Movie:
3 Idiots
Current Revenue Statistics:
Within 12 days of release, 3 Idiots has become the "the highest grossing Bollywood movie of all time." As of 5 January, 2010, it has earned 2.4 billion rupees (51 million dollars) in the combined international and domestic markets since it opened.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots)
Tipping Point:
Tipping Points are "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable." Gladwell defines a tipping point as a sociological term: "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." As Gladwell states, "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do."
Scene from ‘3 Idiots’:
Aamir (Ranchordas Shyamaldas Chanchar) has been dragged into class to teach students by Prof. Viru Sahastrabuddhe (VIRUS) for criticizing him on the death of a senior who committed suicide as VIRUS discarded his genius invention as ‘impractical’ and told him that he will not graduate.
Chanchar gives the class one minute to find out ‘FARHANitrate PeRAJUlization’, terms which do not exist and have been coined in jest from the name of his pals, Farhan & Raju. The class (including VIRUS) start searching mindlessly in various books but obviously find nothing.
Chanchar then says, our whole system is just about mindlessly running without even pausing to think what we are doing. He says, they are in a college, and not a PRESSURE COOKER!
Food for Thought:
Does that say something about the present system & how it is struggling with itself for change? Does it say something about how tomorrow’s world will be different from today?
One can readily shake off ‘3 Idiots’ as an exception (although it would have to be a rather MIGHTY shake to neglect record breaking profits and perennially filled ‘full houses’ of many first & some second time viewers!)
And then it will also be difficult to ignore a slew of similar movies. Rocket Singh, Taare Zameen Par, Wake Up Sid, Rock On….they almost constitute an emerging ‘new age’ genre. In all of them, the theme was about slowing down from the rat-race to live lives more fully, more from the heart, to work for happiness & not just money!
Somehow, somewhere the India of today is realizing that the world in which they grew up, the lessons they were taught about being financially secure, professionally on top, that status really matters, all those middle class values are making him a machine working 8-12 hours, 5 days a week (may be even weekends) and that he has become another uncreative gear in the system preprogrammed to behave exactly like everyone around them!
We have reached an age where we face a conflict everyday between dreams & reality, between ‘practicality’ & morality, between materialism & spirituality (if I may use that bad word in public!)
The India of today is the most materially prosperous that it has been in the last 200 years, we have reached a saturation level s in materialistic acquisitions, and the mindless race has gotten so far that the only way left to survive ‘humanly’ is to slow down (perhaps THE SLOW DOWN caused by the mindless growth by ever hungry investment bankers in the West was really NEEDED to stop & think). Today, there is a struggle between day-to-day ‘practical’ survival and some time to pause and breath…we are like 100 meter sprinters on a marathon! Panting all the way to glory (?!)…
All these low budget movies (3 Idiots, Rocket Singh, Taare Zameen Par, Wake Up Sid, Rock On….) were centered on this idea & indicate a shift from the materialistic perspective of yesteryears to one which is more from the ‘heart’, more for the ‘heart & more of the ‘heart’.
Media Implications
Does that also imply that this sets the tone for how media & product consumption might differ in the years to come? Already print, internet, radio & TV are gearing up to catch 3 Idiots’ thinking heads for columns, reviews, interviews..
That Hirani has done this for the third time in a row (Munnabhais) & similar movies are also doing very well, how much more time before TV also takes the cue?
So if these are the movies we today love, what would be our media be like in the future?
Or in short, what would this ‘new age’ genre comprise of in media?
3 comments:
VERy NICE..
liked the insight about enuing a change in the media... fingers crossed tht it happens...
but Idiots is too one dimentsional... Its all not THAT BAD....
Very nicely written .... but it's an observation..which is not bad .. but u can also add a solution that cud b applied in ur workplace(like mayb a creative thinking day where u do more of what u want to do irrespective of the profits and loss to the company ..something like the google culture) if u r to give this article in ur company's newsletter ... waise nice observation about the tipping point thing..:)
nice post. thanks.
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