With the recent blockbuster Hit-3, what was once an occasional shock element seeped into Tollywood’s commercial template. The audience may have flinched, but it did not look away. The tolerance and even appreciation of gore on big screens portray a shift in how we process violence in cinema, especially when it's the extreme and stylised kind.
In cosmopolitan regions with traditional undercurrents such as Hyderabad, people battle rapid gentrification that conflicts with conservatism, high competition, caste and class divides while leading a fast-paced, mentally fatigued life. Crises of power and assertion have always existed for the ordinary man here, but how it is expressed visually has evolved. In Tollywood, gore is more than just another source of entertainment. “It often symbolises justice,” Rishita Sagi, a Hyderabad-based psychologist, said. She added, “People here are deeply emotional about cinema.
However, conversations around feelings and emotions still remain stigmatised. So, when they are watching something so intense, there is a sense of catharsis, a release of an internal chaos that they may not be able to fully understand or verbally express. This doesn’t however mean that they’re actively or consciously seeking it (gore content) to ‘feel better’, but the emotional response it evokes can act as a kind of emotional release especially when other coping mechanisms feel out of reach or are stigmatised.” The way gore and extreme violence have come to facilitate emotional release is important for understanding the thematic shift from family-centered stories to vigilante tropes in mainstream movies.
Thus, from crime thrillers to mass action films, as long as the hero rises from the dust and becomes a flagbearer of vigilante justice even if he eventually loses his moral compass, the goriest of violence feels justified. “There is some pleasure in seeing people get what they deserve”, Deepika Avudari, a 17-year-old student, told us. With that said, hyperrealism in action sequences comes wrapped in stardom and celebrity worship, which are integral to Tollywood’s fan culture. This helps override the discomfort of gore and even form a connection through it. There is admiration for a character who brutally murders the villain but detachment regarding the graphic intensity of this act. Adding to this, S Sohel, a student counsellor in the city, clarified that this is not to be mistaken for people bypassing emotion. “The audience is processing everything”, he said. Instead, people are drawn by how gore captures a raw symbolic rupture and offers something vicariously therapeutic.
Dr Akanksha Agarwal, a licensed clinical psychologist, shared another perspective: overstimulation and emotional flatness due to high amounts of media exposure. This can lead to people seeking content that gives them a high. She also explained how people’s tolerance keeps expanding with repeated consumption, eventually leading to desensitisation when facing even extremely graphic content.
In the long term though, if romanticised gore is used just to hold the viewer’s attention, it does much harm to our morality, empathy and collective sensitivity. It is one thing to feel seen by what we consume, but if we’re internalising a life lived to the extremes, then what is on the screen goes beyond gore alone.