GN"R to play India in Dec?

[Crash Diet]

India is the cradle of the human race,

Bullshit

[Ketan]

do u realize it is apparent that you r trying too hard to come across as someone with profound knowledge and insights while subtly insulting a billion people whom you consider to be in a rat race to sell out their cultural values for westernization?

You feel that knowledge of Lata and Rafi is an attempt at conveying profound knowledge? Not really, pretty general stuff fella and I wasn't insulting anyone, if i wanted to insult someone i do not shy away from doing so.

india has such remarkable ability to adapt and include other cultures that it doesn't feel puerile to appreciate rock music. it is rather naive to think that if someone listens to Guns N' Roses they have forfeited all things indian and are trying hard to be americanized.

And where was it that you percieved that i was saying listening to Guns n Roses suggests they have forfeited all things indian? In fact, my post didn't even mention Guns n Roses, the idea of the post was sparked by Guns n Roses coming over there but if you read the post it is referring to the current culture existing in India today and referred more precisely to cinema and Indian artists.

for all the knowledge u seem to posses about india it is rather disappointing that you failed to notice that India is one those cultures which doesnt discriminate any art form on the basis of its origin.

Right but there's a difference between discrimination and what amounts to ethnic forgery.

how absurd it is then to suggest that someone going to a rock concert is obsessed with making India a third-rate copy of American culture. india is over 5000 years old. we have survived the test of time. we have adapted many foreign thoughts and believes over the centuries and made them our own. perhaps this is why i dont feel like a treacherous sellout as you would have me feel when i play the rock songs i have written with my rock band.

I agree with this actually, from "india is over 5,000 years old" onwards. Definitely. Nobody mentioned treachery...or selling out all these highly emotive phrases you employ, i simply said that as a culture the modern incarnation of India seems to be intent on westernising itself which to me is like, i dunno, i expect i'd feel kinda short-changed by that.

The fact is that it does not have to be this way. The British ruled India for fuckin ages, that generation didn't throw it's identity away and even in the 60s/70s/80s there were elements on western culture assimilated but the basic Indianness was preserved, this does not appear to be the case nowadays.

Watch any new Indian film, new Indian song and tell me it doesn't come across as cheap. Explain to me why in every new Bollywood film they might as well be in English cuz all the actors keep saying what they're saying in English half the time. I mean, why do that, Indians flock to see Bollywood films in droves, if all of these people understood English then they'd be watching those movies, this is their thing and should be a reflection of that.

Seriously, you wanna talk to me about Indians and wholesale copy and forgery of western culture, watch Ram Jaane and then watch Angels With Dirty Faces and tell me that it ain't indentical? At least in Ram Jaane the setting is still vaguely recognisable as India, these days it's even worse. And this ain't just one film this is most of that industry, i could literally go on all night picking out movies and songs that are just straight rip offs.

I'm not trying to insult you or insult your culture, fuck, your culture IS my culture, i'm from Azad Kashmir, or my family is, the older uncles of my family were born in India, i'm brown-skinned, this isn't some kind of race assault, this is me looking at a culture that i feel to be partly mine and feeling sadness for the state it is in.

This is not the way you get respect, by copying and by mimicry and by forgery, this does not make people look at Indians and erase all the embarassing memorys of little men in loincloths and red dots on their heads, fuck that shit and bring those men back.

Each culture should bring something of itself to the table, that is how you get respect, not by mimicry. As for the Mark Twain quote, thats pretty much my whole point to begin with here.

