For a madly star-struck country, it is amazing how little intellectual respect we are willing to give our actors. If it is a profession, like many others, then the chances of highly intelligent or dumb people coming out of it are the same as in any other. Who hasn't met pathetic doctors, poor journalists, slimy lawyers and shoddy architects? But none of these professions has been branded as "dumb" as acting. That is a bit unfair.
Acting is a tough job. Try making love in front of a roomful of people who are running about their jobs, while you are semi-nude. Try playing alcoholic when you have never tasted liquor, or a fanatic when you are not even aware of your own religion. The Wolf of Wall Street or The Aviator meant months of reading and preparation for Leonardo Di Caprio. Dhanush, Amitabh Bachchan or Huma Qureshi, among the scores of talented actors India has, spend weeks and months getting into character. That requires patience, intellect and intellectual strength. Sure it pays well and is glamorous, but for the successful few. There is, however, no axiom that states that acting is for witless gorms. Why, then, do we treat our actors thus?
There are several reasons. One, of course, is the historical stigma that any performing arts attracts in India. About 100 years ago when cinema and later radio came in, it was difficult to get too many young women into the profession, so it depended on what you might call "dodgy people". Till a few decades back, being an actor was something that respectable people did not do. In spite of intelligent, talented actors such as Balraj Sahni, Shobhana Samarth (Kajol's grandmum) or Ashok Kumar, the profession never got respectability. It was rare for actors themselves to encourage their daughters to choose acting as a profession.
Over the years, second and third generations of educated, erudite filmi children - Soha Ali Khan, Farhan Akhtar, Kajol, among others - came into the fray. So did army officers' children, a whole cavalcade from middle-class and small-town India. As they started making it in films and television, the profession started coming into its own as a "respectable" career option. This coincided with a huge change in the business itself - as the industry corporatised and studios came into existence it has become a much better place in which to work.
But film media, which shapes perceptions about this profession, still focuses on the personal lives of actors not on the cinema or the commerce around it. Imagine if the business press were constantly revealing intimate details of the lives of, say, Sunil Mittal or Narayana Murthy. Since the focus, usually, is on how well or badly they run their companies, a Mittal or Murthy are glamorous but not "dumb".
In an ecosystem that insists on focusing on why Kareena Kapoor wore the same dress twice, this "dumbing" down is bound to happen. The odd business paper or a Shekhar Gupta kind of interview would be one of the few forums at which acting, actors and their craft are discussed with any depth. Watch some of Gupta's Walk The Talks with popular actors or Sreenivasan Jain's Bombay Talkies interviews on YouTube. Over 13 years of covering the sector, I have heard Amitabh, Shahrukh Khan and some of the other popular actors at public forums. Many, Khan and Amitabh for instance, are erudite, intelligent and speak very well. Khan's talk at Ficci Frames in 2010 was one of the best I have heard from anyone in the business. He was fresh from making My Name is Khan with (then) Twentieth Century Fox and shared critical insights on the working differences between Hollywood and India, and how these could be bridged.
To presume that Panag will make a bad politician because she is an actor doesn't seem right. N T Rama Rao in Andhra Pradesh and M G Ramachandran in Tamil Nadu were long-running chief ministers. Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the US are examples of long-running politicians. Earlier this year, Delhites chose a public-spirited IITian as their chief minister and he disappointed them. The chances are that Panag or other actors jumping in currently might do as good or bad a job as any one of them.
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