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Movies and Manipulative Emotions
iView Author:
Harsha Chandrashekar
(Banglore, India)
Email:
harshacshekar [at] gmail [dot] com
Movies and Manipulative Emotions
Aamir Khan’s take on Sanjay Leela Bhansali “Black” as an extremely manipulative effort made me think, Can you actually make a motion picture without tinkering the audience mind to your advantage? I think not.
A triumphant narrative is always dependent on drama that it can bring in. Now the catch is what is Drama? Understandably there is no one definition of Drama but I have put together a few ones that I feel are close.
1. Drama comes from Greek words meaning “to do” or “to act.” It shows people going through some eventful period in their lives, seriously or humorously.
2. Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance.
3. Drama is a unique tool to explore and express human feeling.
Now coming back to the subject of manipulative emotions, it’s the director’s prerogative to tweak the viewer’s intellect to keep alive the drama in the narrative. Sensible directors use manipulative emotions as an important tool to convey the right impact, however most fail miserably by getting on your nerve.
As I started with the Aamir Khan, let’s try and psychoanalyse his first directorial venture “Taare Zammen Par”. Two scenes that immediately come to my mind are first during the painting competition Nikumbh painting the portrait of Ishaan Awasthi and second the climax scene when Ishaan runs towards Nikumbh. Both the scenes are essentially used to manipulate audience feelings and eventually helping in getting the right drama the director intended to. Now let’s take of the movie “Gandhi” directed by Richard Attenborough. It’s essentially a biography of Mahatma Gandhi as designed by Richard Attenborough. Now why do I say that? The quest of the movie was to show the Mahatma in Gandhi and not human aspects of his personality. So if you want to get glimpses of Gandhi, the human being you would have to depend on movies like “Sardar” directed by Ketan Mehta, “Bose” directed by Shyam Benagal, “The Legend of Bhagat Singh” directed by Rajkumar Santoshi and the most interesting of them all “Hey Ram” directed by Kamal Hassan. Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi” is one of the classic examples of using manipulative emotions to your advantage.
Let’s divulge further, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of The Christ” to say it’s a highly manipulative effort would be an understatement. On “The Passion of The Christ”, MS Sathyu the director of “Garam Hawa” one of the very first movies on partition said “We all know Jesus was beaten black and blue before he was Crucified, but do we have to see all the 50-100 times he was whipped to feel the pain”. Mel Gibson did exactly that with “The Passion of The Christ” and laughed all the way to the bank.
My study is directed less towards judging a movie on its merits and more on the aspect of manipulative emotions in it. Directors have and will always use this potent weapon to present the drama as all of us are emotional fools at some level; however the degree is a subjective matter. So when somebody says he could connect with a particular movie you could safely assume manipulative emotion was at work and when director understand the right pulse of the audience you have movies like Sholay, Anand, Guide, Gandhi, Schindler’s List and many more works of art.
As a parting shot let me give you some food for thought. Farah Khan’s “Om Shanti Om” was funny only in parts; it had a wafer thin plot and a climax ripped off from the movie “Karz” directed by Subhash Ghai. So why did it go on to become the highest grosser of 2007.
Below are few reasons how Farah Khan and Shah Rukh Khan in their pre publicity interviews were successful in conditioning the audience what to expect from the movie.
Quotes from the interviews
1. “It’s an extremely funny movie” – Both Farah and Shah Rukh took great pains to explain almost every funny scene in the movie even before the first show, thus ensuring audience knew before hand how many scenes were funny and when they were expected to laugh.
2. “Six Pack abs” – I think Shah Rukh’s six pack should be the most talked about topic in history after 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden.
3. “31 Stars” – Again detailed explanation was provided on how they got 31 Stars to dance for the OST “Deewangi”
Audience just loved the movie from day 1 and as intended the word of mouth spread that it is an extremely funny film, thus a blockbuster hit. I insist everyone who found “Om Shanthi Om” a good watch the first time during the hysteria week of Diwali to watch it now and let me know if you feel the same, my sense is most of you would feel awful and may be even dismayed at the fact that you even liked it the first time. The power of manipulative emotions was at full throttle here and would remain so till time immemorial.
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Hottest Today:
I think Shah Rukh
i don’t subject myself to such emotional manipulations
i sit under my bodhi tree
perfectly in samadhi
what are you doing in cinema hall
come join me
there is another bodhi tree just by my side
let others play this game.
some are manipulating some are ready to be manipulated.
the bodhi tree is waiting for you.
%%-%%-
>:d<
crap article .. will say more later ..
I saw Om Shanti Om a month after its release and didn’t think much of it.
Take away the gimmicks ( the oily abs, 30 stars in one yech song) and the movie barely survives.
The second half is awful and Khan as OK hams and hams and well hams.
It’s a spoof rather than a satire - a satire requires cleverness - and I cannot imagine seeing it again ever.
My understanding is that a Director’s primary objective is to manipulate the audiences’ PERCEPTION, NOT their emotions. On an emotional level, audiences must relate to the character/dilemma presented.
