25-12-2024 (Important News Clippings)
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Date: 25-12-24
High & low
In films & other artforms, avant garde influences commercial creative outputs, makes them better
TOI Editorials
Those who routinely, mournfully ask where the new Satyajit Ray is, or Bimal Roy or Kumar Shahani or Mrinal Sen, will now also ask where the new Shyam Benegal is. IPTA and eighties parallel cinema are two influences particularly storied among Indian film aficionados. It may also be true that, for example, Do Bigha Zameen, Bhuvan Shome, Manthan and Khayal Gatha, are unfamiliar to a majority of audiences today. Even in their own times, many of these texts may have lived as ‘high art’, which the masses stayed away from. But judging their value by the box office alone is a fool’s game.
Creativity isn’t mathematical. Sensitivity to the human condition is a complex civilisational inheritance. Think about a selfie and van Gogh’s self-portraits. To ask which is better is no crime. But what’s really interesting about the comparison is stopping to think about how the two work, to debate their form and meanings. It is contemplation and conversation that carry culture forward. Payal Kapadia, whose All We Imagine as Light is a Cannes Grand Prix winner, has spoken about how Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarnarekha shook her up, its editing, its script, its scene constructions. This is how influence jumps across time. Neither is the diversity that has come to define OTT content unconnected from the storytelling that was once bracketed as art cinema.
Actually, this is true across the arts. Those who aren’t exactly attempting the Great Indian Novel still benefit from those who have. There are directors who persuaded Birju Maharaj to choreograph for their movies, including Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Kamal Haasan. But the influence of kathak on the picturisation of song and dance in Indian cinema is vastly greater. It’s the same with classical music. Its pop impact is immeasurable. It’s impossible to think of a desi song cabinet that owes nothing to Hindustani or Carnatic or Qawwali styles. Of course, none of this stops at national borders. We are hearing Beethoven’s Für Elise all the time, even if we don’t know we are hearing it.
One thing is that the greats may not be well judged in their own times. Take Keats – ironically of the “A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness” fame. It’s said very bad reviews hastened him to an early death. How tastes evolve is impossible to predict. But that the good lifts up the average is certain.
Hide and seek
Transparency is key in maintaining the credibility of the election process
Editorial
Allegations of electronic tampering of voting machines are misplaced and misguided but concerns regarding the conduct of elections — police high-handedness, partisanship of local administration, and voter suppression through various means — are valid. They require a thorough and impartial investigation. Of particular concern is the dramatic rise in voter turnout in the final figures, compared to what was announced at the end of polling time, noticed in recent elections. The ECI may well be right in saying that voters who are in queue at the closing hour get recorded only in the final figures. But the easiest and perhaps the most credible way to establish this claim is to allow wide inspection of the relevant video footage. The ECI has explained that the candidates have access to all documents, papers and records and nothing has been amended in the rules in this regard. It remains unclear how its officials will deal with requests from candidates for records including video footage while the public will face a default denial in most cases. The privacy and security arguments are weak if candidates can access records anyway. In effect, the change in rules does not solve any problem that the ECI says it does, other than time and effort. And it has raised more questions about the ECI’s intentions.
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