Films like Veyil (directed by Vasantha Balan) and Kadhal (directed by Balaji Shakthivel) are produced by Sankar, the director who is considered as the most eminent commercial directors of Indian film industry. From his first film Gentleman onwards he streamed the pictures of brahmanical ideology on the screen. In his films like Gentleman, Indian, Muthalvan, Annyan and Sivaji, he used the brahmanical lines of ideologies like amassing wealth, killing, one man rule, and one man liberation which are fanatic and fascist which followed the route of Hindu feudalism in the Indian spectrum. He gained the name as a good “producer” by presenting the films like Veyil and Kadhal as down to earth movies. Shankar grabbed a clean image in the dialogues/discourse of mainstream intellectual and cultural industry by the production of these films. But in the close examination of the film Kadhal, provides with the underlined but clear textual message that if a dalit strive for an inter caste marriage, the result may be madness and the feudal energy prevails has that sort of power and back ground to attack them brutally and make them mad and to roam around. The subaltern mechanic role played by Bharat has one of the most pathetic “ending” since the evolution of Indian film for he happened to be a dalit and hailed from a slum. Unlike all other feudal heroes of Indian cinema he is depicted as a coward and is always in doubt about his lady lover and her relatives. In Veyil, Murukesan played by Pasupathy has a series of failures and “killings” in his life. He fails as a family man, lover, and human being in the movie. In the saga of Murukesan his inter caste love affair with an elite girl brutally ends in the suicide of her. The psychological posturing of this incident is nothing but inter caste affairs by elites especially to uneconomical dalits must be killed. Murukesan in Veyil and the mechanic boy in Kadhal, both being as dalits have the same mode of transformation of failures, violence against them, madness and killings.
The inter caste relationship in Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu (directed by Susindhran) and Paruthiveeran (directed by Amir Sulthan) are also being killed by the creators of both of these films. In Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu the dalit hero Marimuthu who was on the road to his ultimate victory in Kabadi competition and love affair is being killed. It was pictured as Marimuthu is being killed in an accident at the end of a Kabadi match. The character has inter caste love relationship and the girl doesn’t even know what happened to Marimuthu. Eventhough he was heroic his character is molded as inferior in all aspects except his confidence in Kabadi tournament. In Paruthiveeran there is the same text of dalit narration of characters. The protagonist is a hero in a village named Paruthi. The end of this character is brutal, pathetic and tragic. A dalit woman who is considered as a rogue is brutally killed as untold in Indian film history covering her in a sack and butchering her body. Pruthi veeran’s father who had an inter caste marriage is killed in an accident. Paruthiveeran’s lover Muthazhaku, who is from an elite caste family, is gang raped and killed by some lorry drivers. Paruthiveeran suicides after she is being killed. In Veyil and Paruthiveeran, the women who loved two Dalit identities are being killed.
In Subramaniapuram (directed by Sasikumar) killing of dalits has new brutal presentations. The homicides in the film were shock to the South Indian audience. In Subramaniapuram the elite caste girl who is the lover of the protagonist, Jai, becomes the tool for his homicide by her relatives. This theme was entirely different and shocking to the receivers of the film. She cannot do anything while her hero is stabbed to death in front of her. The Dalit character and the friend of Jai, Kanja Karuppu is the cheating element. Knife is piercing in the dalit body of Jai again and again. The inter caste marriage in this film also is blocked by these killings. And the dalits are pictured as the most violent and those who do the biggest violence are also dalits, ie. the receivers and donors are subalterns. This dichotomy denies further of different complexities of socialites like how dalits become violent, and who makes dalit as violent and who are the behind the curtain players.
One of the significant psychological characters that paved the success for these films are the sympathies gained from the audience to these characters. These characters remained in the mind of audiences as dark memories. They lived in the mind of people. But it is not empathy or confrontation with those characters. Or it is not the political analysis of the social formation of these characters. It is due to mere sympathy towards them. But on the other hand the brahmanical mass psyche of Kerala/Tamil societies enjoyed these killings underneath. Killings of dalits, their disability and madness are secretly enjoyed and celebrated in the Indian mass/mad psychology. And it is a trick of Brahmanical hegemony to highlight these films as a refreshment of Indian film texts. These are nothing but the celebration of homicides of dalits and subalterns.
continuation............!
ReplyDeleteExcept Illayaraja's family (his bro Gangai Amaran) and their kids leading the Music Industry, there is a couple of third level or lower level actors who play in smaller roles like Chandrasekar are from dalit community. As far as dalits as hero, there is only one that I know of Parthban, who seems to be very successful in his movies, because he pretty much does direction, action, production and every other aspect of movies.
Our dalit girls the most beautiful among all the Indian woman, but you see there is not a single dalit female actor in the entire movie industry, I am pretty sure this is same with respect to all other states, there are hardly any in hindi movie, the multi crore movie business.
Even to act as Dr.Ambedkar they put some hindu or muslim actors, Buddha was portrayed by terrible caste hindu actors,
Rajinikanth, Kamalahasan and Karunanidhi are all casteist BSs, but the Dalits adore them and even build temples for them, infact, Rajinikanth's majority fans are dalits, I am pretty sure if a stat is done, it will reveal my prediction.
In the light of this background I just gave here, just imagine how terrible our own people in wasting their time, money and energy on casteistic film industry and actors.
Dalits must totaly ignore all the industries, must start creating their own, even business, they should start putting up their own business, it does not matter if it is smaller levels, it does not matter they will fail, but they must proceed to trash the movie industry.
