Reel World - Real Purpose

During my days of education like a decade before, it is - if anyone asks about my hobbies, its common practice to say 'reading books' and 'listening to music'. But, I never remember, me opening a book other than textbooks, yet, I used to say reading as my hobby because it looks cool and everyone likes to hear that.

Basically, I am a movie freak. I love watching movies. But, I haven't revealed it till my 20's, thinking that people will judge me. And if you watch local (native language) movies, you are done. You will be stereotyped as - fit for nothing - always wasting time - no use - blah blah. But, the interesting part is, if you watch Hollywood movies, then you are doing something useful. So mean!!  Have you ever been in such conversations with your parents or relatives? I bet every movie lover would have faced it.

To be frank, I learned a lot from movies. To be specific from local movies - language will have a great impact on the viewer's mind. I have no idea when did I use sine and cosine (its Trigonometry FYI) in real life. But, some values learned from movies have changed my perceptive and I started looking at things in a new angle. And, this helped me a lot to deal with the real world.

An anecdote from a movie that had a huge influence on me - The protagonist of the movie holds a WHITE paper with a small black dot in the middle and ask people around him to describe that. Everyone started imagining that dot as a star in the sky, a mole on a beautiful girl and so on. Even I started thinking about that sitting in front of the television for the first time. Later, he explained that in a beautiful way. Focusing on the tiny dot, we ignored the large White paper around the dot. Similarly, we incline more towards the negative traits of people and makes our life miserable ignoring the beauty around us. This movie, I watched in 2008 and to date, I remember this. It has changed my perceptive of looking at the people. Nobody had ever told me this. I started behaving with my friends, relatives and strangers in a new way. Eventually, I made lots of friends.

Movies will educate you more than school. Yes, I am not kidding. And, the impact is long-lasting. In my early teens, I knew nothing about Soldiers. But now, I have developed immense respect for them and for their families. All credits to Movies. No teacher helped me to understand these Real Heros. This Reel world taught me laws and flaws of the society, due to which I am all ready to face the Real World.


I can write pages on this, but you got my point right? Watching movies is not that bad. I do agree we have a flip side to this. There is a lot of violence, adultery and unnecessary information shown in these movies. But here comes our brain, which plays a major role to filter all this stuff. We choose what to watch and what to process in the brain. Its just a compatibility check with our Values. You react to what you feel within the self. If you are more connected to emotional scenes, you are a little sensitive in your real life. Even if you deny this, it's true and you know it better - 'When you see your feelings or values reciprocate on the screen, you acknowledge them. It makes you happy and gives you kind of satisfaction as you know you are not alone in this world. And, eventually, you watch more and more to make yourself feel good' -  Didn't get it?? Read again!!

Yes, now I can see you thinking through this!!!

Long story short - Watching movies is like an exercise for self-awareness and feast to your mental health. This is the reason you feel happy and content when you watch your favourite movie, even if it is 100th time.

This is my thesis on Watching Movies and Science behind it :-).

Let me know your views in comments if I miss any;)


                                                         Happy Watching!!!