A geek revolution is quietly unfolding in India

There is a quiet revolution afoot in India. Young internet savvy Indians are looking at new avenues in their insatiable search for better, cheaper, and varied audio-visual entertainment. Their activities ought to make older Indians sit up and recognise the larger picture and the several possible, positive outcomes.

Scouring the Internet, youngsters in their teens and early twenties are increasingly stumbling on entertainment available in cyberspace that is of admirable quality and more satisfying than what the costly box office can provide them at the local movie theatres or even on the cheaper cable TV.

The nerdy population has discovered “anime” and the “manga-inspired” films — serialized, animated tales from Japan, available free or at negligible cost on the Internet. Older sections of the Indian population would recall the comic book culture (a la DC and Marvel comics) sourced in the Sixties and Seventies from USA along with the cartoon films of Disney and Hanna Barbera.  In contrast to those US products, “anime” and “manga” are eastern influences. These are parts of a sophisticated, animated, entertainment sub-culture sourced from Japan. Japan nurtured “anime” and “manga” over several decades, providing jobs for creative minds and exporting the products that have attracted net-savvy youngsters worldwide.

“Anime” refers to hand-drawn or computer generated Japanese animation that involved exaggerated eyes and colourful hairstyles relating to fictional or historical characters and events, a cultural response of the Japanese to the US comics the nation was forcibly exposed to, post World War II. “Anime,” thus, is associated with Japanese animated films and serial TV shows.  “Manga,” in contrast, essentially uses black and white drawings, and colour only for its introductions, and is often published as a comic book.  

In the 1970s, “anime” and “manga” revolved around robots, both real world ones and super-robots, the latter not governed by real-life physics.  The 1980s saw a boom in “anime” and “manga” products, including space-opera tales and animated martial art movies, comic books, and computer games. “Anime” evolved not just to target the young but also older populations with darker and heavier subjects, such as death and spirituality. In recent decades, “anime” and “manga” have emerged as multimillion dollar industries, influencing Hollywood. 

Cineastes know that the Wachowski brothers, who made the Matrix movie trilogy in Hollywood between 1999 and 2003, were influenced by the 1995 “anime” film Ghost in the Shell. They screened the Japanese film to Hollywood producer Joel Silver to impress him of its high quality visuals, which they felt could be recreated in Hollywood with real actors. 

The Hollywood director Christopher Nolan acknowledged that his financially successful, Oscar-winning film Inception (2010) was inspired by the Japanese “anime” film Paprika (2006).  Even James Cameron’s Oscar-winning Avatar (2009) has obvious similarities with the “anime” wizard Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke (1997). 

While older moviegoers were in awe of Matrix, Inception, and Avatar, younger and smarter geeks were lapping up the latest oriental works available on the Internet from the original Japanese “anime” creators, whose works catalysed the Hollywood hits. The youngsters were a step ahead of older folks.

On the Internet, young Indian nerds also realized, thanks to the social media, that the recent Indian film Drishyam, made in both Hindi and in Malayalam, had borrowed ideas from the Japanese novel/film Suspect X (2008) and a South Korean film Perfect Number (2012). A few mouse clicks and some patience rewarded the youngsters, who were able to view on the web the original films from Japan and Korea without having to spend money and effort to view the Indian versions in a regular movie hall.

Internet has introduced youngsters to quality world cinema more effectively than the Indian film societies and film festivals. Social media chatter educates youngsters on filmmakers or a film from a distant land. Youngsters, who had hitherto enjoyed the works of the three big Khans, Amitabh Bachchan, Mammootty, or Rajinikanth, suddenly get exposed to actors from Argentina to Japan and realise the wider and more interesting options available worldwide. 

The mushrooming of international film festivals in small towns (from Mysore to Leh) and most major cities of India attract youngsters who crave for quality cinema. Decades ago, a film festival broadly meant an opportunity to view uncensored films or those unlikely to be screened in India. Internet has changed the roadmap of the film-festival-goer. Social networks and websites provide sufficient information for a viewer to approach a film festival well-informed, unlike the past when it was a blind date. 

These new opportunities to view quality cinema on their computers or on large screens at film festivals provide much more than good tales, interestingly told. Young Indians are exposed to different cultures and hear different languages and begin to differentiate between Spanish and Portuguese, or German and French. Their general knowledge widens as they are exposed to different types of music, literature, and politics. When they enjoy the Russian filmmaker Zvyagintsev’s film The Banishment (2007) and spot the detail that its story is based on the American William Saroyan’s novel, the inquisitive segment of the viewers naturally get interested in the writings of the Pulitzer-winning author. The cross pollination of ideas and works of art lead to a fine harvest of knowledgeable youngsters. 

The ripple effect of the exposure to world cinema could benefit the emerging young India while interacting with global clients in their jobs, whether it is in information technology, hospitality, tourism, health, science, textiles, food and beverages, media or a host of other areas. Even limited international exposure can be a boon for expanding business in less important countries.

The growing interest in world cinema among young Indians could raise the awareness that while India continues to produce the largest amount of feature films in the world, their quality as an art form is dismal within the global context. While film critics in India are quick to describe and assess new Indian films frequently with glowing epithets, such as “brilliant” and “outstanding,” the Internet-savvy youth will notice the mismatch with ground reality when none of those films have been of a quality to gain entry into the top 15-20 competition slots at any of the premier Cannes, Venice and Berlin International Film Festivals for the past 15 odd years. When an Indian film does pick up an award at these events, it is when they are competing within the lower tiers. The young net-savvy Indians note the contrarian fact that while low-budget films from countries such as Chile, Turkey, Iran and Thailand make the cut of entering the top tiers at these prestigious festivals, the so-called “brilliant” films from India are shown the door. These facts make Indian youth to be increasingly drawn towards films from distant lands, even if they have to be enjoyed with English subtitles.

This quiet revolution could send various useful messages to the Indian film industry. Could India develop its fledgling animated film segment to match the “anime” films of Japan? Could Indian cinema be truly unique and win recognition without repackaging films made elsewhere? Can more and more Indian youngsters be motivated to make better films and scripts, and raise the level of film criticism? 

Yes. All these are possible.

The author is a film critic