CINEMA AS A MEDIUM OF CHANGE IN SOCIETY

Cinema is a mirror that can change the world

Hi Guys!! Happy New Year Everyone! We have entered into yet another year with lots of hope and new energy and new resolutions. So, I thought why not talk about a topic that’s not just trending right now but brings with it a lot of emotions like hope, the taste of success as well as failure, tears etc. I have chosen this topic not just keeping in mind that we actually won a Golden Globes Award and managed to get an Oscar Nomination but to understand and talk about the portrayal of Cinema in this modern era. So what is the 1st thing that comes to your mind when I say the word Cinema? A Good Story Perhaps but my question is do we really understand and see what goes behind the making of a movie? When I saw RRR making it big on such a big platform I had this really weird thought that we all do enjoy when the movie as a whole gets its share of awards, IMDB ratings, and appreciation but when the movie doesn’t receive any attention and doesn’t make it to the limelight we tend to criticize it very easily and don’t consider the hard work of the actors, director and the whole team. We tend to learn a lot from a good movie which helps us in changing our outlook, perspective towards life, and what not.

I wouldn't consider myself some crazy Bollywood Fan but then I wouldn't deny the fact that Bollywood has its own charm. In fact, it's not just Bollywood that has managed to leave a deep impression on me, there are certain English Films that I can still watch any number of times. For example, Titanic is one such movie that I can watch on any day...even on a working day as well. Then there are those black-and-white Charlie Chaplin Movies that were full of comedy. And how can we forget the Harry Potter Series which is still a feeling of Nostalgia among we 90s kids.

When we talk of India what comes to our minds is Bollywood and Bollywood has managed to grab eyeballs not just in India but in other countries overseas as well. But it would be really unfair to just keep speaking of Bollywood and forget regional language movies in today's Era with RRR bagging an Oscar nomination. Nowadays when we speak of Indian Cinema as a whole it's not just Bollywood, it's all the states combined and its artwork put on the big screens for people to watch. Cinema is an art as far as I believe. It's not just a solo effort but a team effort. So many people's hard work goes behind making a film.

With changing times people are choosing a good story and acting over anything else when watching a movie. South movies have been making it big nowadays. For example, we have KGF - Yash's brilliant acting skills and of course his personality that manages to make everyone go crazy. Then we have Kantara where Rishabh Shetty was the catch. Then there's RRR which is still managing to stay on top of the news. Having spoken of these brilliant pieces of artwork in the form of a cinema put together for us to watch and cherish I can never stop talking about my favorite set of movies. I grew up watching Kal Ho Na Ho, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Chori Chori Chupke Chupke, Sholay ( managed to watch it in the Lockdown by the way), Mujhse Dosti Karoge, Hum Saath Saath Hain, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, and the list is endless. I can watch these films any number of times and any day. Whenever I am feeling low I switch on any of the old Hindi movies on any of the OTT platforms and cheer myself up. So Cinema is not just box office numbers or a critic's review but it's a feeling in itself. It influences our brains in a way that we even don't know its effect until we have seen it ourselves. By the way thanks to the OTT platforms where I can just watch any movie be it old or new anywhere.

Today, let’s just talk about Cinema from a different perspective.

Let’s start with RRR which has been the most liked, appreciated, and watched movie of 2022 not just for its cinematography but for its music as well. RRR’s win at the Golden Globe Awards this year was a proud achievement for every Indian because this award put the Indian cinema as a whole on the world map. So let’s understand the journey of Cinema and its impact on us from a different angle.

I am speaking about a strong word called, “Inspiration” which goes with “Creation” and “Sharing”. So it could be the end, it could be finished. I could be like “I am going to retire” but that doesn’t happen. So what keeps me going? Its motivation, inspiration, and desire of creating. Well, it hasn’t stopped. So we don’t know exactly. But what I know is that desire is the essence of life. Inspiration is the essence of creation. So how does it come? You know it can be vague things invading the brain. It could be some thoughts and sometimes it's just and emergency.

Power of imagination: Freedom in creation. That’s what is art and a movie is a beautifully presented artwork in the form of visuals that has the capacity to change your thought process entirely.

