Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian Catholic philosopher, is considered the founder of 'Media Studies'. He was enormously influential in the Sixties and even into the Seventies. Indeed, he makes an appearance in Woody Allen's 'Annie Hall'.
Back in 1961, a young Canadian Jesuit who had studied film theory came to Calcutta where he remained for the next sixty years. His name was Father Gaston Roberge and he set up 'Chitrabani', a media college and center of research, in 1970. Thus began his friendship with Satyajit Ray. Roberge has written much on sub-continental Cinema. He suggests that Indians respond to movies emotionally rather than intellectually. This seems strange. Cinema is dramatic. It seeks to stimulate particular emotions. Its protagonists achieve great things or, if they fail, nevertheless display 'aristeia' (excellence). The dramatic tension is built up by 'peripety'- a sudden reversal of fortune. In this way catharsis- or a purgation of the emotions can be achieved. Ray was a fine craftsman but his films lack aristeia or peripety. They may evoke a particular mood well enough. But they lack drama.
A film-maker may be cerebral or wish to deliver a particular ideological or sociological message. But one could always read such messages into entertaining movies aimed at the mass-market. What makes Indian movies different from Western movies is that because Indians are poorer, the opportunity cost of their leisure time is much less. Thus films are much longer and combine a variety of genres- romance, slapstick comedy, dishum-dishum fight scenes, melodramatic scenes, and of course lots of songs and dances.
It is sad that Fr. Roberge set up his institute at just the time when Bengali Cinema's decline had become irreversible. Indeed, the Leftist poet, Dilip Chitre had been audacious enough to denounce Ray's wretched famine movie. Still, the political class was still moving to the left and so 'art movies' were considered to be a 'critique' of Capitalism and thus worth subsidizing. The problem was that plenty of Leftists had been making very successful movies since the Fifties. In Tamil Nadu, Leftist 'Rationalists' from the Film industry had taken over the administration from Congress. At a later point, Om Puri recites Chitre's 'Adha Satya' in the very successful movie of that name. Clearly, you can please the public while delivering a complex political or ideological message.
It is not clear to me if Fr. Roberge- a good and pious man who probably helped all he came in contact with- had anything interesting to say.
Consider the following- "In natural or direct communication the two partners take part in the same situation and can perceive that situation in all its aspects.
This is not true. Speaking generally, we don't know our own situation or that of the other person. That is why most conversations are based on fundamental misapprehensions and if pursued long enough will end in a fist fight.
In media or indirect communication
Indirect communication is when you signal something to a third party. You may not intend for that information to reach the person it most directly affects. Cinema is direct, deliberate, communication for a commercial purpose. There is a demand for a particular thing to be communicated- e.g. an exciting story featuring beautiful damsels and muscular heroes- and there is a supply of the commodity in question.
each partner can only perceive part of the situation .
It can happen that the Director thinks 'I've made a great movie!' but the audience think the film is shit. It may take some time for the Director to understand how and why he went wrong. It may be that he got the casting wrong or that the script was wooden or the special effects were shit. Equally, a rubbish film may be a hit simply because it so happens that all the other films released at that time were even worse. On the other hand a good film which did badly when first released may become a cult classic.
The possibilities of misunderstanding, the chances of error, therefore, are great"
Less so than with ordinary conversation precisely because films cost a lot of money to produce and thus the penalty for getting things wrong is very high.
"It is a common view that the purpose of mass media
which is to provide the masses with a way to pass the time.
is three-fold : to inform, to educate and to entertain.
We may show greater interest in ways to pass the time which yield us information or education or entertainment. Indeed, we may pay for it.
This view smacks of dogma, and it is clear that in many countries where the media have been highly developed, their supposed aims are far from achieved .
No. All countries with advanced mass media have effective means to inform and educate and entertain the masses. It is a different matter that a porn film may not sufficiently educate us about Quantum theory.
The information they give is so selective that it rarely presents a particular picture of events.
No. A porn film gives us a particular picture of particular events of a sort which, thankfully, our own domestic lives are free from.
The education they provide is, more often than not, biased propaganda.
The Catholic Church established 'Propaganda Fide' some four centuries ago. The Pope is very biased because he does not depict the attractions of Buddhism.
