We are a senti bunch.
Cry me an ocean.
If the state of the arts and culture really is a mirror of society, then who really are we?
Are we not a senti (read: sad, depressed) bunch?
When Paran (2025) and Purna Bahadur Ko Sarangi (2024) came out, they brought in a contemporarily neglected segment of audience back to the theatres. Families.
Funnily, mothers did not drag their children to the halls this time, fathers received the baton.
Tears have become the most sought after commodity in the cinema halls. Tears, the producers of the days say, bring money. It is through tears that the producer becomes rich, it is through tears that publishers become rich. And who are we to blame for this?
The range of emotions we see in most Nepali films are so limited in quantity and so stunted in nature that we have someone accepted slight shifts as artistic landmarks. Every social drama is about suffering, perhaps necessarily. But what about other genres? Comedy, for instance. When was the last time a comedy film not pull the same threads of social sadness? Can we not see even an inch of progress celebrated in society? Does all Nepali art have to center society as the protagonist en force to move the story forward… to end in a tragic note?
The kids of today are kept far away from the arts. When Che Shankar directed Dreams (2024), it was a rare attempt for the black-box to host a children’s play. It followed a small, curious girl on an adventure to build a new friendship with a fox while discovering her own passion, and it was beautiful! Sadly, we are a senti bunch and the showtimes did not last long. The kids of the city kept on spending their time on phones watching the myriad of AI videos made by the Gen Zs of today. That’s how Gen Z, the ‘incorruptible’, make money these days.
If we are to really reflect on the recent political upheaval, I wonder how much blame the arts-and-culture has to take. Our current mass art-and-media has numbed minds, oversold sadness, and divided people. And we are the fools, the senti bunch, to believe that only demons reside around us, that our stories can never be richer than sadness, that to feel anything else is to sin.
It is time for us to rethink our own emotions. To allow ourselves to feel a bit more, a bit different. And expect better from the mirror they call the arts. We can be a senti bunch, but we can also be a fun, lyanglyang-doing bunch.
The saddest part is that the kids of today are kept far away from the arts. There needs to be more immersion in the arts, and it would solve a quarter of today's problems.