Contemporary Love

Love, an emotion stranger to no country, known to all humankind, is a topic of interest around the world; globalization of world cinema has also been very commonly analyzed around the world. A common aspect of cinema that can be identified throughout the world is the presence and meaning of love. An interesting focus of this topic is evaluation of how different cinematographic industries portray love modern societies. As societies begin to tread away from the normal marriage patterns, it seems as if the film industry assists these transitions by portraying these new trends in a positive light. In America, a positive trend has developed towards interracial marriages, while in India, the trend is towards inter-religious marriages, and in other countries, same sex marriages.

Two films that represent these qualities are the American film Guess Who and the Bollywood film Veer Zaara. The film Guess Who is about the controversial topic of interracial marriages in America. The film defines the hurdles faced by an interracial couple progressing towards marriage. It does so by outlining the thoughts and prejudices that common Americans dwell upon. Throughout the movie, the difference in race is portrayed as a challenge. The protagonist of this movie is an African-American woman who happens to be dating a Caucasian man. When the young man is introduced to the woman’s family, it causes a stir amongst them. The father of the woman is in awe over the race of the man, and refuses to look past it which results in the two men forming a relationship of mistrust. The sole basis contributing to this relationship of mistrust is the race of the young man. This raises thoughts in the audience’s mind that if the man was also African-American, would their love be faced with such revulsion? The movie goes on to show that, indeed, the reason behind the mistrust was race alone. Due to this mistrust, the father starts investigating the young man and uncovers a hidden secret. The young man has lost his job and has failed to inform his girlfriend. Now, such a secret is not uncommon in a young relationship. However, with the added mistrust and race difference, this diminutive issue is posed as a great betrayal. Society only lends a hand to such an interpretation. Up until recently, marriage has always been composed of a couple sharing the same skin color. Society has come to comprehend that as normalcy. The idea of a marriage between people of two different colors is beyond imaginable to such a society. The parents in this movie represent this society. They refuse to accept this relationship as proper because it overthrows everything that they believed was right. The parents, as the society, share their doubts about such a couple. The marriage between the couple is not acceptable, because it goes against what society holds as correct. Therefore, the movie symbolically shows the obstacles that such a relationship would endure. These obstacles are not caused by the parents, per se, but by the society as a whole. However, the movie also shows how such a couple can overcome these obstacles. By the end of this movie, the parents of the woman realize that the marriage between two beings from different racial backgrounds is just as legitimate as that of a couple from the same racial background. This movie tries to show the transformation of modern society from a society that cannot accept such marriages to one that slowly understands them. Bob Bloom, in his review of Guess Who, is quoted saying, “The idea of mixed marriage — once considered such a taboo that states had laws on the books forbidding it — no longer carries a stigma in our continually growing multicultural and multiethnic society.” (Bloom) However, regardless of society’s tendency towards accepting these interracial marriages, Guess Who’s predecessor Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner related the stigma whereas Guess Who shows how “black/white relationships aren't nearly as taboo today as they were in the 1960s… although it does depict some of the difficulties that are still prevalent for interracial couples, especially for parents who have always envisioned the type of man they want their daughters to marry.”(Leo)

The second film, Veer Zaara, is about a topic that is controversial in many parts of the world, inter-religious marriage. The relationship depicted in this movie is between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman. These two religions are commonly feuding in India and Pakistan. Their battle has been around for ages. However, this movie does not occur in the conservative years of society. It takes place at a pivotal time where society is transitioning to become less orthodox. In this movie, the protagonists are the couple and the antagonists are the Muslim woman’s family members. The couple meets in India, and falls in love soon after. When the woman returns to her home in Pakistan, the man follows right behind to ask for her hand in marriage. Traditionally, if he were a Muslim man, the marriage would have taken place soon after. However, because the man was a Hindu, which is symbolically the opposite of Muslims, the family rejects his proposal. The family so strongly opposes this relationship that they proceed to wrongly accuse the man of a crime that lands him in jail for the next twenty years.

The movie shows that the reasoning behind this decision is not that he is an unacceptable suitor for the woman, but rather because he is from a different religion. It is a sufficient conclusion to claim this movie pushes for religious harmony as Michael Hoffheimer says, “The film projects a casteless, open-handed Hindu spirit. Sikhs appear repeatedly in peripheral roles where they mediate Muslim and Hindu relations. Zaara' devotion to her Sikh bibi takes her to India. Veer's Punjabi family celebrates Lohri collectively with the village Sikh community.” (Hoffheimer) Once again, the family in this movie also represents the society from that vicinity. Culture does not allow people of two separate religions to form such a bond. Each religion upholds different values and ideals; the fusion of those ideals is a thought that society cannot tolerate. The public tends to value past traditions and steer away from any amendments to those traditions; an inter-religious marriage defies all these rules and traditions that the society plants amongst its own. Therefore, a topic such as inter-religious marriage is one that can easily infuriate and offend societies. When that topic is enacted in real life, society acts out by taking extreme steps to end it. This movie brings this topic into light. It vividly describes the opposition that a society has towards an inter-religion marriage. By the end of the movie, the family, or the society, starts to accept and acknowledge the relationship which represents how modern society has transformed into one of a more accepting nature. This movie also has interracial aspects. Although many would foreigners would not consider the union between Indians and Pakistanis interracial, the natives have many contentions over this issue. This is “A movie that aims to bridge the distance in the hearts of Indians and Pakistanis, Veer Zaara tells the story of squadron leader Veer Pratap Singh (Shahrukh), a rescue pilot with the Indian Air Force. He is a humble man who gives without asking, who loves unconditionally and keeps no prejudice in his heart.”(Apunkachoice) The amount of adversity seen in this movie truly shows how what you believe and where you come from can play a pivotal role in determining many aspects of your future, especially in regards to determining who you will marry.
Modern society considers love capable of overcoming the difference of religion in a relationship. Societies, throughout time, have adapted to different types of relationships. Our society, the modern society, considers love and marriage as a relationship between people regardless of their race, religion, or sex; whereas, the societies of older times considered love and marriage to be the bond between man and woman of the same race and religion. The film industry contributes to this transformation by bringing such contentious topics into the public’s eyes through movies. So, while there may be cases of such marriages all over the world, they are obscure. Michael Rosenfield brings up a good point in characterizing the reason for the divide in interracial marriages, “’The racial divide in the U.S. is a fundamental divide. ... but when you have the ’other’ in your own family, it’s hard to think of them as ’other’ anymore,” Rosenfeld said. “We see a blurring of the old lines, and that has to be a good thing, because the lines were artificial in the first place.’”(MSNBC) Movies such as the ones mentioned above do the job of bringing these cases to people that would normally not encounter such issues. As society watches its transformation on the big screen through a movie, it slowly begins to adapt those changes to real life. Society’s ability to adapt to various changes due to the oncoming generations is often seen on the big screen; the effects of these changes on love are no exception as the world begins to portray the new outlooks on the silver screen. These movies will help the world move past the invisible lines of segregation and move towards a mindset of equality creating less of a divide within the household of the “obscure”.