Does Indian cinema shape our popular culture or merely reflect it?

Essay by Omkar Bapat.

Cinema began as a mirror reflecting man's ambitious hopes. The dreams of silver and grey were made real on the silver screen. The visions projected out from the limelight had a power that would enrapture any one who saw it the first time. The imminense power of hopes and dreams having made real, made cinema a medium unlike any other. A Mirror cannot lie, as it speaks the truth alvays. But Cinema is such a mirror which can be manipulated to serve ends, both fair and foul. A Knife can kill and give life.

Cinema as a medium, is most powerful to manipulate public opinion, as the public gets hypnotised by the mesmerising warm lightiness, on the silver screen. Motivated by the visions percieved, the ambitious strive with the pace of quicksilver, to be closer to the towering gods, who looking down upon them, promise a life never lived before.

Human beings, are social animals, who need company as they cannot tolerate loneliness. Since the dawn of Man,man has strived to unite with his creator, the beings he has heard off but never seen. He wants Perception not vision, the interpretations of the impressions recieved upon his senses recieved by personal contact, not by some hearsay made by a respectable priest.

The Gods, on the silver screen, bestow such visions of grandeour,the power is such that it can corrupt truly, as the most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the humanmind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infnity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either typed by omkar go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

To control this imminence power and to direct to subdue the common man, is the cherised hope and dream of any leader - Political Military Philosopher king and autocrat. Best example can be made of D.R Joseph Goebbels, who made Hitler, from a man To a God, transforming a corporal into the supreme fuhrer, the masses made to accept him by free will, the divine light shining from the lamps of lime, white washing the image of a leader, like unlike never seen before.

On the Question - Does Indian cinema shape our popular culture or merely reflect it? the answer is a confirmed Yes, as it is found to render true both.

It is a sad fact, that the majority of the Indian Volk, lack self-assurance, as they find solace in directions and guidances made out for them by some one else. This sad reality is the unfortunate result of the centuries of slavery and oppression faced by our fellow beings, in these past 3000 years.

Cinema was used to bestow benevolent messages in the perceptual realm, to help guide the indian viewers into becoming better citizens, and to help make better their working lives, by reflecting the fate of the poor citizen, who is forced to run as fast as he can, for a sum of two rupees, promised, by the autocrat sitting behind him in his rickshaw, the villain in his opulent mansion, and his fabulous wealth, questioniong the fact whether virtue is its own reward, and the unscruplous politician who forces the manipulatiuon of the system, sending a law abiding officer, the reward for his honesty - A iron cell and a Noose.

Cinema shapes our popular culture as the indian populace is like a soft lump of clay, ready to accept mouldings as the moulder desires. This can be the reason for sudden spate of crimes, rapes etc when a similar themed movie opens up, releasing the slumbering beasts to make real the self-gratifications enjoyed on the silver screen.

The crux of the issue is this - The Average Indian is a easily manipulaple person, who accepts whatever shown to him, with the right amount of propagandic manipulation. This is not a ordinary mirror, as it both shows fantasy along with the truth, and levies a handsome price from the viewer. The truth cannot be hidden as it like the sun, but the option to accept the truth has obscured the noble purpose of this medium into the lovecraftian abomination it is today. Unless we educate the Iron reality behind the silver screen, this sensual molding will continue.

Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of this absolute power wherein and whereupon our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange manipulations in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden aeons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. 

The boundaries of the forbidden and the unknowable are shown, challenging the cinema viewer to peek beyond the veil, the risk of absolute gratification, is both sensual and deadly, as it promises one short stop, and a long drop, the fruit of moral terpitude visited upon the victim, by the silvercrazed assailant emulating his god on screen.

This mirror of the society can both reflect, and it can both shape the reflector, into a image like it self. This is the power of cinema,the power that both shapes our popular culture by merely reflection.