Unpacking Films That Educate: Insta-Explorations of Religion and Society in South Asian and World Cinema

Abstract

With the increased availability of streaming services and access to international content a feature of today’s media consumption, can social media be used to explore the potential of global cinema to inform audiences about religion and society? As a media form, movies play a role in educating as well as entertaining society at large; narrative arcs from Bollywood, Hollywood, and beyond inform audiences about contemporary religious concepts. This research makes use of a practice-based journalistic methodology to explore the educative role movies can play in informing audiences about religious and societal concepts; the researcher produces a creative artefact appropriate for the discipline of journalism (in this instance, a social-media-based curated collection of movie reviews), with a contribution to the wider knowledge that is contextualised by this study. Using a deductive approach, the researcher narrows down an initial list of films, from a global selection of cinematic output, that covers religious and societal themes through a range of lenses (such as characters’ well-being, trauma, religious practice, and cultural values). The concepts and ideologies explored through this study and the construction of a social-media-based movie database suggest that cinema can play an active role in informing audiences about religion and society, instead of merely entertaining across cultures. The concepts and ideologies explored in this paper, through the construction of a social-media-based movie database, show that religious and societal issues in movies can be an important aspect of the lives of millions in the cinema-going audience.