What's Wrong With the Indian Film Industry?

While watching a YouTube podcast on a Sunday afternoon, I came across a conversation between Mr. Ranbir Kapoor, a well-versed actor, and Mr. Nikhil Kamath, a successful entrepreneur and founder of stock broker application Zerodha. They shared a good amount of their life history on the podcast, their sense of purpose, and the X-factor which led them to pursue their passions.

But at one moment I was utterly shocked when Mr. Kamath made a statement about the movie ‘Animal’ which had faced widespread backlash because of the highly toxic content. It included extreme violence and forms of misogyny that somewhere got normalized in the entire course of the film.

“I don’t think movies are a medium from where society should derive a sense of morality, it is just a source of entertainment.” – Mr. Kamath

I mean seriously? I don’t think personally that this is a sensible message that is delivered from such an icon who is followed by a large fragment of Indian youth over the social media. He took the example of the movie ‘Godfather’ to justify the heinous scenes based on the film ‘Animal’. Then after dedicating a good number of hours pondering over this idea, I felt that somewhere he hasn’t understood the Indian society and our civilizational human behavior. In India movies aren’t just a mere source of entertainment, it is actually a portal which pushes us to reimagine our living standards.

Why is it so? India is a land of timeless epics, stories of valour and courage. Perhaps it is the only country where epics like the Mahabharata and Ramayana are used as courses of emulation and provide a moral sense of distinction between right and wrong. The biography of a single man is used to lay out a framework of an ideal son, father or a husband. May it be Lord Rama or the wicked Shakuni, these stories always helped us to reflect and introspect our society and categorize a multitude of personalities.

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Not just these epics, but anecdotes, folktales and stories of chivalry and valour always found its way to bedtime stories narrated by elders of a family to the younger ones and it goes on and on with the generations.

The inception of the Indian film industry itself began with movies like Raja Harishchandra, Mother India and others which reflected and propagated the ideals of virtue and righteous actions. Indian society has such a deep connection with our civilizational folklore and roots that every protagonist becomes a figure of emulation. It makes our minds highly vulnerable towards such films which normalise acts that are morally adulterated. Every step, every action, every dialogue becomes a trend to be followed.

There are indeed other films from foreign lands of the West which have a higher concentration of violence, but there is a stark difference in societal complexities and intricacies. Awareness is a need of the hour for the Indian population who follow the Indian film industry as not just a source of entertainment but also a matrix for judgement and setting societal parameters.

We need to understand that in the 21st century, we have to be selective in our approach as everything has been highly commercialised which includes ‘fundamental ethics’ as well. No one actually cares, that’s the dark reality. ‘Movies are a mirror of the society’ - a statement which has lost its essence in today’s era because of heavy elements that only make a sharp diversion towards heavy profit making rather than building an in-depth social and intellectual landscape.

Imagine if movies like- Homebound,Swades,Masaan and many more are flunking the box office on grounds of not ‘resonating with the public’ then I don’t know where as a country we are heading to..

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All these films failed miserably at the box office which is indeed something that we should be worried about…

No filmmaker is ready to risk their pockets and trade educational social perspectives with a box-office failure.

Statistics—as Indians, we are already aware of this undebatable fact that all spiced-up elements in the movies are directly connected to anti-social hazards which includes a criminalised bunch of offences. All in all we shouldn’t forget to demarcate boundaries between ethical standards and quest for entertainment.