There is a fundamental difference in “relating to” and being “manipulated by”. The minute an audience member ceases to relate, you’ve lost them.
Afterall, we may be emotional fools… but we (most of us anyways) are not stupid…
I can’t think of a movie that doesn’t ultimately try to affect viewers’ emotions. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, either. E.g., No Smoking was all about getting us to have a shared experience of paranoia, IMO.
The problem may be the clumsier efforts to do so. We don’t want to notice when we are letting ourselves being manipulated. It breaks us out of our reveries and makes us consider the filmmakers’ intentions toward us.
What falls in the clumsy emotional manipulation category? Dialog that overstates the obvious, for one thing. Laugh tracks. Bombastic music that punctuates a dramatic beat. Music that would make you cry even if the scene wasn’t sad. Forced gaiety. Overacting. Thunder bolts. Too much camera movement for no valid reason, etcetera, etcetera.
Duh - that was a waste of time. What happens if you missed all the pre-release hoopla and still laughed in Om Shanti Om? What happens if you are more primed to laugh than cry? I found both Black and Taare Zameen Par emotionally manipulative. Give me Anand any day - a dying man trying to make other around him laugh while he is slowly withering on the inside. I can cry buckets at that - but not at a big ‘glycerin-filled’ eyes cute child and string instruments cuing me in to every emotional moment.
With all due respect to those discerning eyes, I think its really tough to write a manipulative sequence, leave alone an entire film.
If at all u have tried your hand at writing a screenplay and not just talked about manipulation on the exterior, you would realise that its really really tough to ring in manipulative emotions.
I have gone through this rigorous process of trying to write in scenes and induce drama, but to me writing a scene, replete with conversational patterns like I have experienced them is a far more easier job that writing something that I know subconcsciously is manipulative..
Which brings me to the larger debate of all this..Things arent that simple as this article suggests.. Do some filmmakers who reguarly indulge in manipulation know that they r doing so? Maybe their lives itself are soaked in an emotional quotient thats so reguarly inclining on artificiality that they dont know of a better alternative..Which makes emotional manipulation an extremely relative and personal thing..
Another question.. Do these filmmakers know that the audience today can accept stuff that are subdued and almost subcutaneous. If no, then I guess its not a case of courage… but plain simple case of not knowing where ur audience is heading to…
I think the problem is not as simple as it seems…..
If I had to suggest an axiom for all this I would say that our cinema has fucked up our lives so bad that our lives as of today are probably lead with a sense of artificiality to start with. Letting cinema creep into our lives has made our lives unreal. And when we then try to peep into our own lives for cinematic transferences we get an image of that artificiality that has originally come to us through our movies..The whole process is I suppose, recursive..
The trick then while making movies is to visit those crevices and corners of our lives that have been left unaffected by cinema. Then maybe we can truly visualise on screen what the writer wishes to see in prose here..
“We don
Thanks guys for chipping in with your thoughts. The point is if you are a good director you use manipulative emotions very effectively as you have very strong hold of the craft.
rxtreme - You say, “Give me Anand any day - a dying man trying to make other around him laugh while he is slowly withering on the inside. I can cry buckets at that - but not at a big
harsh .. u seem to be a case of a guy who heard a nice cinematic word called ‘manipulation’ and is paranoid abt it 24X7 .. relax boy !
Harsha
don’t heed filmibhai’s advice.
there are relatively lesser people who are capable of being really restless.
you seems to be one of them. continue.
i would like to make one suggestion.
try to improve your writing a little. the concepts you have are great. but the presentation is not coherent. make your forthcomings articles a little more organized. and they will be great read.
:>$-)
emotional manipulation
what you want to say that. a director shows you something to make you cry. and if he is succesfull in this he has manipulated viewers emotion.
this you deemd to be wrong.
art - is an insihgt in you. an insight of what is a human being made of.
if one can see inside oneself on one’s own. he doesn’t need the help of art.
art helps people to see what is inside them.
identification - comes from within. i can not identify with a african tribal ritual. it is not in me.
tare zamien per - a viewer may identify with the child. because he has gone through the same thing in his childhood. all that pain is shut up in his mind. afecting him negatively. and he may not be concious of that. TZP is providing a relief for him, a catharsis. watching the movie, he will see himself in there. he will cry. tears which are there from his childhood will flow. and a wound will be healed. and in this way a movie has helped him unburden. leaving cinema hall he will be a lighter, healthier person.
your objection is that, a director should not make him cry. director is manipulating his emotions. director is touching him.
you accept that there is something that can be touched. and you say that it should not be touched.
think it this way. director is giving him an opportunity to get rid of them. and you will agree that it is good.
and don’t worry. when there will be nothing to be touched, directors will not be able to do that.
that was behind my first reaction. all the great tearjerker directors stiched together can not manipulate a buddha. he has emptied himself on his own.
@};-@};-@};-
#:-s
LOL nice article
for all those who think quality cinema is not about manipulating emotions i got one word for u HITCHCOCK