The Narratives – Mohamed Miah

Mohamed Miah | The Narratives

Cinema Has Become a Dangerous Tool

Cinema should be a place where people escape, reflect or reconnect with their emotions. Instead, it has quietly become one of the most powerful mind-shaping tools in the world. Audiences don’t watch films with suspicion — they watch with openness. That openness allows stories to plant ideas, fears and assumptions directly into the subconscious.

When a community is repeatedly portrayed as the villain, viewers begin to fear that community without ever questioning why. This is how entire cultures are reshaped quietly, silently and dangerously. It happened in America. Now it is happening in India.

Hollywood Invented the Modern Villain

For decades, Hollywood mastered the art of crafting political enemies. During the Cold War, Russians became icy masterminds. After 9/11, Arabs and Muslims were turned into the default terrorists. Today, Chinese villains represent geopolitical anxiety.

These narratives didn’t emerge from artistic creativity — they helped justify American foreign policy. Cinema softened the audience before the government made its next move. Films created the emotional enemy; politics handled the real one. Hollywood proved that entertainment could be weaponised.

Bollywood Adopted the Same Strategy

Bollywood has absorbed this strategy almost exactly — but with local enemies. Over the last five to seven years, a clear pattern has emerged: the antagonist is almost always Pakistani, Muslim-coded or tied to Islamic extremism.

Films like The Kashmir Files, The Kerala Story, Uri, Mission Majnu, Pathaan, Ek Tha Tiger, and upcoming titles like Dhurandhar and the new Border revival all follow the same formula. The look is predictable: Pathani suits, heavy Urdu, beards, skullcaps, dim rooms and intelligence agencies across the border.

Before the plot even begins, the audience already knows who the villain will be — not because the story demands it, but because the ideology does.

The Political Landscape Makes the Choices Clear

Both Hollywood and Bollywood select their villains based on the ideological needs of their countries. America needs external enemies to justify its global power. India’s dominant political ideology needs both an external and an internal enemy to reinforce majoritarian identity.

In India’s current climate, Pakistan becomes the external villain while Indian Muslims become the internal one. These targets are politically “safe” because they align with the national mood. Bollywood, understanding the risks of challenging this climate, follows the path of least resistance.

Films become extensions of political psychology. The hero becomes the idealised Hindu patriot. The villain becomes the Muslim other. And audiences consume these roles as if they were natural rather than constructed.

Nationalism Is Now the Default Genre

This new generation of films is less about storytelling and more about emotional reinforcement. The structure rarely changes: a heroic Indian soldier, a waving tricolour, a rousing patriotic speech and an enemy shaped conveniently like a minority.

Complexity disappears. Nuance is erased. Cinema becomes a megaphone for nationalism, packaged with explosions and dramatic background scores. It isn’t creativity — it’s strategy.

The Romance Trap Shows the Bias Clearly

One of the clearest indicators of this ideological shift appears in Bollywood’s love stories. When a Hindu–Muslim romance is shown, the man is almost always Hindu and the woman Muslim. The reverse — a Muslim man with a Hindu woman — has become almost impossible to find.

This is not coincidence; it is narrative engineering. It reinforces the idea that the Hindu man is stable, safe and morally superior, while the Muslim woman is acceptable only if she assimilates into his identity. At the same time, the Muslim man becomes a threat — mirroring the paranoia around “love jihad” promoted by certain political groups.

Films don’t need to say any of this explicitly. The repetition does the teaching.

Audiences Are Finally Getting Tired

A noticeable shift in audience behaviour is now emerging. People are beginning to reject these formulaic, politically charged thrillers. They know these films aren’t historically accurate or factually reliable. They recognise the exaggeration. They sense the manipulation. And they’re emotionally exhausted by constant fear-based storytelling.

Viewers today want something different: family films, genuine comedies, light-hearted romances, slice-of-life stories and simple emotional cinema. People want warmth, humour and humanity. They want to leave a cinema feeling lighter, not angrier. They want characters, not political caricatures. They want emotion, not propaganda. And they want truth, not manufactured threat.

Creativity Is Returning — But Slowly

The more Bollywood leans on religious antagonists instead of real, complex villains, the more it loses the audience’s respect. People do not connect with films that demonise entire communities. They connect with stories that reflect their lives, families, relationships and dreams.

That is why older genres are resurfacing — because they offer what propaganda cannot: sincerity. Cinema flourishes when it unites people, not when it divides them. Propaganda does the opposite.

A Mirror Across Two Nations

When Hollywood and Bollywood are placed side by side, the parallels are unavoidable. Both industries create villains based on ideological needs, not artistic truth. Both use cinema to shape public consciousness. Both rely on emotion to normalise fear and suspicion.

The accents change. The costumes change. The religions change. But the manipulation remains exactly the same.

The Real Cost of These Narratives

The danger is not only political — it is emotional. When a religion or nation is repeatedly shown as the enemy, people eventually internalise that fear. It spreads into homes, workplaces and everyday conversations.

Cinema becomes a subtle teacher of prejudice. Propaganda becomes culture. And once a narrative becomes cultural truth, reversing it becomes almost impossible.

This is why calling out the trend matters. If people don’t realise how they are being conditioned, they will mistake manipulation for truth and ideology for cinema. The medium that can bring people together is being used to pull them apart — and Bollywood is drifting dangerously close to that edge.