Yes, the debate around nepotism is legitimate, but it’s also time for us to take accountability as audiences. The king for commercial cinema, after all, is the audience. Nobody can break the one that audiences make.
Otherwise, a rank stranger – who during his days of struggle had said one day this city will be mine – wouldn’t have become the industry himself. Shah Rukh Khan wasn’t made by a godfather, but by the audience.
There’s only one kingmaker in the business of commercial cinema, though opportunity providers might be many. While star children have it easy in terms of access or chances, there are more than enough examples of star children being rejected by the box office. It’s the audience that rejected an Abhishek Bacchan and made a Madhuri Dixit or an Ayushman Khurana.
The only reason why horrible movies with some star kids churn so much money at the box office is that we, the audience is paying to see the glamour associated with stardom. It’s easy to put ourselves on a moral high ground but the reality is – the frenzy around Taimur shows that we have an active interest in the lives of stars and their children, because there’s easy identification right there.
It’s easy to pin blame on every next person and institution and absolve the self. If the audience appreciated intelligent cinema, without falling for the fake glamour created around below average films, the story probably would have been different today.
One of Ritwik Ghatak’s iconic characters said in a film, “bhabo, bhaba practise koro (think, practise thinking).”
If you sneer at intelligence, you’ll get a dumb cinema. Demand drives supply. And at times a lot of forced demand is created and it’s done to get the audience because there exists one.
If rationality is willingly sacrificed at the altar of glamour, then there’s no point blaming anyone for what’s offered.
Hindi film audiences have made a Rishi Kapoor while at the same time making Amol Palekar’s Choti Si Baat a hit. There’s an audience for both kinds of work. And it doesn’t mean that smaller films can’t make business, they do. Good work sells but even bad art sells. Probably there are other things that audiences identify with or discover in content-wise bad cinema.
Hence, audiences need to make themselves accountable, instead of blaming every second person if an outsider fails to make a mark in a way the audience define success.
We get the kind of things we deserve, be it cinema or the government we choose. We vote one to power and we pay to make the other stars.
The writer is a Delhi based business journalist.
