Q5Comprehension2 Marks10 May 2026
Passage
Read the following passage and answer the given subquestions. An Audience for Violence To what extent can portrayals of juvenile delinquency in films be held responsible for encouraging youth along the same path? In January 2022, three children were brutally stabbed at Jahangirpuri in New Delhi. Upon enquiry, the police found that the killer was influenced by the wildly popular Allu Arjun-starrer Pushpa. The same year in August, a 14-year old boy was arrested by the Gujarat police in Surat for procuring a country-made revolver for Rs. 6,000 from UP. He also told the police that he was addicted to crime web series and would "get an adrenaline rush" whenever he saw armed protagonists, and would even show off or use the weapon to frighten others in his locality. These incidents establish a direct connection between delinquent behaviour and violence shown in films, an argument supported by a study conducted by psychiatrist Dr. Samir Parikh in 2008 with a sample size of 1,000 people aged 14-17. The study found that 79 per cent of the boys "loved watching violent movies" and 44 per cent of them had the urge to hit others. Interestingly, many of them said that they knew of friends who "carried weapons for protection." This idea of self-protection stems mostly from three sociopolitical contexts. Firstly, the neo-liberal state's withdrawal from the lives of the people where the state fails to offer any perception of security. Secondly, the idea of 'responsible citizenry' in which protecting one's house from 'invaders' by being armed is seen as a sign of being responsible. And lastly, the peddling of a "culture of fear" by the media that pushes one to believe that they are living through a crisis of safety. Film scholar Sayandeb Chowdhury, however, says, "A popular film is seen by thousands, but the proportion of violence that can directly refer back to any particular film is usually negligible. At the same time, the slow, immeasurable impact of many films over a period of time cannot be overlooked. In other words, it is like osmosis, which in terms of psychology, can lead to a case of transference," says Chowdhury. According to Chowdhury, while early Indian cinema was not non-violent either, there is a perceptible difference in current films insofar as violence is projected as an acceptable and legitimate solution to a problem. "The visceral violence that routinely masquerades as entertainment may have unchained violence from the last bit of moral nudging that may have existed, . . ." notes the author of Uttam Kumar: A Life in Cinema. "Like cinema, politics is also making it legal to seek a solution in violence as an answer to complicated problems," he adds. Excerpted from: Bhattacharya, Abhik. "An Audience for Violence." Edited by Ramya Maddali, Outlook, vol. LXIII, no. 20, 01 Jul. 2023.
This idea of self-protection stems mostly from three sociopolitical contexts. In this sentence, the word "stems" is: