Costume is character

Last week’s Amazon Prime Video drop Made in Heaven Season 2 has a scene where a middle-class character, Jazz (played by Shivani in Heaven Season 2 has a scene where a middle-class character, Jazz (played by Shivani Raghuvanshi), speaks of her office: “You can’t do fashion here”. It is such a great moment, almost as if she is addressing the show’s makers themselves. Take us seriously, don’t just dress us up. And yet, it is the dresses that speak louder than the stories. After all, this is India, where the lehenga matters more than the wedding, perhaps even the groom.

- NAMRATA ZAKARIA

 

This is not a complaint though. We are watching cinema in a country where escapism is de rigueur. Whether our movie theatres are plush multiplexes or dusty, rexine-seated standalones, we need to forget our daily drudgery for those three hours. Thus, the difference between mainstream and art-house is in whether you want a mirror to reality or to be rescued from it.

The new medium that has taken over India’s storytelling in the last few years—OTT platforms such as Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar—faces the same binary. On the one hand we see shows and films that bring to the fore those faces and stories that would have otherwise not been told. On the other, there is the acknowledgement that one is creating for those with laptops and cell phones now, an Instagram generation that is not too bothered with authenticity and originality, so long as it makes for pretty pictures.