Violence in movies

A feature from the promising new newspaper Mint The feature is centered around two recent movies which have their genesis in real life --- Parzania and Black Friday. Parzania, directed by Rahul Dholakia, is a real-life story wound around the Gujarat riots -- about a Parsi couple looking for their lost son amidst the violence. Black Friday, directed by the indomitable Anurag Kashyap, is about the 1993 Mumbai Serial blasts. Read the feature to get the full impact. But I will quote a section here that hits the bull's eye: Kashyap believes that violence made digestible and glamorous as it is in slick action films, is dangerous. “I have a problem with violence that is shown in diffused light, with techno music, as choreographed kung fu. Because that is highly watchable violence and it tells the audience that it is okay to kill. Hard violence makes you cringe, but it also brings home the horror of the situation,” says Kashyap. How true...in the name of entertainment, movies glamorize everything these days...if only they could expose the real side of things every now and then, people would leave the movie hall with a better understanding of their real world.