Saturday, April 08, 2006

Violence In Movies

Gone are they days of the hero very theatrically punching the villain three inches below the chin and the extras making unconvincing sounds of ‘dhishum dhishum’. In today’s movie world violence is so real that after some of the more convincing scenes there is a greater no. of people making a beeline for the theatre washrooms. This a trend that has been observed across cultures. Among other things technology and the real life happenings are responsible for these reels of gore and blood.

They say movies are a reflection of society, to a certain extent at least. That given, when you have planes crashing into tall buildings, pictures of soldiers being stripped naked and tortured doing the rounds, video clips of beheading of journalists circulated through the internet, can you really blame the movie mongers to be showing those blood curdling scenes? Every alternate day in the newspaper you hear stories about how a 16 year old boy was killed by his 17 year old friend because they both happened to love the same 14 year old girl. Isn’t that very similar to a stammering Shah Rukh Khan doing every negative thing possible to get his Juhi Chawla, including killing her screen husband Sunny Deol?

Is it a chicken and egg story? Which is replicating what? There is no clear answer, but one thing is for sure, if the world actually buys the concept of peace unconditionally then these movies will have to do away with the violence. If for nothing else at least for commercial reasons because then violence won’t sell. Ask Neha Dhupia what sells most after sex and Shah Rukh Khan and she will agree with me.

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