How can we make social issues sexy?

There is something terribly exciting about ordinary people waking up to possibilities they did not dream of, and pushing for social change. However, sometimes the zeal to do what is right gets mixed up with becoming righteous. Worse still, tedious. Is it possible to have fervour and fun?

It is an old question. If you toss in health, social development, women and children, the discourse remains confined to the throng of development-wallahs. As a member of this tribe, I am often invited to seminars in the heart of Lutyens’ Delhi, and other such salubrious locales, where familiar faces hold forth. The experience is uplifting, no doubt. But truth be told, I have often wondered whether we can be a little less earnest, and a little more exciting, while making our points.

Last week, I was in for a pleasant surprise. Two groups of people whose paths rarely cross came together to discuss social change.

That they were from different countries added shine to the scene. Educators chatted with entertainers, academics with actors, and development-wallahs with artists. There were scriptwriters with master’s degrees in public health and Beverley Hills denizens. The occasion — the 5th International Entertainment and Education Conference, focusing on women and children. The organisers, an eclectic bunch, included Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs; UNICEF, University of Texas at El Paso Department of Communication, and agencies such as the Hollywood, Health and Society affiliated to the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, Annenberg.

The conversations meandered, but were fascinating. Most people agreed that the right to undo social wrongs does not automatically give one the right to bore everyone, that education works splendidly in the guise of entertainment, and that you don’t always have to have pots of money to get the message out to the masses.

Of course, there are the inconvenient truths. If one is in the business of filmmaking in India, one knows all too well that big studios care most about the cast, the star factor, that multiplex theatres are not enamoured of the alternative vision, and so on. How then does an independent filmmaker without family connections and family wealth make films that are pungent, passionate, and have a point of view that deserves to be heard?

One inspiring example of how one can survive, and make a mark, without the traditional support systems is Onir, the young, Thimphu-born director, editor, writer and producer who made a splash with My Brother Nikhil, perhaps the first Hindi film to deal frontally with AIDS and same-sex relationships.

At the conference, Onir talked about  his experience of using Facebook to fund his films. His most recent work I Am — four short films dealing with themes like child abuse and same-sex relationships, is  India’s first ‘crowdsourced’ film with over 400 ‘co-owners’ from 47 cities across the world.

A student sent a cheque of $25 — his pocket money — because he wanted to support such films. Another group of students form Malda, West Bengal, took a loan to contribute to I Am. Contributors/co-producers live in places as far apart as Nigeria and Germany. They not only donate money, but also publicise the film among their friends and their social networks.

As Onir tells it, the whole experience has not only opened up new possibilities to creative people with a social conscience, it has also busted some fond myths. One telling example — small towns don’t have a ‘niche viewership’ and only big city sophisticates can deal with taboo topics. Onir’s experience points to just the opposite — a question-and-answer session following the screening of I Am in poverty-stricken, conflict-scarred Jharkhand revealed a far more tolerant attitude towards sexual choices than in the IITs.

There were many others who offered new ideas on how individuals and small groups can make serious topics sizzle, and get vital health and social development messages across to the people.

Of course, in designing and implementing Education and Entertainment interventions, one has to remember that while some parts of the collaboration process between entertainment and health communication professionals run smoothly, there is a  need to be cautious about ‘bloopers.’ These are the deleted scenes that contain mistakes made by a member of the cast or crew or inadvertent errors during a live radio or TV broadcast. Thoughtful of the organisers to have included an entire session on bloopers that offer hard lessons which scholastic literature often skips.

The author is a Delhi-based writer
patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com linbox@dnaindia.net