High Camp and Low Lives

I confess to being a fan of Bollywood schlockbusters: those awful, unholy strips of celluloid cobbled together by a sub-moronic team of 'technicians', 'artists' and possibly, an underworld financier or two. Oh come on, you know what I speak of, you sly savants of drek! You're all well-acquainted with these paragons of kitsch, these manufactories of mulch, the non plus ultra of neon...OK, I’ll put away the thesaurus now. What I meant to say was, through all of that hyperbole, that by gosh, camp is the shizzle. With the zeal of Perez Hilton and the agenda of Kim Newman, I’m gonna force y’all Bollybusters outta the closet and into the parliament of Cool to vote ‘aye’.

Just the other day I was compiling a list, on Facebook, of the top five films that I knew by heart. One of them happens to be the revered Mithun classic, Gunda. (To the pitiable ignorami, I recommend a look at TLV Prasad and Kanti Shah’s combined filmographies, a subsequent Sunday evening in and the metabolism of a bunny on crack). A friend commented on this choice, sputtering with disbelief, “But...but...I thought you had taste!” Taste? Excusez moi? Hold on there, buddy boy. Hold on, just a *generic profane interjection* minute! Where’s your sense of irony? I know just as well as anyone else that in a debate between, say, Pather Panchali and Gunda, the former would adjust its monocle, let forth a poignant aria about the simple tragicomedies of life and win the hearts of the audience, even as the latter grunted around uncertainly. BUT let’s have a proper tussle folks, an all-out, down-and-dirty bar brawl between the two: Gunda would not only own Pather Panchali five times over but fuhtheluvvaShiva, the trash talk would be insane: the kerchief-necked frat-ilicious jeers ridiculing Pather Panchali’s monogrammed blazer and loafers would be A-DOUBLE U- E some. Yeah baby!!!! Ringside seats to that one!

It is this sense of sardonic, silly and sweaty low-brow pleasure which causes a cult phenomenon in the first place. A brief overview might put things into perspective.

Almost anything that has spawned legendary appeal is either exceptionally good or excruciatingly bad. While the brilliant is often overlooked, in time it always finds its place in the pantheon of genius. The truly great will always be recognised and lauded, if not in its own time then in the time after; it represents all that is complex and confusing in our lives and worlds and as such, will be revisited by every generation and admired anew, its delights subtle and variegated, its assaults gentle and permeating. Next up is the usual fare that’s churned out all the time. In kowtowing to the gatekeepers of high culture, most well-intentioned rubbish is rejected and soon forgotten. There will be precious few lining up to remark upon these trite attempts to ‘entertain’ or laughably, ‘enlighten’. The majority of art falls into this category.

And then of course there is the really bad stuff that is rightly debunked by those in the know, but with its unabashed earnestness, wins the rest of us right over. Why d’you think Ed Wood is so the man, even today? Plan 9 from Outer Space retains the title of ‘Worst Film Ever’, with no dearth of audience at any screening. The film they made on his life, starring Johnny Depp no less, probably grossed less than his estate manages to generate annually. Uwe Boll, krapmeister Super (yeah that’s not really a word) cranks out one bilious videogame movie every year, beats up pasty European film critics in boxing rings (Youtube Raging Boll) and dares his detractors to put him out of business by soliciting petitions from them, promising to quit if they reach a million: “Nice try, Hündinnen!” Chuck Norris, Van Damme and Steven Segal represent the Holy Trinity of Tripe, with acolytes (including myself) humming their theme tunes in times of danger and unquestioningly accepting their ubermenschian abilities (Chuck Norris facts), seeming resistance to age (rent JVCD. Please.) and musical prowess (Songs from a Crystal Cave). Closer home, Mithun (His Awesomeness), Rajnikanth, Ravi Kissen and Himesh, have all managed to win our hearts, minds and internal organs.

Why, you ask? Ah, here lies the gravamen of my piece.

Coming back to the accusation of having a taste and yet knowing Gunda front-to-back, I was at first unsure of how to respond. I mean, how does one explain the concept of so-bad-its-good and the consequent affection and awe that such a quality can evoke?

