Are Movies Killing Society’s Morals?

Without movies we would be dead bored Some of us know nothing but what we have seen in movies. All the way from The Sound of Music to The Godfather sequels, movies have spiced up our lives, have enlightened us, entertained us and educated generation after generation. Let’s start with Jackie Chan, my legendary martial arts superhero. If it weren’t for movies, I would never have known that this guy is capable of somersaulting and kicking at 50 bad guys till they are all dead. Thanks to Chan, we now know that kung-fu can be used when we are in trouble. It does not matter whether Jackie Chan is heavily outnumbered in a fight, be rest assured that he will kick all their butts. Only that sometimes I wonder why the bad guys will wait patiently, dancing around in an intimidating manner and attack him one by one till he kicks all of them. What other way to bring happy family members together than inviting Chuck Norris or Arnold Schwarzenegger on that small screen in your living room? When we are watching a movie at home, we literally forget all our differences, chat up on a few scenes and laugh together. Some of you who have never gone to the U.S.A feel as if you’ve been there a million times. You know how their culture is, thanks to Desperate Housewives, who the most influential people are, “the Company” in Prison Break and how their security intelligence works, thanks to 24. (By the way, there is a friend of mine who actually believes that Jack Bauer is a real personality.) The knowledge we get from movies is a blessing without which, we would just have the theoretical stuff we read from books and not the visualization. Like when you read a novel and create all those characters in your head, a movie helps to brings them to life. Now let’s delve a little into our own Hillywood- the glamorous version of Hollywood, minus the Oscars of course. Hillywood has presented us with a couple of motion pictures depicting what happened here in 1994. For those who don’t comprehend what exactly took place in Rwanda, I recommend that you pay good attention to the FESPAD film festival starting this week. There is this particular movie, Long Coat, which depicts how the seemingly impossible reconciliation process is actually happening. Although at first I was attracted to watch because the pretty Miss Chanele was featuring, I was not only surprise by her immense acting talent, but also the fact that it’s based on a true story. Bringing the reconciliation story on screen makes it more real to Rwandans. They say that a picture speaks a thousand words and after watching Long Coat, I can’t protest much. If Hillywood manages to avoid using monotonous and boring storylines like in Nigerian movies and the never ending songs in Indian movies, then hopefully it might become the most profitable movie industry in Africa. Movies are here to stay and they are good. Send your comments to mugishaivan@yahoo.com