New YouTube Video! With a dog head in it for a half second. Oh well. Anyway, it’s the video version of this post here.
Video:
dontcallitbollywood
Call it Indian film and treat it seriously!
New YouTube Video! With a dog head in it for a half second. Oh well. Anyway, it’s the video version of this post here.
Video:
dontcallitbollywood 
I genuinely think that it is the ‘hunger for phantasie’ 🙂 … like you wrote in your review: a fairy tale (maybe a poisoned one but I bet there are a lot of people who doesn’t care 😉 )
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Ironically, it’s when people’s real lives are less than ideal that they want to escape to fantasy fairy tales the most!! Like during the Kalakeya battle, the coronation scene, and shivudu walking as mahendra through the crowd the first time in Bahubali, the feeling was “why can’t we have a real life leader like that?!”
I think the reason why padmavati got such a negative reaction in India was because people are genuinely scared we might be on the verge of our real lives getting to the point where jauhar is a legitimate option. I think this fear and anxiety isn’t being experienced by audiences that aren’t living in India at the moment in the same way that the anti-trump anxiety or the European immigrant crisis anxiety isn’t making it to other parts of the world.
I guess the fear and anxiety isn’t that this film would become a huge success and suddenly jauhar would become cool; the fear is that this film will become successful and 1000 other films and TV series will follow it and THEN jauhar would become a legitimate “option”!!
And that fear isn’t unfounded. It all began with Ekta Kapoor using the HAHK formula in Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (the lead actress from that soap is now the Union Minister for Textiles DESPITE her having lost the elections!) which spawned a gazillion other soaps which propagated the same conservatism which poisoned the mind of out masses to the point where no-one laughed at the Rajput women threatening to do jauhar if this film released!! The soap come out in year 2000 I guess and in less than 18 years, we’re at “educated, rich, upper class, Upper caste women want to commit jauhar over a film”!!
We’re in the middle of a cultural emergency here in India. It’s getting political too and dangerous and no-one wants to believe us. I guess no-one believed the Pakistani liberals of the 80s either. We’re 10 years away from becoming pakistan. That’s not comforting at all.
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A frightening thought…but then…isn’t India one of the countries with extremes (like killing girls before birth, sending mutilated little ones on the street to beg for money, getting 14-year-olds pregnant etc.)? Other countries make small boys be ‘soldiers’…it is a crime – in my eyes – to make kids walk into the fire…well…girls…Bhansali doesn’t tell about the boys.
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Like I’ve said before, India didn’t exist before 1947. We’re not a country of extremes, we’re many countries masquerading as one. That’s why we make no sense. We’re like Europe. Imagine Europe being declared one country. Yikes!!
I’m still waiting for someone to write about Bhansali’s mommy issues
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PS, I’m so disappointed that there was so little dog in that video 😔
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I considered dragging her head up so she would show in the video more, but she would have hated that.
On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 5:28 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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but we’d see more of her in the next videos right????
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Probably? She’s real clingy, so it would be hard to talk for 10 minutes straight without her wandering through the frame.
On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 8:45 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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More dog! I think you’ve finally found your video hook. Margaret and dog analyze Indian film. And when you get your permanent dog, she can sit on your lap or do other dog-like things in the background.
(I’d watch that!)
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Or, I use that creepy video editing stuff and just have the dog in the frame with my voice as though she is talking.
On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 9:28 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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You’re just teasing us with that small glimpse of the dog’s head. Is he not allowed on the couch on your lap?
Like the different location of this video — the red couch background is good, and the lighting is better.
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She’s allowed on the couch, she is just a very tiny dog. She was laying totally flat in petting ecstasy right next to me for the majority of the video. I could have stopped petting her and dragged her up on my lap, but that just seemed cruel when she was having such a nice time.
That’s why it was on the couch, it was right in the middle of cuddle time and if I filmed on the couch I could keep petting.
On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 1:25 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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