What’s the point in tampering with classicsIJ
Just as the trend of ‘remaking' successful Hindi films of the earlier decades has become a fashion, so has, it appears, the drive around the world to ‘rewrite' classics. The result has so far been largely disastrous. So, why are the film and the publishing industries persisting with the exerciseIJ It is partly because they have run out of fresh ideas and largely because no one wants to take risks. They would rather go with a tested product, tweak it here and there and serve it as new. The problem is that, in their creative laziness, they are imposing a farce on the audience and the readers — at least on most occasions. What else can one say when today's film-makers decide to remake classics like Sholay or Zanjeer, to name just twoIJ The first attempt was an unmitigated disaster and the second has run into unsavoury controversies. The West presents a similar scenario. To take a recent instance, Oscar-winning actor Sandra Bullock ridiculed the trend of remakes and sequels (another way to re-do by a different name), when she said that the two sequels she did of the action-comedy film, The Heat, were “horrible”, and that she would do no more sequels of the film. There are honourable exceptions in India, such as Gangs of Wasseypur II and Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster Returns, but by and large, sequels and such other attempts have been, to use Bullock's words, horrible. Classics cannot and should not be repeated, and film-makers who believe that they are ‘paying a tribute' to the original by adapting it through a new interpretation, must know that the most respectable way to deal with classics is to leave them alone and not emasculate them.
The same holds true for the publishing industry. Suddenly, we have a legion of writers that has taken to rewriting or ‘taking forward' classic works of authors such as PG Wodehouse and Jane Austen. We have also had a recent instance of an author revive the evergreen Hercule Poirot of Agatha Christie, although Christie had put the fictional detective character out of business after she found him “insufferable”. Even the popular James Bond character and the reverential William Shakespeare have not been spared. The latter's Merchant of Venice is being ‘redone' to suit the political correctness of modern times. Author Sebastian Faulks recently completed a new James Bond novel and a story about the legendary characters of Jeeves and Wooster in Wodehouse's rib-tickling and satirical novels. But he too admits to unease in performing the task. He is, like Bullock, not a fan of remakes or rewrites. There is no need to ‘update' classics such as Emma and Pride and Prejudice. Books are written in a certain context and in the backdrop of a particular socio-cultural environment. Tampering with these elements destroys the very soul of the work. Imagine if somewhere to rewrite Munshi Premchand's Godaan or Srilal Shukla's Raag Durbari, or the works of Rabindranath Tagore and Saadat Hasan Manto! Wouldn’t that be atrociousIJ