Genre pushing!!!

"Our invention can be exploited for a certain time as a scientific curiosity, but apart from that, it has no commercial future whatsoever."    --Auguste Lumière

This is just a gentle reminder. Anyways, this post is all about a thought that came to me very recently. When i was approached by a producer to do a 'remake' of a very successful film, i backed out because i did not subscribe to the idea and the content of that film. I also that it was just  not right for a remake to be done . But then, I also began to wonder about what actually can be termed a 'remake'.!!

'A film set in another part of the country or the world comes along with its own sense of culture, its own p.o.v and that p.o.v would be a sum total of all the filmmakers' experiences. The way he has looked at life, at events and the way i would perceive it would be different .And so ,for me to be doing a remake would be wrong...' is what i felt. 

But then, i also began to think about what i call as 'genre pushing' that seems to be happening everywhere , a very dangerous trend that seems like is catching up very fast, mostly among the younger lot of filmmakers. 

What exactly is this 'genre pushing' then? And why is it important for me to be speaking about it...? are the two questions that would find an answer in the note i write below... 

I would not call myself a film critic but as an observer of the art form, I have definitely and constantly longed to keep studying films in my own way and through this study I observe that a filmmaker's body of work in totality becomes really important . For example..a filmmaker 'X' would have made a cult horror film in the sixties , moved on to a 'sci fi' film in the seventies, made a 'political thriller' in the eighties and then maybe went on to dabble with the form and churned out more 'genres' of film in the process.

And maybe we are fans of one of the films... like say ...his sixties cult horror film. 

Unfortunately, we tend to pick up that one film as an example of his body of work and we judge him by that one film and then that film's style gives way to a lot of wannabe filmmakers wanting to rip off the 'style' of that film. And this , is what i call as 'genre pushing'. Genre pushing is where you watch a film, love it for the quirkiness, for the style,for the narrative...just pick it up and then adapt it unnecessarily to make a film that 'looks' like that favorite film of yours. 

Across india today, there people blindly copying these 'styles' of telling a story and making films that come across as 'naive copies' of the classic. 

So, just like one says 'no' to piracy, one also has to strongly go against this whole new wave of 'genre pushing' with a lack of sensibilities.

A harmless remake should still be ok:-)