Friday, 14 December 2007

Godel and Bollywood

If the mathematician Kurt Godel were to be alive and by some miracle was watching the recent bollywood releases,he would be pleased. Kurt Godel was the first to disprove the whole premise of the rigorous axiomatic systems proposed by the Principia Mathematica. He did this by constructing self referential structures and proved that in any axiomatic system there are theorems which are true but cant be proven.The concept of self reference appears quite frequently in theoretical computer science. Another place where it finds mention , quite strangely is television and media.Both OSO and Khoya Khoya Chand have references to themselves or strictly speaking references to movies with the same name as themselves in the script. The idea can be used effectively to generate some good intelligent humor.The concept has been used before in subtle ways, for example in Seinfeld when Jerry and George try to pitch their show "Jerry" to NBC which is actually a reference to the real show and tells the story of how the show Seinfeld actually came into being. The co creator of the series Larry David , used the same concept to even more comedic effect in the series Curb your enthusiasm where he makes references to a character Larry David loosely based on himself.

The idea blurs reality and fiction and when used in comedy results in some humorous situations. Its good to see Hindi movies using this technique. How about a movie which actually tells the story of how it got made.

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