BY J. B. APPASWAMI

Is India ever going to be educated?–asks Mr. Edward Thompson in a recent article. His answer is surprising enough:

"yes by the films".

He tells how at a Bombay railway station he bought a packet of chocolate from a little boy. The boy asked him for the coupon in the packet. Mr. Thompson imagined that a set of coupons might bring this enthusiastic collector some useful article, but on enquiry he found that the boy was collecting to obtain a series of film star pictures.

"Ramshakle tents on lorries", the writer continues, "take the cinema to remote hamlets, I saw a tent in the shadow of a renowned Buddhist shrine. Tables of coloured drinks and cigarettes were before it, and from the tent came crooned jazz about ‘My Baby’. India is producing her own films, bad Hollywood in Oriental clothes. The peasant’s mind, untouched through millenniums, is going to be swiftly and thoroughly remade. In five years, both Hindu and Moslem cultures are going to be smashed, and India will be as daft as we are (on top of its own brand of silliness.)"

This is plain speaking and worth thinking about. In a land where the mass of the people is illiterate the film is the most obvious vehicle of new ideas and information. Thousands of the poorer classes are now going to the pictures, and cinema houses are springing up all over the country to meet the new demand. What sort of influence will the films they see have on the minds of these people?

Indian audiences are of two kinds: those who see pictures that talk English and those who see only pictures that talk an Indian language. From the standpoint of the future, of the five years in which the Hindu and Moslem cultures will be smashed, according to Mr. Thompson, the English-knowing audience are not very important, since they are a minority that will become relatively smaller and smaller as time goes on. It is true that they are an influential minority and that the American and English films they see will affect their conduct and thus indirectly the mind of the people as a whole. But compared with the influences radiated by the Indian-language cinema their effect is negligible.

The vital difference between the two is that the Indian-language films reach audiences that cannot be reached in other ways. Indian women, who cannot read or write, who are unaffected by education or propaganda of any kind, flock to the cinema in the towns. With the collapse of the Indian theatre in most parts of India and the gradual abandonment of long-drawn-out wedding festivities, the cinema becomes the main source of entertainment.

And these are the films that Mr. Thompson calls "bad Hollywood in Oriental clothes." Just as Elstree copied Hollywood in its early days, Indian producers slavishly followed the themes of foreign films in their desire to be up-to-date and smart; till quite recently they imagined that bad Hollywood was good box-office.

They novelty of seeing Indian heroes in evening dress escorting Westernised heroines to cabarets did, at first, amuse Indian audiences. But unreality palls, and after the shine had worn off, producers began to see that there was something wrong with the Goldwyn-girls-and-gangsters formula.

At the same time, film producers, especially in South India, also carried on a line of mythological and pseudo-historical costume pictures. This was a legacy of the moribund Indian stage which also supplied actor-singers to the screen. This style of picture has also had its day, for it is also unreal and without application to modern life. Foreign producers know that an occasional historical picture is welcome, but that as daily fare it tends to become insipid. This fact is being discovered here.

The picture that will be made in the next five years will be different, for Indian producers will have to make some genuine contact with the lives of the people. Some pictures of this sort are being shown now. They are of varying quality; some are satirical, some romantic, most of them are overweighted with songs and are too long to sustain interest, but on the whole they are a fair indication of what we can expect in the future. It is doubtful if they will do anything to smash the Hindu and Moslem cultures. On the other hand, they do a great deal for both these cultures.

Is the effect of the, film on daily life really as potent as Mr. Thompson assumes? Is the young film-goer–and there are thousands of them now–deeply influenced by what he sees?

No scientific enquiry has yet been made in this country on the effects of seeing motion pictures on impressionable minds. Some work, however, has been done by American sociologists and their findings are very instructive.

Of. 458 high school pupils who were asked to write their "motion picture autobiographies," 66 per cent said that daydreams had followed the seeing of pictures, 39 per cent were often moved to tears, 50 per cent had gleaned information about love making, 20 per cent were dissatisfied with their own lives after seeing films where youth was free and opulent. The desire for travel had been stirred in 29 per cent of these adolescents and 51 per cent were infected with the desire for further education.

Baudelaire, in an essay on the effects of drugs on the mind, comes to the conclusion that the effect of a drug on a particular person depends on the frame of mind of the person before he took the drug. A sad man becomes even more melancholy, a cheerful man becomes hilarious.

Similarly, the American investigators found that what people get from the films is a crystallization of the attitude they already had. A young man, ready for love, is stirred to amorousness by the same picture from which another gets tips on the latest styles in men’s wear.

One young man wrote: "As I got into high school and into my sixteenth year I began to use the movies as a school of etiquette. I began to observe the table manners of the actors, in the eating scenes. I watched for the proper way to conduct oneself at a night club, because I began to have ideas that way. The fact that the leading man’s coat was single-breasted or double-breasted, the number of buttons on it, and the cut of its lapels, all influenced me in the choice of my own suits".

Little children who see robbery and violence in a film often imitate these actions at home. This is harmless imitation, for children are not very conscious of the difference between social and anti-social behaviour. Boys love blood-thirsty scenes and are thrilled by adventure stories in a way that is normal and healthy. The same cannot be said for adolescents and adults.

A year or two ago an outcry was raised in the United States against "gangster" films which glorified criminals of the type of Al Capone, and sex stories of the kind in which Mae West was starred. A censorship was set up to "clean up Hollywood." The result is a series of artificial and rather sentimental films and the narrowing down of the field to harmless and uninteresting themes.

In a recent article, Samuel Goldwyn, the famous producer, pointed out the gagging effects of film censorship, All racial themes were barred. Hollywood can no longer make a non-American a villain. If a villain were a Chinese or a Mexican China or Mexico would enter a protest. The result was that all villains had to be hundred per cent American.

In other words, the far reaching effects of the seeing of films on the minds of the people have already been gauged and the instilling of racial prejudice prevented to some extent. The film is a powerful instrument for propaganda as well as a means of entertainment.

The supervision of films should be carried out with great caution. The American researchers advise their classification under three heads–those for children, those for adolescents and those for adults. Horror pictures, sensual love stories and stories that show revolt against morality as being smart and modern should be banned for the first two groups. Adolescents should see pictures showing romantic love, adventure, travel, family relations, school and college life and mystery stories that do not stress horror. Problem pictures of adult life might also be shown to young people who are beginning to consider such matters, provided they are done with insight and sympathy.

There are European governments who control the film industry itself. But this is an extreme measure that tends to deprive the films of the entertainment value which is their drawing card. Mr. Thompson ends his article with these words:

"A wise Government would find the money–even if it meant cutting down the colleges, if it meant cutting down the swank and extravagance of its own higher circles–to provide everywhere a free service of instruction in elementary common sense, through the films (resisting the temptation to slip in propaganda in favour of itself). But this will not happen. No one fusses. No one is going to fuss."

What he means by free instruction in common sense is not very clear. But whatever the Government may or may not do with educational films of the kind now used in some schools, the Indian film industry has its own problems to solve in the field of pure entertainment. They have given up bad Hollywood and imitation opera, and turned their attention to the lives of the people in the streets and in the shops. What they will do with the material in their hands is of great importance to India. They have it in their power to mould the opinions and beliefs of millions of their countrymen. Will they do so? Time alone can tell.

BACK