The other day, my friend shared a film on Facebook. The film was shot by our classmates when we were in high school many years ago, and it was shown at a cultural festival at our school (In Japan, the cultural festival is an annual event held by most schools. It's called 文化祭/bunkasai in Japanese). To enable the very old film to be seen on a computer, my friend who is a camera operator at a major TV station converted it to the current standard version.
Anyway, when my friends from the school and I saw the film, many of us felt like there was more freedom at the time than there is these days. We were surprised to realize that. We commented that if we currently tried to shoot the same film, we probably wouldn't be allowed to shoot some of the scenes. We felt that some parents would find certain things dangerous and ask our school not to let us do that, and school wouldn't allow us to do certain things for security reasons. Maybe people near our shooting locations would complain, saying we were being too or things like that.
These days, there are more regulations for TV shows than there used to be. Some have insisted that these regulations are necessary, but some of them have limited our freedom. As a result, TV shows have become less interesting. At school, some parents complain to the school when their children have failed to do something. It seems that they don't attribute the failures to their children and themselves. In society, some regulations make people hesitate to get involved in other people's affairs in a positive way. Partly because of this, people have become indifferent about others, which has caused problems and fights, and then new regulations are sometimes made to prevent further fights. Needless to say, regulations often improve our lives. I think that striking a balance is important, but it's very difficult.
I feel that there are more people than before who always assert their rights and freedom, but forget their obligations and responsibilities. Rights and freedom always come along with obligations and responsibilities. If we forget that, our freedom will be limited.
