Madireddy Lakshmi Bhavana | Centre for Rights of Differently-Abled (Symbiosis Law School,Hyderabad) | 6th November 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Movies are one of the major entertainment and informational sources\nin India and it has taken a significant role in the lives of Indian citizens.\nThese can be considered as a media which has the capacity to influence the\naudience on any controversial or unfamiliar issues. Disability has been one of\nthe issues where people lack sensitization and awareness and it has been\nlargely marginalized in our Indian society. There is a traditional belief in\nour country where it is believed that disability is a punishment for the deeds\ncommitted in the past life. The saddest part is that there is an existence of\nthis kind of belief in a disabled person\u2019s mind which is very common in our\ncountry. Various NGOs and organizations have tried to break this kind of\nstereotype through different kinds of activities and tasks but it has been to a\nvery limited extent.\n\nMovies can be one of the media which can raise\nawareness towards the disability in the minds of Indian citizens in order to\nmake them understand the problems and provide a direct experience of a disabled\nperson\u2019s life. When a movie character is based on a disabled person, it depicts\nabout a particular disability and how the person communicates, behaves and\nleads a life. One of the earliest movies, Jeevan Naiya, 1936 has portrayed the traditional\nbelief of of disability as a punishment written by Niranjan Pal driven by an\nidea of social injustice and indifference faced by the disabled people. The\nmovie is about a rich guy who rejects his wife because of her background of\ndancers who end up losing his sight and taken care by the same wife who he has\nrejected. Famous Tamil industry actor, Rajnikanth in 1979 acted in the movie\nNetrikkan, where he ends up being on a wheel chair due to his wicked activities\nthroughout the movie. There are many more movies in the past which has depicted\nthe idea of karma being the reason of the disability which has created an\nimpact on the audience believing it to be true and justifiable reason for a\ndisability. There are also movies which have portrayed disabled persons as a\nstrong personality such as Thakur from Sholay (1975), Haider (2014) etc. To a\nlarge extent, there are movies which portray disabled persons in a comic role\nand making jokes on their disability giving it a very serious negative impact\non the audience. It creates a stigma of laughing on these kinds of jokes which\nare very inappropriate, disrespectful and inconsiderate towards the disabled.\nEven though there are many movies which depict the disabled persons in a bad\nlight, there are also incredible movies which show the independence of few\ncharacters. Sparsh (1980), lead role played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui is portrayed\nas a very independent principal of a school and the movie also shows the\nreality of inaccessibility of these disabled persons. In 2005, Chennai based\nNGO Ability foundation organized an international disability film festival to\npromote unique and inspiring platform of extraordinary movies with a purpose of\ncreating awareness about disability and to break down the stereotypes. This\nfilm festival is being conducted every year since 2005 drawing many film makers\nand producers attend this film festival. There has been a positive influence of\nmovies on the audience regarding disabled persons and through acceptance of\nthese kinds of movies, there is a high scope of effective and appropriate use\nof movies to portray the reality of the lives of disabled persons.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Madireddy Lakshmi Bhavana | Centre for Rights of Differently-Abled (Symbiosis Law School,Hyderabad) | 6th November 2019 Movies are one of the major entertainment and informational sources in India and it has taken a significant role in the lives of Indian citizens. These can be considered as a media which has the capacity to influence the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n