In management, we read a term PLC or Product Life Cycle. It meant that every product or product category has a defined life after which its public acceptance will start drooping down, diminishing. There are so many factors behind that which range from technology to public awareness, consumers’ want for more, competition, consumer intelligence and, most importantly, fatigue.
While competition is an external factor, I’d like to count consumer intelligence or want for more as an internal factor in the product itself. Meaning that the product will, over a period of time, start losing its relevance or importance to the consumer. That the consumer will start feeling bored or tired of using the same product, same experience day after day. That his requirements and expectations will increase.
We have many examples. Starting from a poor landline phone which was hard to dial, to sleek business phones and blackberry, we’ve seen the transformation in little over a decade. Our poor PC that operated on Windows with basic functions has now taken various shapes, size, range and accommodates thousand times higher capacities than what it used to be ten years back. These are all results of fast changing consumer preferences with increasing usages.
Consumers develop a fatigue if they have to experience the same or a very similar product experience over a sustained period of time. The K-serials with Saas Bahu jhamela got over us to the hilt before Star had to take it off-air. Several other new formulas are going to meet the same fate on telly – be it reality shows with much of theatrical melodrama or, the so-called serials with social messages of child marriage, female foeticide and so on.
Remember, we had enough of “kutte main tera khoon pee jaungaa” in the eighties and they had to make way for refreshing romantic flicks. We had too much of one bad guy-in-a-happy-family-spoiling everything kind typical cinema in the name of family entertainment, very much like fatigued K-serials. They made way for better family drama like Waqt, Baghbaan and so on. With their new USPs they worked. We had too much of David Dhawan-Govinda kind cinema ruling the Bollywood for a long time. They worked when Bollywood was not producing enough of good humour. So, whatever vulgarity or flimsy content it came with, it sold with a particular category of audiences for a long time. Initially all those films had a Shakti Kapoor, Laxmikant Berde or so trying to poke with the same funny acts which failed to make you laugh after some time and looked idiotic. Qadar Khan’s double-meaning dialogues also faded out gradually. Soon, a new formula was devised by Dhawan sahib around infidelity where the hero would have two wives or multiple relations and his entire life went into saving both of his marriages. The initial bit probably amused some. But, he and some more film-makers went overboard by giving us so many films that I can count at least 8-9 films made on the same plot, with good star-cast. Later ones failed big time. Interestingly, I remember at least 2-3 films each starring Govinda as well Salman, on the same plot. Then came more of infidelity a la No Entry style. Do Knot Disturb sealed the fate for many, with the same lesson.
When Priyadarshan gave us Hera Pheri, we thought a new saviour had arrived. Gadually, all his films started resembling with each other so much so that now you can predict the entire plot after hearing the first line of the story. All the climaxes resembled each other to the extent that you can take one climax and fit into almost all of his movies without affecting their result. I think, he would do better by shooting one climax with all the artistes (and crowd) showing their back while running the race. It can be safely used in all of his next films, in case he intends to continue his trend and have different artistes in different movies. Just hope that he has thought of some changes for the climax of DeDana Dan which gives a déjà vu of Hera Pheri. Priyadarshan ji, if you haven’t and you can still manage it, my humble request, please do it now.
Then Madhur Bhandarkar type of films come replete with pessimism and sadism where the director takes pleasure in watching you cry and act like a whistleblower. Man, it is good to be in the whistleblower’s shoes but, it is worse to believe that the world can only be seen in either black or white. There are shades of gray in everything. His plot is always conceptualized, designed and developed by painting things in black and white. Man, grow up. Nothing in this world comes in either only black or white. Selling pessimism for a very long time like those sundry Hindi News channels who always can be seen predicting the end of the universe on a particular date & time for umpteenth time cannot help. World would believe once, twice, thrice but, not always. Sell anything. But please do not try to hardsell anything more than twice in Bollywood anymore. That simply doesn’t work. Every profession, everything in life has a good side to it too. Had it not been so, forget other things, Bollywood would also have just been a scam, a fiasco called casting couch. But it is not. It is into serious business of making films. There are aberrations everywhere.
Surprisingly, we notice, most of the directors who started with the promise of making something different for us ended up being so different that all their respective projects started looking look-alikes. A direct lift from another earlier successful film. Sad.
To this context, I’d likes to say kudos for traditional film-makers like the Yashraj or Karan Johar’s banners which do not pompously make any promise to serve us “different” cinema but whatever they serve is generally not such a big lift from the older flick.
The recent fiasco of so many films has proved that you can sell any damn thing at least once in Bollywood with a good success, if it comes in a good and complete package. A repeat is also allowable. For that matter people may even watch the same film multiple times, if it is watchable. But, showing them the same film with another name won’t work. Similarly, re-packaging the same formula and content in the new incarnation like old wine in a new bottle won’t work anymore.
I think, I’ve got at least one of the many concrete answers for the question I asked in my previous bloghttp://passionforcinema.com/“who-is-to-blame”-introspections-by-a-young-movie-maker/
Must thank my readers for their contributions.
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