Social Influence Of Cinema

Films are mere reflection of the society so much so that sometimes they can even influence the public opinion or can mould the viewpoint of the public of the society. Films are one of the important tools of mass communication. In India, when the films came into being, they were either devotional or morally influential. People used to teach the society and implant the good morals and ethics in them.

“Bollywood” is a term created by the English language press in India in the late 1970s. It has now become the dominant global term to refer to the prolific and box-office oriented Hindi language film industry that is located in Bombay (now known as Mumbai). Cinema in India encompasses a great deal more diversity and has a longer history than the

These movies rejected the age old clichés of the popular cinema being shorter in length, with little or no dance or song in the movies, and having a very realistic approach to the theme of the film. It also focussed on the social issues of the society through the lens of progressive leftist politics. There is another name given to such movies, “middle cinema”. Supposedly these movies were seen to be located between the mass market entertainment films and the non-commercial experimental or avant-garde movies. However, their target audience were primarily the educated urban middle class people of the country.

The evidently decline of this rejuvenating movement in the final years of the 1980s showed the lasting preference of the masses for the big budgeted melodramatic and larger than life movies. Even the popular filmmakers like Shyam Benegal had to turn toward more accessible and marketable films in order to please the audiences which had been a subject of many critical analysis.

Women and the New Wave

Hindi film industry is abundant with private investors or producers from the corporate world who influence the filmmaking process as well. Huge corporations with their own profit motives own media houses. These developments are bound to affect the manner in which media scrutinises and covers any issue – gender being an important one. Hindi commercial cinema holds popular appeal whereas art or parallel cinema engages with social issues, middle cinema and regional language cinema. Popular cinema and popular culture are intertwined. They derive inspiration from each other. Films are believed to be the opium of the Indian masses as people depend on this medium to help them escape to a world of fantasy. In a very explicit way, cinema shapes the cultural, social and political values of people of this country. While, the other forms of cinema are also important when it comes to the representation of women, drawing a comparative study between the commercial cinema and the parallel cinema is the focus of this