While the refusal of a mammoth industry to change its business model is indeed not as grievous a charge as choking freedom of expression, it assumes even greater significance in the context of the recent ban.
With all this talk of Viswaroopam, where truly drama has preceded the film’s release, it would be easy to write a post railing out against the clamp on freedom of speech. It would be even easier to write of the venal ‘culture of outrage’ that is so apparent and characteristic of today’s time.
But alas, there has been much written on this in the last two weeks – and adding another post to that would just be contributing to the noise.
Where debate is absent and has more or less washed away after taking into account the events of the last few weeks is —Viswaroopam on DTH (direct-to-home). While the refusal of a mammoth industry to change its business model is indeed not as grievous a charge as choking freedom of expression, it assumes even greater significance in the context of the recent ban.
It is important to understand that the outrage against a DTH release can only be read as a blow against the paying consumer and any collective bargaining we had against the movie industry.
Strawmen galore!
While Kamal’s decision to release over DTH may still go through and indeed maybe even on the same day as theatre release (whenever that happens in Tamil Nadu), there are a few misconceptions that are currently masquerading as arguments against DTH release.
Number 1 – it will cause more piracy. Wrong. The strongest way to fight piracy is to compete with it. Kollywood needs to take a leaf out of the ridiculously successful bottled water industry. By creating a better product than what is essentially “free” – Aquafina and Bisleri were available to provide a level of convenience and support that normal water just doesn’t come with. While in India there is the added benefit of supposed safety, this does not hold true in western nations.
What the bottled water giants really did is create a market in which their paid product became the standard, and the free counterpart (tap water) inferior.
What movie producers need to understand that there is no free lunch. Nothing in life is “free” – even piracy comes with a form of investment, be it wasting time to find an appropriate torrent or working to figure out what codec the pirated movie plays on.
Essentially, with the refusal to adopt content delivery over DTH, Kollywood is telling movie-watchers that they couldn’t care less about your convenience. That it’s either storming the crowded movie theatres or waiting long periods of time for a DVD (and sometimes no DVD at all).
At this point, it is mandatory to interject that yes, in a free market such as ours, it is up to movie producers to decide how they want to combat piracy and how they want to release their products. And also that there are a great many people who do love the opening-weekend theatre rush.
What is not said that is crystal clear between the lines, however, is this indirectly leads to price-gouging and provides incentives for movie producers to not really create the best movie – instead banking on hype to recover most costs.
As a recent story in The Hindu put it, quoting a movie producer – ““Hindi films make crores because of the high number of screens multiplied by the high average ticket price in the first three days of demand. The demand is created by hype,” the producer says.”
True demand can only be ascertained through the process of price discovery – when there is enough information on the movie in the form of accessible reviews— how friends and family liked it and so on.
Jacking up the prices – in places like Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi – for the opening weekend (sometimes movie ticket prices range from Rs. 350- 550 on the first weekend) is not “demand-based pricing”. It is a simple exploitation of a monopoly that theatre owners and distributors possess combined with the multi-crore advertising and hype machine. (This is something newspapers are complicit in – read the “short-cuts or movie tidbits that often appear in supplements and the language they use.)
Releasing movies on DTH, sometimes even before theatre-release, aids the processes of price discovery – more people are able to see it and spread the word on whether the movie is worth seeing. It would be an interesting experiment to see whether if the majority of movies (Tamil, Kannada, Malyalam, English) when released on DTH on the same day or before theatre release would result in the average price of a movie ticket heading downwards in Bangalore and settling somewhere near the range of Rs. 120 – 150.
Barbra Streisand
Coming back to the ban – the last two weeks have also seen Viswaroopam hit with what is known as the ‘Streisand effect’. It is the name for the phenomenon by which attempting to hide or ban a piece of information (in this case a whole movie) results in publicizing the information much more widely.
The calls for a ban of Viswaroopam have only resulted in more people wanting to see it (perhaps Kamal’s intended effect?) – the movie has leaked online and is widely being pirated at this moment. The World Wide Web facilitates this in an astonishing manner – and further releases on DTH and perhaps even an Internet-download release one day will only diminish the ability of the Government to have any sort of power over banning any form of media. Where will outraged parties protest? The Tata Sky and Airtel DTH offices?
So we are left at a crossroads at this point – before the ban— watching Viswaroopam on DTH should have been the moral choice for all paying consumers. After the last two weeks, people are more determined than over to show the fringe radicals they are wrong and are determined to watch it in theatres.
The only clear moral choice at this point? Pirate it (before the Halal-edits take place) to prove the fringe fundamentalists wrong and watch it on DTH to break the theatre monopoly!
Keywords: Viswaroopam, DTH, movie, piracy, freedom of speech
Am really surprised at the comments in this page, a movie is a sheer entertainer, why do we always look at message or hurting sentiments etc. We go there for 2-3hours to take one's mind off your daily routine. Relax and enjoy the entertainment that unfolds, with no expectation, if your engrossed and enjoy then fine your time is well spent, but if you get bored and start worrying of work /studies etc.. then the movie is not worth recommending.
The problem is we go with a mindset and premonition that so and so movie means this this etc, well why not watch it with blank mind...
Viswaroopam ban will either make the movie a mega HIT or FLOP.
@Nisha, Its obvious from what you have written, that you have not seen the movie. I have seen it and the movie is made almost entirely from the perspective of Afghan extremists.
