Ricciotto Canudo an Italian film theoretician has described cinema as a combination of the spatial arts and the temporal arts, in other words a film is a combination of music and dance on one hand and a suitable story supported with adequate presentation and imagery on the other. So although what we see in reel life may be true, it is substantially regulated and designed with a certain objective in mind, it is a result of concoction. Whereas real life is beyond any definition or explanation if we try to define real life it can fill hundreds and thousands of books due to its vastness, uncertainty and complexity. Hence the concepts and issues which arise in real life will outnumber those in reel life substantially. Reel life is a part of real life infact it originates from real life. One of the major functions of reel life is to portray social reality in a systematic manner, its important that reel life has to be significant in the era in which it is made and showed. A very good example in this context is the transition between films of Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachan. In the Rajesh Khanna films of early seventies like Anand and Bavarcheee many socialist values get reflected, values like fairness, equity and justice are reflected in these films because at that time Nehruvian socialism was predominant. Whereas in the Amitabh Bachan films of late seventies and early eighties the concept of the “angry young man” is used to show the frustrations of the people then due to the economic crisis and the introduction of mills which lead to the exploitation of the proletariat, all this was reflected through the angry young man.
Now the rural population and people from the lower social strata may be desirous of imitating reel life, but mere desire cannot lead to imitation, imitating reel life requires monetary backing and strong economic background which is absent in the people of the lower social strata, hence imitation by a large number of people is out of question.
If we...