Why moviegoing might be riskier than you think

If you’re like me, you once risked arrest by not knowing how to watch a movie in a foreign country. You were studying abroad in Thailand and wanted to take in a Thai film. Comedy and tragedy are the same in any language. While the subtitles helped with the film, they neglected to tell you to stand after the half hour of advertisements because the national anthem was about to be played. Hopefully you, like me, stood because it turns out, you can be arrested for not respecting the anthem and as it turns out, it’s not just Thailand taking this practice seriously.

            This past November, India’s Supreme Court, in an effort to instill “a sense of committed patriotism and nationalism,” ordered that movie theaters had to play the national anthem before each screening and everyone must stand so that the citizens realize that they “are duty bound to show respect to the national anthem” as it is a symbol of the nation.

            I remember a similar logic from high school when it was decided that first hour should always start with the pledge of allegiance. It was to instill patriotism and reverence for the flag. Of course we rebelled because we were 17 and any rule we didn’t come up with ourselves must be wrong. Because teachers have enough battles to wage, eventually most let us simply remain silent and choose to stand or not, so long as the moment was recognized.

            At the time, I felt that forcing us to stand for the pledge was an attempt to mandate patriotism from a government that was experiencing constant criticism and unrest. (Similarly, outside commentators cite recent conflicts with Pakistan as motivations for India’s new law.) I stood anyway and usually repeated the pledge, but my classmates and I were going through the motions. There was no heightened sense of patriotism because we said the pledge. The mandated reverence wasn’t to patriotism, it was to a symbol of patriotism. It’s that false equivalency between idea and symbol that resulted in 19 moviegoers being arrested within 2 weeks of India’s new law. There’s the assumption that a lack of reverence for a symbol is the same as lack of reverence for the idea.

            Symbols are easy. A symbol is something we can all understand. Whether it is a flag, a cross, or Superman’s “S” shield, we all have a symbol that we would claim great reverence for. I would argue that the reverence is more accurately to the idea behind the symbol, not the symbol itself. A symbol doesn’t change, it doesn’t grow. If your loyalty is to a symbol, you will be just as stagnant. An idea is fluid out of necessity. Ideas have to mutate and grow to survive. There have been over a dozen flags that have served as symbols for America. As the idea of America evolves and adapts to new times, one symbol becomes ineffective and a new one must be found. Some symbols last for a long while, but ideas are eternal.

            Don’t misunderstand, symbols are important. Symbols are one of the easiest ways to communicate. Sometimes criticizing a symbol is the quickest way to communicate about the evolution of an idea. Do some take disrespect for symbols too far? Absolutely. Our anger comes from the transitive disrespect for the idea behind the symbol.  

            I don’t know what the right answer is. I don’t know if we should all stand for the anthem before every Buddy Cop film or if that breeds unrest. I hated it in high school but respected it in Thailand. What I do know is that we can’t confuse the utility of symbols with the profoundness of ideas.