Films have the capacity to change the way people perceive issues. An effective storyteller speaks to our emotions, elicits empathy and compassion, and forces us to look at things differently. It could change lives. I believe cinema can play a very positive role in changing and molding society in a positive direction.

Can cinema cause social change? I believe it can. While it may not effect sweeping social changes, it has the power to tell stories and even plant images in your head. Storytelling is something that has existed since time immemorial and you know that stories have been an extremely important way of delivering thoughts and ideas. History is peppered with examples. You have the Bible, The Gita, Quran, and Ramayana. These are all great stories. Take it onto the battle of Kurukshetra. You have a blood-strewn battlefield. You have brothers fighting each other. You have Arjuna – a truly cinematic moment – putting an arrow into his bow, being about to unleash it, overcome by anguish. And boom! We have the concept of Dharma. So, stories have continuously done this, they have used imagery to get ideas across.

The difference between cinema and most of the earlier forms of storytelling is very simple: early forms were a 2-step process. So, when someone told a story to another person which was the earliest form, a verbal form – the listener had to listen and then form an image in his or her head. We moved to books. I see Paula Hawkins there, that’s what she does for a living. She puts words on a page, a reader reads it, and forms an image. The drama took it one step further: tried to eliminate some of those things but still, the person had to visualize the place. And finally came movies. Today, as we know it, by and large, it’s the most important form of storytelling because it works with the way our brain is wired. We like images, we think in images; off the ground.

We are a nation of movie buffs. So this is very relevant to think and analyze how cinema influences society and how society influences cinema. Cinema is a kind of synthesis of so many arts. It has literature, visuals, music, acting, and dancing. Every form of art somehow or the other contributes to the cinema but does it reflect society? Does it reflect the aspirations and hopes and dreams of society, their apprehensions and hurts and bruises? I believe that even mainstream cinema which has no claim over reality does that. One can ask that if films are not realistic how can they portray or reflect the truth of society? You know commercial cinema has its own language like dreams have. You know when we sleep all the parts of our body are functional except for our brain. Brain functions in a different manner because if it keeps on functioning the way it functions when we are awake how will we sleep. So it has a trick. It changes the language and instead of thinking sharply it starts working in dreams. Now dreams don’t come from Mars and Moon but from the realities but they turn into symbols and if you tell your dream to any psychologist, he or she will be able to analyze and tell you why you are seeing the dream and why you have seen the dream. In the same way, in Cinema if we look at it carefully then as a matter of fact in light of the list of the heroes or the villains or the heroines, the characters, you can write the socio-economic political history of this country of the last 70 years and more.

As a matter of fact, if you remember in the 40s who was a hero? Devadas was the symbol, the personification of the funeral system that was breathing its last. There even a lover, even a rebel could not think to rebel against the parents, against the establishment. So that anger was directed towards self and there was a glorification in that society for self-destruction. Then the world changed and then came the time when we got independence and we were hopeful and happy and we thought everything is going to be fine and right and that happiness is just around the corner and there are wonderful days ahead of us and then we had a rebel star. The rebel star that we saw later, the rebel image that we saw later you know in the 70s. This rebel star was different. This rebel star had no problems with society, with the economic or social system because this rebel star was hopeful. The only fight he had won was with the feudalistic system of his or her own family. This star for the 1st time unlike Devadas, started telling the parents, the mother or the father or the grandfather that he will marry so and so and won’t marry so and so. That was a rebellion but then after a while, the dream shattered. Society realized especially the younger generation that things are not hunky dory, happy days are not here, and so on and so forth. This disillusionment which ultimately came to her 70s created the angry young man. This was for the 1st time a vigilante, a man who had lost because society had lost trust in the institutions. That was the time when extra-constitutional forces were rising when decisions were being rejected and so on and so forth and that was a time that you saw on the screen an angry young man has come but how long you can remain angry? So ultimately you were tired of anger and comes cynicism. Then you see a villain who was once upon a time the villain, the Thakur, the zamindar when we had the remnants of the feudal system. Then with urbanization, the villain became the capitalist, the mill owner because that was the time of socialistic pattern of society and then you see that as urbanization became denser and denser the villain was the slumlord or the urban gangster, and lo and behold within few years this urban gangster became the hero that tells something about the morality for the society. Then after that, the villain was the policeman, the politician which was unimaginable in the 40s or 50s because we used to respect political leaders but in the 80s the villain was the politician, the policeman and in the 90s for very obvious reasons the villain became the Pakistani terrorist and then we got tired of him also. The law of diminishing utility was applied to him.

