Page Three syndrome

The Hindu : Magazine / Lifestyle: "WHEN a people are able to mock the cream of their society and when no censorship affects the laughter that this satire produces, we are free. 'Page 3' is a liberating movie because it allows us to unleash our venom at the sheer fluff of empty-headed hedonism that consumerism creates. There are no winners in this film, only losers. It is stunning to see Mumbai's beautiful people turned in the space of two hours into ugly, pock marked, uncouth vulgarians. The party people, desperate to form an alliance with a section of the media that sells the vacuum in their minds as gold, are betrayed by their own party poopers.

Director Madhu Bhandarkar's party pooping 'research' methodology was simple. He went to Mumbai's parties � the ones that page 3 columnists and photographers were paid to attend, the ones about which prominent pictures in the next morning's city supplement have to be bought. Soon he was figuring out the shifting equations; the power principles of publicity, the unwritten code between a beautiful socialite and a middle class journalist, and above all, the determination of the newspaper's reader as the lowest common denominator of sales and of taste.

The movie "Page 3", and more vitally, the commercial success of this film, is dramatically important because it brings back cultural criticism to centre stage. It takes a page 1 look at page 3 and dismisses it as the bunch of whopping lies it is.

No one is spared. We the readers, the consumers of page 3, we the audience, the watchers of the movie "Page 3", we the media, with the couldn't care less attitude to what is sacred in the free press, a press that we have nurtured for 60-odd years of our independence to keep free. At the end of the movie you sit and watch the credits, sick to the pit of your stomach at the cultural nadir to which we, the public, have reached.

Robert Altman's "The Player" (1992) tore into the Hollywood system and exposed the hypocrisy of big players in American entertainment. Michael Moore in "Fahrenheit 9/11" (2004) ripped open the alliance between the military industrial complex, oil and construction conglomerates and media houses in the post-9/11 U.S.

Of course, "Page 3" takes a much smaller subject in scale and volume, the Mumbai upper crust, but does as skillful a job of satirical exposure. The making and distribution of such a film in India, particularly in the context of the contemporary entertainment world of Hindi cinema, is a heartening and positive sign of a free and mature society. "