Why India keeps flunking at the Oscars and how it can learn from Miss India
I do not pretend to be a big movie buff but I like watching movies nonetheless. No - not the mainstream masala movies but some slightly off beat not so larger-than-life movies. I’d take movies like Udaan, Aankhon Dekhi, Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana or Kumbalangi Nights anyday over larger-than-life movies like Pathaan, Pushpa 2, KGF or Animal.
I do follow the Indian movie scene a little more than I used to many years ago, especially thanks to the excellent quality of cinema emerging from the South, especially from Kerala. That is one of the reasons why Indian Cinema’s constant omission from any global recognition (YouTube reaction videos by firangs don’t count) despite producing the most films for any country in the world, bothers me a little bit.
It‘s another year where an Indian film gets overlooked by the Academy Awards. This time around it was the satire Laapata Ladies - a nice feel-good movie but admittedly, a terrible choice to be nominated for the Academy Awards.
Many Indians on social media are now saying “Why should we care about some Oscar awards?”. A part of that is right, some of us give too much importance to an American award that has its own set of rigid criteria (I’ll come to that later) but let’s please not pretend that us Indians, in general, do not yearn for recognition at the world stage, especially in the arts and sports. The recent World Chess Championship by Gukesh D has excited the country as much as an elusive Olympic Gold Medal. We want to be recognized at the world stage, especially by or against goras and that is also exactly why YouTube reaction videos by goras or any foreigner really garners so many views. I tried explaining why in this post.
Back to the primary topic - we need to perform better at competitions or recognitions at the world stage and the Academy Awards is amongst the top ones in the pecking order.
It’s not like India does not produce quality movies, it does! Can we do better - of course we can. But we need to learn how to learn backwards to crack the code - something we have been doing right from our youth while trying to crack board exams by analysing the last 10 year question papers or in competitive exams - by trying to recognize patterns.
This is exactly how India won so many Miss World/Miss Universe titles about 25-30 years ago and here is the story.
The popular magazine Femina was the primary sponsor and organizer of Miss India back then. They realized that -
Indian women, especially back in the 90s, may not have the perfect physique like the women from most western nations but hold and edge because of the focus on our schooling and education (well that’s only partially true but I’ll not get into that) so our contestants needed to just use that, mix some current affairs into it and give more intelligent and rounded answers that would give her an edge over a blonde 5’11 woman from Nebraska or from the Alps.
The Miss Universe and Miss World contests each had a distinct criterion on which they selected their winners. Miss Universe apparently looked for an “unpaid ambassador for various causes who they can milk through the year, and they’ll fly you across the world, make you feel like a queen but treat you like a slave”. So Femina asked judges at Miss India contests to look for someone who can speak well and can handle the press well.
On the other hand, Miss World looked for “fairy tales” - women who could visit the downtrodden or the injured and tell them everything will be okay.Once selected, the Miss India winners would be trained on how they can get an edge. Beyond the obvious aims of toning up and learning to speak up more confidently and show their “Indian-ness” at the apt moment to stand out from the crowd.
This is how even Indian legends such as Susmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai were selected for their specific awards (no one, maybe except for Bengali uncles, will rate Susmita Sen’s looks to be better than that of Aishwarya Rai)
Indian award hunters simply need to learn from India’s success at Miss India in order to increase the chances to crack these awards.
The Academy Awards and their flaws
Every year, we keep hoping that an India movie gets nominated for the “Best International Feature Film” category and every year we get that sinking feeling of rejection when the nominees are finally announced.
However, beyond the doom and gloom and shame, one must also understand that the Academy Award, at least for this award comes with its own set of must-haves -
The movie must have been screened in the US and even more specifically, it must have run in a cinema in the Los Angeles County area or other major counties such as NY, the Bay Area, Chicago etc. It might even have to need to have a minimum number of screenings
It must have been submitted officially to the Academy
Only one movie can be nominated from a country
One must also understand that the Academy Awards are an American Award and are hence obviously pro American movies in most categories. Moreover, there has been a strong criticism of the Academy of its lack of diversity in both - the choice if its winners and the composition of its voters.
Having pointed out these flaws, let's not pretend that the Academy Awards (or other global awards) do not matter to us.
The great Film Federation of India keeps choosing the wrong film year after year and clearly show an abysmal lack of understanding of how to crack the Oscar code. It’s not hard to see why once you see the current key members
The president “Shri T.P. Aggarwal” has the following repertoire to boast of
Go through the other names and you will find that most of them bring absolutely nothing to the table - no international experience and no stellar work to boast of. Just like any other “committee” in India, it consists of largely oldies and barely and diversity. I can’t help but think that this too was an outcome of some lobbying and power games rather than having best interests at heart.
This is also what keeps sports, not named Cricket, backwards in India as well - something I’m truly passionate about. I’ll get into that piece in detail in another blog.
How can such an incompetent and uninspiring group even think of something like “working backwards”? How can they continue to overlook movies that are gaining international recognition like “All We Imagine As Light”. Why can’t they understand that the Academy does not look for feel good films like Laapata Ladies, Gully Boy and Barfi or dramas like Devdas and Rang De Basanti (all of these were nominated).
I could not agree more with the following tweet by Ricky Rej, a man who most definitely is the right authority to speak out against India’s constant failure at cracking the Oscar code.
How did a decent but not extraordinary track like “Naatu Naatu” from RRR crack the Oscar code then? It played on it’s strengths (the unique dance move and the larger than life and anti oppressive theme of the entire movie) and lobbied intensely - something that Aamir Khan also did with Lagaan more than 20 years ago.
Slumdog Millionaire, despite not being an Indian film technically, also learnt to crack the Oscar code - of showcasing exotic poverty porn (which I’m sure White Caucasians love) and the power of intense lobbying.
This is something that both Indian film makers and the FFI need to learn (after the composition of the FFI committee improves of course!). They need to learn from the 2 examples above and from Femina Miss India that one must work backwards, play on your strengths and mask your weaknesses to crack the Oscar code.
Despite the constant allure of doom and gloom in this country, I’m hopeful that we see that day soon.
Maybe the old men at FFI should start seeing the Femina Miss India videos from the 90s secretly, to start of with?