Look at the women characters “Main Chup Rahungi” was a film and Meena Kumari and Mala Sinha’s of the world who would cry at the drop of the hat. Their husbands would go to the kotha to listen to the mudra and they will sit in the temple and sing bhajans for the long life of the husband and so on and so forth. Now she is rejected. She is gone. Society is aware that she is no longer a currency but she is not on the screen also. You see it is not a one-way traffic. It is give and take. What happens that there are some they think but they can’t counterplay, they fantasize but they can’t visualize, they imagine and desire but they can’t dream. The cinema somehow instinctively understands what they are looking for and when the guess is right the film offers an icon, a symbol, a narrative, a character and the audience says this is what we were looking for and has the best. Obviously, change is constant and that’s why the hero, heroine everybody changes. You see you used to have Mona Darling, Rita, Julie. Wherever they are gone, they are no longer in the friend's roles anymore because the heroine used to be the pativrata, sati savitri. At that time some hero or villain needed somebody like Rita and Miss Mona also but then our Heroine became Miss Mona and society accepted that. So now we don’t need those vamps and all of it is happening in society and cinema is only reflecting it. Then cinema gives you the image and you take that image and send a stronger message to society and so on and so forth.

You will notice that the protagonists of Hindi Cinema are no longer working person or poor person. He doesn’t come from the working class. In the 40s or 50s or 60s or 70s you may not agree with the intellectual level of those films but who is the hero? A Rickshaw Walla, Taxi Driver, Farmer, Mill Worker, Clerk, School Teacher, Lawyer, and Doctor but now our Protagonist doesn’t work. He lives in a palatial house and when he steps out he is in Switzerland because if he will walk on the streets of India some poor person may come into the frame and spoil the party. So what has happened is on one hand we are achieving variety and on the other hand at the cost of certain realities. Society is economically divided. So we are gaining sophistication, smartness, and wellness at the cost of honesty and depth and it is coming from the audience. Life offers you packages and in every package, you will have something good and something bad. Because there was hardly any industrialization so how could you be in the middle class? Only people who are lawyers, university professors, teachers, doctors, and civil servants. These are the people who were the only middle-class people. So they were necessarily educated but when industrialization happens it creates a lot of ancillary. These ancillary – I will suppose somebody is making a bicycle so you say okay you make the tube. This main factory doesn’t produce everything. They give small contracts to different people, smaller people. Now, these people are technicians, these people have learned at the job but they may not be necessarily educated. So industrialization creates a middle class that is not necessarily educated.

Communalism was not invented by the 80s. It was always there but it was never ugly or unaesthetic as it was in the 80s cinema always had made good and bad films but these were the dark ages of cinema. In the 40s and 50s, it was not possible and you could not imagine that Sarkaye Liyo Khatiya would be a super hit in the 50s. It’s the same thing but things are changing. The next generation and the next generation that is coming are more sensitive and more receptive. Their antenna is at the right place. Now we can see that we have crossed Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kal Ho Na Ho, Pyaar Ho Gaya, and so on. Now the films that are coming are putting forward a stronger message for society to take in. The films are getting closer to reality. Now films are achieving certain depth, certain sensitivity and I am extremely hopeful and proud of this generation which has come now and things will become better and better because for them it is no achievement, they have all the material things around them and they have the facility. For their parents or grandparents, it was energy but maybe it was an achievement for me but not for the upcoming generation, they take it for granted and now they are looking around. They are people with much better values, much better aesthetics, and morality and that is why I believe that the Indian mainstream cinema's future is very bright. Societies will see good films and will keep asking for better.