google analytics code

16 July 2014

Movies vs the reality

Recently, there was a show as part of a Telugu Quiz show which should be an eye opener for many people who get drawn too much by the movies and believe them to be true, especially the ones based upon history.
One such movie is "Chanakya Chandragupta". The movie is in itself  a fantastic one depicting the relation between the great political genius Chanakya(played by Akkineni Nageshwara Rao), the king Chandragupta(Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao) and Alexander(played by Shivaji Ganeshan). It showed Alexander fighting Chandragupta and a fictitious story was built to just add spice to the movie.
In the Telugu quiz show "Meelo Evaru Koteeshwarudu"(Telugu version of the famous show "Who wants to be a millionaire"), it was asked:
Which of the following Indian rulers fought against Alexander the great in battle? And the options were:

  1. Ashoka, 
  2. Chandragupta Maurya, 
  3. Porus
  4. Chatrapathi Shivaji

And the contestant, owing to the movie, immediately answered Chandragupta and locked the answer. She was wrong.
The answer was Porus(the Greek version of the original name of Purushottam(or Puru for short)), whom Alexander defeated. The movie just added a bit more drama to its story by including Alexander, but the fact is that Chandragupta and Alexander never faced each other. In fact Chandragupta Maurya established the Mauryan Empire(in 321 BC) 2 years after the death of Alexander(323 BC).
So the impact of movies on the general public cannot be underestimated and sometimes can be misleading.
And the contestant paid the price for believing the cinematic story by losing a big amount of her earnings. Sad, but thats the harsh reality that people have to face for not seeing the movie as an entertainment and assuming it to be a historical fact.

With love.. Anil

No comments:

Post a Comment

I would love to hear your comments and will do my best to reply to your comments and get back to you! :-)