On Mass Production...

Even though cricket writing doesn't really qualify as top drawer creative writing, it does suffer when an attempt is made to mass produce it.

Cricinfo, of late, has been a big culprit of trying to mass produce cricket articles. Here I am not talking about general match reports and bulletins. But rather about analysis articles that typically talk about a particular facet of the game or a player.

Take for instance, this article on VVS Laxman. Now that he has been dropped for a test, it was time to analyze Laxman as a player and his future. Dileep Premachandran (probably the best in Cricinfo's ranks) raises the now cliched "is it the end of the road?" question and rehashes some of Laxman's magical moments as a batsman. Absolute run-of-the-mill stuff with a set pattern - discuss the batsman's recent form, highlight his legend, discuss his age, close with the question.

In the last 6 months, I have seen atleast 3 or 4 articles by different Cricinfo writers on Ganguly, claiming that this is the "end of the road", "long kiss goodnight", "twilight zone" etc for the former captain. The point? While such articles coming from Dileep are barely readable, the ones from writers of lesser calibre are outright silly. I even start doubting if they were just pulled together by a computer that had a database of cricket stats and a dictionary.

Perils of mass production is all I can say.

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On a related note, we recently got Sun TV subscribed through a Dish antenna at home (an outright bad idea, in hindsight). There can be no better example than Sun TV Serials for the utter trash that can result when creative fields are subject to mass production.

So much so, that I even feel guilty of using the word "creative" and Sun TV in the same breath. Such is the quality of all their programs (have to reiterate - I say, ALL their programs). Two samples below.

In one of the too many mega serials (the rock bottom of Sun TVs products), the following scene -

Daughter comes back from College scared. Parents ask why. Girl explains that a few rowdy elements are chasing her every day on the road and she is afraid to step out of house. The father yells at the daughter for wearing indecent clothes (like the Salwar Kameez, which she is wearing in that scene) and "advices" that such a situation would not have come if only she wore a Dhaavani!

And no, I don't want to get started on critiquing this piece. You can do it yourself.

The second sample item is Sun TV news. Every darn day, there is a piece on the now infamous Paravai Kaaichal (bird flu). It ceased to be a news of any significance quite a while back I think - but then Sun News isn't really "News" is it?

Every day, this news item examines how the bird flu destroyed Chicken sales and is now totally eradicated and how chicken sales have really picked up. Obviously, this is a message for the ill-informed public to go buy more chicken. This advertisement reached its zenith when one of the interviewees in the news item proudly pronounced that since Tamil food uses a lot of masala and spices, even if the bird flu virus (or whatever else) was there in the bird, it will not affect the person who is eating it!

I don't want to say anything more.