A string of recent movie releases clearly highlight a strange obsession that most of our filmmakers continue to have. They are endlessly fascinated about the notorious and heinous people out there, and the fixation continues to grow every year. Two among the soon-to-be released movies are clearly gangster flicks that narrate nothing but sheer despicability and ruthlessness in all terms. The protagonists are violent, cruel, and psychotic most of the times, yet get treated like folk heroes on screen.
While filmmakers reiterate that the casts have little resemblance to anyone living or dead, and the movies are just fictionalized narrations, they drop many sly hints to underline where they have drawn aspiration from. Is the likeliness added knowingly? I don’t know. Perhaps, filmmakers are unwilling to openly admit real-life connection fearing backlashes, legal and otherwise.
While cinema is just a mode of entertainment, turning baddies into emblematic embodiments of valor and heroism is not even remotely close to entertainment. Do they stories make us feel good? Absolutely not! The increasing trend of extolling cruel, fearless, and unforgiving people in every second movie is highly disturbing to say the least. The impact that it will create on the audience is unfathomable negativity and sometimes a dangerous urge to emulate the characters on screen. Wondering why?
Protagonists of such movies try to control their destiny in their own way until the inevitable downfall. They steal and feed families, they lie unhesitatingly when it benefits somebody, and they kill remorselessly when someone rises strong enough to become a threat. And most part of the audience get easily fancied by such larger-than-life characters. Don’t such movies convey a distorted and disfigured sense of right and wrong? They do.
While we all know that films needn’t give out inspiring messages all the time, it’s disheartening to see how the appalling is transformed to become the appealing, while audiences clutch to their seats anxiously to see if cops catch the ‘virtuous’ protagonist or not. Very often, the lead character hails from a poor background which makes it totally ‘justifiable’ to take up crimes to make both ends meet. He grows up with larger-than-life persona with a unhealthy concoction of charisma, violence, and shadiness.
The audiences are so taken by the character, no matter what he does. He breaks rules, yet is regarded as the powerhouse of strength and mystery. Audience empathize first and then blindly admire them for all wrong reasons, no matter whether a hero stalks a woman in the name of love or kills someone to steal money. It’s high time to stop this glorification. It's not at all cool to be a law-breaker and there’s hardly any entertainment in narrating stories about ganglands and mind-numbing cruelty.
While filmmakers reiterate that the casts have little resemblance to anyone living or dead, and the movies are just fictionalized narrations, they drop many sly hints to underline where they have drawn aspiration from. Is the likeliness added knowingly? I don’t know. Perhaps, filmmakers are unwilling to openly admit real-life connection fearing backlashes, legal and otherwise.
While cinema is just a mode of entertainment, turning baddies into emblematic embodiments of valor and heroism is not even remotely close to entertainment. Do they stories make us feel good? Absolutely not! The increasing trend of extolling cruel, fearless, and unforgiving people in every second movie is highly disturbing to say the least. The impact that it will create on the audience is unfathomable negativity and sometimes a dangerous urge to emulate the characters on screen. Wondering why?
Protagonists of such movies try to control their destiny in their own way until the inevitable downfall. They steal and feed families, they lie unhesitatingly when it benefits somebody, and they kill remorselessly when someone rises strong enough to become a threat. And most part of the audience get easily fancied by such larger-than-life characters. Don’t such movies convey a distorted and disfigured sense of right and wrong? They do.
While we all know that films needn’t give out inspiring messages all the time, it’s disheartening to see how the appalling is transformed to become the appealing, while audiences clutch to their seats anxiously to see if cops catch the ‘virtuous’ protagonist or not. Very often, the lead character hails from a poor background which makes it totally ‘justifiable’ to take up crimes to make both ends meet. He grows up with larger-than-life persona with a unhealthy concoction of charisma, violence, and shadiness.
The audiences are so taken by the character, no matter what he does. He breaks rules, yet is regarded as the powerhouse of strength and mystery. Audience empathize first and then blindly admire them for all wrong reasons, no matter whether a hero stalks a woman in the name of love or kills someone to steal money. It’s high time to stop this glorification. It's not at all cool to be a law-breaker and there’s hardly any entertainment in narrating stories about ganglands and mind-numbing cruelty.