? How has it been picturised? What has been picturised? Can I really see so much of horrendosity? All these questions and many more comes to mind and are discussed and then curiosity takes the better of us :).

PS: I know that “horrendosity” isn’t actually a true-blue English dictionary word but I guess the meaning that I want to convey is best put forward using that word instead of the words in my small vocabulary collection.
So, continuing the article now and coming to the daring streak that we have in ourselves – we all seek thrills in our lives. And more often than not, we seek these thrills passively by watching somebody do something. And that’s where the medium of television and cinema seeps in. Though, watching a cinema depicting torture is perhaps not that passive a thrill as watching some mean vamp fluttering her eyes and plotting an idiotic scheme to put fire in a nauseatingly sweet family in the saas-bahu serials. On the other hand, it’s perhaps as passive as it gets when we analyze the actual rendition of such torturous acts (And am not talking of saas bahu serials this time, but of the torture genre movies :) ).

Watching these kinds of scenes and being capable of taking in the scenes without puking out often will be an act of bravado which can also flourished in public chat rooms. I have gone through some of the threads discussing if a particular scene was that bad to take and though there is seldom a response unashamedly trying to prove the bravado, but one can certainly feel a sense of achievement in the responses. And in some others, one can feel the sense of being a more pro than others when they analyze the scenes and compare with others proving how these scenes were perhaps not as torturous as others think it to be. And then the game goes on in loops.

I guess with this, I will put a stop on the discussion of what motivates people to watch these kinda movies. Though, I have left out the “horror fans” category for the obvious reason that they are fans and look forward to watching these movies. And the last two segments of “one-off cases” and “by mistake people” are just some outliers who are not a regular for these movies. Here, I will also like to again say that not all horror fans perhaps approve of such kind of torture genre movie and there are separate levels within the genre of horror too. And I am pretty sure that curiosity and daredevilry play a certain very important role even in the horror fans who look forward to these movies.

The next couple of posts will perhaps be related to the promotion factor of these kind of movies and will be more informative rather than analysis based. But perhaps they will be more entertaining than these. So, watch out for them. Before signing off, let me take leave on a very different note today. It’s Independence Day for us today and though I am never enthusiastic about days which celebrate love, friendship and all such emotions, there’s a part of me which celebrates the Independence Day. Primarily because love and friendship don’t need one particular day to happen but it was only today when we got independence. So, here’s wishing everyone Happy Independence Day. And though Independence Day now, as opposed to my childhood days, also reminds me of the carnage that followed it and how I wish and hope that never does it happen again, I still want to salute the great heroes who fought for us. And going in future, I hope that there will be day when we have a boundary-less and united world, at least when it comes to emotions and patriotism, but till that happens and even after that, here’s wishing everyone again: HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY.

Consumers of Torture Genre

Movies are a life line for most of us. A chance to get away from reality and get into the dreamy world that most of us can never have. This is an analogy that has often been used for Hindi masala flicks which are too nonsensical and unrealistic to believe. But they are entertaining and lets the viewers who are tired with their non-stop life to sit back for a while and just enjoy. Now that I am writing these words I am thinking about the words “nonsensical” and “unrealistic” that I have used to describe the Bollywood masala movies, I am wondering whether the same two words can be used to describe the movies that I have been writing about.

What prevents us from saying that these gory and torturous movies are unrealistic in nature. Perhaps not 100% but certainly to a great extent. Most of these movies also have just a nonsensical and beaten to death plot. And as long as a viewer can know that whatever he is seeing on the screen is just an animation and not a reality, then, what’s preventing him to savor some unrealistic entertainment he knows he will never have in life. Perhaps, I am under-playing the kind of cinema that I am talking about but I just want to look at it from a different angle. Not from the same angle that I have always been thinking that it’s so gory and that it perhaps will take a psycho to enjoy such horrible acts of torture.

Anyways, to come to the main theme of this particular entry, who exactly are the consumers of this genre of movies? At the first glance, we can directly segment them on the basis of age. And anyone above the age of 18 years is qualified by law to watch such movies. But that still doesn’t point to the target segment. It’s just that the law thinks that people above 18 years are suitable to handle such movies as they have become adults. But with the advent of technology, there are perhaps a few underage people also who watch these movies. Now, out of the legally qualified people, we can perhaps further divide the segment into following people who will be willing to watch such movies:

· Horror fans
· Curious on-lookers
· Daring challengers
· One-off cases
· By-mistake people

Yeah yeah, I know. The classification is real classy. Though, going by this classification, the pool doesn’t seem to be big enough to actually make the genre worthy of making profits. We have to remember that not all horror fans will be willing to watch a movie of this genre. Horror will have its own degree of consumption and there will be various levels. This level that we are talking of is perhaps around the highest level of horror that anyone can digest. And we are well aware that as we go high, there are fewer people to find there. The second segment of curious on-lookers may certainly be bigger than the bottom two combined but still not huge enough. This segment as well as the third one of “Daring challengers” perhaps overlap each other a lot.

Now, if I have to give a percentage of world population who will fall under each category, then, what exactly it will be? I guess it’s perhaps very tough to predict it so subjectively. But, let me give it a try. If I take my base as IMDB which is perhaps the best site for movie fans and enthusiasts, then, the most popular of the movies in the site have been rated by almost 300,000 odd people. For the genre of movies that I am discussing, Hostel has been rated by around 50,000 odd people and the rest have yet to cross being rated by 25,000 people. There are some exceptions like Sin City which has gone for more than 150,000 votes but then that’s a Tarintino movie with a supposedly very artistic flavor and a huge fan following with it. Now, if we consider that only one-tenth of the people who watch the movie actually rate it, then also we will arrive at an optimistic figure of 500,000 audience. I have chosen just a fraction of one-tenth because these kind of movies perhaps have a very limited audience and aren’t released on such a wide scale all around the world. Is this much audience enough to make money for the producers? I guess not. Perhaps my calculation is too understated.

In a later post, I will perhaps give this count a more thought. Perhaps a back calculation might help to arrive at the figure. And for the next one, let’s see why do audience watch such gory flicks.