Entertainment value is rarely high . Furthermore, since the operation of mass media is extremely costly, broadcasting time and space in printed media has to be sold out, and, as a result, the mass media all too frequently becomes merely a vehicle of commercial interest".
Canada is rich because 'commercial interest' is given free reign. This is also why the Canadian Government had the money to pay Fr. Gaston's pension. Incidentally, Calcutta was founded by 'commercial interests'.
Speaking of Ray's films, he says 'What struck me most was not the material poverty depicted in the films, but the enormous spiritual poverty of some rich people is much more deplorable than material poverty.' Here I agree with Fr. Gaston. I would much rather starve to death than have plenty to eat because I don't want to be spiritually poor. Sadly, because I am not a Catholic, I will go to Hell in either case.
Fr. Gaston made an attempt to engage with popular Indian cinema. Sadly, the people he associated with in Calcutta lacked any insight into this. Consider the question as to why, in my home state of Tamil Nadu, people from the Cinema industry took over Politics from about 1968 onward. No Bengali will give you the answer I will give you. The story starts with Tandon (who was based in Calcutta) making a film about Saint Nandanar which was remade about a decade later in the Forties. To a Tamil, it is clear that this sort of film draws on the indigenous 'kathakalakshepham' (which means narrating the stories of ancient text in a comprehensible manner to the common people) tradition. Sadly, Tandon's film showed the supremacy of Brahmins. The Justice Party was anti-Brahmin because of the arrogance of some educated Brahmins who held a disproportionate share of Government jobs. Also they supported Gandhi and thus considered themselves duty-bound to accept Hindi as the national language. Great film personalities like Karunanidhi, Sivaji Ganesan and MGR eagerly adopted the 'Rationalist' anti-Brahmin ideology and turned the values of 'kathakalakshepham' on its head. I may mention, the film 'Nandanar' drew their ire because it shows a low-caste Saint as subservient to the Brahmin priest. Clearly, this was unacceptable. However, it was Kamraj & Bhaktavatsalam's endorsement of 'Hindization' which caused Congress to fall from power. Thus we have the paradox of Tamil Nadu as a land of pious Temple-goers ruled, nevertheless, by a man named Stalin whose son says 'sanatan dharma' (orthodox Hinduism) should be banished.
Turning to the Islamic 'Sufi' tradition of 'hubb-al-udhri' which is a big theme in North Indian movies, no Bengali will admit that Sharat's Devdas is in that tradition. They think it is just coincidence that the hero dies while on the 'kuh-e-yaar' path to the beloved's house! One may say the Hindu aspect is to give the hero two love-interests- Paro and Chandramukhi. But this is the old idea of the dichotomy between pure and impure, natural and cultivated etc.
Guru Dutt's Pyaasa should be of interest to a Catholic priest. The poet dies and is resurrected only to be denied by his own Cultus's Caiaphas custodians! Bengalis in the Seventies and Eighties could not bring themselves to mention such obvious religious themes. The 'dhvani' resonances of super-hit movies were too vulgar to take note of.
Consider Roberge's comment on Sholay-
When Basanti dances on glass it’s pity. When Thakursaab’s hands are chopped off it’s a mixed feeling of fear followed by egotism. Emotions maybe experienced differently but the feelings of anger, fear or love are common,”
Why does Meena Kumari in Pakeezah and Basanti in Sholay dance on broken glass? The answer has to do with 'tandava' dance which heralds the destruction of an age. It is Goddess Kali herself who is dancing on the corpse of Shiva.
In both films, a particular type of culture is coming to an end. The 'Thakur' (lord) has had his hands cut off. He will kick the villain to death. The old moral order has collapsed.
Is Sholay a 'folk movie'? It has some essentially Indic elements but it derives from the cowboy movie via Kurosawa's 'seven samurai'. American stunt coordinators were brought in for it. Indeed, the mother of the producer was named not after the sacred Ganges but that highly capitalist, not to say racist, American river, the Mississippi. I protested against this shameless CIA ploy in a letter I wrote to Madam Gandhi when I was ten years old.
