Cinema cannot be made the scapegoat for violent crime. That is the verdict from music composer Amaal Mallik, who broke ranks to defend the filmmaking fraternity after a gruesome chainsaw attack on a Class 10 student at an Andhra Pradesh school ignited a fierce public backlash against graphic onscreen violence.
Director Sandeep Reddy Vanga had already traded barbs with critics over hyper-violent set pieces in modern cinema. Now, Mallik has weighed in with an unapologetic pushback against calls for outright bans. Acknowledging that the school assault was horrifying and inexcusable, Mallik insisted that an individual's brutal actions stem from personal trauma, upbringing, and state-level political climates—not screenplays.
"Cinema alone cannot be blamed for someone's actions," Mallik stated, pushing back against the narrative that cinematic aggression directly triggers schoolyard bloodshed. "If you are getting so influenced by a film, you're the fool."
The debate exploded after the Andhra Pradesh school assault drew immediate comparisons to visceral, blade-heavy action sequences popularized across Indian screens over the past five years. Critics quickly singled out Vanga's filmography alongside commercial action titles like KGF and Animal. Yet Mallik pointed out that audiences routinely separate artistic excess from real-world conduct. While admitting he enjoyed Animal, Kabir Singh, Dhurandhar, and KGF despite taking issue with individual scenes, he stressed that collaborative cinematic storytelling belongs to an imaginative space. If modern social media outrage had policed the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s, he argued, classic cinema would have faced the exact same fury.
The real systemic failure, according to Mallik, begins at home and inside theater lobbies. He slammed parents who routinely ignore the Central Board of Film Certification's 'A' classification by hauling infants and young children into adult-certified screenings. Rules exist. Audiences simply flout them.
Turning the lens back onto popular culture, Mallik exposed the selective outrage of moral gatekeepers who target action cinema while ignoring provocative music. He pointed directly to his own popular commercial catalog—including hits like 'Kar Gayi Chull' and 'Rom Rom Romantic'—alongside mass dance tracks like 'Beedi Jalaile', 'Pink Lips', 'Chikni Chameli', and 'Munni Badnaam'. Those tracks, he noted, are routinely celebrated on reality television and played by parents at family gatherings where children dance to aggressive or suggestive lyrics. Mallik also pointed to the unfiltered wave of digital rap tracks streaming across YouTube and Instagram that glorify murder, muscle, and intimidation.
The road ahead, Mallik warned, cannot be paved with knee-jerk prohibition. Banning titles like Pushpa, KGF, or digital comedy formats like Latent will not mend broken societal guardrails. Cinema wields narrative influence, but turning the country into a collective moral police force will never substitute for real-world accountability.