This morning I was reading a Sunday special newspaper article. The author apparently presented himself as a media guru, an expert in films. The very first few sentences were full of sheer name-dropping. That is okay. "Vadde log, vaddi bate" to quote the Kajol of "Kabhie Khushi, Kabhie Gum".
The article dealt with a great film by one of the best film directors ever, namely, "Rashomon" by Akiro Kurosawa. But it was rather apparent that the "media major" had probably not seen the movie recently, and had clearly forgotten whatever he saw ages ago, though, of course, not a single frame in that film is forgettable ever. The film literally etches itself on the audience's soul.
Well, the expert writing this article seemed to be an exception to this general rule. In his narration of the storyline, there was absolutely no reference to a central character, enacted moreover by one of the brilliant actors world-wide, and the most beloved actor of Kurosawa himself.
Yup, it is like discussing "Deewar" and not mentioning the Vijay of Amitabh Bacchan! Actors after all are the faces of films, and of the characters in any type of story-boarding, to quote a technical term the media major used oh-so-scholarly.
However unusual (better use mild words as the author is supposedly a media expert!) such "name dropping" (not in the figurative but in the literal sense of this phrase) might appear, the author had forgotten to mention the great end of the superb film in an article of about al least three thousand words!
Well, that would be like forgetting "the tossing of the coin" scene in "Sholay"! Yes, when it comes to a work of art, everyone surely has the right to discuss it from any particular angle, but, surely, the basic concepts just cannot be missed, especially in this era of information explosion wherein thousands of sites, beginning with the Wikipedia to Quora versions of Google guru's, provide in detail, though often wrong, all sorts of bits and bytes!
Why could not the great expert consult such basic sources, though, in fact, one should (or, rather, must) re-check every reference while discussing anything at all actually, but surely a great film? It possibly could not be the printer's devil as such biggies' stuff would get proof-read repeatedly, and in detail! What exactly was the editor doing, moreover?
Well, expertise hereabouts often seems to be resting on long lost laurels, right? This is actually an intellectual version of the famous Indian jugad. Such "everything and anything goes" attitude is the real 'fault line', one would say.
One wonders how such intellectual scenario would survive, when in the already happening (in all senses of the term) AI version of reality, robots are writing pitch perfect articles, even literary texts! In the times of intelligent machines, Lord save us from juggadu's of all types, especially of the intellectual variety!
Pratima@ In the times of intelligent machines, none can deceive, forget "all the people all the time", but even one "rasik" one time!
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