Is anything & everything accepted in the name of Creative Freedom?

— By Jai Raj Sharma

Artistic or Creative freedom can be understood as the level of independence that artists can avail to create art freely. But to what extent is the big question. Can anything and everything can be accepted under the pretext of creative freedom?

I hope you might have seen the earlier launched teaser of the movie Adipurush or the recently launched remastered version trailer of the movie that the creators improved after the outrage on different social media platforms.

From stand-up comedy shows to recent movies, these so-called artists use the word creative choices or creative freedom to hide the anarchy they are slowly mixing in India’s atmosphere to brainwash the country’s youth.

All artists whether they are writers, public speakers, comedians, filmmakers, etc are important in society, even in ancient times; artists used to hold a very important place in the court of a king, they were respected and treated well because they used to preserve and carry history and knowledge from one mind to another in through their art.

Talking of this fast-moving modern world, people have taken sides and have divided seeking their interests and this is where external forces and negative minds who want to shake the roots of Sanatan Dharma use these divisions as their tools. Art in all becomes a great tool to brainwash the modern youth.

These so-called artists use our rich history and culture for their art inspiration but what they present in the face of their product clearly reflects their bad research work, cheap efforts, and negative motivation behind creating it.

For example; Movie Adipurush’s teaser or trailer might just be a small glimpse of the full movie but that small 2-3 minute video was enough for a movie enthusiast to imagine the quality of the full movie.

The movie trailer portrays Raavan as a hybrid of terrorists and a Nordic Viking, with a well-trimmed, shaped beard and hairs, with no Tripund on the forehead, etc. Vaanar Sena has been portrayed as an army of apes similar to the movie series ‘Planet of the Apes.’ Is this how Valmiki Ramayana portrays these legendary characters from our history?

There are many versions of the Ramayana and I want to ask the creators; what versions have such a portrayal? The portrayal in the movie clearly shows the poor research work of the creators.

And creative freedom never gives a license to a creator to play with history.

In this modern world, the majority of people, especially youth, majorly consume video forms of artwork or content, and this sometimes even represents a country on a global stage then how can we let something which distorts our history in the name of art be released in the country with no proper checks?

Talking of other works, there are many great cinematic works on the portrayal of Ramayan. No doubt Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan series was one of the best portrayals of Ramayan till date.

Bhagwan Shree Ram is called the Maryada Purushottam and simplicity is something that makes him what he is; an ideal for every Indian. You definitely don’t need leather belts or leather clothes on his body to give him a more heroic look, it might work in other science fiction or fantasy genre movies but not here. I doubt if they even visit the jungle even for a day to shoot this movie because the background in the trailer scenes clearly shows that it was shot on a green screen and everything was just left on the post-production work.

And this is where it hurts the most, it feels like the creators of this movie have no realization of what they are working on and what they were creating. The recent trailer of the movie shows their poor research work and the cheap efforts they have put into the production work. Despite such a huge budget, they are serving a movie with the VFX quality of a series like Balveer or some computer-generated games of the 2010s.

After the outrage on the last teaser, creators took some time to improve the quality but still, it does not look promising and now they have invested in marketing, busy paying for paid tweets, posts, and videos to create a fake Ambience of the movie.

((The writer is an aspiring author & science enthusiast. His Twitter handle is @jai_rry and has presence on other social media platforms as “Ved Science & Maths”.))