Susan Sontag once said that camp cannot be deliberate. She’s right: if Gunda were to be a parody, it would have accessed a talent beyond itself: satire, and become eligible for membership in a posher club as opposed to the seedy back alley tavern it is in right now. It’s why Naked Gun is actually a decent series. Well, in my house anyway. Gunda is quite unembarrassed by itself, revelling in the doggerelled dialogues fit to make your ears shrivel up and disappear into their holes and good-natured about subjecting everyone’s retinas to imagery that makes the sensory neurons detonate. It’s all just so darn sincere that you can’t help but be mesmerised. The hypnotic effect of this film comes from its unapologetic, self-convinced braggadocio, dunked in every kind of political incorrectness and burdened by absolutely no pretensions to being at all ‘good’ or ‘artistically valuable’ in any sense. It sucks, it doesn’t know it; it sucks, you know it. So why can’t we all come together like a happy family and enjoy what we can. You know that friend you’re not sure why you’re friends with...the one who’s always calling you at 3 a.m. from a bender to tell you how much he loves you, owes you your inheritance, cracks inappropriate jokes about your female relatives and yet you get your dander up the moment anyone hints that you ditch them? This is that movie. If you’re in college and don’t have a friend at least resembling this guy, you need to get out more. If you’re in college and haven’t seen Gunda, you need to stay in more. I know it’s a bit of a catch-22 but you’ll figure it out. After all, you were smart enough to get into college in the first place. Bottomline: Gunda has no idea that it’s bad, so why should you? In its honest horrendousness lies its heart.

The second part of its appeal lies in something outside itself. Gunda is an internally sustained system of excreta but when faced with the real world, it’s an interesting foil to the prevailing socioculture. Camp confronts culture as itself, except in its worst, most exaggerated form. The godawfulness of kitsch is only superficially because it looks so bad. I remember reading Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being go on for a good chapter about how real kitsch is bad because it ignores the truth and panders to the middle-class fear of seeing real pain, darkness and suffering. Maybe. I’m not as smart as this dude, so I’m not gonna mount a disagreement in a blog, but I have this feeling that the reason kitsch or camp is really bad is because it unwittingly makes fun of bourgeois aesthetics. The more something is really bad, the more attention and perverse regard it attracts. By juxtaposing itself with what is considered the acme of high culture, it provides a ludicrous, absurd alternative to the gold standard. It is usually at least as solemn in its efforts to exist as the outstandingly good. And often, it curates some of the same themes, albeit turned on their head and dumbed down to the extremes of frivolity. The creators of camp or kitsch are completely ignorant of this of course, otherwise they’d be too clever to make it. Gunda, as anyone who saw movies in the mid-90s knows, represents the worst of life and films back then. We have a country barely heaving itself out of the economic nightmare of pre-NEP era humiliation, successive unstable governments fostering chaos across the nation and the first wave of major reactions to the products of the NEP and its cries of Globalisation-Liberalisation-Privatisation (like cable TV and foreign shoe brands). The movies were confections of blinding/deafening music videos and costumes nobody would be caught dead wearing; the high point was something like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, a completely unoriginal two-hours worth of film reel devoted to much the same things as Gunda: female lead(s) popping off and being nothing more than the motive for the male lead to do anything; a lot of singing and dancing; a sexually confused ‘comedian’ and a happily ever after. OK, maybe not exactly the same things...but you get my drift. The point is that the most popular film of the same year wasn’t that much different from Gunda when you really sit down to think about it. And that is what anticultural junk is supposed to do – exhibit the stupidest facets of an era alongside the most compelling questions of its time. Unlike great works, it’s always bound by the limitations of time and space, but it does provide an effective counterpoise for the consumers of that time and space and does its job, thanks very much. There’s a pseudo-Hegelian dialectic at work here: culture, anticulture and the emergent ‘cult classic’.

In a departing salvo, here’s a brief review of Gunda that I penned a few months ago:

Obviously, Gunda is a stellar example of mid-90s social realist counter-aesthetic – it tackles heavyweight issues like small town India's growing socio-economic alienation from a newly liberalised metropolitan economy, the emasculation and infantilisation of the Indian male (as evinced by Chutia's condition) in the face of increasing female empowerment and of course, the reason Mithun Da will always be THE MAN. Also see Loha, the prequel to this work of art and indeed, copiously referenced in it, in yet another stunning example of director Kanti Shah's attempts at syncretism - making him a true post-modernist maverick. 10/10

If you take issue with my love for this movie, don’t bother to harangue me with walls. You can see further evidence for the love this film enjoys by reading reviews on IMDb or www.greatbong.net or lurking on any of the many fanclub messageboards. If they don’t convince you, you’re an idiot who doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as us loyal fans of Mithun Da and his entourage.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, in the inimitable style of Mithun Da (His Awesomeness):

“Main hoon garibon ke liye jyoti aur gundon ke liye jwala”

Move over, Robin Hood.


I'm sure most of you need not be converted and know exactly what I defend. As for the others, beg, steal or borrow your copy of this staple college fare or regret not getting the jokes. It is advisable, nay, imperative that you sit through...I mean...savour this masterpiece nonpareil, for the sake of your own education and for that of those after you. Watch Gunda, so that you can say to your grandkids that you were part of the generation that saw it first.