Keeping it ‘REEL’ as ‘REAL’
“From ancient cave paintings to modern scientific drawings; From documentation of human history to expressing collective emotions, artists are ingenious contributors crucial from the very beginning of our existence. On expanding human evolution from various perspectives “ART” is both personal and universal at the same time.”
As I began my speech, I knew the starting was cool and its almost enthralling to describe topics like “Art and Culture”, as these are parts of your life that you love and embrace.
Today, sitcoms and comedy show make us laugh, psychological thrillers help us see the planet from new perspectives, and historical films help us understand where we’ve come from as a people (nowadays historic real and reel comes out in huge contrast though). Every video and each film can reflect society and transform opinions.
These films, for an extended time, have been shaping our values and beliefs parallelly reflecting upon our diverse cultures. An honest example is when people copy fashion trends from movie stars and try to resemble their favorite rockstars and use figures of speech that are inspired by films in daily conversations.
While scrolling through some movie cringes and memes on my social media news feed, I got an instinct to read more about our movie culture and here I am to share a few of my takeaways.
THE BEGINNING
The early days of Indian cinema saw the sense of Indianness being propagated. While all the Afro-Asian nations, which were European colonies hooked into films imported from America, England or France, an organized movie industry was born only in India. The first sense of Indianness arose with Dadasaheb Phalke’s ‘Raja Harischandra’ (1913), being the primary Indian feature setting a trend of its own.
The Indianness eventually got louder with “sound”. Combining western technology with the aesthetic sort of India’s folk theatre, Alam Ara(1931) by Ardeshir Irani established a new formula for Indian movies, unique with the rest of the world by incorporating songs and dances as an integral part of it.
Though India might have been a late starter in terms of modern economic and social development, today India emerges as the producer of the largest number of films per annum. It is interesting to see how our masses are ruled by sentiments more than any economic or political logic and how we all bond over these sentiments despite the diversity in language, culture and region.
FREEDOM STRUGGLE AGAINST ORTHODOXIES
After the passing of the Sarada Act in 1929 (which prohibited child marriage), a replacement member was introduced to the Indian family — the ‘adult unmarried daughter’. This was a serious watershed of social change.
When Indian films began to portray contemporary Indian life, they came to be referred to as social films in contrast to the mythological ones or the folklore.
When films addressed boy-meets-girl stories or the drama of the perennial conflict between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, or advocated widow remarriages, they set a robust precedent for a population to look upon and were daring to question the orthodoxies and provoked change.
But the fact that from then to even now, cinema and media remain largely in the hands of the upper caste elites from big cities stay unhindered. The fate of Malayalam cinema’s first actress, P K Rosy, to have encountered the fury of many upper caste Hindus accompanied by death threats forcing her to even flee her state and end up being a woman in exile for the rest of her life, all because she supposedly committed a ‘crime’ by portraying the role of an upper-caste woman contrary to her real identity of being a Dalit, continues to be a visible scar on the face of the history of Indian cinema.
Back in 2017, The ‘Birmingham City University United Kingdom’ raised critical questions about the representation of the backward classes in the Indian film industry for being 0.1% despite the share of them in the Indian population being 85%. Let’s take Bollywood for instance, and the years between 2013 to 2015 saw 300 films being made, out of which 5 had Dalit heroes or heroines in them.
Right from movies like Acchut Kannya (1939) which told romance between inter-caste couples to Article 15(2019) which talks about caste-discrimination, the Dalit characters got depicted based on a ‘Harijan’ understanding of scheduled castes, which comes out of a Gandhian framework instead of a ‘Dalit’ understanding, where the Dalit himself is given agency to fight and win his struggle , which stems from Phule-Ambedkar perspective.
However, there have been changes with this regard by a handful of movies like Court (2014) through which filmmakers portray Dalit characters prominently in their films, addressing Dalit concerns through the Phule-Ambedkar-Periyar perspective.
NATIONALISM — SUBTLE AND CALM
Throughout history, audiovisuals were used for socio-political and economic interests. Leaders such as Adolf Hitler, successfully used films as propaganda tools during World War II, showing the power of films to even cause a revolution.
