Does cinema owe any responsibility to the society
I was watching an actors’ roundtable video hosted by Nikhil Taneja, and one of the topics they discussed was toxic masculinity in films. In the world of the arts, it is a common debate: Does cinema owe any responsibility to only show politically correct ideals?
Varun Grover says that the glorification and vilification of a certain behaviour should be in the film itself. It should not be that the filmmakers are explaining the counterpoint in interviews. About violent movies, he said that violence which is at a fantasy level, is not something that will influence people as someone slapping their partner. That is an easily imitable form of violence.
It was my semester one exams, and my roommate had come back after watching 3 Idiots. He had been so influenced by it that he did not study for the exam the next day. To him, engineering was futile and not his passion.
Indians got into bikes after Dhoom was released. No matter what, movies still have to show that smoking and drinking are injurious to health but don’t if there is violence.
So yes. People do get influenced by movies.
Abhay Verma shares a story about a man who has two sons. One of them grows up and to become a wife beater, whereas the other one does not. When asked, the first one said that he learnt if from his dad. The second one also said that he learnt it from his dad. Bascailly, you learn what you want to.
This also makes a lot of sense. After all, despite Darr separating the right from the wrong, some people wrote letters with blood, and there was an uptick in women getting blank calls.
So does cinema influence people or are we getting influenced by cinema?
Jaideep Ahlalwat makes a strong argument that cinema is a tiny portion of anyone’s life. You can’t put the responsibility of 140 crore people on Cinema. If someone gets influenced by cinema then that person already has those seeds in them. They just needed some excuse. Cinema is made from the society not the other way round. If we weren’t able to learn from Ramayana and Mahabharata, then no cinema can teach us anything.
Everyone has an inner compass, for some it aligns with the morally right, but some it doesn’t. But we can’t break it into a simple problem of what a person thinks in their core, there is a lot more to it. Your beliefs are just directions, you need to walk on the path and discover yourself.
Cinema may not change a person but if they are in the right direction, it can surely show them to the right path. And if they are in the wrong direction, then the wrong path.
There isn’t a single movie that changed me. But there are movies, which taught me something new, and reinforced my conviction in my beliefs. The latter is more important.
Of course, I am not saying that movies should only be about social causes. Just that they should consider that when telling stories. You can’t make a movie on Hitler, glorifying his acts.
*The quotes are not verbatim. Mistakes are not of the actors but my own.
