WE ARE SO CHARACTER-LESS While Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Superman rule, desi cartoons fall by the wayside For someone used to seeing people queue up so much and for so long only before an impending fuel hike, the serpentine lines at the recently held D23 Expo at Anaheim, California, was a pleasant surprise. The D23, organised by Walt Disney, is the big daddy of cartoon expos and this year thousands of fans from 21 countries converged at the venue for the mega event taking place after two years. Men, women and children dressed as Peter Pan, Little Mermaid and other popular comic heroes waited hours to be the first to rush in when the gates opened. But the startling enthusiasm for the funnies in a foreign land had me thinking: Do we have such characters in India who can evoke equal passion? And do we have fans with matching fervour? The answers are a little tricky. The success of many foreign characters in India testifies to fans’ passion about comic stars; Mickey Mouse, for instance, has featured in everything from pencil boxes to wristwatches. It’s a different story, though, when it comes to indigenous characters. We often draw a blank. Do we have home-grown characters with pan-India appeal? I have been a cartoonist now for over two decades, but i still cannot come up with even a handful of names. If one goes by sheer visibility, maybe the aging Maharaja of our national airline and the impish girl selling butter with clever one-liners can make a case for themselves. But they would be more in the realm of advertising than comic books or strips. That leaves us with R K Laxman’s Common Man, the closest anyone has come to being an all-India favourite, someone who thousands looked out for every morning in The Times of India’s pages as he silently observed the vagaries and variety of our social and political life since 1951. Yes, attempts have been made in the past. One can think of several brilliant creations that had the potential to give Mickey and Donald a run for their money. Like the moustachioed Chacha Choudhary with henchman Saboo in tow – a perennial north India favourite. Or Dabbooji, for that matter. To be fair to the creators, however, it is next to impossible in a country like India, with multiple languages, cultures and social contexts to have an indigenous star that connects with one and all, makes everyone laugh. A Gujarati joke may be completely lost on a Naga, a Tamil wisecrack on a Kumaoni. Importantly, most linguistic communities already have their folk icons. Another factor has been persistence and longevity. You don’t see much of Chacha these days and Dabbooji has disappeared. Contrast this to Disney taking almost a century to build up its characters into the global brands they are today. They have a pervasive presence now in comic books, films, games, merchandise, theme parks and companies like Pixar, Marvel and Lucas films. They are as popular in Japan as they are in Jordan. All this is a lesson also in brand management. Iron Man and Spiderman are billion-dollar industries in themselves. We, too, have been taking baby steps through animated characters like Bal Ganesh, Chhota Bheem and Bal Hanuman – drawn from our huge repertoire of mythology. And now Indian audiences can even look forward to a desi celluloid brand in Krrish. But, clearly, we have a long way to go. A strong imagination, conscious effort on detailing and quality backed by an equally robust marketing and branding effort that is sustained year after year can push us to create world-class cartoon heroes with their own pan-Indian touch. It is not that we lack a sense of humour. What was it again about Rajini being so fast that he always arrives yesterday? Yes, that, and the fact that the Union government quietly pays him a tax for just living in India. -TOI
Posted on: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 06:06:31 +0000
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