Before we plunge into the imaginary yet logical justifications of some ideas in my head let me ease you in with most prerequisites & foreknowledge while I hope you’ll be able to keep up with the speed of my thought train.
Let’s say there are broadly two sects of society, the privileged class and the under-privileged class. The privileged sects have the luxury or you can say abundance of basic necessities. They have the time and thinking capacity that they can spend on questioning the socio-political and economic conditions that we are living-in & ponder over abstracts like morality, ethics and equality. Now you have the capacity doesn’t necessarily mean you ought to do it, you’re again faced with a choice. Let’s break it further, the people belonging to the privileged class, who actually do the heavy thinking instead of wasting their time in enjoying themselves can further be broken into two, the active ones & the passive ones.
Passive ones do ponder & discuss these subjects but are not very vocal about it. They don’t get up and act, although they might individually do their part of good which includes moral and responsible deeds. But they generally feel that their unprecedented voices and actions are too small of a force that cannot budge the cruel machinery equivalent of the system, even by an inch. So they shy away from risking their comforts & safety net for a seemingly doomed cause.
Active ones are those who feel a strong sense of responsibility towards their conscience and and even raise their voices & get into positions where they can actually make a change. Now once you get in that position of power you are immediately over burdened by responsibilities and protocols. Dealing with them becomes your job and you keep getting further and further from the change that you actually wanted to strife for. Some might become corrupt and others disheartened looking at the sheer vastness and rigidity of the broken system. Now, don’t get me wrong on this. I do not mean to criticise either of them, I am simply considering their effectiveness.
Now, somewhere between this active and passive spectrum of morality and humanity, lie the film-makers.
Before I elaborate on that, let me quickly state that humans are not animals of reason but they are animals of realisation. If a person is presented with two facts where one is thoroughly logical but against the ideologies of that person. The other one is not that logical but vaguely supports the person’s ideologies. After assessing both, it’s seen that most of the people tend to prefer the second one and turn a blind eye to others. If you set out to logically change a person’s mind and the moment he realizes that you are trying to change his perspective, his mind immediately takes an anti stance and then no matter what you say or how logical it is, you won’t be able to change his mind. Don’t be awestruck by that and don’t think that it’s not quite possible. The reality is that human brains are set in positive feedback loops. They are set to find similarities in their surroundings and thoughts that reaffirm their previous beliefs because this re-affirmation of similarities is what has helped us survive the wild. The behavior, the practices, the thoughts that helped us survive every next moment get reinforced the very next because, since they helped our cause of survival hence they’re to be adopted. Only when we repeatedly experience something negative by following our belief system only then are we compelled to change them.
Coming back, Now the world wide web is not the only invisible entity we are surrounded by, we are surrounded by propaganda, by inequality, by poverty, by revolution and these abstracts simply can not be seen by naked eye. They can only be observed, when one witnesses emotions, when people interact with these fields, the rage, the sorrow, the helplessness & the pain(It’s like Higgs field which can never be seen but its presence is felt as it gives mass to the particles that interact with it). And by capturing these emotions, people’s interaction with these aspects of our environment, the film tries to shed light on the underlying vanity of our conditions and situations.
Through this powerful tool of films, the film makers have the power to successfully capture and re-create these interaction and effectively deliver the essence of stark reality that we face, true filmmakers never emphasizes a point they only focus on showing things the way they were, focusing on aspect that affects us all at large, which we often miss out on since they are hidden in large canvas of our surroundings. Since we don’t like looking at bleak aspects of it we miss out on the trivial but essential qualities of it.
Through all this film makers don’t give commentary, logic or interpretation, they just show us the things that we missed out and leave it to our reason to figure it out. And when the reason clicks through self realization, reform of the highest quality sets into motion. This reform tends to be more permanent and less prone to unconscious alterations or corrosion.
Hence a film maker doesn’t simply sit back enjoying his privilege but speaks up to the wrongs and unjust happening around him though his work. He is effectively able to capture and communicate his message which pierces through logical & open minds & doesn’t bring resistance from dense skulls who weren’t even open to an idea. Ultimately the film maker can find solace knowing that he did raise his voice & did take action which made an impact where it was necessary.
Edit : When I wrote this piece I was just setting out to explore stuff & these were some of my initial ideas. Obviously these ideas aren’t conclusive of my thoughts just the tip of the iceberg. Hence you may find them to be incomplete, so I request you not to look for the absolute.
