When icons become iconoclastic

What do the believers do when the idols of their temple start talking blasphemously? They are shocked, they become incredulous, even enter the state of denial. This was, at any rate, the fate of Saeed Naqvi when he interviewed Naseeruddin Shah (NewsX, July 20).
He could not believe when Naseer, an icon of parallel cinema, said that Shammi Kapoor, Dev Anand, and Dara Singh were his favorite actors in Hindi movies. Naqvi was so stunned that he actually asked the veteran actor whether it was a tongue-in-cheek remark; but Naseer made it clear that he was not joking. Naqvi, however, remained unconvinced till the end; in the winding-up remarks, he said that Naseer “is playing the fool with us.”
At the heart of Naqvi’s incredulity lies a generation’s weltanschauung. I am talking about the sixties’ generation which had swallowed and digested not only the economy and politics of socialism but also its esthetics. There was a big problem, though: the most popular art was dominated by the people who had little time for the True Theory, which was socialism. The Raj Kapoors, the Dev Anands, the Guru Dutts, the K. Asifs, the Dilip Kumars, the B.R. Chopras, the Prakash Mehras, and other movie moguls made movies to mint money or to create great art; they never bothered to do things as per the dogmas, doctrines, or straitjackets of the Theory. This greatly frustrated the pundits; so, they dubbed the mainstream as Commercial Cinema, a term that went to signify anything that was crude, crass, escapist, kitsch. This is commerce, not art, thundered the popes of esthetics.
Thanks to the entrenchment of socialism in the 1970s, the government took upon itself to redeem, among other things, cinema (the way it ‘redeemed’ the economy is well-known; the results were shortages, black market, arrested growth, and crony capitalism, but that is another story). The consequence of state intervention in the world of movies was Art Cinema. And pinkish pundits got the opportunity to chalk out its canons.
I have always found the term, Art Cinema, puzzling for two reasons. First, it is tautological: since cinema is a form of art, the coinage has some redundancy about it. Second, most of the movies that go with it are the antithesis of art. It is difficult to find anything beautiful, elevating, or sublimating in the dreariness and boredom peddled by the masters of Art Cinema. But these incongruities did not bother the sixties’ generation, which continued to patronize the ‘socially relevant’ movies.
Art Cinema flourished as long as the government funded it; and, in the same manner as an unviable public sector undertaking goes sick when the government stops financing it, the Art Cinema business got bust when the winds of liberalization hit the Indian shores in the 1990s. The Shyam Benegals and the Govind Nihalanis came to terms with the new reality and made films with mainstream stars. But, interestingly, the canons and myths of Art Cinema did not fade away with time; in fact, they have got entrenched in public discourse and common parlance.
It is not unusual to read a film review which tells us that this movie has a message (and is therefore is good movie) or that one does not have any message (and therefore is just entertaining). A movie, as per the accepted code of film critics, is good if it has a socially relevant message. A filmmaker ought to be a postman, apart from his mastery over the craft, to be a considered a good one. Such are the consequences of having a public discourse immersed in socialist-collectivist-tribalist ethic. Everything and everybody are good so long as they serve their utility to a collectivity.
It is a measure of not only the prevalence of collectivist ethic but also of shabby elitism and general mendacity that when any intellectual or a cinema person with intellectual pretensions is asked about their favorite film directors, they talk about Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Bimal Roy, Eisenstein, or some other high-sounding names. Many, if not most, of them relish Johny Mera Naam and Sholay, but they discuss only Pather Panchali.
I am yet to come across a person who has named, say, Vijay Anand and Raj Khosla. Naseer had the courage to call Dev Anand starrer Guide and Jewel Thief (both directed by Vijay Anand) as great movies. In fact, Naseer says that Guide is among the best movies ever made in the world.
Given this socio-cultural milieu, it was indeed courageous―brazen, some would say―on the part of Naseer to call Shammi Kapoor as his favorite actor, to say that he grew up on his movies. But it was not unnatural for a man who was born in 1950 to say that. As a teenager and as a young man, and as a person with deep interest in cinema, Naseer could not have avoided Kapoor or Dev Anand. In fact, the two are not just among the handsomest and most Westernized heroes but they also represented all that was stylish, elegant, graceful, and blithe in contemporary India. Quite obviously, the champions of social realism found little worth in the two stars of yesteryears.
Even if Naseer had called Raj Kapoor his favorite, it would have been grudgingly accepted, for Raj sold sugary socialism and sexy altruism for decades.
But Naseer is talking about Shammi, Dev sahib, and―horrors― Dara Singh in superlative terms! Worse, he has nothing good to say about Shyam Benegal; despite Naqvi’s prompting to call him as his favorite director, Naseer refused to do that; instead, he went on naming Shekhar Kapoor, Gulzar, and Sai Paranpai as his favorites. It will be very difficult to put the three in the Art Cinema camp. Paranjpai actually made delightful and thoroughly entertaining movies Chashm-e-baddur and Katha; she can scarcely be thrown in the company of those who portrayed the sordid, the morbid, and the unlovely on celluloid.
What blasphemy! Naseer has no regard for the high priests of Art Cinema and the votaries of Theory. No wonder, Naqvi, a sixties’ generation representative, was incredulous.