The fate of cinema in a polarised world

While we need hard hitting films about real issues, the aim of such films should be to heal and not distort expectations that make audiences behave like mobs and contribute to the process of ‘othering’

Mumbai-based gay rights activist Vivek Anand went to watch The Kashmir Files because he is interested in history. Like many others across the country, he was curious to know the story of Kashmiri Pandits.

For someone growing up in the city of dreams in good neighbourliness and caring for the marginalised, a movie is about entertainment with a social responsibility. But unease gripped Anand more than the film's impact on him because peoples' reaction inside the auditorium, he says, "was an evolution in audience response."

Having watched controversial films in the past, Anand says he was shocked at the hysteria generated by TheKashmir Files. "People got up to give hate speeches, raised slogans of Bharat Mata ki Jai and Vande Mataram," he says and adds, "the statements made were not just ordinary reactions from people; it reflected the mood of the country."

The anguish and anger of audiences to art often make the daily challenge of keeping our secular fabric intact tough. Actor Adil Hussain's tweet in a general context that "art should not be reactive" is significant because people would want the experience of watching a movie to be meaningful and not harming.

It is one thing to see the naked truth on screen but another to witness a roller-coaster of public emotions post-screening. When Anand says the aftermath of The Kashmir Files screening reminded him of the Bombay riots post-Babri masjid demolition as it "divided peoples' lives into pre and post 1992 phase", it affirms how polarisation happens in and through films. Back from the theatre that evening, he told his friends that for the first time he felt scared inside an auditorium after the film got over. "I witnessed normalisation of hate politics," he wrote.

Glorification in a movie usually ends in applause while a tragedy tears you up and we tend to leave it there. “But when people start resonating and engaging in a mob-like manner, it incites violence and makes it murky,“ says Delhi-based psychologist Shraddha Kapoor, who teaches at Lady Irwin College. “When a film’s narrative moves us, we should turn melancholic, not point accusing fingers,” she notes.

Good films do shape our minds but should movies decide our behaviour? Given today's atmosphere in the country, if films drive political narratives, they will end up splitting audiences into groups. The anti-Muslim agenda is a polarising national issue now and when the ruling party throws its weight behind a movie, it is like an automatic promotion of an agenda. It could actually turn off half of the people they are trying to convince and simultaneously also help reduce any controversy with the propaganda.