Cinema For Multiplex Generation


                           Indian cinema for the past decade has revealed a curious enchantment towards stories and cultures about young people. Film trends for young audiences has emerged in the past generations, but movies in last few years are fixated on certain youth styles, like promoting certain perspectives and celebration of adolescence. So, What might be the reason for this change?

                          Some might say, youths have disposable incomes that they enjoy spending on entertainment. Others tend to say, most of the new film-makers are young themselves, and they are portraying their own experiences of youth.

                              Process of maturing is a natural conflict familiar to everyone by their teenage years. We all participate in the screen fantasies, like having a life of a secret agent, or saving some loved ones from the clutches of death. But, most of our lives are filled with less spectacular phenomena, such as how we come to be accepted by society, discover romance, gain employment, make moral decisions, learning about the world and who we are in it. These are the phenomena that most of us first encounter in our adolescence,  and how we handle them largely determines the rest of our lives.

                              Few Decades back, our cinema relied on families to pay for movies, about their daily dramas. Also, movies addressing young people are not mostly produced or directed by young people. So, the images of youth are filtered by the perspectives of a matured adult director or producer. The globalization phenomenon changed the cinema, like it changed the whole world. Now, we have a generation, earning millions in their 20's, sophisticated teens studying in private schools, and also film-makers in early 20's, who chose film-making as a sole career.

Delinquent Youth
                           Young people seem to be natural candidates for trouble, from mischievous adventures in school or college to criminal acts induced by more violent and angry drives. Indeed, the range of plots in films dealing with youth in trouble is quiet wide. Sometimes, they wander into negligence by turning a day off in college, by rebelling against their uncaring or strict parents, or by pursuing their romantic dreams. Most teens are clearly out to just have fun, while others thinks of themselves as crusaders. 

                   So, films about delinquent teens or youths make for a great drama. Another distinct and interesting category of the youth delinquent subject is the 'tough girl,' in which one or more girls stake out their identity through rebellious acts. Since most youth negligence films dwell on males, films about female delinquency takes on a different and specific tone. The common past practice of depicting girls within delinquency films as the spectators to or victims of male rebellion is changing in the movies of current period.

                     As a global culture, movies must be especially concerned with the youth. A movie's impressionability allows them to utilize a wide range of images that can induce them both to achieve greatness and to falter in despair. As succeeding generations of young people become the adults of tomorrow,  the media that define them will be largely responsible for their roles in the world. 

                     Let's hope that the cinema for our younger generations becomes an increasingly accessible one, and that those people who create media in the future will respect and celebrate all of the discoveries, anxieties, opportunities,  pains, wonders, and joys of what it means it to be young.

2 comments:

Protik Basu said...

I think that there is a large commentary on the youth that is not yet addressed...in movies or in books...inspite of millions that we supposedly earn, we feel disconnected and living job to job...its not all yupiee college stuff, esp when you get out of college!!! Where is a "Catcher in the rye" for india?

Arun Kumar said...

@Protik Basu, Thanks for your comment. You are right, our Indian movies, other than dance and songs, mostly fails to address the youth.