FILMFARE Awards: a Breeding Ground of Mediocrity

Few days back a Professor* of a business school in India, told me that they are on their way to become a Harvard Business School. I asked how? The answer was comical. We are building a similar campus. Well is it the campus that makes Harvard Business School what it is now. Or the business schools that have got similar success in research and MBA programs emulated its campus? The answer is NO. It’s the quality of teachers and students that make the difference. Teachers like Porter, Christensen, Ghemawat, and Nohria, creating Ranjay Gulati, Rajat Gupta etc.

This year the filmfare emulated the Oscars. Well in terms of dress code and stage design. It ends pretty much there! In the Oscars we don’t see Tobey McGuire, Christen Bell, Brandon Routh getting nominated in the best actors categiry (be it leading or supporting) for their portrayal of Spiderman, Batman and Superman, respectively. Let alone win it. We also don’t see Viggo Mortenssen getting nominated for his portrayal of Aragon in Lord of the Rings. Not that the actors are short of merit, but the roles and its attributes did not qualify for the best actors in leading and supporting categories. So despite The “Return of the King”(the third installment of the Trilogy of J.R.R.Tolkien’s Screen play adaptation of “ Lord of the Rings”) banging twelve Oscars, the actors who got the awards for acting were Sean Penn and Tim Robbins in Clint Eastwood’s “The Mystic River”.

This year Hrittik Roshan gets the leading actors award in Filmfare. Now he could be a talented actor, but does his role in Dhoom 2 entail him with the the India version of Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences? In my view the answer is NO. Such recognition in fact even the nomination of Sharhruk Khan's portrayal of a beaten football player is nothing than being a breeding ground of mediocrity. Let’s forget about being a mediocre actor anyone looking at the penalty shot can tell that those are not a footballer’s legs. In the Indian film industry the actor’s persona becomes the prime portrayal in any character they intend to play. The character itself becomes a faint shadow of the actors’ persona. And recognition of such average quality work makes the Filmfare, a breeding ground of mediocrity. We don’t see any similarity of Maximus and Professor Nash, played by Russel Crowe, we also don’t see any similarity Forrest Gump and Michael Sullivan (Road to Perdition), both played by Tom Hanks. But Emperor Ashoka and the Footballer looked the same.

One cannot become Harvard by emulating the campus; similarly, one cannot become the Oscars with black and white theme. There is more to the game than what meets the eye.

* PROFESSOR: The Word professor in prestigious academic institution is synonymous with an indisputable knowledge in a field. It is used to refer to someone who has contributed to the development of a field if not creating it. The word here often means a job of teaching in a college and taking tuitions explaining what is written in textbooks.