FilmIndia (1940)

June 1940 FILMINDI A the more healthier for having gone through its measles and an adolescent, though, transitionally, he or she may behave like a prize ass, is all the better fitted for the serious business of life for having succumbed to the star craze. PORT SAID OF EMOTIONS! Emotional escapism, which is the essence of fan-dom, is all the more necessary in the life of the present generation of Indian youths, with feet fixed in the East, heads hanging on the West, and minds vacillating in between. The silver screen serves as a sort of blackedout Port Said to them, the emotional meeting ground of the East and the West. They can let themselves go with wild abandon, forget all the taboos and restraints and touchme-nots of the society in which their lot is cast and give the reins to all their pent-up longings and suppressed lust, complexes and inhibitions, without losing caste or their face either. They can hitch their wagon to whatever star, starlet or planet they may be attracted by, pester her with impassioned letters, phone her at all hours of the day and night on the off-chance of being at least damned in her sweet voice, wall-paper their garrets with her pictures, gate-crash her flat or studio to get chucked out from her paradisical presence by the well-trained Durwan, or (if you are lucky enough) to be kicked out by her own dainty foot. Her very own— oh! what an exquisite destiny! It is a brief paradise. A mad whirl! A most colourful life as long as it lasts. You are elated, enthralled. You walk on air, forgetting your feet on earth. A sense of reality soon dawns upon you. That inevitability is what makes the fan's auto-intoxication so very worth while. It serves as a prophylaxis of the soul and gives you immunity from further heart-attacks. In other words, it makes you hard-boiled. OH! THAT GRAIN OF SALT!. And what is the phoney talk of film stars being fed up with their admirers and worshippers, with those autograph-hunters and bouquet throwers, and with all the gaga boys and giggling girls? What is this high heresy of the poor dears only wanting to be allowed to do their work in peace and privacy? I am quite prepared to believe the broadcasts of Herr Goebbels, or the outbursts of Signor Gayda, or even the Forward trumpet-blasts of our own Desh Gaurab Subhas Chandra Bose. I cannot, however, swallow this hocus of the star's abhorrence of his or her fans. The fans may be fulsome flatterers, blundering idiots and insufferable bores and boors. But they are fans all the same; the air, water and sun so essential for the astral art to bloom, the human fuel on which alone their high strung personality can thrive. No. The true artiste born to her art requires none of the intellectual appraisals and the long-winded appreciation of cold-blooded critics: she wants the warming fire of the human heart, the heart which lies at her feet and goes to her head, the heart which her fan alone can hand her on a salver, to be squeezed or spurned as she pleases. In this way alone can her soul flower: from Salome to Pavlova they will tell you the same tale. Sometimes in a mood of inconsistency my lady may protest loudly, but that is only an other manner of saying "Thank you!" to her fans. DON'T BLAME THE FANS! Moralising is the easiest and cheapest of social approaches. The fan is misbehaved, detestable miscreant. No doubt very easily said! But in these times when every criminal expects to be rationally understood and cured, who will pity the poor fan, who will save him from utter spiritual and moral breakdown? It is he, more than his alleged victims who are so firmly entrenched behind their astronomical pay-rolls, who needs sympathy and succour. You educate a youth under conditions in which he is convinced that his education is an apprenticeship to unemployment. You make marriage economically impossible till late in life, when it merely leads to emotional frustration. You shatter his nerves in a world where human values are observed only in their breach. You inflame his passions by organised sextravaganza on the screen. And when he falls a victim to this terrific social onslaught on his morale, you accuse him of misbehaviour! Fans, where are your manners? As well might have Menaka, the celestial star, after the epic episode that led to the birth of Shakuntala, asked Vishwamitra, the great Rishi. •'O Sage, where are your morals?"