Popular Cinema; Marxist lens.
[small essay, planning on writing more extensively]
Under the Frankfurt School of thought, the most prominent theory to have emerged is the concept of The Culture Industry; Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in 1947 coined the term to refer to the mass production and distribution of what defines culture namely movies, books, music.
Post mass industrialization and eyeing the inevitable rise of capitalist consumerism, the way film making was critically analyzed through this theory is noteworthy today more than ever.
The state of popular cinema today clearly embodies what Adorno and Horkheimer tried to position in opposition to ‘authentic art’. The major criticism in this respect was how movies were beginning to design itself in an easy-to-consume unoriginal fashion- further postulating that the entirety of the industry is simply engaging in pacifying the masses.
In an Indian context this rings particularly true if placed parallelly with some statistics: in 2019, the Indian film industry is said to be valued at 180 billion, every year 1000–2000 movies are made in India making it the largest producer of movies in the world closely followed by Hollywood, in 2019 Bollywood made over 3000 crores.
The two highest grossing Bollywood movies of the previous year were War and Kabir Singh, making 474 crores and 379 crores respectively.
The visual appeal of War completely centers itself upon the aesthetics of muscular men who engage in grandiose action, over a minimal story line that treads linearly. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the film is focused on what you see, as opposed to what you can deduce. The logic of this must be that cinema as a mode has become comfortable in regaling visual consumption, and not conceptualizing.Another movie that managed to make economic progress last year was Housefull 4, with a large array of popular actors. Critics constantly expressed their confusion upon why it was necessary to create a franchise for a movie that never required a continued story line, at any point- the answer to that is simple; the accumulation of capital.
Currently in India, there are 13,000 film screens. The insistence of the culture industry that it needs to produce its mass media on a large scale is so that it remains standardized, allowing the same plots to be interchanged and revamped over and over. Through this approach to cinema it is visible that what pushes a movie is not content but what the appearance of content; familiar faces, attractive faces.
Popular culture is generally identified as something that stands in opposition to the quality of the content, contributes to its commodification and mass production. Therefore, the movement of the auteurs remains sidelined.
An auteur driven industry would typically acknowledge the agency of the author, in this case, of the director. In fact, the auteur theory places the director at a more significant position than the scriptwriter because it is the former who is in charge of and conceptualizes the visual and audio aspects of the film. Thus, the appearance of the film is a distinct indicator of the person who makes it and not the person who is in it.
The standardized re-production of modern cinema is thus a contrast to the auteur theory. How can one identify a distinct technique attributed to the maker, when it is impossible to distinguish between one and another movie?
On a more localized scale it is probably more possible to identify movies that signify an idea and are driven by this it, but it is still minimal. Despite being critically acclaimed for “humanistic” stories the Malayalam film industry’s most popular films of 2019 were largely dominated by actors that maintain a cult status. The movies that collected the most money in the past year were Lucifer and Maduraraja, both starring actors that have occupied the screens for years. There was no valuable merit attached to these movies post their release reinforcing the necessity to simply adhere to an invaluable standard.
Perhaps it is more uplifting to look at the other movies that did well during the year and see comparatively more worthwhile and admirable stories that have attempted to create a counter space of non-heroes.
The star-driven nature of modern cinema goes hand in hand with its nature of production that allows for content to remain indistinguishable. Narratives are formulaic, conventional and androcentric. While it can be argued that qualities are largely a social phenomenon simply reflecting on the media, that would betray a juvenile understanding of the interconnection between the social, economic and political.
The supply-driven nature of such an industry is impossible to critique without realizing that the need to appeal to a majority is a fallacy of the society’s inherent prejudices- these inferiorities further create inferior art that is never truly original. An important testament to the star driven nature of popular cinema is the very prevalent hierarchy of nepotism. We largely trace this back to Bollywood but the relevance of the star kids run deep in the South Indian industries just the same. The common names that are held accountable in this regard move through the Kapoor and Khan family to the NTR, ANR, Chiranjeevi family. But even among the Tamil and Malayalam cinema world it isn’t alien to find familiar names and faces thrust into the system to sustain familiarity.
An auteur driven industry would neutralize the requirement of ‘a star kid’- the author is authority. Popular cinema has transferred this agency to the actors and their status quo. There is an obvious power play that renders everyone but the actors and the capitalists powerless in this space.
It is no coincidence that many of the names in the aforementioned families have been politicians. The influence of this power dynamics further homogenize the cinema industry from outsourcing, from critical and revolutionary change that prioritizes high-art.
The numerous remakes of A Star is Born and Disney animation movies to live action ones are examples of this phenomenon.
