How do socio-political biases influence our movie-watching experience?

Is the very act of creating a world and determining how people relate to each other in it via power structures, competition for resources, and their struggle to abide by (or break) existing rules inherently political?

All art, no matter how pristine and highly acclaimed meets the human eye after passing through two key organs—the retina, and socio-political biases. The result of this phenomenon is a perennial voice of dissent ready to drag the greatest of movies through the mud if they do not conform to our own inclinations. The age-old question of whether anyone can assess a movie through a truly unbiased lens is especially relevant now, at a time when the colour of an actor’s clothes in a shot decides what a movie truly stands for. While it might be tempting to blame the fragile global political climate we’re currently witnessing, it is worth noting that politics has always been sensitive terrain, and our opinions of films have always been incredibly subjective.

Issues of objectivity

Even a film as universally revered as Mani Ratnam’s critical darling Roja (1992) has been criticised for its coarse treatment of the incredibly nuanced subject matter (growing militancy among the civilians in Kashmir). Rustom Bharucha, a retired theatre professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and corresponding fellow of the British Academy, offered a biting critique of the film in his 1994 piece for The Economic and Political Weekly titled ‘The Manufacture of Consent in Roja.’ Bharucha wrote, “My central problem with the film is its construction of a powerful and convenient ‘enemy image’. It is a series of assumptions and myths masquerading as common sense.” 

Bharucha’s criticism, while harsh, raises an important cultural question. Is it possible for even the most learned critics to look at a film objectively? Film critic Prathyush Parasuraman weighs in on the matter, saying, “At least philosophically, there is no way of being bias-free. Whether or not one lets those biases actively influence their choices is, of course, a moral question.” Parasuraman personally believes that every good critic, no matter how objective, should always acknowledge the existence of an inherent political prism that all celluloid passes through. “When it comes to film criticism, anything that takes ‘active efforts,’ including objectivity, will come off as disingenuous. The best thing to do is to be aware of the political filter in your head and to remember that your opinion isn’t the gospel truth.” 

Parasuraman further seeks to examine the objectivity of the very films that critics like him are asked to review each Friday. “You must understand that by asking a critic to review a film objectively, you’re assuming the film was made with the purpose of remaining politically neutral. It is possible to make a film that is completely insular to the communities it is based on, but you just can’t do that with certain subjects. It would be tone-deaf to make a film on Kashmir that does not examine the resistance that the Kashmiris’ put up to exist as dignified individuals.”

A closer lens

Kashmir has been the subject of several polarising films, the latest of them being Vivek Agnihotri's infamous The Kashmir Files. While the factual socio-political merit of the film is better examined by anthropologists and social studies professors, a simple Google search is enough to understand that it is, in fact, a polarising piece of cinema. The film has been rated a mere 50 per cent by critics on Rotten Tomatoes but boasts a healthy 94 per cent audience rating.

Vishal Bhardwaj's 2014 film Haider (examining the same subject from a more nuanced and arguably empathetic lens), on the other hand, has been rated 85+ per cent by both critics and general audiences on the same website. Whether these stats reflect Agnihotri's or Bhardwaj's filmmaking styles or, more importantly, socio-political values, is of course, open to interpretation. 

Parasuraman’s views on the inherent unattainability of objective film criticism, especially in a country like ours, are mirrored by forensic psychologist Aditya Sundaray. “Unconscious biases are a fact of life and anything that contradicts them becomes repulsive by default. The actual problem arises when these feelings escalate to agitation.” Sundaray believes our newfound penchant for getting agitated is the result of several deeply cultural factors. “We are uniquely doomed in this sense because the Indian populace is first, conditioned to a certain majority-centric ideology through decades of subtle messaging in popular media, and second, taught that it is okay to be overtly passionate about protecting one’s political ideology and interests. As a result, people tend to pick up on the slightest out-of-context cues and feel threatened by them.” 

Another reason for our growing inability to assess art objectively, Sundaray believes, is the advent of the internet as the leading platform for film criticism. “The first thing we need to understand here is that information on the internet radiates concentrically. Everything, including socio-political views, is shared with an entire group of people all at once. Each of these people can then share it with their own groups and so on,” he says. “Once this happens, Meme Theory starts showing effect.” Meme Theory is the hypothesis that human beings tend to learn everything–from new ideas to extremely specific behavior (like fiercely protecting a specific social/political ideology)–through imitation. 

Sundaray’s theory here is that the internet might have a central role in teaching large groups of people how to view everything through a shared, terse cultural lens. “Trying too hard to be objective will only squeeze out the cultural context that our individual views carry. Rather, the goal should be to become more tolerant of opposing ideas.” he says. Parasuraman further elaborates on this in the context of films, saying, “You can’t be an objective critic the same way you can’t be an objective filmmaker. The best you can do is be fair to the people behind the camera and their processes.”

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