@Swaminathan, I watched the movie in Bangalore, its running without any problems and its not banned in Singapore either. In fact other than Tamil nadu, there is not a single problem anywhere else. It ran peacefully in Malaysia for 2 days before the govt decided to stop it.
@Dr Gopal, One can be non-religious and secular too. Message of the movie is this - It shows how unspeakable evil is done in the name of religion. It maybe done by a small group of people in Afghanistan (or elsewhere), but why should it not be shown, is it not the truth?
Why should the moderate majority protect the extremist minority? Irony is that the extremists will not object to this movie, eventhough this movie shows them in poor light, they are proud of their actions.
All the hoopla that freedom of speech has been hit , artists should not be oppressed and all is fine . But why kamal chose this kind of a story with total irrelevance to India? If he wants to depict terrorism , let him take the issue of kashmir or mumbai 2008. Why he wants to depict himself as a RAW officer saving America? This is a pure American intervention. I guess this is a step kamal has taken to reach Hollywood by adapting a story to their comfort . This story has only irked controversies , it doesnt touch our sentiments.
@Nisha Your post took my breath away. I may be wrong it looks like you are condoning OBL and Al-queda's action and are using this to justify the ban on this movie and have rules for what kind of movie are made in Tamil.
As Kamal Haasan says the beheading and killing is not something he has made up. remember Zarqawi in Iraq ? The videos of his killing innocent Iraqis and soldiers are on internet for all to see. Lets not use respect for religion as a crutch to support censorship. I am sure religions (including atheism) are strong to survive a movie or a critical review.
Thanks to the contributors (secular minded sisters/ brother of other
religion) with their views of opposing the theme of the film by
depicting a particular faith in wrong lime light just to appease world
police to acquire an Oscar award. Brilliant piece though.
Making such a movie is lame. It not only reinforces the concpt tht muslims are ruthless
terrorists, it also insults islam's core belief in prayers. Shame to the actor who has to make
money with such a theme. Tamil movies should be made like tamil movies not like anglo
indian movies. If we want to watch english movies , we wud make the choice to do so. For an
aethist to make such a movie, is extremely shallow. It shows very shallow understanding of
the war between afganistan & usa. Research thoroughly abt osama, afganistan history and
why such an organisation led by osama existed. For once make a movie tht shows their
perspective as well. U have made a mockery of urself, kamalhassan.
The Moral of story stroking on religion is like puting your hand into
the cage of a lion.U might have got away once,but not always.Kamal is
indeed one of most oustanding actors in the world,but he had under-
estimated the muslim community's unity.It should be noted,kamal had
made movies relating about muslims in "hey Ram" annd "unnai pol
oruvan".There was some opposition from certain quaters of the muslim
community,but never at this scale.For First time,24 Muslim
organization's united to make a stand against kamal,CM of Tamil-nadu
had cited,she has to ban the movie for concern's of law and order
problem.The movie had faced subsquent problems in karantaka,kerala and
andra pradesh.It was even banned in singapore,malaysia,srilanka,UAE
and qatar.The indian Muslim community had ultized their business
network in this countries to give devasting blow to Kamal.If he had
made cuts earlier,he would not be in this situation.All the best to u
kamal
Very compelling argument.
By the way, shouldn't it be Barbra Streisand ?
Or, am I missing something ?
It had been difficult for me to accept Kamal's repeated reference of secularism. For me the right way of secularism is not by being an atheist; but say for example being a very orthodox Hindu, still accepting extremely orthodox Muslim or Catholic or person belonging to another faith.
Same way, I wonder what message this film Viswaroopam is carrying to masses? Nothing - a shear thriller showing in poor light a group of people and generalizing that to followers of a large faith. Hero in the film is a Muslim is hardly an excuse to care less how some scenes in the movie (in my opinion the whole movie) having the possibility of strengthening the already existing wrong image of fellow Muslims being seen as terrorists. When Oklahoma bombing took place in nineties, the media, Govt, people started blaming Muslim community (mind you, this is before Sept 11). When it was finally found that it was a white American who did that dastardly act, not many apologized to the Muslim community.
Gopal
Excellent Article. Its not possible at all to use police force to stop piracy. You have rightly suggested that competing with the piracy market is the way to go.
It is strange to see the militant fundamentalists behaving like sheep once a few audio effects are made silent. First of all this applies to only Tamilnadu. The Hindi and other local language editions go unabated. Even Tamil versions in Banglaore etc go without any editing.
One should understand that though Tamilnadu market is high, the 'Tamil market' includes diaspora Tamils who pay ten to fifteen times the ticket rate in Tamilnadu. So, even with a Tamilnadu ban Kamal will not be that much let down as he or other people may picture it to be. Now with all these controversies, he would really rake in easily double the investment.
Most Kamal fans, including myself, made it a point that we will not see any pirated CDs, not use U-tube etc. Now that everything is OK, after watching the theatre 'edited' version, surely we would see what went missing in the pirated or utube versions.
All the noises of fundamentalists have gone waste .
I like this approach. However I think the edited version will be available only in
Tamil Nadu theatres. The unedited version will be available in the pirated copies
and DVD's unless Kamal sells the unedited version to the DTH owners soon. The
movie will be seen by more people now. Either way the people who lost here are the
fringe Muslim outfits and the Tamil Nadu chief Minister (if her motive was to bring
down Kamal Hassan).
Excellent, short to the point. Long time since I have read anything with
substance in it. A very good fresh look at the DTH and Viswaroopam Ban
issue.
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