A popular Malayalam movie named ‘Pani’ has recently brought some discussions in social media about the violence in movies and its impact on human psyche. Some argues that violence shown in any art form would help the audience to have an experience of ‘Catharsis’.
The word catharsis comes from the Greek word katharsis, which literally means a cleansing or purging (Bushman, 2002, p.724). “According to catharsis theory, acting aggressively or even viewing aggression is an effective way to purge angry and aggressive feelings” (Bushman, 2002, p.724). This theory makes authoritative statement that venting one’s anger will produce a positive improvement in one’s psychological state. Thus catharsis-theory promotes the possibility of purging one’s emotional residues of anger by letting it to flow without any screening.
Brad J. Bushman a social psychologist and a renowned professor at the School of Communication at Ohio State University is an expert researcher on aggression and violence. In 2002, Prof. Bushman conducted an empirical study among 600 undergraduate students to understand the validity of the above-mentioned catharsis theory. After the analysis of the experiment, he challenged this theory. According to him for reducing anger and aggression, it is the worst possible advice to tell one to imagine their provocateur’s face on a pillow or punching bag as they wallop it, yet this is precisely what many popular psychologists advise people to do. If followed, such advice will only make people angrier and more aggressive (p.730).
This research becomes relevant when the movies which enacts violence place at the top in the popularity chart. There are some recent movies which picturized the heroics of violence with an attempt to glorify the aggression needs of humans. When such movies attract the people in large, the society has to be alert to such social phenomena. A plenty of computer games and video games target the psychological need of aggression as well. Repeated actions of firing the enemies within a setting of game would naturally reduce the impact of human conscience which demands ‘not to kill’ or to inflict pain on others. Any attempt to glorify violence as a part of heroism or an attempt to simplify it as a part of human life would significantly damage the social conscience of India which promoted Ahimsa and nonviolence as the mantra of freedom-fight a few decades ago.