Choose randomly any successfully running movie in India and even an ordinary movie buff will be able to trace out its roots to some other movie in a different language or industry. Now i don't mean to say that remaking movies is a bad thing, a good story deserves to be told repeatedly. For example, Kamal Hasan's Mahanadi was a loose adaptation of the 1979 Hollywood movie, Hardcore, but this a case where the story deserves to be retold. Or even the recent Vikram starrer 'Deivathirumagan', is an excellent altered version of Sean penn's 'I am Sam'.
But take the case of Surya's Ghajini, which was supposed to be an adaptation of Christopher Nolan's Memento. That was not creativity but a gross butchering of intellectual property. Most Tamil and Hindi movies are re-made from English,malayalam or telugu, just for the sake of the actors ,especially famous heroes. Salman kahn, Sharukh, Vijay are the main culprits and recently even versatile actors like Ajay Devgan and Ajith have joined the bandwagon. Gone are the days where the directors made stars out of ordinary actors. Now it is the stars who introduce directors to make (remake) movies to suit their image. With more and more corporates entering the industry, the days of producers and directors nurturing a movie like growing a child, are numbered.
Recently it seems that one star actor cannot carry an entire film successfully, every other bollywood movie has two, three or even four big stars in the lead doing little or no roles.Legendary actors like Amitabh, Sanjay Dutt, and Akshay Kumar who are known for their amazing on-screen persona's have been recently pushed into acting alongside wannabe actors who are the son's of the producers or whose screen life is long past the expiry date. These secondary heroes of course do not have even the least bit of acting skills or fan following for that matter and just share the limelight of the bigger stars (Tusshar kapoor jumps into my mind here). Sadly every movie industry seems to be taking up this trend.
And as a marketing student it is interesting to see how film marketing has evolved. From simple posters on the roads and newspapers, movie marketing has grown out of proportions. The prime example being Rajini's Enthiran (Robot). Every possible channel of marketing communications was used, TV ad's, newspaper ad's, magazine editorials, event hosting for movie trailer, music release, previews , autograph sessions, special interviews etc etc. This is not creative marketing, creativity in marketing is where your cost effective marketing program reaches your target audience effectively, not just using every medium under the sun. Forget creative , is this even ethical? What will smaller budget movies do?Especially when movie promos ,covering half the screen, are disrupting the live news in Sun news channel? Come on people, Movie ad's rolling at the bottom during the news coverage of terrorist attacks?! That is plain sick, not to mention a highly unethical marketing strategy to gain audience attention. And this trend does not seem to be easing up, with many channels following suit, and more remade movies waiting to be released, every channel nowadays seems to be into movie production and all you see in them are the promos of their productions!
Well why only blame movies? The sitcoms or what we popularly call as 'serials' , in our regional channels are perhaps the most guilty in the crime of murdering creativity. But before I detail the negative aspects, first we'll look at the positives the serial industry brings us, i) less fighting between the in laws in the household, because they are too busy crying over the woman protagonist's problems. ii) Golden advertising space for marketers targeting emotionally compromised women iii) Lots of jobs for the utterly non talented script writers and musicians whose job is to cut and paste music, from various pop songs, tom and jerry cartoons etc, into the background of the serial. Why is it all of the serials, and i mean ALL of them, have a woman protagonist in the lead whose life seems to be filled with miseries and villains? I remember our family used to enjoy various sitcoms like Ramani vs Ramani, Crazy Mohan's plays, Marmadesam etc. But now all I find is ridiculous mockery of the crimes and difficulties faced by women in our society. In a nation where we always talk about women rights and equality, it is equally important that we show our women as strong individuals who are capable of achieving anything. Also as if the endless number of serials is not enough, channels like Z tamil and Raj TV have started dubbing Hindi serials into Tamil ! You have to actually watch it to experience the Horror!!
Even in TV programs the plague of copying seems to be omnipresent. Enter Vijay TV with a refreshing stand up comedy program, 'Kalakka povadhu yaaru' and the next thing you know Sun TV has a similar program 'Asatha povadhu yaaru', with the same artists and setup. Then you see 'Jodi No.1' and before you can even blink you see all the channels having the same artists dancing to different judges (Judges like Namitha, Mumtaz etc , who are without doubt the most 'talented' dancers in Tamil Nadu). By now I am sure you understand my view,not only the creativity of the young talents are being pushed out by senseless programs and movies - whose only aim seems to be to extract maximum revenue without adding any value,my point is that it is the society that pushes the media industry to resort to such poor means of entertainment and marketing.
I really start to wonder when am I going to walk into my house to see my mother laughing at a TV serial, when am I going to watch a movie without a sense of Deja vu or when am I going to become a die-hard fan again, like after watching Rajini in 'Thalapathi'. Guess we have to keep on dreaming.
By,
Anandraj S,
PSG Institute of Management, Marketing.
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