A suspension notice for creative cinema

To slip into corporate lingo, as the two media build on their core competencies, the complexion of cinema seems set to change for ever. Just as Hollywood needed a Spielberg to pull the couch potatoes back into theatres, the Hindi film industry can have little use for another Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt, Hrishikesh Mukherjee (the Dada Saheb Phalke Award is truly belated) or any other cinematic craftsman who seeks to communicate solely with words spoken and emotions unarticulated. It is a gross generalisation but one that serves to transmit home the essential points of divergence.

Equally, picture the requirements of the two media. Cinema demands potential superstars with extraordinary physical attributes. TV calls for trained actors — most of them, interestingly enough, now come from the National School of Drama. Cinema cannot do without beat-driven song-and-dance sequences with big-getting-bigger budgets. TV can make do with musical recitations in the familiar baritone of Jagjit Singh playing on the soundtrack and humdrum activity to keep step. Cinema continues to peddle dreams woven in the colours of fantasy. TV serials deal largely with identifiable situations in the lives of recognisable characters. Cinema remains largely the terrain of the make-believe. TV survives on a captive audience. Cinema has always had to motivate people to move out of their homes.

Cinema can make ample use of TV and vice-versa, though. Until TV comes of age, it has to rely on cinema to supply much of the entertainment. And cinema will always need TV for publicising its wares.

The dichotomy can be viewed in the gender perspective too. TV draws most of its captive audience from the pool of housewives while cinema caters largly to the pool of emerging youth. It is then imperative for TV to offer women-oriented soaps even as cinema continues to create spectacle out of well-worn themes. Yet, since TV has a wider spectrum of viewership, it can venture creatively in many more directions than cinema. In that sense, cinema as a creative art form has been served a suspension notice. For lovers of cinema who tune in to TV only to keep a daily count of the follies of humankind, this could mean an irreparable loss.