The Great lollywood teen movie

Every year, a spate of teen movies are released in Hollywood. Set on campus, most of them are coming of age movies, mostly from the male point of view -- of late, the more gross, the better -- American Pie, Dude Where's My Car, for example. There was even a spoof Not Just Another Teen Movie, using all the stereotypes of the teen movie: the jock, prom queen, ugly girl, cheerleader, nerd, and so on.
In Pakistan, almost every story has some part of the hero-heroine flirtation and a couple of group songs set in a college campus. But that's just a take-off point, for what is to follow -- revenge, romance, family drama, whatever. There has been no memorable youth movie that covers every aspect of the growing up. Just showing the campus in the background to show some sort of upbringing is just not enough, they may scratch the surface, but the definitive Youth film is yet to come. Even if we look towards Bollywood, that unfortunately Lollywood's greatest inspiration in coming up with some original plots, then we must try to look at a series of movies in the previous one year like Ishq Vishq, Style, Yeh Kya Ho Raha Hai and Raghu More Bachelor Of Hearts. Filmmakers in Bollywood are waking up to the potential of the teen market now and designing films for them. Unfortunately, they are abysmally poor copies of the worst kind of cheap and exploitative Hollywood teen flick but still a stylistically superior but otherwise superficial Dil Chahta Hai changed the trend of the market with technically strong and visually stunning movie. It seems that Lollywood has never thought of giving any importance to the type of movie set in the backdrop of a campus, as either they find it too childish or too mature or feel threatened about the viewer ship. It seems really odd that after so many decades film makers haven't been able to come out of such odd rust topics that literary no novelty left in them. Even in the late 70's, if ever the college was touched then it was to show a trip of college girls going to some northern areas and falling in love with a group of other college boys, a perfect backdrop of hero meeting his dream lady and then story as usual takes the same sloppy turn.

Then again, the type of teen movies that Bollywood and Hollywood have made show the teens having a completely distorted picture of what the real college life is. Real teens normally are not preoccupied with sex all the time and don't spend all their time chasing girls -- or boys, as the case may be. They did plenty of other fun stuff too. No film, for instance, has captured the funky, innovative and enterprising ambience of the college fest. In America, teens have a different lifestyle -- cheerleaders and football jocks are a quintessentially Yankee phenomenon. Indian as well as Pakistani colleges have their own 'types.' While here teen may also wake up to raging hormones and sexual anxiety, our society is a little more conservative. Or let's say hypocritical, more so when it comes to women.



The Pakistani teen caught up in a rigid educational system and rapidly changing social norms, is concerned with marks, admissions, careers, and future, in spite of the supposed MTVisation of our society. Then there is the generation gap, peer pressure, class and status-linked friction, also sexual doubts, image problems, cultural confusion, the classic nerd-vs. -Cool thing, and a whole youth subculture, which our films have not even touched upon. Bollywood's Dil Chahta Hai was cool, urban, chic -- Hum hain naye, andaz kyon ho purana provided an anthem -- but it existed out of an identifiable social milieu. Rich kids who can afford to wear trendy labels, hang out at cool spots, holiday abroad, drive hot wheels, flaunt gizmos, easily attract the opposite sex and stand to inherit family businesses, would have no problems bigger than romantic ones! So, the crux of the whole discussion is that we must have some sort of teen movie that must not be that unreal in which their skewed focus be on just the sexual fantasies of young men or on the gangster duffer whose only dream is to patao rich girls. Most of the time, when we talk about the college life, the only thing that the directors and writers is either a perfect background for the meeting of boy and girl or making fun of silly professors or handicapped people and humiliating girls. Today's teens are smart, well informed, focused. Some of them are socially committed and almost all are career oriented. Romance and sex is just one aspect of their lives, not an overwhelming obsession. There is the Great Lollywood Teen Movie just waiting to be made. It can be funny yet deal with relevant issues, entertaining but not empty headed, visually exciting but not a straight lift from Mohabbatein-fake. And hopefully not sexist. Who will take up the challenge when there are a variety of Hollywood films just there to be picked and 'adapted'?