Fr. Gaston was enamored with Tagore even before he saw Ray's Apu trilogy. Thus he saw Ray as a latter day Tagore. But Tagore was a practical man who spent a lot of time with peasants- including his Muslim tenants. Ray was urban and was focused on his own supercilious class. Tagore had scolded this class for seeking to slit their own throats by chasing away the Brits (or, later on, embracing Communism as a nephew of his did). Ray scolded his own class to no good purpose. He 'mourned the plumage but forgot the dying bird'. After all, if the bhadralok and the buddhijivis had risen up it was only because of industrial capitalism. Pretending the thing was evil or that 'China's Chairman' should be Bengal's Chairman was simply stupid.
Fr. Gaston thinks Tagore's last three films are like the Apu trilogy which was based on Bibhuti Babu's book. But Bibhuti had a strong interest in the occult and there is a theme of reincarnation in Pather Panchali which raises it above ethnographic cinematography like that of 'Nanook of the North'.
For me, the first film, Pather Panchali 1955 (The Song of the Road) impressed me so deeply that it became my ‘song of the road’ as a new comer in India.
But it references the doctrine of re-birth (as shown by the snake entering the abandoned house at the end of the film). Apu will meet his sister again. The wheel of samsara is merely a circle.
I liked the two other films also, Aparajito 1956 (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar 1959 (The Word of Apu) but it was difficult to absorb three movies one after another.
More particularly because there was a decline in quality. Ray was having to resort to Leftist cliches.
Nevertheless, since I saw them again once in Kolkata, they prepared me to see the last movies of Satyajit Ray, three of them constituting a final trilogy, Gana Shatru 1989 (Public Enemy),
based on Ibsen. But, since 1860, Doctors in India have to report an epidemic to the District Medical Officer. There is no local administration which can interfere in what happens next.
Shakha Proshakha 1990
whose message is 'well paid business executives or entrepreneurs are corrupt. It is better to be mentally ill and thus incapable of work'. The problem here is that we are expected to believe that a 70 year old retired industrialist could have been honest. But no businessman could have paid all his taxes and remained solvent. There may have been such industrialists in British times. But the British ran away long ago. Still, the one good son (who can't hold down a job because he suffered an accident in England) did receive the one blessing that faraway country could still bestow on Indians- viz. make them unemployable.
(The Branches and the Twigs) and Agantuk 1991 (The Stranger).
Which reminds us that Bibhuti could write good Rider Haggard style adventure stories- indeed, Apu himself went off to Samoa. The 'stranger' may have had adventures in remote places but he has only returned to India to scold his family. George Lucas was a fool to focus on Indiana Jones's swashbuckling expeditions. He should have depicted Indiana as a senile bore who enjoys scolding his kith and kin.
The trilogy attuned me to the Indian culture with the ‘song of the little road’ (Pather Panchali) in my mind.
Bibhuti was a Brahmin who had been a member of the Cow Protection league. Ray failed to wholly excise Hinduism from the film though the father, a priest, is depicted as a shithead.
The journey inside India itself progressed along with the Ray films until I saw his last one, Agantuk, and understood that a film or movie is experienced in the viewer’s heart.
Bibhuti's stories speak to the heart. Agantuk is the work of a senile scold.
Cinema awakes the caveman in each one of us.
Raquel Welch in 'One million years BC' awoke the caveman in me. Agantuk put me to sleep.
Very significantly Ray’s last film shows us the famous bison that was painted in a cave of Alta Mira in Spain some fifteen thousand years ago.
It is being hunted. Hunting is exciting. Agantuk is as boring as shit.
In Agantuk the actor Utpal Dutt gives a human face to the antique bison.
Sadly, nobody hunts him to death.
And we, the viewers who look at the screen, are like the cavemen of old contemplating images on the wall of their cave.
The cavemen of old enjoyed hunting and eating bison. Sadly, nobody wanted to hunt and eat Utpal Dutt.
How did Satyajit Ray himself get into the cave?
Was he trying to hunt and eat Utpal Dutt? I wouldn't mind watching that movie.
He was introduced to the caves of Ajanta by his own father. Both were deeply impressed by the Ajanta caves. These number over fifty. They were cut into the side of a mountain in North-West India, close to Bombay (now Mumbai) about fifteen hundred years ago. They are decorated with Buddhist images.
