"This
is all a political conspiracy. It is against our culture. What message does it
give to the society? I really did not expect this from a director of his
stature!”
To this
day, I do not understand this line of thought. The idea of any form of public media
giving a ‘message’ to the society, itself seems questionable to me!
With all
the talks in the town about PK, the rest of this post may invoke a few
questions in you. Some useful questions that might convince you that this whole
idea might need some reconsideration.
A movie
is capable of a strong form of ‘expression’. Expression of an idea, a story, an
opinion, or simply wild creativity. Saying it out is the independence of the
movie maker. But when it comes to receiving it, that’s the discretion of a
viewer. If a movie “is giving a bad message to the society”, that’s because the
people of the society are probably ‘taking’ it!
Let me
ask you a question. What’s your favorite flavor of ice-cream? Vanilla, Butterscotch,
Chocolate? Of course, you’ll have a favorite. Why? Because you’ve tasted all
kinds of ice-cream there is, and your favorite is the best! Now, imagine that
you’ve only had Vanilla all your life. Do you think Vanilla would be your ‘true’
favorite? No points for guessing that one!
Why did I
just talk about ice-cream? Because culturally, majority of us are in the same
position! If you do not open your mind to understand and respect all kinds of
cultures, then how would you ever know why yours is the best for you?
It’s that
simple when I say it.
Be open-minded.
If a
movie has an opinion about a social issue, welcome it. It may be true that the
opinion in the movie is weak, not logical enough or absurd. Nevertheless, it
is an opinion. It exposes us to different questions. It encourages us to
reconsider and reinforce our beliefs and expands our horizons of thinking. But
by simply boycotting the movies, all we are doing is making our society more and
more delusional and handicap.
It is understandable that conformity is essential
for smooth functioning of the society. But being one geographical home for a
country full of people where there is a diversity of culture across every 100km
is not easy! There will be hitches. But if we always protect ourselves from
them, we are never going to get past them!
All our
society has been doing, is ‘protecting’ us from modernization when it really
had to be ‘exposing’ us to it!
Why are we so worried about the impact that
movies are creating? Because we are not successful in empowering our people to
think in different directions and make their own decisions about their beliefs.
Yes, it would create disagreements. But when are we ever going to learn to
accept the disagreements when we are suppressing them all the time?
Summing
things up,
What we
are doing: Raising our voices against the display of movies with strong
non-conforming opinions and trying to boycott them.
What we
should be doing: Watching them, discussing about them with an open mind, having
healthy arguments and encouraging others to do so.
This
might all look very ideal. It is also quite natural that no social problem is
an isolated one. But, all I want to do with this little write-up, is reach the
educated class and tell them that instead of labeling and boycotting things
with our personal bias, we need to sit down, receive new things with an open-mind and talk about them.
Let's do more towards growing, shall we?
