The visage of violence
This 'n' that
By Renee Ranchan

VIOLENCE... everything seems to be directed towards it. And isn’t that ironical since we consider the ahimsa philosophy as our national code. The Father of the Nation knew no other way of life, so naturally non-violence — ahimsa — was our proud legacy. How then has violence perforated every nook and corner of our existence, our very psyche? Go for a Bollywood movie, and you witness this, what would you say, carnival of blood and gore and more violence.

Thankfully, though for the last couple of years — ever since Hum Aapke Hain Koun — we have had some films which detail the happy goings-on in a family where people fall in love, laugh, cry, go through ups and downs, which despite its too-good-to-be-true scenario offer a respite. These offer a respite from movies that reek of violence. That too, violence of a genre where gouging out eyes with a hot tong, stubbing a nose with a lighted cigarette, yanking out a fingernail, ripping off genitals is plain, ordinary fare. Bollywood takes its cue from Hollywood, that is the quiet, an-explanation-in-itself argument. Silence of the Lambs... no, I have not seen it, shall not either ( a summary of the story was enough!) but I am told many a Hindi film-maker desires to make as pathologically morbid a movie where the so-called hero(?) for his staple diet, his dinner, requires the flesh of young women...

Now to zoom away from the big screen.... Take your child, the apple of your eyes, to a toy store. Yes, of course, you will find those adorable, most huggable teddies prominently displayed and rosy-cheeked dolls peering endearingly at you with their blue eyes. (Tell me why do the majority of dolls — even after all this talk of globalisation, universal citizenship and all that — have blonde hair?) But these toys have become rather passe — at least that is what I felt at my recent experience at a swanky toy store. Two Saturdays back to be precise. I was invited to a seven-year-old boy’s birthday party. My cousin, the little boy’s mother, was with me on this birthday-gift shopping trip. And you know what this shop housed — high-tech toy guns that looked like AK-56 or were perhaps its more evolved brethren; war-tanks that crackle with electric fire and are all set to blow up anything obstructing its path; robots with grim, ready-to-slash-at-your movements; He-man heroes, who with a flex of a single, bludgeoning sinew are able to wreak destruction on the world.

I read sometime back — over a month ago, — how a mother in America made a very vocal protest to the manufacturers of a toy company after she discovered that the doll her 11-year-old had bought was mouthing something that could pass of as an obscenity. Why would anyone want to fit such a recording in a child’s doll or toy animal in the first place? I have not, unfortunately, followed up the news. Hope the toy was removed from the market.... But back to my own little toy travail. The mother told me, just as I was cuddling the most darling teddy bear I had ever set eyes on, that her son had crossed the stuffed-toy stage. I settled for one of those remote controlled "chuk-chuk" trains that come with an assemble-yourself railway track. (My cousin had mentioned that Sachit had an mechanics aptitude for) Of course, the shop attendant did his best, trying to sell me some sort of hi-fi play-rifle that could fold up as a pistol when the mood desired. I did have half a mind to tell this pistol-selling enthusiast that the nature of the toy plays a tremendous role on a child’s impressionable mind, introduces him to, perhaps, a certain lifestyle. I am quite sure I would have, had he not got busy peddling the same gun to a father and son duo....

However, now to talk about the animated script — no I am not bringing up the silver screen yet again! We really do not need to when we can have a miniature version right at home and can do all our heart’s viewing while plonking ourselves comfortably on the sitting room’s couch! Yes, watch our TV serials, age being no bar. Our weekly or even daily sitcoms do, definitely so, give our movies a run for their money. Switch on the tube, say around pre-supper or post-dinner time, and simply surf the channels. What are the serials about? You find family intrigue on account of an overflow of wealth, power and time on hand. And so on account of this insatiable desire to amass wealth, which goes by the name of ‘healthy ambition’, life is a staple diet comprising kidnappings, extortions, murders. But life is not all business... All work and no play does make Jack a dull boy and so in-between there is time for some romance, some passion which in turn leads to crimes of passion. Yes, it all goes back to square one... violence. The stories differ in shades of course, but the outcome remains the same — plenty of blood (of the visible and invisible hue) is splaltered across your personal screen. Monitoring your child’s viewing is getting progressively difficult, complains one working mother. The reasons she gives: more and more mothers are out at ‘work’. Secondly, the TV has become a kind of surrogate parent/grandparent for the latch-key kid. And since the single-kid syndrome is more or less an urban reality, the child has no sibling to play with save the TV.

Another lady wants to know how you would respond to your prospective servant when he assuredly informs you that it is a must for him to view the TV for at least three hours. On a daily basis? Yes, but of course! And then wishes to know, if you have a second tele-beeshun. When I heard this, the vision that swam before me was no pretty sight. Robinhood, was the poor man’s knight in armour, who stole wealth from the rich to give it to the poor, right? Domestic help, these days, have taken a leaf, a warped one, from the hero’s pamphlet. The glitz and glamour on the idiot box, shown to be a way of life, is what life is about, how it should be. Crushing anyone or anything that comes in the way... so it seems okay to bash out a sleeping employer’s brain, and then adopting to run away with the booty, adopting Robinhood’s self-righteous streak. Except in this ‘exercise’ two matters are lost. Number one, Robinhood was no murderer. Secondly, the poor for Robinhood did not comprise I-me-myself.... But before you run off with the wrong picture — domestic help and the likes are not the only ones who can muffle you to death with your pillow. You are told the bar is closed, so the last drink cannot be served. Your way of getting back? Whisking out your revolver and shooting the woman manning the bar. Remember Jessica Lal? And what about Gulshan Kumar... murdered in broad daylight. A gory scene right out of a Hindi pot-boiler. To move across shores... two high schoolboys belonging to well-heeled, well-off families killing their schoolmates with home-made bombs, rifles all just for the fun of it? Had they embraced Nazi ideology? And why did they enjoy playing only savage video games? However, how many such ‘cases’ can we speak of... they would spill into reams and reams and still we would have more. Before turning off the tube, mention has to be made what the V chip America has at last come out with. They say, all you have to do is fit the chip in your set and parents can censor their kids TV viewing... channels and programmes can be blocked, erased....Hurrah, you say? What happens there, happens here in no time! Yes, quite true except that buyers of this V-chip facility are having a hard time programming it. Even the people in charge of selling this valuable chip are not proficient in its programming!

Books, cinema, television — why blame them, so say a growing number of people who believe ‘these’ are not responsible for society’s growing violence. How can a mere video game turn you into a Hitler’s sycophant? Or a movie inspire you into becoming an underworld don? True, in parts. But what about the responsibility literature has towards society? Violence, in any form — palpable or impalpable — is not something we should have to live with. So should we not vacuum it away and get out house in order...?