COMMENT
Ethnography of violence
A. SRIVATHSAN
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In many recent Tamil movies, violence is congruent with certain castes and regions.
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Violence and its markers: A scene from "Muni".
WITH every Tamil film, the men get darker and their sweethearts fairer. More the contrast in complexion, better it augurs is the assumption. If this exposes the entrenched male notions of aesthetics and desirable female bodies, the violence that permeates in current films betray perceptions about caste. Caste and violence now conflate in an archaic manner in Tamil movies.
Typical frame
Try this typical scene from the many recent films. Blood drips from the aruval (a large sickle) and dead men lie all around. There is neither remorse nor fear in the eyes of the male protagonist. Why should he? After all, violence is natural to the caste he belongs to, so believes Tamil cinema. Patriarchal disputes, romantic delinquencies or simple business squabbling, everything is resolved through an orgy of blood. Sharper the aruval, swifter the solution. This could have passed as a senseless obsession with violence or as an object of commercial appeal. But the caste connotation it carries raises concern.
As one friend remarked, things start with the names. There has never been a Tamil villain who carries names like Subramanian. It is always Paratai or Pakiri and the caste markings begin there. Even the protagonists are Pandian or Muthu. Through language, the region and the caste position of the protagonists are evoked. It prepares the viewer to both anticipate and accept the violence. The dialogues self-congratulate the martial past of the community and legitimises violence as a natural trait. Typically, the mother eggs the protagonist to get aggressive and deal with the baddies. She would rattle her dialogues and at a crucial moment pause for a second. Look up and tell her son that the gods he worships always carried the aruval. He inherits aggressiveness and violence becomes a matter of genetics rather than a social phenomenon. The portrayal of violence amongst the upper castes only confirms this in reverse. In the film "Alwar", the upper caste protagonist takes revenge and is about to set the world right. He shuns his tuft, erases his religious marks on the body and even changes his profession from that of a priest to a caretaker in a mortuary. In his words, this is necessary to keep the gore and anger going inside. Every time he kills the bad guys, he disguises and poses as an incarnation of God. The upper caste, mortal body is not meant for unleashing violence — one needs to transform. Critics have already pointed out that acclaimed films like "Anniyan" too suffer this prejudice. Studies show that such differential notions about lower and upper caste bodies pervade earlier legends like the ones that surround the Tamil Bhakti saints. Many of the lower caste saints have often walked through fire or gouged their eyes or dispensed their mortal bodies before acquiring divine status.
Riding on old prejudices
If Tamil films take flight to Europe for shooting romantic songs, it runs to southern Tamil Nadu to locate its violent stories. The films rides on popular prejudice that some of the violent castes reside there. "Virumandi", "Sandai Kozhi" and "Paruthi Veeran" are cases in point. Some of the films even take direct geographical names like Tamiraparni, Tirunelveli and so on. To the filmmakers, violence, caste and geography are congruent. As a result, they make a simplistic rural-urban divide. Communal violence has to be always located in the rural areas while urban violence is only a matter of law and order. Even within the skewed portrayal of urban violence, the residues of stereotypes are visible.
The box office hit film "Pokiri" is a case in point. The male lead is a dark skinned slum dweller. He is a hired killer who goes about eliminating the rival gangs. His unkempt hair, uncoordinated costume and the language he speaks marks his class and by extension his profession. Even his name, Tamizh, is slowly forgotten and everyone knows him as Pokiri or the miscreant. The revealing moment is the climax. The film presents the true identity of Pokiri at the end — he is a cop working undercover. In the final scene, he steps out in his ironed uniform and informs in chaste language that he is Sathyamoorthy. I.P.S.
Persisting images
In the colonial past, communities were stereotyped as martial castes and some were castigated as criminal tribes. False stories were perpetuated and a few were branded as habitual offenders through an Act in 1871. It is almost 50 years since such Acts were abolished and communities de-notified. But Tamil films persist with these stereotypes. Such prejudices and perceptions in films have been on the rise since the late 1980s. Almost during the same period, the Tamil Nadu politics also witnessed a rise in sub-caste politics. This mirroring of cinema and politics is more than a coincidence.
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