CRITICAL DISCUSSION

Critically Discuss Filmic Depictions of Human Rights and the Role of Film in Advancing Human Rights Campaigns

Table of Content

Introduction3

Role of film in society4

Impacts social issues on film4

Limited-effects theory5

Class-dominant theory6

Culturalist theory8

Women, Obscenity and the Law9

The Human Rights Approach to Mass Media11

Approaches to the Legal Expression of Human Rights to Movies16

Concluding Remarks18

References20

Critically Discuss Filmic Depictions of Human Rights and the Role of Film in Advancing Human Rights Campaigns

Introduction

Film has a uniquely powerful ubiquity within human culture. In 2009, across major territories, there were over 6.8 billion cinema admissions (compared against a world population of roughly the same number) creating global box office revenues of over £30 billion. The convergent nature of film creates consumption across a number of channels. In the same year combined DVD and Blu-Ray sales in the United States, Canada and European Union alone were £32.5 billion (amounting to over 1.1 billion units sold). When you start to then consider revenues and audience figures from those who consume digitally, via television, repeat view content they already own and view through the highly illegal but vast black-market in films, the figures become truly staggering.

The direct economic impact of film is clear, but the effect to the wider economy is also significant. The UK House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee- in a 2002 report on The British Film Industry stated, "...Of the 23 million people who visited the UK in 2001 — spending approximately £11.3billion — Visit Britain (formerly the British Tourist Authority) estimates that approximately 20% visited the UK because of the way it is portrayed in films or on television. The flow-on effect from film (i.e. the use of services and purchase of goods by the industry) is thought to be that for every £1 spent on film, there is a £1.50 benefit to the economy.

Cinema has become a powerful vehicle for culture, education, leisure and propaganda. In a 1963 report for the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization looking at Indian Cinema and Culture, the author Bickenbach (1999, 1173) quoted a speech by Prime Minister Nehru who stated, "...the influence in India of films is greater than newspapers and books combined." Even at this early stage in cinema, the Indian film-market catered for over 25 million people a week- considered to be just a 'fringe' of the population.

Role of film in society

Film is a reflection of society, both present and past. I think the film and their innovation sometimes has to catch up to society but sometimes it leads society too. Movies are stories; movies are people who come out with ideas about something they want to say something they want to tell someone. Movies are a form of communication and that communication, those stories, comes from societies- not just where society is presently and what it's doing now- but where society has been. It's been that way for as long as movies have been around (Albrecht, 1992, 45). Before that, society had the stories, but they didn't really have the places to go ...