Movies & their effects

Movies are known to be the most powerful means of communication. It is inseparable part of our daily lives. They play a very important role in shaping the personality of people. It has been observed that citizens become more sensible towards their responsibility for the nation and the society because of them. Rang De Basanti, Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Chak De India are all examples of such instances. By observing the current influence of movies, we need to agree on the fact that movies are playing an important role in shaping up opinions of teenagers.

Media is a double-edged sword which has both negative and positive effects on the young and innocent minds of the teenagers. But, unfortunately the negative effects are more in number and at the same time they are more visible.

Media is responsible for creating ideals about body image, owing to which several teenagers (especially girls) suffer from inferiority complex and resort to unhealthy practices to lose weight and get skinny. They aspire to look like Bipasha, Katrina and Kareena. The amount of excessive violence in the name of action depicted in media – be it the television, movies or the video games, tends to increase aggressive tendencies in teenagers. The amount of celebrity hype created by the media causes many children to make irrational demands for designer clothing, accessories and other perks of the celebrity life that they are exposed to.

Glorification of unhealthy habits like smoking, drug abuse, unprotected sex and liquor consumption can encourage these habits in teenagers, which can permanently scar their lives. Particularly smoking is one such habit which is prevalent among the youngsters and most of them are teenagers. It is so since the youth thinks it is cool to light up as they see the good guys do it on screen. Earlier, it were the villains smoking on screen but as the actors doing heroic deeds started burning cigars on screen the young people started thinking positively about smoking. Half of the Indian stars have smoked on screen including Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgan, John Abraham, Vivek Oberoi, Salman Khan and Ranbir Kapoor.

Glamorizing smoking on screen makes teenagers believe that its mark of coolness and people who do so are heroes in life. Level of smoking will not decline by launching ad campaigns or by organizing a fashion show on ‘No Tobacco Day’, it is much deeper. Solution has to be workable at mass level reaching all youngsters belonging to different classes of the society.