Hipsters and horror movies

The last telegram by Indian Posts was sent about a month ago. There were massive articles filled with nostalgia by octogenarians and septuagenarians who had worked their entire lives in the telegraph office and the event of receiving one at their homes was of some significance, either positive or negative. Then I saw something really idio(syncra)tic. This was an actual article in some newspaper featuring the photographs of 20 somethings queued up to send a telegram on the last day of its operation. I was absolutely flabbergasted to see generations that have never used that service feeling nostalgic about it. Is it even plausible to understand the significance of something that has never played any role in their lives? Is it the era of intellectual hipsters? Do bloggers who do nothing but non-linearly rant also fall under the same umbrella? Jeez..

Every now and then I listen to some music on youtube, usually Indian classical. Often I commit the mistake of reading the comments. For the naive of the readers, there is a vast change in the paradigm of song and music rendition between the previous generation and the current. Here I'm using the term generation rather loosely with it meaning something on the lines of decades of their prime than anything else. So there is always this comment(s) that extols the virtues of the previous generation's musicians and calling the current generation artists hogwash. Unfortunately, feeding to my rage, these commenters also fall into the bracket of younger generation who have never heard the artists of the yesteryear in their prime. They could have only heard of them performances well into their 70s-80s, due to the lack of technological advancements before that. The only accounts of the artists in their young prime were probably passed down as fairy tales by their grandmothers. Some blogger writes about those artists from a modern day view point. I'm quoting from that blog. 

KVN showed me how you can create boring monotony by rendering almost all the rendition in the same vilambita kaalapramaanam, which lacked grip, tempo & excitement.

SSI showed me what having a good voice meant to the listener with his rather rough and unconditioned voice and also how raaga aalapana akaarams make or break the soothing effect it is supposed to provide (ex: instead of the usual na, tha dha ri na... he had a rather annoying "nghya nghya...")

MDR showed me, much like KVN, singing slow is not always the way to go as almost all his renditions were like a tortoise race. He had biological reasons why he had a 1/2 kattai shruthi but then will you accept it in a sports form if the athlete had a disability which makes him less capable than some one else?

MSS showed me that music without vyavahaaram is like coffee without sugar. It was like sitting in a plane that will never take off. And also how much on stage creativity adds value to a concert by demonstrating the lack of it!

GNB  showed me that it can be terribly annoying to race through all compositions at 100mph! Also when you sing brighas at machine tempo, your shruthi could go for a six.

Horror movies are one such kind whose success depends on doing the exact opposite of something that the other kinds of movies aspire to do. I recently watched a movie called 'The Conjuring' that is supposedly based on some real incidents investigated by the Warrens. Personally I thought it was a good subtle mix of two eras of horror movies. Coming back, as I walk into the theater I could hear a bunch of people saying that they weren't scared of horror flicks. Sure, if your last horror flick was the great art-pukedom of Phoonk. And then there are the girls in the theater, who kept providing me with the much needed background score for the movie. No, literally, background. They were sitting behind me and were producing sounds that I last heard in some Japanese tentacle art flick. And then there are the Ebert reincarnates whose reviews came out as the movie came out. There was almost a small betting racket on how the protagonist was going to be haunted. Then there was group that was planning to leave and decided to have one of those screaming contests to have their opinion passed onto the next person on when they had to leave. I guess, I should clarify at this instant, you know, for 'political correctness' that my issue is not how people perceive the movie but how their reaction to the perception dominates my movie watching experience more than the movie itself.

Let the hatred flow.