People don't stand up and tell you things like this unless they consider you apne, others will just laugh at you or be afraid of offending you.

your point about indian movies ripping off american movies is something i agree to completely but that is a separate debate all together and perhaps this isnt the right forum for it. However i will say that raam jane isn't the only western movie to be shamelessly copied. in fact the way i see is that filmmakers don't want to spend much on original and quality scripts when they can easily rip off a foreign movie for nothing. i often say that if one went looking for the most apt words for things their search would always end with "Bollywood". just like the name, there is hardly anything original. so much so that i am often compelled to reject indian movies as an art form. instead its just a way of making money with minimum of efforts

As a popular film maker recently said in a talk show that most indians go to theater to escape reality and that is why we make the movies that we do. i actually believe that in india mediocrity sells. people do not question the content they are often shoved down their throat. how else do you explain the extreme popularity of people such as RD Burman who had copied many western songs note by note and had claimed them as his own, or movies such As Sholay which is coped from western cowboy films?

but really most of us can't be bothered with quality when we go inside theaters looking for escape can we?

i dont know why would you think showing people speak in English is a false representation. people do actually converse in english quite often. There are many things they show in these movies which i believe is farce but i dont have a propblem with them showing peopple speak english since we often do converse in english in real life.

what offended me was your remark that you felt sorry for india, culturally speaking. why would u say something like this on a thread discussing a supposed Gnr date in Delhi if not to express your disapproval.

anyway i did not know that you were from the subcontinent. i think you did not mean "they" but "us" when you speak of the culture.

Cheers

[The Archer]

India is the cradle of the human race,

Bullshit

Africa is the cradle of the human race. We are all Africans.

[Guest Len B'stard]

your point about indian movies ripping off american movies is something i agree to completely but that is a separate debate all together and perhaps this isnt the right forum for it. However i will say that raam jane isn't the only western movie to be shamelessly copied. in fact the way i see is that filmmakers don't want to spend much on original and quality scripts when they can easily rip off a foreign movie for nothing. i often say that if one went looking for the most apt words for things their search would always end with "Bollywood". just like the name, there is hardly anything original. so much so that i am often compelled to reject indian movies as an art form. instead its just a way of making money with minimum of efforts

The overall point of my post, just to clarify, was nothing really to do with Guns n Roses and more a comment on Indian culture, evoked by the thread, in a way, being about India, a tangent yes but attached to the topic...vaguely

As a popular film maker recently said in a talk show that most indians go to theater to escape reality and that is why we make the movies that we do. i actually believe that in india mediocrity sells. people do not question the content they are often shoved down their throat. how else do you explain the extreme popularity of people such as RD Burman who had copied many western songs note by note and had claimed them as his own, or movies such As Sholay which is coped from western cowboy films?

yes, Sholay just basically rips of The Magnificent Seven and Once Upon a Time in the West, the latter to the point of stealing entire sections of the film, to the point of almost being shot for shot. And, i guess mediocrity does sell in India but not exclusively, this is a disservice...and to reject them as an art form is kind of...again, see, it's indicative of this imperialist mentality where if the thing doesn't fit pre-concieved western notions of how a film or a genre or a medium should be then it is no longer relevant. My gripe with Indian cinema isn't the song and dance routines, it isn't the theatricality of it, that just makes it more grand and operatic and dramatic, these elements are wonderful when correctly realised, it's the rejection of indigenous elements with a view to creating something thats a copy of something else from somewhere else is what troubles me.

See even the older movies that stole elements, like Sholay that you mentioned, yes it's a copy but the movie itself is authentically Indian and it has a life beyond just being like, a cheap copy, the interplay between Amitabh Bachan and Dharmendra is priceless, the whole setting, the girls, Basanthi, Amjad Khans fucking amazing turn as Gubbar Singh all this is a degree of authenticity, in the way Magnificent Seven itself is a movie thats a remake or copy or stolen or inspired by The Seven Samurai but it is original in the way that it is re-jigged and re-concieved as a western...same with Sholay however there is little reconceptualising going on anymore and more wholesale forgery with less and less or the colour and character of movies like Sholay, which to me is fucking brilliant and always will be.

i dont know why would you think showing people speak in English is a false representation. people do actually converse in english quite often. There are many things they show in these movies which i believe is farce but i dont have a propblem with them showing peopple speak english since we often do converse in english in real life.

