Cinema and Culture
Does (Indian) cinema shape our popular culture or merely reflect it? (You can write on cinema in general or Indian cinema specifically as per your choice)
Cinema, like other art forms, is highly correlated to culture. They go hand-in-hand. Both are dynamic. Let us first examine this through the sensitive relationship between crime films and American society.
The last few decades have been a field day for directors like Tarantino and their hyper-realistic movies like Reservoir Dogs, Hateful Eight, and Kill Bill. The use of humorously excessive violence (Mexican standoffs), revenge storylines, and intense dialogues have lent Tarantino an auteur status. However, the burning question is whether the depiction of gruesome violence in these films is the inspiration source for the mass shooters of frequent crimes in the US which (coincidently?) have also risen in the last few decades, or does Tarantino cleverly write movies based on violence (and its popularity) inherent in society, particularly amongst the youth who make up the majority of the film-going audience? This is similar to the age-old chicken-egg problem that has no answers to date.
The claim that crime as a genre in cinema causes crimes in society can be verified by studying the outcome of a random experiment, conducted by a team at Ohio University, which included 104 children aged 8 to 12 years who were tested in pairs. The result was as follows. The children who viewed a PG-rated movie containing guns played with a real gun longer and pulled the trigger more times than the children who viewed the same movie not containing guns. This illustrates that cinema shapes people and culture, for bad in this case. So, should the politicians and Hollywood together force Mr. Quentin not to make any movies further for the sake of humanity?
To answer the above question, we need to look at the true cause behind committing crimes. The rising economic inequality, poverty, and unemployment in the US with the advent of globalization and technological innovations, existing political scenario (the lenient gun control laws which enable easy access to guns), and the rise of violent video games, sports (like UFC, boxing, and rugby), music, books, television, paintings, etc are the key contributing factors, not cinema, towards propagating violence in society, which are the confounding factors in the Ohio experiment above. So, Tarantino’s movies merely reflect the already existing violent culture and not the other way around.
Now, let’s explore further how certain movies show us the key issues in society that all of us are not fully aware of. The film, Judas and Black Messiah brings the fight against racism to light, Moonlight explores the crucial theme of homosexuality, masculinity, and repression, Wonder Woman embraces female empowerment, Eagle in the Sky questions the ethics/impact of global warfare on commons, Big Short highlights the financial impact of the shortcoming of the global banking system, Death Proof shows the crimes against women, Perks of being a wallflower depicts the effects of mental disorders, and Say Anything demonstrates the beauty of loving relationships. All of these are the issues some or all of us experience in our life, and cinema plays its role as a mass medium to spread these.
Hence, we conclude that cinema is a mirror that reflects the underlying culture
