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Films as a median have never really been seen as a platform that educates people but rather stays true to it’s industry name, which is the “entertainment industry”. Film makers are often not bothered by whether their films appeal to the classes because the real money making gimmick lies with masala films that attract the masses.
I personally feel that India as a nation has a huge number of movie going audience but we’re the most pretentious movie going audience at it too. I say this because while on one hand, we go on youtube and see trailers of movies that talk about socially regressive issues, on the other hand we’d prefer watching a masala film of Rohit Shetty any day over a movie made on Sati or bride buying - because the latter two issues don’t promise a happy, go lucky experience.
The concern I’ve with correlating films in India with their impact on social regressive issues is that 1) we don’t give such movies a chance. Mostly, these movies on social regressive issues are low budgeted, with no star power (rightly so) and therefore they don’t find an audience. Result is, that the director and the acting team fails to continue making such movies. Leave apart an impact on the society, the movie doesn’t even get a justified audience for viewing.
In case of big starer movies on social regressive issues like how Taare Zameen Par dealt with Dyslexia and Padman with lack of sanitary pads for women in rural India - these 2 movies definitely going people talking. But, another major problem of we as a movie going audience is that the impact of movies on us is short lived.
When Taare Zameen par came, Indian parents started to question the Indian education system and whether it in-fact failed to gauge the issues of young students and pitted them as ‘different’ to others and impacted their social skills - instead of understanding the real problem. Media started to question how students committed suicide after poor performance in board exams, even though they were dyslexic and in some cases, their own parents didn’t know or care.
But, here we are 10 years down the line and the discussion has stopped. The impact is no more to be seen. Therefore, in spite of having a movie take up social regressive issue of mental health - we’ve seen no impact because we as Indian audience have forgot.
In case of Padman, the movie aptly highlights how in a modern Indian society, we still live with a primitive mindset. Yet, the movie can never change things completely because we still are a society wherein the rural class (which makes for the majority of the Indian population) will never watch this movie because they feel it’s against their “standard” of viewing. Why would they watch a movie that talks about women’s periods and sanitary pads? And this is exactly why films in India on social regressive issues fail because the part of the population that is the most socially regressive refuses to give these movies a chance - leave apart allow an impact to be created.
At last, we must also talk about how films in India never actually become socially relevant because the censor board doesn’t allow them to. A movie like Fire suffered huge backlash when it came out, primarily because it addressed lesbian relationship between the lead actresses. The censor board often asks for cuts in scenes that can actually highlight the real realities of a socially regressive issue.
And what is it that we’re afraid of in our films? We as a cinema loving audience are deprived of hard-hitting, socially relevant cinema because film makers are worried that taking on any socially regressive issue and making a blunt film on it can lead to 1) violent protests 2) probably death threats and 3) eventual shutting down of the movie or a no-go on the release of the film. This all leading to huge losses.
Even if such a film releases, are we sure that we’re going to watch it? After all, impact is to be created by you and I - there’s no one else to do this. If you and I as a film loving audience aren’t going to give movies like Aligarh a chance, movies like Bazaar(1982 one, not 2018 one) a chance, movies like Once Again a chance - we’ll never seen movies actually creating an impact on the society. The real challenge remains to get the masses to watch such movies and that happens when big stars get involved in making films on socially regressive issues.
The first step towards solving any problem is realizing there is one. We as an audience should change because our times are modern and therefore our thinking need not be primitive. It’s time to watch movies on socially regressive issues and talk about them, discuss on them, go to social media and post about them- initiate a change and then definitely, movies will have an impact on socially regressive issues.
The above therefore I feel is the crux of why films do not have an impact on socially regressive issues.
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