POINT OF VIEW Kunal BASU

Can marketing kill the arts?
If research could predict what kinds of cars we want, why couldn’t it anticipate the next literary masterpiece, KUNAL BASU questions

MARKETING is everywhere—from the most private to the most public of places, and increasingly laying its claim to the holy land of the arts. Before finding out where marketing might take the arts, let’s turn back to business to see where it came from.

In the 1970s, a profound shift occurred in the world of business. Till then, companies believed in the rather benign “product concept,” which translated to: If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

Experts developed new mousetraps to offer to the market. It was the world of the “backroom”: scientists, engineers and artists engaged in the solitary perfection of their craft.

Marketing, as we know it today, changed all that. In championing the “marketing concept,” it ridiculed the mousetrap makers. Who cares about a better mousetrap? How can you be sure that consumers would want to buy it? It encouraged starting from the outside—the consumers’ needs in order to please them in the end.

Standing between the makers and the buyers, the marketers discovered a role for themselves: the matchmakers. But the lure of marketing came from the promise of market research—a “scientific” process capable of predicting consumers’ needs and behaviours. Suddenly, everything seemed ripe for marketing—including the arts.

Are the arts different from cars and computers? Yes, if one were to subtract from it routine items of entertainment. Deriving its power from the power to surprise, they foster passion and wonder that is distinct from the instant gratification of daytime drama or a song contest.

Is it in marketing’s gift to anticipate surprises? Even diehard marketers would grudgingly admit that tangibles are better measured than intangibles let alone our appetite for a truly creative experience—where we consumers are most idiosyncratic, least articulate, constantly shifting and downright unpredictable. The best brief that a marketer could give to an artist would be no more than to be unconventional and creatively unique.

Marketers, in fact, have displayed staggering myopia with tangibles as well. The president of 20th Century Fox claimed notoriously in 1946: “Video won’t be around for more than six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box.” And as late as in 1977, the chairman of Digital Equipment, a marketing guru, took an astute view of consumer behaviour: “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” Decca’s rejection of the Beatles (“guitar groups are on their way out”) isn’t peculiar to arts marketing, but marketing.

Creativity in the arts can’t come from researching the consumers. But it can be fostered by others—the backroom appraisers, passionate reviewers, and eventually, the word-of-mouth endorsement from adventurous audiences.

The best of these—commissioning editors, gallery curators, music label scouts and agents—are often the unsung heroes, who climb the mountain of “marketability” in order to see an innovative project through. Relying on human judgement, that eternally fallible but irreplaceable quality, it is they who place the risky bets against the scientific odds of research.

The power of marketing, its real power, lies not in idea generation or even in market creation, but in market expansion for an idea that is hovering secretly and subconsciously at the edge of acceptance. Its calling is that of a populariser. The rest is its delusion.

Thus, the well-honed tricks of placement and distribution, promotion and tie-ins, can indeed stir up an audience that is late in getting to a new play, picking up that startling new novel, or trying out an unknown band’s CD. Its techniques of extending reach and awareness are well-proven, and as long as the cause is good, the effects can be beneficial to artists.

As a propagator, marketing is not hostile to the arts. If anything, it could be a nice complement, lending a push to lethargic public imagination. Its threat lies in its ambitious self-concept—that it isn’t simply a supportive function, but the raison d’être; more a grand philosophy than a set of techniques; the composer and the conductor, not simply the violinist. In a classic Harvard Business Review article titled “Marketing is Everything,” Regis McKenna claims: “Marketing will do more than sell. It will be the way a company does business.”

That way is the way of the tyrannical matchmaker, arranging a union between the artist and the audience, based on the measured needs of one and the formulaic creation of the other. It is the way of seeing a successful novelist as a “product” capable of laying a row of identical golden eggs, or remaking popular films at the expense of new screenplays. It is the philosophy of seeing all that is good in simply good consumption.

With so much in our landscape guided already by the marketing ethic, it isn’t far-fetched to imagine the spectre of marketing next stalking the arts. To counter it is to believe that art is enough for art’s sake, not the sake of market share; and combating the logic of repeat purchase for a “proven product.” It means, ultimately, standing up for the arts.
Unlike an arranged marriage, the creation and the appreciation of the arts is a spontaneous affair. Backstage orchestrations could kill the spirit, and end up wounding the actors. Perhaps, fatally so.

KUNAL BASU was born in Calcutta, India, but has spent much of his adult life in Canada and the U.S. He has taught at the McGill University in Canada and has been a Professor of Marketing at Templeton College, Oxford University, England. He has also acted in films in India and written a screenplay, Snakecharmer, as well as written and directed two documentaries. He is the author of three acclaimed novels, The Opium Clerk (2001), The Miniaturist (2003) and Racists (2006), he has acted in films and on stage, written poetry and screenplays. His first collection of stories, The Japanese Wife, was published by HarperCollins India in January 2008. His story, “The Japanese Wife,” has been made into a film by India’s celebrated director Aparna Sen.