With then existing strict political censorship, Indian filmmakers avoided direct nationalist themes but often showed their inclination incidentally and subtly. There came portraits of Gandhi, Nehru, Rajaji or Netaji, and infrequently Marx, hanging within the living rooms of the ‘heroes’ showing the affiliation to the national struggle by the filmmakers. People singing ‘Door Hato aye Duniyawale, Hindustan Hamara Hai,’ the famous song from the film ‘Kismat’ (1942), happened to reflect the same nationalist sentiments.
The hero of J.B.H Wadia’s “Amar Raj” dethroning a tyrannical king and declaring democracy, instead of taking over the throne and declaring himself a winner was an example of how historical, folklore and mythological films can share a message monumental in itself.
Portraying the sufferings of widows and chastising Brahmin orthodoxy, K Subrahmanyam, through “Balyogini” and “Seva Sadhanam”, attempted for movies based upon Gandhian ideologies and had to endure bans by the British Government for his political content supporting the Indian National Congress.
More often than not, films produced after independence reflecting the glory of the heroism of the nation during the freedom movement are classified in popular perception as ‘films of the freedom struggle’. But the fact that film contributions strong enough to influence social conventions also occupy a seat on their own to this perception is a fact not to be missed.
LET’S TALK PRESENT
Now that I have given a few examples and instances of films where we challenged societal norms, the people who say “Movies are to be seen as movies” and “If these movies are problematic then what about random movies on wars and other forms of violence” to sound ‘cool’ in a social circle often need to overlook the fact that we sleep in a society that has more or less made it clear that murder or shooting someone point-blank are punishable offences.
While aware of the fact that rare instances of people being inspired by movies to do violence and robbery exist and not all punishments could be enforced, we are aware that murdering someone after watching, say, The Godfather, or dealing in drug trafficking after watching Narcos, will probably put us in trouble.
This is because these are cases quite cut and dried in terms of unacceptability and therefore its depiction on the screen becomes justifiable.
But does that very same justification hold good when it involves a scene depicting a girl followed home from college involving actions absolutely against her will?
It feels fine at first look to a majority who read this because we have romanticized stalking, and how that is almost an integral part of Indian movies of the romance genre. We still hold the record for the longest run Bollywood movie for the cult classic DDLJ, one admired and appreciated by a majority of us, where critical views might change your perspective on the same. Being forced to do things beyond consent seems fine to a wide set of the audience unless and until the issue rests with an acid attack or domestic violence of grave consequence putting life at risk to the main character.
This is precisely the reason why “romanticized” depiction of socially regressive elements become problematic, because our society remains at a stage where large parts of it still believe that sort of behaviour is “acceptable” and “adjustable”.
For instance, a movie about chauvinism doesn’t need to be chauvinistic. We as audiences welcome more such films on existing regressive elements of society because that’s the way forward to deepen our conversation about how art influences life and life influences art. What comes out condemnable is to parade a movie as something that it’s not.
END NOTE
As I begin to conclude with this topic of hot discussion and debate, I realize this piece of writing had pointed out bits and bytes from a myriad of things art as a medium offers to the world. While acknowledging the presence of multiple perspectives, for a filmmaker who makes a movie as well as for a viewer who watches the film, ‘what fits the mainstream’ is often something that relies on a whole system upon which the industry thrives.
The positive note in today’s global world is our understanding of these components to be existing within our society and the need to open up on these. Therefore, a call for a change gets easier and stronger. The way we find ourselves today looking back to some films/books/memes/songs and say “Even though back then I enjoyed and felt okay, not anymore” is indicative of how we are being open to learning, unlearning and relearning.
When recently released films like Paava Kadhaigal(2020) powerfully depicted and questioned different forms of honour killings, and The Great Indian Kitchen(2021) served an unsavory tale of sexism and patriarchy, we as the audience are left in awe and admiration to the scope and scale of action the medium of cinema offers to the world.
Let’s keep this conversation moving with constructive criticisms and appreciation of positive changes. Be it me who wrote this or you who may or may not have found it relatable to the way I contemplated this topic. These are conversations that matter.
“If sharp criticism disappears completely, mild criticism will become harsh. If mild criticism is not allowed, silence will be considered ill-intended. If silence is no longer allowed, not praising hard enough is a crime. If only one voice is allowed to exist, then the only voice that exists is a lie.”
— Zhang Xuezhong
Attaching hereby a few relevant articles:
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