Arjun wrote:CRamS wrote: And of course, we have our own impotent chuitays fight it out (I mean the Cong and BJP, not the Gen Jaswal, I salute him) in front of the Paki as he has that gotcha triumphant smirk on his face. Man our Paki policy makes me puke.
Forget GOI policy. Consider the simple fact that in this environment of Paki mayhem, a large segment of North India has helped a film like Bajrangi Bhaijaan become the third-biggest ever grosser in Bollywood.
If anyone has taken a more massive hit to credibility than even GOI as a result of this brazen Paki act - its got to be the Bhaiwood-loving North Indian populace.
Arjun,
I know what you wrote in your post is just another version of the popular sentiment of this forum. But let me offer some thoughts on this.
First off let me say I had to sit through this insufferable movie since my wife wanted to see it. Most of it was sh*t crap. But it was high on sentimentality and I'm sure the lovely innocent look on that child actor's face resulted in at least Rs 100 crore in extra sales. She was adorable.
The general Indian population is high on sentimentality and this film was successful because it told of a story of the hero overcoming "impossible" (exceedingly stupid in my opinion) odds to do "right" for a "masoom" little girl. I live outside of Desh and I saw this movie in a hall full of so-called well-educated Deshis and there was actual handclapping (something I heard after a long time) when the film ended with the girl calling out "Jai Shree Ram" while rushing into Salman Khan's arms. I can imagine what the reaction was in many halls in small towns in India.
The point is the film is well crafted in the sense that it managed to press all the sentimentality buttons of the Indian populace. It created a make believe "India and Indians" and a make believe "Pakistan and Pakistanis" and I'm sure folks who went to watch the movie and clapped understood that just very well - it was feel good film which did its job.
I can an imagine a situation in which such a film despite being made with such a "successful" formula would bomb at the box office. And that is in a situation where the Indian population or as you say North Indian population is the exact mirror image of the Pakistani population. That is if it were a society full of religious bigots which persecuted its minorities and taught kids to hate religious minorities via school curriculum.
If India had been such a society then one benefit would have been that our Pakistani/Islamic problem would have been solved a long time ago.
But the question we need to ask is once the problem was/is solved via this means - meaning creating a society which rejects a film because it shows Muslims/Pakistanis in a relatively "good and harmless" light, what do we do? Do we just revert back to our civilisational ethos - which is tolerance for other POVs - with just a push of a button?
It doesn't work like that and I don't know about you but I'd rather live and identify with a society which sends a stupid, idiotic film to box office stardom just because it's packaged with the correct dose of sentimentality rather than live/identify with a society that rejects such a film because it shows Pakistanis and Muslims is a "relatively good light".
Bottomline the success or otherwise of this film is no indication of any alleged failure of the Indian society or its Indic values. It has no relation to what people really think about Pakistan and the terrorism it sponsors. The same people will cheer the Modi sarkar if it very publicly takes out a few training camps in Pakistan.
As a sidenote, I also remember - can't recall the names as I'm not a big fan of Hindi films - of many successful films which had a decided anti-Pakistan and Pakistan as the source of all terrorism themes that were pretty successful at the box office as well.