Skip to main content

Life, Movies and the real Villains



Movies and life are mirror images of each other. Movies reflect life and vice-versa. Script writers draw inspiration from the life around them. Movie viewers are influenced to some extent at least by what they see on the screen. Audrey Hepburn went to the extent of claiming that “Everything I learnt I learnt from the movies.”
Movies do influence people. But can we ascribe to movies all the violence and other forms of evil in today’s world? A fellow blogger raises the question in this week’s Indispire: “Is the portrayal of women in Cinema one of the reasons behind increase in sexual crimes against them? Do commercial movies merely reflect prevailing attitudes or do they shape and contribute to those attitudes as well?” 
Did our ancestors burn thousands of women on the funeral pyres of their husbands because of movies? Were millions of women kept confined to hearth and home for centuries because of movies? Were thousands of pubescent girls abandoned in temples in the name of devadasi system because of movies?
It has been a man’s world all along. A few matriarchal tribal societies in the northeast may be the only exceptions. Even the matrilineal system among the Nairs in Kerala was a system forged by the Namboothiri men to exploit the women sexually.
The 21st century has entered adulthood. Yet have men’s attitudes towards women changed significantly? Women are not free to walk about where they like, when they like, and with whom they like. Men will make the choices for them even today in countries like India.
India has been taken backward by a few centuries in the name of culture and religion. The movies are not the villains. You know who the villains are. Unfortunately you will vote the same villains to power again.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 305: #VulgarityInCinema
PPS. Having read my previous post, New Year Resolutions, a friend texted, “So really you gonna change your style of writing? Ha ha ha. I have a doubt.” Her doubt is proved valid by the very next post of mine, this present one.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Joys of Onam and a reflection

Suppose that the whole universe were to be saved and made perfect and happy forever on just one condition: one single soul must suffer, alone, eternally. Would this be acceptable? Philosopher William James asked that in his 1891 book, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life . Please think about it once again and answer the question for yourself. You, as well as others, are going to live a life without a tinge of sorrow. Joyful existence. Life in Paradise. The only condition is that one person will take up all the sorrows of the universe on him-/herself and suffer – alone, eternally. What do you say? James’s answer is a firm no . “Not even a god would be justified in setting up such a scheme,” James asserted, knowing too well how the Bible justified a positive answer to his question. “It is expedient that one man should die for the people, so that the nation can be saved” [John 11:50]. Jesus was that one man in the Biblical vision of redemption. I was reading a Malayalam period...

Are You Sane?

Illustration by Gemini AI A few months back, a clinical psychiatrist asked me whether anyone in my family ever suffered from insanity. “All of us are insane to some degree,” I wanted to tell her. But I didn’t because there was another family member with me. We had taken a youngster of the family for counselling. I had forgotten the above episode until something happened the other day which led me to write last post . The incident that prompted me to write that post brought down an elder of my family from the pedestal on which I had placed him simply because he is a very devout religious person who prays a lot and moves about in the society like the gentlest soul that ever lived in these not-so-gentle terrains. I also think that the severe flu which descended on me that night was partly a product of my disillusionment. The realisation that one’s religion and devotion that guided one for seven decades hadn’t touched one’s heart even a little bit was a rude shock to me. What does re...

Loving God and Hating People

Illustration by Gemini AI There are too many people, including in my extended family. who love God so much that other people have no place in their hearts. God fills their hearts. They go to church or other similar places every day and meet their God. I guess they do. But they return home from the place of worship only to pour out the venom in their hearts on those around them. When I’m vexed by such ‘religious’ people I consult Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov in which there are some characters who are acutely vexed by spiritual questions. Let me leave Ivan Karamazov to himself, as he has been discussed too much already. In Book II, Chapter 4 [ A lady of Little Faith ], a troubled woman comes to Father Zosima, the wise monk, and confesses her spiritual struggle. “I long to love God,” she says. She knows that she cannot love God without loving her fellow human beings, or at least doing some service to them. The truth is, she says, “I cannot bear people. The closer they ...