The Value of Cinema
Recreation is as much necessary for healthy growth as work. Life will be dull and unpleasant if there is no occasional amusement to cheer it up. Therefore, from the earliest limes recreation in different forms has been introduced in a healthy and civilized society. Dance, drama, singing, puppet show and various other forms of entertainment have found favor with the people. Today life of man has grown complex, full of worries, cares, and anxieties. The mechanized Way of life has bred monotony, therefore his modes of entertainment have also undergone a revolutionary change. The latest and the most popular form of recreation is Cinema.
Its phenomenal popularity and development are due to its mass appeal and that it is well within the financial limitation of common man. The people belonging to different walks of life patronize it and find it equal to their varied interests. The power or the motion pictures as an instrument of culture and education is immeasurable. We know that a motion picture based on a classical novel will induce thousands of people to read or reread the book; the introduction of a classical composition into the picture stimulates the demand for the recording of that composition. Lessons of history, geography, and everyday science life imparted through it.
Associated essay:
The advantages and disadvantages of cinema
The man of today is better informed than his ancestors due to the cinema. Thus they give food for thought and imagination to the common people by showing on the screen grand objects; sublime beauties and epoch-making events. The great personalities of former times come to life and their message is communicated to the people. The lives of saints and seers set high ideals before the people. They enlarge our vision and broaden our minds. Films depict historical, mythological and social themes bearing on Indian lives, whether of the past or the present make a special appeal to the people.
Cinema has been found to be the most effective method of exposing social evils such as dowry system, etc. Civic sense and public morality are engendered through them. The political awareness, fight for the rights and the general awakening of the masses is largely contributed by Cinema. As a means of propaganda, publicity and advertisement its services are invaluable and it must be preserved and fostered at all costs. Cinema has also thrown down the barriers of time and space. It has made a man truly cosmopolitan in outlook. A grand sight in cold Norway is reproduced vividly to people in hot Africa.
A political or social revolution in one part of the country is shown the world over. Moreover, it can be used as a medium for the enlightenment of other nations about our own culture, customs, manners, and policies. It has often been said that one of the potent causes of international misunderstanding, hot and cold wars, is that people of different countries do not have the means to understand and appreciate each other adequately. In this respect, cinema can serve the goodwill mission of presenting the correct image of the country and the people abroad.
Thus, cinema can be used for establishing mutual international understanding and paving the way for permanent world peace. However, it cannot be neglected that they are the major single factor which earns substantial and much needed foreign exchange. Commercially also cinema has opened up a lucrative profession. Besides encouraging young men and women to enter the field of acting, it has provided employment to millions of people as technicians, designers, photographers, dressmakers and various allied agencies.
The artists right from the storywriter to a poster designer have found a ready market for their talent. Poets and even literary men who had been looked down upon for ages have found with Cinema a fresh lease of life and livelihood. Apart from its various advantages, cinema is not free from its evil effects. Film artistry is, unfortunately, compelled to compromise with people’s popular taste and appeal to their lower instincts. Too many films dealing with sex problems and with the ways of the criminals are now shown, f These are apt to affect public morality. The substandard catering of music and recreation is likely to injure public taste and outlook and is not ultimately good for the art.
The Cinema has far-reaching effect upon the youth of the country. The films make them prematurely sex-conscious and they start reacting the scenes of romantic pictures in their regular life. A sense of dissatisfaction with life is engendered among them. Vandalism and increasing acts of rowdyism in the student community are attributed to their indiscriminately frequenting the cinema halls. Again the youth imitating all sorts of fashions from the films lead to the development of expensive tastes and manners. They grow divorced from grim and dismal realities of life and start living in the fairyland pictures on the screen.
In this respect, the role of Government is significantly felt. Further in India Cinema has to attain the artistic and technical perfection, Government aid by way of subsidy, helping manufacture of raw film and other equipment in the country; admission tax reduction, encouragement to talented artists and technicians must be forthcoming.
We must not forget that with a wide range of depiction and with the universality of its appeal, Cinema has tremendous possibilities in our country. With our abundant and natural wealth and an inexhaustible fund of rich literature, our Cinema, though young and unstable, its growth is inevitable.
