Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
The desire to utilise the format of folk forms for mass electronic
me~a has become an urgent need in times like ours when a societal approach
to hltQlan problems has taken such multi-level and multifarious forms . To
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reach out to the common man and to communicate with him is, in fact, the
greatest possible challenge posed to a media man . He has to find an answer
to the problem of directly bringing the mass-mind face to face with the reali-
ties of modern life . Knowledge of advanced technology, mingled with differ-
ent levels of social development in a given society, has resulted in new
processes of thinking and this challenge has to be met, if we want to keep
pace with the forces of change.
Dr. Parmar has dealt with a few forms like folk theatre, puppetry,
folk music, ballads, the harikatha form of recitation, community dance, kavad
etc. All these provide a traditional format for inculcating the modern message .
Once it is accepted that a particular form has a fair degree of potential
for responding to contemporary themes, it is worth one's while to examine
the particular channel to which the form is most suited. When we think
about the electronic media which have made it possible for us to reach
a great number of people at a given time, it becomes all the more impor-
tant to select different forms for the different media. This would surely
mean that folk forms will have to be uprooted from their social soil and
yet exist as a real art-form exercise . There can be no compromise on the
question of its aesthetic value. Dr. Parmar dwells on the contribution of
All India Radio, of the Song and Drama Division, and of Television and its
efforts to draw ·on folk media for its programmes. What we need to analyse
and understand is whether this· is the right course open to us .
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sonnel or media-men who will shoulder the responsibility of injecting the
so-called message into the forms? It is certainly very important that the
media-men should be fed by scholars of folklore . They should be informed
about the different discoveries in these subjects and provided with a struc-
tural analysis of the same . A superficial or arbitrary utilisation of forms will
merely damage our great traditional heritage . Closer collaboration between
folklore scholars and the mass-media personnel is needed because the
present machinery of propaganda is using folk forms in quite a question-
able way .
KOMAL KOTHARI
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