Because the place housed a Buddhist monastery.
Satyajit Ray is said to have commented: “love, separation, joy, sorrow, anger, shame, envy, and other refined states of mind are apparent simply from the details in the body’s postures.
Because that is how painting and sculpture work. But the message of these works is soteriological and involves the theory of re-birth.
Film directors can learn a lot from these early pictures.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali certainly did so to very good effect in his re-make of Devdas. It seems, if you want to watch a Bengali movie, make sure the director is a Gujju.
Thus, watching a movie the Indian way is to enter the cave of one’s heart
hridaya guha in which, the Chandogya Upanishad tells us, the Supreme Reality is found.
and contemplate the images some cave men − old or new − have created on the walls of the cave.
there are no such images in hridaya guha. It is obvious that cave paintings of bison etc. has to do with hunting and eating such creatures.
Here the expression I use, ‘to enter the cave of one’s heart’ is a way of speaking that, perhaps, is not meaningful to some people.
Unless they are Hindus and know the Upanishads.
That difficulty comes from the fact that men and women do not all live human life in the same way.
That is irrelevant. The Supreme Reality is non-dual. Tat tvam asi. Thou art That.
And we find among human beings the infinite variety we find in nature itself.
Human beings are part of nature. We evolved by natural selection- or boredom. The good thing about movies and TV is that they give us some less Malthusian recreation than procreation.
Agantuk is a meditation on the present world
it is a satire on the upper middle-class who are obsessed with inheritance rights in valuable urban real-estate.
and Manikda’s view on civilization.
He was against it.
Here Satyajit Ray who in so many aspects first follows Rabindranath Tagore and inevitably goes beyond Tagore without betraying him.
Tagore gave up on his people. They were incorrigibly stupid. But younger Bengali poets had abandoned Tagore for TS Eliot by the end of the Twenties. Ray was culturally retarded.
In his documentary film about Tagore Manikda quoted the words that Tagore had said about civilization, namely that he had thought that the light of civilization was coming from the West, but after the War he lost that confidence and thought that the light of civilization will now come from the East.
He died shortly before Pearl Harbor. He was spared the sight of Bose allying with Tojo so that 'light from the Rising Sun' could blind and enslave Bengal.
But Satyajit Ray asserted that the light of civilization will come neither from the West nor from the East.
It will come only when the bhadralok are scolded into lighting their own farts.
It will come from the depth of the human heart.
Which is where you encounter the Supreme Reality. After that, what need have you of light or darkness or nice pictures of bison?
That is why in Aguntuk Ray showed the famous painting of a bison made in a cave of Alta Mira.
The protagonist says it was seeing that painting which sparked his wanderlust.
Here we have a very human perception of the bison and a no less human way of representing that perception.
Our ancestors hunted beasts. We write books. Sad.
And no doubt that perception was rooted in the hearth of the people living at that time.
Who liked eating bison.
It may be also mentioned that the bison could be a symbol of the divine.
Because we hunt and eat God- right?
Should that be the case, the divine for those people who drew the image is seen as a deity of the soil in distinction of the deity of the sky.
Why are they waving spears at it?
From the Greek language the one of the soil is said to be ‘chthonian’, whereas the one of the sky is ‘ouranian’. Thus the invaders’ god is Indra (ouranian), and the Hindu god is Krishna, chthonian.
Indra is a Hindu god particularly popular in Tamil Nadu probably because the Kings (Narendra- the Indra of Men) were indigenous and great patrons of the Tamil language. Arjuna is a partial incarnation of Indra. Krishna is not 'chthonian'. He is the dark rain cloud which supports agriculture in most parts of India. The Nagas are 'chthonian'.
In a cave next to the sea a few kilometers from Madras, there is an image on a wall of Indra and Krishna standing next to each other. The two seem friendly to each other, but the Lord Krishna is one head taller than Indra. A gently sarcastic statement?
No. Lightning is all very well but what we need is rain clouds. Also Krishna is the Godhead and the Yogishvara or Lord of Yoga- a subject which can be very well studied in India itself. Still, if bison are what you are into perhaps you should sojourn elsewhere.
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