There is as much logic in your argument as in a typical Tamil movie. If you didn't get it, I meant, not that much.
Let's start at the beginning. My comment regarding the selection of national award for best actor was: Was it politics or was it well deserved? This was not an aspersion on the abilities of all Tamil born. Voting for Vijaykant not withstanding, I know not all of them are complete morons. One constantly hears that Tamil people in general and Tamil cinema in particular haven't got the recognition they deserve. If one were to accept the supposition that politics played a detrimental role in the national award chances of Tamil cinema greats in the past, is it unfair to question if the award was a consequence of a rigged selection process. Or is it political conniving only if we lose and well deserved when we win? Is it discrimination only when it favours somebody else? And is it unfair to ask that question given that the report also included this in the brackets - "son-in-law of Rajnikant". Are you claiming favoritism doesn't exist at all or merely that it doesn't exist in the national awards committee?
I need not repeat here the already debunked myth that we have suddenly learnt to make better movies in the past decade. The proportion of good films have remained pretty much constant, at around 3-4 films a year as you put it. There is nothing to indicate that we live in some golden era. And 4 films out of 100 is not defensible.
Oh, btw, questioning the productivity of Tamil cinema doesn't make me a stooge of Hollywood. Why would you even bring the productivity of Hollywood into the conversation? Tamil cinema's failings are its own. It is not caused by Hollywood. Bad cinema is bad cinema, no matter from where. Unless your argument is that no film industry can ever produce more than 4 good films a year, I am going to consider that a non sequitur. Also, Tamil cinema cannot aspire to use Hollywood as its business model. It is regional, with a limited language-specific audience. Try French or Korean film industry next time if you want to make a comparison.
And you didn't really mean that quality of work cannot be measured, right? Because last I checked there was Quality Assurance and Quality Control in almost all industries, where they use calculations, not always the brutal ones either, to define and quantify "goodness" and "acceptable standards". Why would you think the film industry is exempt from such measures? Have you checked Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic? They use numbers based on critics' ratings and reviews. And oh! it avoids subjective biases by using weighted factors. Is it infallible? No. But it sure separates the wheat from 'The last airbender'. Ironically, a bunch of people sat in a room together and decided that X was the best. I mean, if quality of work, this being an artform and all, cannot be determined, then what the hell were they doing giving out awards.
If you were to argue that it does not make business sense to make good movies, I'll totally accept your premise. One could perhaps even argue that productivity, in the context of Indian cinema, is not measured by the number of films of good quality (as assessed by an independent panel of experts or a national awards committee), but by a more desirable metric, *kaching* the box-office collections. But if you argue that "good" movies don't exist and that one is same as the other, then it is disingenuous, to say the least. Admit that a quality film culture is not going to happen because of business reasons. There is no market for meaningful cinema. Period. And you know what would change that; us. The film industry is a service provider and if the customer is satisfied, there is no need for them to improve. Why would they?
I mean if we stopped worshipping mediocrity, then perhaps, just maybe, they may feel compelled to make movies that don't leave you wishing to gouge your eyes out. Wishful thinking, perhaps. But the undeniable fact is that our best is not good enough. We could live in denial of it like we do with athletics and pretend to be content with what we have. Or we could stop the parochial chest-thumping and actually do something. No pressure.
