Wednesday, June 29, 2022 — 5
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Watch more Telugu movies (and
listen to ThyGap!)
SMARANI KOMANDURI
MiC Columnist
Maybe I’m biased, but Telugu
films never get the recognition
they deserve. Only recently have
Telugu films become more readily
available in their original language
via streaming platforms and screened
in theaters worldwide, increasing
accessibility. Out of the top 87 highest
grossing Indian films to date, the
Telugu films that are ranked are
“Rangasthalam” (2018) at number
74, “Sarileru Neekevvaru” (2020)
at number 60, “Sye Raa Narasimha
Reddy” (2019) at number 55, “Ala
Vaikunthapurramuloo”
(2020)
at
number 49, “Pushpa: The Rise – Part
1” (2021) at number 23, “Baahubali:
The Beginning” (2015) at number 10,
“RRR” (2022) at number four and
“Baahubali 2: The Conclusion” (2017)
sits at number two.
Although Telugu films are slowly
starting to make their marks on the
charts, the Hindi film industry has
always dominated popular notions
of Indian cinema. Hindi actors and
directors are the ones that have wax
figures made of them at Madame
Tussauds. They’re the ones that get to
walk the red carpets, represent film
festival panels and strike Hollywood
deals.
Time after time we’ve witnessed
the
Hindi
film
industry
take
screenplays from the Telugu industry
and other South Indian industries, and
while the original Telugu screenplays
have higher ratings, they’re still not
as popular as their Hindi remakes.
For example, many Hindi-film fans
will know the iconic film “Rowdy
Rathore” (2012) and its soundtrack,
but many of those same fans would be
shocked to find out that it is a remake
of the Telugu movie “Vikramarkudu”
(2006). The film even uses some of the
same songs, just translated into Hindi!
While “Vikramarkdu” has a 3.4 out
of 5.0 rating on Letterboxd, “Rowdy
Rathore” has a 2.3 rating. If you take
a peek at that same list of the top 87
highest-grossing Indian movies, you’ll
see “Rowdy Rathore” at 87, while the
original “Vikramarkudu” is nowhere
to be found.
Not only are some of the highest-
grossing Indian films just Hindi
remakes of Telugu screenplays, some
of these films go as far as to make fun
of South Indian culture altogether.
Films like “Ra.One” (2011) and
“Chennai Express” (2013) are prime
examples of films that stereotype
South Indian culture, yet they’re some
of the highest-grossing Indian films
to date, ranking at number 80 and 19
respectively.
So how can I convince you to pay
more attention to the Telugu film
industry? It’s not a task I can do alone,
so I decided to sit down with the hosts
of ThyGap Telugu Podcast. The hosts,
using the pseudonyms BeingBrut and
BogusNoog, review popular Telugu
films, using sarcastic and witty humor
to make anyone that can understand
Telugu laugh until they have tears
streaming down their faces. And
luckily for you, if you don’t understand
Telugu or have Telugu friends willing
to translate, they also have an English
podcast under the same name,
ThyGap, which is just as entertaining.
Brut, Bogus and I all feel that the
Telugu film industry has the potential
of showcasing stories on the same
caliber as the Western and Hindi film
industries.
“Today, the fourth wall of movie-
making has been broken,” Brut
explained. “You are no (longer) bound
by your regional concepts, you’re
no (longer) bound by the regional
talent. We have the potential of being
as good storytellers as the Western
(and/or Hindi) movie industry, but
we somehow don’t seem to be going
in that direction. And the reason that
was told before was that the audiences
don’t want it.”
But did audiences truly not want
it? Before streaming services became
mainstream, that may have been the
case. “There’s a lot more exposure of
the Hindi-speaking audience to the
Tamil content and Kannada content
and Telugu content,” Brut said. Before
streaming platforms, it was difficult
to find films with subtitles, so unless
you understood Telugu, you wouldn’t
be able to watch a Telugu movie. But
now that subtitles and closed captions
are the default on streaming platforms
and in theaters, that’s no longer a
concern. “We feel like the audiences
are ready,” Brut said.
We’ve seen Telugu screenwriters
reuse Hindi scripts in the past.
However, Brut, Bogus and I don’t
think that will continue to be the case.
We feel that Telugu storytellers are
pioneering original content, especially
with recent films like “RRR,” sparking
conversation about whether this could
be a potential Oscar submission from
India for “Best Foreign Language
Film.”
“(The Telugu film industry) just
started off, but the road map looks
really exciting, is what we can say,”
Brut said. “Storytelling is obviously
the core of any content making, so
a better question to ask is: are there
good storytellers now?”
Storytelling is an art and a skill in
and of itself. We are all storytellers,
or at least consume stories via one
medium or another. Storytelling
allows the Telugu film industry
to share cultural experiences, and
through those experiences we’re able
to learn from and teach each other
more about ourselves and the world.
Read more at michigandaily.com
Beyond the promises
of growth
MEERA KUMAR
MiC Columnist
At the farm, I’ve seen plants
grow. A few days ago, I smoothed
my fingers over thousands of black
scallion seeds with a funky smell
at the bottom of a glass container;
the seeds rolled around in small yet
persistent waves of water harvested
from a pump on the farm. They stuck
to my hands, even as I shook off
water droplets. Hiding in my sleeve,
under my nails, in between fingers,
the yet-to-germinate black particles
wouldn’t
leave.
Suddenly,
their
weight was noticeable.
My coworkers and boss were
fascinated by the scallion seeds.
“How do they know what to do?”
they marveled.
“I wish I knew what I was
supposed to do next,” another
one remarked over their shoulder
while we packed the seeds into
small cartons of soil, designed to be
transplanted once the scallions grow.
To be fair, to be stationary and
to have a functioning procedure
for food and water consumption
— which is your main concern for
survival — decided before your
ancestors’
ancestors
were
born
doesn’t lead to analysis paralysis. To
be a plant is to be that and nothing
more (or less); they are fragile and
ephemeral and feathery, and, yes,
they feed and shelter much of the
natural and built world. The entire
life of the next generation is already
written in their seeds before they
flutter to the ground, never realizing
the exhilarating taste of autonomy,
nor the bitter, overwhelming flavor
of possibility that makes you forget
everything else you came for.
In “Everything Everywhere All
at Once,” a movie I have seen no less
than three times in theaters, the
main antagonist is Joy, a Queer Asian
American girl with mommy issues.
She is influenced by a giant everything
bagel black hole of her own creation
that inexplicably sucks in those in
a tender, desperate state of mind.
Joy, who is forced by her mother to
always see all of her potential futures
in an infinity of alternate timelines,
collapses and puts it “all onto a bagel”
(also with sesame and poppy seeds)
that implodes under its own weight.
This creates a dark void that sucks the
goodness out of the worlds of those
who come close to the bagel, those
who cannot bear the unbearable
weight of vision, of possibility, of life
during late-stage capitalism. The
movie shows that to exist in multiple
timelines of what “could have been,”
to be solely obsessed with countless
possibilities, as Mitski and David
Byrne sing in “This is a Life” during
the end credits, “View of other worlds
/ From our window sills / With the
weight of eternity / At the speed of
light” is to fracture the self.
But how can a fragmented self glue
itself together? How can we scrape off
the seeds we’ve longed for, the seeds
that stick to us, in a world of extreme
connectivity, an age of “opportunity,”
with the highest worldwide average
wealth recorded in history (adjusted
for inflation) and more pretty people
than we can process? If anyone can
do “anything,” why haven’t we done
what we’ve wanted to do? And what
am I supposed to do?
Read more at michigandaily.com
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