Us and our Streets

[deepad]

My eyes popped when unusualmusic linked to this -


Because it's my old school friend! Hi Ishu! You got a haircut! :D

But what's also amusing is the framing of this short film. Ishan Tankha, photographer with a big ass fancy pants camera, sitting in casually imperial isolation on one of the many historical monuments peppering Delhi (I can't identify it for sure, but I think its Hauz Khas?)

Meanwhile every other shot? The gaudy, public, and exotically poor street life of Delhi. At most we get some middle class women shopping, some Metro commuters, and Ishan riding his bike in front of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

But even as he is saying climate change spans all classes, there are no other young, upper class people like him, no rich people, no half-naked out of fashion rather than poverty women, no fat cat industrialists or cavalcade-riding politicians, no indication that there are any of the Westernised English speaking people on the streets, even though Ishan has been chosen spokesperson.

I'm calling this the Slumdog Shooting technique - use English because you don't want to alienate your Western audience with subtitles, but keep the local colour full of attractive yet needy children, crowds that look struggling, and picturesque poverty.

Comments

[applegnat]

I find it striking that our own commercial cinema has pretty much blocked public life out of our stories. I see a bit of Slumdog Shooting in India too, though - in advertising. It's like there are parts of the media which have decided to sell our own country back to us, packaged as a different world.

[ZOMG Ishan Tankha, srs bziness photog. Awe.]

[deepad]

Hmm... see, I this the Great Indian Rasta is very present in commercial cinema, just spruced up and prettified as is every other part of that dreamscape. But I agree with the way advertising has taken on the Orientalist narrative and thrown it back at us, even while it sometimes problemitises it. (So much to say about Channel V promos, for instance!)

Also, ZOMG, you know Ishan IRL? Does this mean that we might know each other then? Ahh, six degrees!

[monanotlisa]

Dan Savage, much? *g*

http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/11/20/which-images-represent-india/comment-page-1/#comment-145899

(Attractive yet needy children and picturesque poverty: nail, meet head.)

[deepad]

Yeah, denying global warming was... kind of not my point. ;)