Re: Disturbing "gun in your face" Bollywood movie trends
Originally Posted by
ShivaFan
Commercials advertising Bollywood movies come on our television here where we live (California). Actually I am becoming disgusted with the trend in Bollywood film. Literally, I find myself saying out loud, "How is this India?" ... meaning culture.
Certainly there is violence depicted in film, but these movie adverts are not about films on Indian war heroes, they are ... how should I word it? It is making heroes of those who stick a gun in someone's face and kill them as if they are a bug, without second thought, then move on to drinking, flirting, laughing. They put a gun in a woman's hand and then say "shoot that man", then they kiss as if they are "cool" or something.
Most of the scenes are not in India, but Europe or such. And I see no Indian culture in them, no Hindu values or example. They are like a very bad James Bond movie but not even clever - everything is wrong about them.
Is Hinduism dying in India? Seriously. As incredible as it may sound to you in India, I am now seeing more films in America that show positive light on Indian culture, on yoga and Hinduism albeit very "beginners" level, but positive. Not a lot, I will not exaggerate ... but more it seems to me than in Indian film of late. I would not even call these films "Indian", it doesn't matter that the actors and actresses are speaking Hindi or the "heroes" call murderers and scummy fellow as "Desi". They are not even Indian, certainly not Hindu.
Some will blame the West for these horrible movies. Yet I am not so sure about that. Sometimes I ask myself, "will the West become the last refuge for Indian culture and Hinduism?"... what is happening? Why these horrible movies?
I am a Hindu. What is this I see?
Pranam,
Before rejecting the Aryan Invasion construct in my mind, I actually gave it a real serious thought. Because it easily explains a lot of things (and some I personally know- perfectly reasonable people - believe in it).
Talking of movies, they are a direct window into a people; and the regional (state level) movies from some states in India - and you know it is not even not clever, it's outright subhuman.
One defence, however, can be made here that the money involve in the production of these films has sources in black money, terror, extortion. So this leaves out our village Hindu from the entire loop, but the ugliness of Urbans and semi urbans is beyond disgusting.
Bengal has already led the way with its people steadily giving in to and converting formally (after all that is more sincere) to different religion.
Can we give Modi - the outsider - an outside chance? One may say, a single person cannot change everything; but this is far from truth - he can if he is an empowered individual.
But in any case I don't see Dharma making a revival in the present set up. People aren't just upto it, they've lost it.
West, on the other hand, is innately not complex enough to support Dharma in all its totality. But the richness can be developed from Dharma itself, and if and when that happens, the West will be superior in every sense to everyone, and India will lose Her very reason to survive.
However that is also far fetched, not gonna happen. False gurus will misrepresent the complexity of Vedic thought; some of very corrupted Indians will keep coming to the West claiming themselves as enlightened beings - and public will accept them simply on the face value of them being "native Hindu".
Personally, I am not concerned about the survival of India as a political state, not as much as the survival of Dharma. If someone somewhere is doing something for its safeguard, he or she is closer to my heart than my neighbour is.
Perhaps I need to observe "empathy month".
Things to remember:
1. Life = yajña
2. Depth of Āstika knowledge is directly proportional
to the richness of Sanskrit it is written in
3. Āstika = Bhārata ("east") / Ārya ("west")
4. Varṇa = tripartite division of Vedic polity
5. r = c. x²
where,
r = realisation
constant c = intelligence
variable x = bhakti
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