Should films be pure entertainment or be a window to various topical issues:A casual look through

The scenario of cinema in India is vastly changing today which prompts us to ask questions like this one. Cinema originated as a medium of expression in the winter of Paris in 1896 and since then in a 114 years have covered an artistic journey which other art forms have taken over 500.Primarily because, cinema has uniquely a mass appeal. Lots of people can experience cinema at the same time, where as only one person can read a novel at a time. Cinema can thus be very powerful as a medium and precisely for this reason we need to see cinema as a window of handling topical social issues rather than mindless entertainment churners. Or better if they can do both. One of the reasons to support this is the mass appeal of cinema. People follow see and read films with more intensity than any other forms of art. Scientifically film is a medium where we need to use our visual as well as our auditory senses, which is absent in other arts. Literature as well as painting use only visuals, music… primarily auditory. Cinema uses both, hence it is the most impressionistic on the human mind. It can cause a bigger impact than any forms of address. Also the way the silver screen is idolized it is very easy to depict a social ill if that ideal is used to depict that. The mass following a film or a film star has would be able to generate an awareness which is impossible in other forms of art. All the more to induce into production films which are tackling topical issues. Critics may argue does it actually make a difference in reality? Isn’t this assumption an idealization? Well, yes it is. Then again all assumptions are an attempt at reaching the better, chasing the ideal. It is in the follow up to Taare Zameen Par that we saw the film being shown to teachers in Bihar to help them deal with mentally backward children. How many of us actually did know of something called progeria before Paa? In Hollywood examples are rife. The collective amnesia in the US regarding the Vietnam war was shaken by Apocalypse Now. Very recently we had Ranchhoddas Shayamaldas Chhanchad talking of overhauling the education system. Whether we actually do it or not is the question of the government, but the path breaking success of 3idiots shows we are hearing. And after all it is “we the people” who make the government. We as humans can make all well… and it is films that can make us believe we too can make “Aal izz well”.