Bollywood movies are something that most of us love and Fridays are the days which we look up to. Being excited for every new release to being disappointed by a bad movie has become a part of our lives. Today’s youth follows Bollywood like holy books. This article talks about some of the movies which influenced the youth.
Today, cinema is the one of the most powerful media for mass communication. We go to a movie for three hours of entertainment but there are some movies that cause something more than entertainment. They leave a lasting impact on our minds which may be good or bad. On one hand, some movies are responsible for bringing a revolution whereas on the other hand there are some movies which provoke people in their life. Teenagers and college students are the most easily influenced group in our society.
There are various movies which show unreal and impossible scenes that most people are crazy behind. It makes many people believe that lives can be as perfect as shown in movies and leads to disappointment when it doesn’t turn out to be the actual case.
The perfect college scenes of Karan Johar’s movies increased our expectations and made us all believe that college life is as happening as shown in movies like Student of the Year. The movie that revolves around lavish lives of three privileged kids shows everything apart from studying, and it surely made us believe that college is all about having fun and chilling around. But the reality is something very different from that. College, in real life, is more about studies, assessments, internals and externals, and much less about the glorified chilling around.
Romance is another aspect shown in Bollywood movies in unrealistic ways. Such movies make us believe that our love lives can be as perfect as the love lives of the lead actors. But love in real life is full of ups and downs. Movies like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge make us believe that our Raj will come from continents apart and propose in the mustard fields. But this doesn’t happen in real life (SPOILER ALERT: Love is not everything that you have in real life.). Life has much more to it. Not all girls will give up all they have just for love and no prince charming will come riding a white horse to take you with him.
Movies like Dil Chahta Hai and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara left most of the audience dreaming of a perfect trip with friends. But planning trips is not as easy as shown in the movies. It takes a lot of things to plan such trips. Firstly, you need money. Nobody can go to Spain and live the best of their lives if they do not have finances. A Goa trip is something that we all want to go to at least once in the three years of college. At times, students are denied permission by parents which leads to a negative impact on their minds.
Many movies make the youth believe that smoking, drinking, and attending parties makes them look cool and those who focus more on studying are not so cool. This has also become a cause behind youth indulging into drinks and drugs. Movies portray that having a social life is must and those who don’t have a social life are not living their lives in the correct way. All these things tend to create a negative impact on the audience and make people spend lots of money on parties and forces them to show the world what they are doing, where they are, and who they are with. Social media becomes a platform for this. People do everything for that perfect shot to be uploaded on Instagram. Lives start to revolve around the perfect and colourful world of Instagram.
Some movies also show that girls who wear pretty clothes and dress up in a conventionally girly way are more desirable and liked by boys more often. For instance, Anjali in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai is not liked by Rahul in her tomboyish look and he goes after Tina who looks wears pretty dresses and looks more ‘girly’. But the same Rahul falls for Anjali and finds her to be desirable when she wears saree and looks more like a conventionally typified girl of his conditioned beliefs.
However, not all movies leave a negative impact on the audience. There are a few movies which impact our minds positively and teaches us some very important life lessons.
Gully Boy is a movie praised vastly by the audience. The movie has done wonders and has left a message that we should not always run after the mainstream professions and we should follow our dreams. It shows that poverty is not something that can stop you from achieving your goals. It is not the end of the world but an obstacle that we all can cross. The movie teaches us that no dream is impossible and we can become what we dream of.
Dear Zindagi teaches us a number of beautiful life lessons. The most important of which is that you should always move on and once we take charge of our lives and start understanding ourselves then other’s opinions don’t matter. Another important lesson is to not let your past ruin your present or a beautiful future and never let the memories of your past haunt you.
Another movie that left people with something that they carried with them outside the theatre is Tamasha. It is a movie with a heart that beats in every frame. The biggest lesson that it teaches us is that we need to stop trying to fit in the world the way it wants us to; rather we should become what we want to be. It also teaches us that it is impossible to run away from who we are as it will keep returning to us in ways we can’t imagine. Tamasha is not just a movie but an emotion and words can never be enough to explain it.
It can be concluded that all the movies have both positive as well as a negative factors, and it depends on our minds on how to interpret it. We should try to take the good lessons and ignore the bad lessons. We need to understand the difference between the reel and real life and we need to know that what’s shown on the reel cannot always be implemented in real life. However, the good thing about Bollywood movies these days is that a lot of movies are now based on social causes which tend to influence the audience in a positive way and are responsible for bringing a change in the mind-set of the audience.
Feature Image Credits: Rishabh Gogoi for DU Beat
Priya Chauhan