A wonderful article on the significance of Oscars, Filmfare etc ... http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090301/jsp/7days/story_10606930.jsp
Our awards, their awards celebrity circusBHARATHI S. PRADHAN 'ONE OSCAR IS EQUAL TO 100 FILMFARE TROPHIES' Anyone who watched the Oscars this Monday would’ve wondered just what it is that makes the Academy Awards such a coveted event and why an Indian award comes off as such a pathetic country cousin. The reasons have nothing to do with being in awe of the West. To begin with, we don’t really honour cinema. We worship stars, dynasties and the sponsors. If Resul Pookutty had won a trophy for Best Sound Mixing at any of our awards functions, we’d have never heard the sound of his voice. Our functions are so star-oriented that we don’t respect or honour any other department of filmmaking. There is a time-honoured tradition here that all ‘unimportant’ awards (read, technical awards) are dispensed with earlier in the evening and no winner is accorded the respect of a few seconds before the mike. The ‘important’ celebrity awards are then bunched together to make the finale where glittering stars and famous filmmakers are allowed one-upmanship and rambling before the mike because that’s what the channels think is the sure-fire formula for high viewership. A few years ago, when I was heading an awards show and had meetings with a reputed channel, all they wanted was a list of film star items (they couldn’t care less what the performance would be about) and who’d constitute the celebrity audience. There was no discussion on what kind of aesthetics or talent would be on display and certainly no room for anything that departed from their famous formula. A *Jai ho *with unknown dancers and a black American singing would have been out of the question. If A.R. Rahman had not been a part of it, our channel heads would’ve collectively shaken their heads and yawned, but who’s the star performer in this item? Today, of course, we have degenerated even further. One peep at the audience and you know who’ll be the Best Actor or Best Actress of the evening. No Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie or Meryl Streep would sit in the front row and go home empty-handed in Mumbai. That’s the difference between the Oscars and our awards functions which revolve solely around pleasing the sponsors and TV channels. In any case, once the sponsors get centre-stage, as they uniformly do at all our functions, the whole event turns too crassly commercial to make it classy. ‘Classy’, was what Resul Pookutty and A.R. Rahman were, that night at the Oscars. When Resul talked of a nationalistic ‘Om’ and Rahman talked of a universal ‘God’, they did the country proud. There was no narrow-thinking ‘cheer me, cheer my religion’, no*Jai Mata Di, *no Allah, no Mother Mary — it was a stylishly secular, universally-accepted ‘God’ (or *‘kadavul’* as Rahman said in Tamil). Similarly, there was no parochial Kerala or Chennai, there was no ‘pat us, we’re both south Indians’ — they were simply two sincere, immensely deserving Indians who were thrilled to bring home to this country a token of the international recognition they had received. Thank you, Resul, thank you, Rahman. You did us proud in more ways than you think. Question being asked: What’s Anil Kapoor going to do once he returns to terra firma? Unfair, really. Why can’t he bask in the sun for a while? For one, he has reason to rejoice — Anil’s pockets get filled with every victory that *Slumdog Millionaire* notches up, since he was astute enough to accept a modest fee and a small percentage of the profits. With the kind of business the film has done all over the globe, even a small percentage works out to a big grin on the quiz master’s face. The profits apart, let Anil make the most of this short-lived stint in the international spotlight. Next year, this time, he just might be like Shilpa Shetty in UK today — forgotten as yesterday’s headlines. In the glare of the Oscar fever, it surfaced that *Jai ho* was actually a Subhash Ghai number but he’d handed it back to A.R. Rahman as ‘unsuitable for *Yuvvraaj*’. Lucky Boyle picked it up as the perfect ending for *Slumdog Millionaire*. Does Subhash Ghai feel a twinge of regret for foregoing a song that went on to win international approval? “I’m not like others, you know,” says Ghai. “I’m a very giving sort of person. I am genuinely very happy for Rahman. He’s my composer, my friend. One has to forego even a great song sometimes if it doesn’t fit into your film. And *Jai ho* is a great song that didn’t fit into *Yuvvraaj*. Rahman is the best and he proved it by getting an Oscar. After all, one Oscar is equal to 100 Filmfare trophies!” Ah, just the sentiments expressed at the beginning of this column. -- -A http://viewsnmuse.blogspot.com
