Before writing anything I must admit that I used to do the same things that I am mentioning below. So I’m just a hypocrite :P
There is a friend of mine whose attitude really pisses me off. He refuses to watch any film that is a ‘superhit’ & looks down upon people who watch the same. Anything that is enjoyed by a LOT of people, has to be crap. And, he feels very superior to these ‘dumb mass audience’ (these are his words, not mine).
I see the same attitude on social networking sites like Twitter where people love to show that they are not like the ‘dumb masses’ who watch Dabbang (I haven’t seen the film) or read 3 mistakes of my life (no, I don’t like that book!)
Why am I writing this? Am I one of those dumb masses (again, this label is not my invention) who watch masala, formula films? Yes & no. I mean sometimes, my mind is so chaotic that I just sit down & watch these formula films (yeah go ahead judge me!). But mostly, I don’t watch all those formula films. But do I need to feel superior to my neighbor (who is a big fan of masala films) because of that? Should I feel superior to my friend because I read Rabindranath Tagore & Albert Camus (okay as I’m typing this, I do feel a lil’ superior :P I do feel a lil’ snobbish as I’m taking these big names :P I’m trying to get over this) & my friend reads Chetan Bhagat? My neighbor HATES Coke Studio (both India & Pakistan). She likes Akon. Should I look down upon her & call her dumb?
I think the tendency to ‘look down’ upon something arises when you are competing. And Art in my opinion is not about competing (that is the reason I hate award shows), it is just expressing your feelings. The first thing about art is that it is subjective! But what is happening? We are trying to come up with objective standards and try to bully everyone to accept them! If it is cricket, you will judge in numbers, but you cannot do the same with art.
People look at art in the same way they look at the top 10 run scorers in the History of cricket. I do not look at art in an aesthetic sense. Let’s take an example (the example is not completely based on facts): When my dad gets some promotion, me and my brother are happy. My brother is a lil’ outgoing while I’m extremely shy. He will straight away praise my dad & tell him how much he respects him (he is expressing his feelings). I, on the other hand will prefer to say things in an indirect way (maybe I will write a short story). But the fact remains that we both love my father equally! And basically we are saying the SAME thing. Just because my brother expressed his feelings directly, he isn’t inferior to me!
Of course, I’m not applying the above example totally in the field of arts.
Yes, I do wonder..why doesn’t my neighbor watch Coke Studio? I do cringe when I watch those singers on singing shows & compare their voices to legends like M.S.Subbulakshmi (yes, I am deriving a little snobbish pleasure again :P) Doesn’t my neighbor get tired of the same old “Raat ko neend nahi aati, din mein chain nahi aata” type of songs? But who am I to decide what ‘art’ is? Maybe she likes formula films because her life is almost like those films or maybe she wants her life to be like them. Mostly (not always), the songs, the films that we love are the ones which give us an assurance that we are not alone..that we are not weird ("I could totally relate to that"). Artists are people who say things that we want to say..most of us don’t have the courage/ability to say it.
So just let the people enjoy what they want. Why the hell do you want to impose your ‘aesthetic’ standards?
I just want to say this to my friend: What the fuck? In school, you study that there is only one right opinion and that is of the guy whose definition is there in the textbook and do you want to do that throughout your life? Just accept some opinion because it is given by someone who is considered to be an authority or an expert (it is okay if the expert’s opinion is good and you agree with it but it is not OKAY if you hate a film because according to some hotshot critic, it wasn’t good)? Stop being an intellectual slave & an intellectual snob. You don’t need to bring down Sunidhi Chauhan just because M.S.Subbulakshmi is better. Just let people listen to whatever they want.
