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So bad, they are good

Rife with clichés, hamming, plot-holes and atrocious production values, a B movie still has its dedicated fans

KITSCH RULES House of Wax, Snakes on a Plane, Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, and Dude, Where's my Car? are some recent favourites

The nominees for the 27th Annual Golden Raspberry Awards have been announced; and as the list of worst films of 2006 stretches from lame sequels (Basic Instinct 2) and remakes (Wicker Man) to Internet cult (Uwe Bolls's Bloodrayne), the question on most average viewers' minds is: "Who watches this stuff?" Or at least that's what most "self-respecting" movie watchers say when they know someone's listening.

Take away the audience though, and one notices that there are always "trashy," "badly-made" films that one loves to watch, to take delight in the not-so-little glitches that separate them from the more mediocre, everyday fare and set them in a league of their own. The most readily professed attitude for such a love of kitsch, points out S.V. Srinivas, a fellow at the Centre for Study of Culture and Society who specialises in popular cinema, is one of disdainful engagement with it. "Since pop culture is in some ways created for the lowest common denominator, one way to create categories of distinctions is by distancing oneself from aspects of it and then enjoying it," he explains. So, whether it's the wooden expressions of Paris Hilton in the melting House of Wax or the dumb and dumber act in Dude Where's My Car or the obviously fake rubber make up of the Ramsay Brothers' films, for a majority of the viewers there's a smug sense of superiority that surrounds the experience. For this engagement to occur, there needs to be a distinct sense of the other, a sense of "this is not my cinema,"he adds. No surprises then that one of the prime movers in this creation of cult today is the Internet, which Srinivas points out, circulates products such as Rajkumar's immensely popular Youtube video "If You Come Today" among groups who are not familiar with Dr. Rajkumar or a Rajnikant as seen by their traditional fan bases.

However, while disdainful engagement might come easily to many, Srinivas insists, that such a feeling of perceived superiority is incorrect since the aesthetic criteria used to judge films are purely arbitrary. Indeed, says director Kunal Kohli (Fanaa) if one enjoys a film, then the fact that critics or other viewers trash a film should in no way change one's way of thinking about it. "Sometimes, you are just looking for mindless fare that you enjoy precisely for being clumsy. And that is a lot of fun. You should get something out of everything," he says. And so it is that although he finds the dacoit films of Joginder from the 70s and 80s very hilarious, he is loath to label any craft as B or C grade.

On the contrary, he says, as a filmmaker he sees just as much value in films that the average viewer might be too quick to dismiss. "You can get things from every film, and you never know where ideas can come from," he says. And anyone that pooh-poohs that take on the subject, only needs to look at the now-legendary story of director Quentin Tarantino, who developed his exquisite style and unique approach to filmmaking watching, among other things, some of the most underground, unheard-of B-cinema from around the world.

Indeed, says one culture theory researcher laughing at something because one sees it as belonging to a lower class than oneself is problematic, and if one lets go of prejudices and indulges much of pulp cinema in the country, one can learn to laugh with and appreciate Rajnikant and Mithun and so on.

"B films," he says, "can do things that a certain kind of upper middle class, "better" cinema cannot. There is a level of rudeness, inventiveness, humour and cocking a snook at the middle class that they manage because they see themselves as outside the urban middle class space." In that sense, it is only obvious that there is more to the so-bad-it's-good film than meets the eye, points out Dhoom director Sanjay Gadhvi. "The only reason you would approach a film is because you are curious about something in it. If films like these are on one's list over dozens of other films that one watches, that means there is something in them."

RAKESH MEHAR

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