Reproduced from the April-June 2008 issue of Quill magazine

Su AZIZ talks to Kunal BASU

WORTHY OF A TAGORE

Su Aziz spoke to Kunal Basu, the prolific Indian author whose work has been compared to that of Asia’s first literary Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore.

DID YOU KNOW that short stories have their origins in “oral story-telling traditions and the prose anecdote, a swiftly-sketched situation that comes rapidly to its point?”

To me, a book of short stories is the perfect weeknight read simply because it disciplines me to stop only when a story ends. Happily, this is rather quick when compared to a novel.

Now the million-word question is, just how different is it to write short stories compared to full-length novels?

As the author of a recently-published collection of short stories, Kunal Basu thinks there is no difference between the two.

“One needs the same resolve to begin and enjoy the same sense of euphoria when satisfied with one’s writing.

“Only short stories require more urgency in bringing matters to a close. I love to both read and write such stories. But I also like to hone my craft via a wide spectrum of writing, from screenplays and poetry to journalism and academic non-fiction.”

A professor of marketing at Oxford University, England, the 52-year-old father of one admits there is no trick or method when it comes to writing short stories. “They’re just exciting tales that one’s dying to tell others.” Sounds simple enough!

Having completed and published three novels, or as Kunal called them, “historical fiction“ (The Opium Clerk, The Miniaturist and Racists), his latest is a collection of short stories titled The Japanese Wife.

With a publisher for a father and an author for a mother, it was natural that Kunal took to writing. “I have, as far back as I can remember, always written. First in Bangla, which is my mother tongue, as well as in English.”

Kunal’s early writings were mostly poetry and literary essays. He only started writing novels about a decade ago. “Writing is my passion, something that I have to do every day. It is of the order of a grand obsession.”

He has also acted on stage and for film, but it is a minor interest, he said. “I started acting in Indian cinema, then did theatre, both in India and in Canada, where I lived for 13 years.”

He recently made a cameo appearance in The Japanese Wife, which has been turned into a movie by India’s celebrated director, Aparna Sen.

The Japanese Wife is a dozen short stories, including an intriguing love story: a marriage of many decades but one that was never consummated, fuelled only by old-fashion snail mail, the couple being separated by 6,500km of distance.

This curious story stemmed from Kunal’s travels through rural India many moons ago. “I heard about a village man who married a foreigner, which I thought rather unusual. Many years later, I wrote the story of “The Japanese Wife.”

“Stories are products of daydreaming and I am an avid daydreamer. A sentence overheard on the street, a news snippet or something innocuous could start off a chain of thoughts that lead to a story. People have asked me why a Japanese wife? I don’t know. The image of a simple Japanese woman just came to my mind.”

He cites the various inspirations for each of his 12 tales in the book. “The Grateful Ganga,” for example, is about a lover of Indian popular music. As a father, “The Pearlfisher” makes him wistful whenever he thinks about his daughter living in California. “Father Tito’s Onion Rings,” about a priest in Yugoslavia embroiled in a communal riot, is his way of giving vent to his drive for defending the downtrodden.

“I love travelling and so there’s a story about a dalang Yogya in the book, which always brings a smile to my face when I read it as it reminds me of a real-life dalang who had become my friend.”

Having taken over a decade to put pen to paper for these tales, Kunal said each story in this collection reflects to some measure the key preoccupations of his life during this period.

The most memorable comment about the book was when a reviewer compared the stories to those of Rabindranath Tagore.

“Worthy of a Tagore,” the reviewer wrote.

“I didn’t believe it for a moment, but it set my spirit soaring!” A compliment of the highest order, indeed.

The Japanese Wife the movie is due for release later this year.

Kunal voiced his admiration for its director. “I have seen a partly completed version and have been touched deeply. She [Aparna Sen] captured both the lyrical and surreal nature of the story. It is very funny and the music score is breathtaking, blending the Japanese koto and sakuhachi with Indian flutes.

“This is the first time that a Japanese actor has been featured in an Indian film and Chigusa Takako has given a stellar performance as have Rahul Bose and Mousumi Chatterjee.

“In many ways, this is a film for a world audience, not a film to be distributed abroad for the Indian diaspora.”

Today, between Oxford, writing and the myriad other creative things he is up to, Kunal still has time to read Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan, about the personal memoirs of a dalit (the “untouchable” class in India). “It is a disturbing and deeply touching book,” he said.

If he had one wish, what would it be? “That the goddess of literature would descend on me and remain with me forever.”

