Glamourised Violence In Films: Why We Cannot Look Away Any More
Sep 8, 2023 | Shalini Rai
In the past few years, the trend has been to render violence as a cathartic act. As if the glorification of violence, which is often, disturbingly, accompanied by music that seems to extol it, would somehow make the revenge sweeter and more memorable (Representational Image)
The other day, I saw a movie based on a persecuted individual who goes on to avenge the wrongs done to him. He does this with flourish, sparing his enemies no pain and flinging them around as if they were not full-grown men but volleyballs. It would be futile to name the movie and will take away from the focus of this article — the glorification of violence in Indian cinema.
In the said film, the protagonist is shown not just to be violent but as being very good at it. He punches, pushes and bangs his head against his opponent and bangs his opponents against concrete floors, wall and ceilings. He does all of this to the accompaniment of background music which seems to enhance his over-the-top violent antics. As he picks up the ‘bad guy’, the music starts building up, aiding his increasingly-violent stance and then reaches a crescendo as our leading man head-butts and then lifts and pushes the antagonist into a hard surface. The audience erupts in applause at this juncture and feels vicariously-close to having beaten the life out of the ‘bad guy’.
Although Indian cinema, particularly Bollywood, was never considered a safe place for conversations around the use of violence and its effects on the audience, I have witnessed that in the past few years, the trend has been to render violence as a cathartic act. As if the glorification of violence, which is often, disturbingly, accompanied by music that seems to extol it, would somehow make the revenge sweeter and more memorable.
The effects that such antics would have on the minds of an audience of impressionable age have not been delved into, let alone seriously researched and analysed.
My postulation is if the current generation of young people grows up watching such acts, whether in a shared public space like a movie theatre or within the privacy of their own homes, in front of their mobile devices, with no filters and censorship, it would leave a deep, lasting impact on their malleable minds; it’s not something they would be able to put behind them and carry on with life as usual, discounting the effect such glorified violence would have on them in the long term, eons after the OTT series or movie where they imbibed it from, is over.
Just as the continued, normalised and even awarding use of cuss words and words containing threats of violence against women, animals and other beings perceived to be ‘game’ for such acts shows, the use and encouragement of violence has been embedded in our current existence. It is extensive; it is prevalent equally over varied demographics and geographies.
While its roots lie in misogyny and toxic masculinity, its erasure and denunciation must come from a place of deep concern for the way ahead for the current generation of young people. After all, it is they who will hold the reins of administration, law enforcement, business, technology and research in future. If they are brought up with a steady dose of normalised violence which is frequently glorified and glamourised, it would be unfortunate for us as a society and a nation, and we would have nobody except ourselves, our societal permissibility and our mainstream movies that ennoble violence to blame for such a scenario.