Motion pictures as an agent of socialization: A comparative content analysis of demography of population on Indian silver screen and reported crime news in Pakistan (1976 to 2006)

Abstract

This study aims to examine and analyze the role of motion pictures as an agent of socialization. It focuses the contribution of Indian movies to the increase of violent crimes and criminals in Pakistani society across four decades (i.e., 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s) through favorable, rather glamorized depiction of violence and perpetrators of violence. It is arbitrarily assumed that violence is often projected on the silver screen as a quick and easy solution to social injustice and class discrimination in the blockbusters of Bollywood and Lollywood. Five top grossing Indian films selected through popularity charts and youth polls are thus content analyzed from the four decades under study for the census and portrayal of both perpetrators and subjects of violence, following sampling techniques of Shipley and Cavendar, 2001. Subsequently, four samples of one month issues of the largest circulated Daily Jang--from each decade (1976-2006)--were carefully content analyzed to identify the population, age, gender, class, and depiction of criminals and victims as a representative day-to-day record of the social crime scene. Results show that the population of violent criminals has increased both in Pakistani society and in Indian movies during the forty years sampled but the increase is curvilinear rather than linear in nature. Though there seems to be a fragile, proportional relationship between the two variables, it is observed that the presence and portrayal of criminal elements in Pakistani society fluctuate and are subject to several other socio-economic and political factors both in national and international scenarios. The very fact reflects that the impact of mass media as an agent of socialization is rather slow, gradual, and subtle unlike the hypodermic needle or magic bullet theories of yesteryears. Besides there is an assumption that strikingly popular Indian movies (which actually fill the cinematic vacuum in absence of sufficient quality local films) are likely to play a vital role in transmitting patterns of conduct and defining role models in Pakistani society.