His books are selling at MPH Bookstores and other major bookstores.

Interview courtesy of the New Straits Times of May 31, 2008

AN INTERVIEW WITH KUNAL BASU

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
By AHNAF

Meet Kunal Basu, an author who writes about what he doesn’t know, and takes the reader along on his journeys of discovery.

FROM AFAR, Kunal Basu doesn’t look at all out of place in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur. You could easily mistake him for a homebred Indian professional even though the 52-year-old professor of marketing in Oxford was born and raised in Calcutta.

It’s only when I sit down with him for the interview that I notice anything different. For one thing, he doesn’t pepper his speech with “-lahs.” For another, he waits for me with decidedly un-Malaysian patience. There’s an air of benevolent dignity around him, as if he were a cross between Father Christmas and a Zen master—Buddha Claus.

This is his third trip to Malaysia and I ask him how he finds it.

“I’m an Asian man, I’m comfortable anywhere in Asia,” he says with a half-smile, though he denies being stereotyped as an Asian author. “If you follow my work, I don’t typically write about a certain kind of Asia or a certain kind of India.”

His first two novels, The Opium Clerk and The Miniaturist, are set in very different Asian contexts (in colonial and 16th-century India, respectively) while his third, Racists, is set in Victorian-era Africa, with “not an Asian character in sight.”

“I think I’m seen as an author of literary fiction, not necessarily as an author of Asian literary fiction.”

The 12 short stories in his most recent book, The Japanese Wife, are, however, almost all set in Asia, and took 10 years for Basu to write. The title story is being adapted for film by Bengali director Aparna Sen, and is being billed as a “modern-day fairy tale.”

It’s the tale of a shy Indian man and his Japanese pen pal, whose relationship deepens through letters until she proposes to him—and he accepts, despite their never having laid eyes on each other.

Call me sentimental, but I liked it. And I actually managed to read the other stories all the way through, too, which is unusual because I’m generally wary of Asian authors. Too many of their stories seem to wallow in an idealised past brimming with nostalgia, like a bowlful of stale, soggy noodles. Basu, however, doesn’t idealise much. He has a realistic way of bringing settings to life, warts and all.

Often, The Japanese Wife reads like a richly-textured travelogue covering places like China, Zurich, Indonesia, and, of course, India.

Though exotic, some of his stories are actually based on real experiences. “Lotus Dragon,” for example, is a bittersweet romance set in China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. “I was in China during the Tiananmen event and had to be evacuated,” he says without drama.

Certainly, his wide travels have helped him flesh out settings. “Travel is my addiction and I don’t want to go to rehab to get myself cured,” he says, in the off-hand manner of someone trotting out an old joke.

But he takes pains to stress the importance of research and imagination to writing, as well, especially since he often writes about places he’s never been to. The Opium Clerk, for example, is partly set in Kuching [Sarawak], which he’d never visited until after he wrote about it.

“It’s created out of reading some diaries, colonial diaries, diaries of visitors, and imagination.

“But bear in mind that researching for fiction is different from researching for academia. For academics, you want to research comprehensively … if you’re writing fiction, you shouldn’t be trying to do that.

“What I try to do is understand: what should I read at a minimum to fire my imagination? What can I read that will take me into a very different space, as if I was walking down the streets of a country that I’ve never been to? I think in writing fiction, imagination is a very important component.”

Whether he’s researching or actually writing, Basu confesses that, as long as there aren’t any classes, he spends 10 to 12 hours a day working on his fiction.

I’m incredulous: 10 to 12 hours? Really? He confirms it; and I think guiltily about the 10 to 12 hours a day I spend sleeping. Basu, with his untouched plain water in front of him, seems a model of authorial austerity, and I guiltily slurp down the last of my decadent caramel macchiato.

“I don’t have much of a social life,” he adds. “I don’t have much of a life outside my desk—but that’s what I like. Writing fiction is my passion in life.”

Even when he admits to hobbies like travelling and collecting traditional crafts, he rounds off smilingly with the declaration, “Nothing compares to the obsession of writing.”

What motivates him especially is writing about the unknown. “I’m not a person who likes writing about the familiar, what I know, what I’ve experienced; I want to write about what I don’t know, and in the process I want to discover it.

“So although my stories and plots are very different from each other, if there is one way to describe them, it’s that they are about encounters with the unexpected.”

He also says that he’d like to write a full-length novel in his mother tongue, Bengali. For now, however, he’s already hard at work on another English-language novel.

“It’s a contemporary novel, not a historical novel, set in contemporary India, in some of the most dangerous parts of India,” he says, remaining understandably tight-lipped about the rest.

But if The Japanese Wife and his novels are anything to go by, we can be sure to expect the unexpected.

Interview first published in The Sunday Star of April 27, 2008