Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Defining new genre of films

As all the three faithful readers of this blog (are there that many?) know, I have been travelling a little, and finally have some airport / travel stories to tell. No, not as interesting as the last one about bumping into Guenther Grass, but this time the only thing that came to my mind is what I am going to say below. Actually it had already to my mind earlier when I was watching a couple of bits of films on this world movies channel, which seemed to be mainly Spanish films, where really not much happened. The movies were not very interesting, and not very challenging. Then it occured to me that these must come from a genre of films designed for in-flight entertainment. My beliefs were reinforced after looking at the selection on Emirates flights. They were exactly that! But there is another genre of films on Star and HBO which boggles my mind even more. Now which one of us in India would be interested in US war films, where the great white nation mainly takes on the yellow peril or middle-eastern terrorists? Even if these films have Denzel Washington starring as a high-ranking general? Or the other genre of US college and teenage films? Do not those who are responsible for scheduling of films study what genre would or would not be interesting? Even more mind boggling were the films on Discovery or Nat Geo, where there was a long series of documentaries on fishing for crabs in the North Sea. How many of us have ever seen the North sea, sailed on boats or are interested in eating crabs? This genre is really not for me...

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