It's not that aspect unto itself that troubles me, it's that when you think about it in the context of the entire thing im trying to say, i find this often with westernised elements of my family when they converse with the guys from over our end and they pepper this language with English and...i dunno, i just don't see why, particularly in an Indian film.

Basically, Indian movies in general, by and large, it's audience is the working class population of countries like Pakistan, India etc etc where these films are watched. Now, these people watch these movies because it's their thing and it's in their language. Have you ever sat in a dingy little concrete room with 5 folding chairs on either side of a wall, drinking mango milkshake, watching an 80s Amir Khan film off a 24 inch screen TV in the blistering heat in a remote village somewhere in Kashmir? THESE people are the core audience of these films, these are the people that need, nay, DESERVE representation. The stuffy elite of India and Pakistan don't even watch the movies anymore, they, like yourself, reject it as an art form and yet this art form insists on replicating and representing the people that think it's a bit of a joke, i just don't understand that mentality.

what offended me was your remark that you felt sorry for india, culturally speaking. why would u say something like this on a thread discussing a supposed Gnr date in Delhi if not to express your disapproval.

Well it was just the mention of India in relation to art (or in this case an artist) that sparked the thought in my head rather than any connection necessarily to GnR, i didn't mean to insult or offend you, quite frankly i'd be insulting myself if i was trying to make any disparaging remarks about India, that was not my intention, quite the opposite actually, i think it's being done a disservice.

And also, quite frankly, western representation of India is a joke...what, the fuckin Guru...Harold and Kumar...so, y'know, why kowtow to a culture that doesn't even have respect? The right circles respect Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan though...or Satyajit Ray.

Edited June 27, 2012 by sugaraylen

[ThinkAboutYou]

I think security fears and possibility of being fleeced would be of concern with touring India

[finck6]

hitmanhart408 & dizzyreedsexmachine-

many songs have already been recorded for the next chinese democracy record. there's no need 2 record after this tour. the songs are ready to go for a 2012 release

Remaster!

brain remaster

[Ketan]

And, i guess mediocrity does sell in India but not exclusively, this is a disservice...and to reject them as an art form is kind of...again, see, it's indicative of this imperialist mentality where if the thing doesn't fit pre-concieved western notions of how a film or a genre or a medium should be then it is no longer relevant. My gripe with Indian cinema isn't the song and dance routines, it isn't the theatricality of it, that just makes it more grand and operatic and dramatic, these elements are wonderful when correctly realised, it's the rejection of indigenous elements with a view to creating something thats a copy of something else from somewhere else is what troubles me.

imperialist? pre-concieved western notions? ur rather quick on assuming what the other person's thought process is. i say i just called a spade a spade. Art reflects society, has the power to change opinions...not that this is what a movie should do in order to be good but there is little that indian movies collectively do.

for the record i am one for the dance and songs... in certain situations it helps portray the feel and emotions smoothly,why on earth would u assume i am opposed to it? perhaps because (and no offense intended) you yourself have per-conceived notions about people you hardly know.

indian movies which are worth the time doesn't really get a mainstream release ever, they can only be seen during those film festivals. the reason i reject Bollywood as an art form is not because they dont fit western standards, but because it lacks creativity once they fix that and make movies with heart and soul i will not complain.

the fact is there are horrible hollywood movies which sometimes seem like a bollywood flick (Anger Management?} but they do make quality films.

i mean there is so much a movie can do... think about the issues a common man faces in this country and all the wrongs that he does (for instance breaking traffic rule on every given opportunity, molesting and eve teasing, racially\religiously discriminating etc)... a movie can propel you into soul searching, can make you see your faults. how many indian movies have you seen lately which even attempt to do that?

think about war and violence. how many war movies have u seen which portrays the horrors of war? instead all we get is LoCs and Borders portraying Pakistanis as brute and evil.

i am not saying indian movies are bad because they have dances... but because they dont have any soul. art must have soul.

Edited June 27, 2012 by Ketan