It’s quite simple, really.
When lyricists and singers celebrate alcohol and drugs in their songs, young, intoxicated people at parties are encouraged to consume more alcohol and normalise drugs. And let me tell you that alcohol also causes cancer and erectile dysfunction.

When filmmakers show songs with raunchy lyrics and double meanings, objectifying women, they are used by young men to taunt and sexually harass women in the real world. They nurture behaviour that makes you degrade women and see them as objects — and can lead to violent crimes.

When abusive language or unthinkable, grisly violence becomes the norm on OTT apps, the baddie behaviour becomes cool in everyday life as well.

Content is a very powerful tool, whose power has not been entirely understood. It rewires our brain for better or worse and affects our lives in deep, invisible ways. And for a very large number of creators, reckless and negative content is a neat shortcut in the name of freedom of expression.

A few years ago, we were in the preparatory workshop for an OTT series that would become one of the biggest ever in India. It would be my first stint as an actor — the role was that of a politician, one of the three most prominent roles for the show, a political drama.

I was grumbling to the main protagonist, an excellent actor known for her feisty roles, about the abundance of cuss words in the script despite having specifically told the creative team that hired me that my only condition was: “Gaali nahin doonga” (I won’t use abusive language).

She leaned over and replied: “You can’t escape it. When scriptwriters don’t know what else to write, they fill the script with cuss words.”

By late night on the first day, I politely and respectfully left the OTT show.

You take shortcuts when you are not creatively good enough. You take shortcuts when you cannot write powerful dialogues or great scenes or evocative poetry. You mindlessly celebrate sex and alcohol, drugs and violence, because they offer easy titillation.

Badshah knows this. Honey Singh knows this. Raqueeb Alam, Mangli, Prem, Arjun Janya, and Nora Fatehi — makers of the recent (now-banned) song ‘Sarke Chunar Teri Sarke’ that graphically described sexual acts, they all know this.

The release of this kind of song would have been unimaginable even five years ago. How did we get here? Creators either do not know the power and impact of their work on people’s everyday lives — or just do not care about it. When you write a sexual song objectifying a woman in the name of freedom of speech, you empower offences against women. When you create uplifting content, it improves lives, raises dopamine levels.

It’s not rocket science.
Ask parents.
Ask viewers.
Ask scientists.

There is abundant scientific research to show that what we watch on-screen has a direct impact on our beliefs and actions off-screen. Watching violence on the screen increases the probability of violent and aggressive behaviour in the immediate and long-term spans. There is a direct linkage between exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex and early sexual experiences among adolescents.

But a large number of creators have zero sense of their social responsibility. In the absence of adequate govt controls on obscene digital content and algorithms, it is very easy to put out virtually any kind of creative content with absolutely any kind of messaging and have it travel through the internet to virality at the speed of light.

Remember the crass YouTube episode featuring Samay Raina and Ranveer Allahbadia which featured unthinkable statements around a participant’s parents’ intimacy? A group of men and women having an adult conversation in a room – who could object to that? But it was shot, and clips with the most obscene parts were released on the wider social media where anyone could watch them, and they did — including children and teenagers, and they still can access that content which was then repurposed by other creators. The internet never forgets.

Irony died a painful death recently when the Delhi Police and the narcotics department collaborated with Honey Singh to put out a message against drugs. “If our youth is healthy, our country shall march on,” he said. In the past, the same artiste has been known to include messaging normalising and glorifying the intoxication culture, and the consumption of alcohol and even drugs.

Badshah, his contemporary and rival, recently faced legal trouble for a song that allegedly promoted drug use. And his discography includes several songs that celebrate ‘party culture’ — an allusion to reckless social behaviour and alcohol consumption.

But such content keeps getting churned out, brazenly. And it keeps getting justified through arguments around the freedom of expression.

This debate is not new, of course. Fifteen years ago, in a TV discussion over the song ‘Bhaag DK Bose’ in the film ‘Delhi Belly’ iconic Hindi writer, the late Rajendra Yadav, vehemently opposed my argument against the song. He said, “You people don’t want the language of the poor, the language of the street, to come into your drawing rooms.” With respect, that is an indefensible defence of abusive language which should not be in any street or home, poor or not.

Creating decent, purposeful, entertaining content is hard work, a lonesome journey and creates a lasting impact. Creating crass sexual or violent content comes easy and is forgotten easily.
Creators can choose how they want to be remembered. Audiences can choose what kind of content they want for vulnerable minds around them. Lawmakers and authorities must remember that a creator’s freedom ends where the audience’s nose begins.

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