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Passions of the Mind:
Mainstream Indian films keeping perpetuating certain myths that might send out wrong messages to impressionable young people, says Subhasis Chattopadhyay
INDIAN films, including great box-office hits, often betray a deep-rooted prejudice against most things related to campus life. Take, for example, the most important and famous film now doing the rounds —Lage Raho Munna Bhai. Professors are shown as greedy, believers in dry book learning as against Munna Bhai who follows the true Gandhian ideals. Teachers are either emaciated or obese, and absolutely un-Gandhian in their ways, in spite of their professed knowledge of Gandhi.
In films like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Khabhi Alvida Na Kehna, relationships forged in college are shown to be fickle and transitory. It is as if one, inevitably, ends up choosing the wrong partner in college. But if young people are expected to choose their representative in the government in college, how is it that they bungle when it comes to choosing one’s mate? The answer lies in the politics of creating a super-hit. The average audience of mainstream films is not interested in watching the people on screen labouring away at academics, hence the trivialisation of college and campus life. Jaaneman, about an astronaut, hinges totally on the mockery of a serious and brainy student.
Films are subtly changing our perception about academics. The consequences can be serious. If being serious about studies is always equated with being a geek, over time our young men and women might want to run away from scholastic pursuits.
The idea of negotiated marriages over marrying for love is being propagated. In films like Fanaa, Bas Ek Pal and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam arranged marriages have been given the bulwark they needed in our liberal times. One of the reasons why people go to an institute of higher learning is because it teaches students the ways of making mature choices. But films made in recent times are upholding the idea that it’s the parents and elders who know better.
Films are important vehicles of propaganda and in recent times they have been seen to perpetrate an old value system and institutions that had been discarded in the 1970s and 80s. We need films where young people are shown as mature, responsible and able to make informed judgments. Monsoon Wedding was a hit because it concentrated on infidelity and not because it celebrated marriage. The test of a lasting romance is in a happy marriage, which, unfortunately, is hardly ever shown in the movies. They normally end at the commencement of wedded life, or go into post-marital conflicts. There have been hardly any films in recent times that could teach students how to integrate better with their own future families and not how bad marriages can be. Love is not love if it keeps changing.
Young men and women are shown as being devout; but the devotion is purely superficial — e.g. going to temples/churches etc., touching the feet of elders very often and being overly ritualistic (as in Bunty Aur Bubbly). The stars who essay these roles are often found to evade income tax, beat up persuasive journalists and have flings outside their marriage. This is exactly how films affirm that what you see on screen is different from real life. But it is done in a way that young people sometimes do not quite know which one to believe.
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