In our era, in the stranglehold of the internet and information overkill, facts are increasingly being binned for the bizarre, the flashy and the unreal. Rumours and misinformation cloaked as facts have taken over our news and social media feeds.
According to Statista, an online platform for market and consumer data, about 64.4 per cent of the world's population was on the information and internet highway as of April 2023. It's a mind-boggling number that is at the mercy of tech giants, affiliated social media and micro blogging sites that offer an overload of information readily consumed, digested and internalised.
The past week saw the release of Sudhir Mishra's critically acclaimed "Afwaah (rumour)", a film that sought to highlight the disastrous effects of misinformation and rumour-mongering - a diabolical art form as old as civilization itself, often even a weapon of statecraft. Rumours are timeless - wielded by messengers on horseback, confidantes of rulers, key players of the French and American revolutions, and soldiers in the First and Second World Wars.
French historian Arlette Farge notes how popular rumours in 18th century France were birthed by those who tried to sidle up to the state and appear well-versed with the intrigue and power dynamics. Mishra through his film emphasizes that rumours and rumour-mongering do not come with any disclaimers, especially in these times of rampant exploitation of digital communication. The objective of rumours, the filmmaker asserts, is to deliver that vilest thrill, cloaked in banter, before it vanishes.
The film delves on how fake news gains traction and infiltrates chat servers as it circulates on microblogging sites, shared and liked by all, making us reach for the subscriber bell icon. "Afwaah" also depicts how misinformation is weaponised through a well-oiled private-public partnership model, with the help of intelligence and algorithms, both human and artificial. It is a disturbing reminder that rumours and manufactured information can be efficiently mass-produced.
Another film released last week thrives on heresy and drummed up data. Its single point agenda appears to be to portray a southern state of India as a hotbed of radicalisation, depravity, and fear. Panned by critics over its intent and quality, the movie, however, received glowing reviews from some Bollywood trade analysts-turned-reviewers who harped more on its box office numbers over the weekend.
In the final tally, Mishra's earnest attempt could only get a "critically acclaimed" film tag, unable to rack up numbers with planned shows aborted due to the lack of an audience compared to its propped-up competitor. "Afwaah" had to meet the same sad box office fate of earlier films like "Zwigato" and "Bheed", directed by Nandita Sen and Anubhav Sinha, that mirrored the realities of many around us.
Not only do the makers of such projects bear the brunt of limited release in terms of the number of screens, thanks to distributor/exhibitor bias, they also have to face the hate propagated by fly-by-night critics endorsing propaganda. For them, Mishra, Sen and Sinha are needless, inconvenient distractions in the larger scheme of big budget commercial productions that are churned out relentlessly by Bollywood.
As Mishra pointed out a few days after his film's release, the audiences for such films simply do not show up in theatres, they wait instead for their OTT release. But their films must be seen in the cinemas, even as they are pushed and shooed away lest they prick our conscience. These films may have run their course within days of their release, but their stories go on, lived by someone close to us. In our current glorious vegetative disarray, a prod to dust and ease the cobwebs off our comatose brains to introspect, interrogate and ask uncomfortable questions is an unimaginable task. Let us be content with the rumour mills that work overtime. As the protagonists of "Afwaah" in a red Range Rover careen into an under-construction building site, an adjacent warning sign handwritten in red screams what we all know and fear; that this project is still work in progress, and that any inconvenience caused is duly regretted.
(Anand Mathew is based in New Delhi.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.