Even the single great Dalit contributor Illayaraja is of no use to Dalits, except we can just say for name sake, he is an ardent Gandhi follower, what a waste. I never heard him talking or writing or making music about Ambedkar or Buddha, but he makes musics about some hindu personalities and ancient hindu saints. The tragedy of dalits betrayer does not stop with the politicians but it transcend just about every field?.
Just read the following Tamil Movie review, the writer made an excellent analysis that every single one here must read and pass on the message that we must clean up the Movie industry shit too!
Dalits & Indian Movies:
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost, Dalits must learn to understand how detrimental and dangerous ideas, incidents and often dalit people depicted in Indian Movies, both hindi, tamil and other language movies.
As in every other field such as science, medicine, sports, or arts, Dalits are left out and kept outside the mainstream movies, but also kept out of smaller mediums like painting, illustrative media and sculpting etc, so imagine how Dalits will ever reach into the great Architecture or other such fields?.
In this regard, it is horrendously painful why Dalits never got into any of these fields, but dalits are the one who go and waste their hard earned money in movie theaters and in music shows etc?. The amount of money made in film industry alone is an amount unimaginable, billions and billions of US dollar equivalent, means several thousand crores per year.
I am pretty sure, like the dalits constitute abotu 30% of the population of India, the cinema and other business run by casteist people make enormous gain from selling to dalits, if roughly put about 40% of the movie/film industry money or even more is coming from Dalits, Dalits are obnoxiously addicted to movies and they will go hunger but will not keep themselves out of Movies, Tamil movie goers can be an extreme example in this analysis.
If this is the case, how tragic it is to see, there is no Dalit actor, director or producer that the world can talk about, let alone distributors or theater owners?. In Tamil Nadu for example, which is the example taken by the following link so I stick to discuss the known statistics, most of the directors are either Brahmins or the most backward barbaric Thevars/Gounders?. If this is not enough, let me tell you that 80% of those actors and ladies are brahmins,
they chest beat all around the world saying they are the purerest of the pure came out of gods mouth, it is astounding to notice that they are the one who strip naked in movies, vulgar and arrogant. Even in the prostitution, the brahmins run the poor woman who go there to do this terrible livelihood, which majority of these poor comes from dalits and other most backward groups?.
Continued......Part II
Excellent analysis and quite revealing about the Casteism and it's pervasiveness in Tamil Movies, the same kind of movies are made in hindi and all other languages. Tamil Movie industry is the epitome of Casteism in India that people can hardly even notice it. Half of the film industry is run by brahmins and the rest by most brutal casteists of all Thevars/Goundars and others?.
ReplyDeleteGood work Budhane, I enjoyed reading this painful reality.
Your outlook disgusts me to a great extent. Me being a Dalit, I can never accept this nonsense you're mentioning. Everything is centered on oppression. Illayaraja (his family) and Parthiban are no jokers in the cine field. These guys are talented and hence made it big. We will keep on projecting oppression and look for freebies. I sincerely hope just this nonsense of an article is not taken seriously by many.
ReplyDeletedear rupesh, thanks for sharing your blog. what you are saying is true. there is a lot of celebration of these in kerala. and the argument is that these are such stark and brilliant representations of social reality. i havent seen veyil and subramanyapuram. but i watched kathal many times. i like the film because of the actors and the songs. but i totally agree with the point that dalit homicide is its highlight and it is utterly horrible how bharath ends up. however when i watched the film something else also was very disturbing to me. in the cinema world it is always the people who kill and murder who are the bad guys, the monsters, the villians. the killed and maimed is the victim. think of who the killers in this films are. it is people belonging to a non upper caste, probably obc caste. i feel that in this film they are portrayed as ruthless, blood thirsty, violent and murderous. and i felt there was some problem in thus shifting the burden of caste and its violence to this non upper caste community and representing them as this ruthless. i did not see the girls family as belonging to upper caste - their customs, practices everything talks of a non brahminical and much below the social status group - i think just as dalit homicide is happening again and again - this homicide is shown as being conducted by "barbaric" lower castes too. through this i think there is a shift of the entire caste discourse into the rural setting and also the demonization of the elites (mostly non upper caste) who rule the rural areas. especially think of the girl in kadhal, she is being educated in a convent and is really different from all her family members who are extremely "backward" and not at all sophisticated and also think of the way these members look - none of them have the typical looks of the usual fathers, mothers and relatives of upper caste heroines - i am not sure whether i am right.. maybe you like to comment , jenny
ReplyDeleteAnonymous?: I have no idea as to how your face look as you only have anonymous??.
ReplyDeleteIt should be disgusting to you & after all you are a disgusting individual, who betray a quarter of India who are suffering from the hindu pathology of caste system.
If you grow up and gain education, gain knowledge then it is your responsibility to help uplift the needy, poor and Oppressed people in India. And, I see that you do not take responsibility of telling the world about the existence of problems in the society like how this blogger Buddha never sleeps is telling the true story and awakening people in India, you are a betrayer and a human of highest denial of reality.
Who cares if Parthiban or Illayaraja is talented or genius, or earned a livelihood in movie field by their skills, it is of damn no use if they did not help heal their fellow humans in suffering, why?. Because they are not doing a family business or a personal business, they are doing a business of art that is public, they are in a social media, without people using their creativity or products be it a movie, or a music CD/DVD or any damn thing, will be simply useless and waste. It is people, the dalits all over TN, and in India who flock to buy their product, promote their fellow citizen, yes of course all other Indians do buy and promote too!, but these artists have responsibility to give back, and help the suffering mass, suffering mass from the hindu pathology, you traitor. Like these artists are traitors who abandoned their society, you are a waste to this society, as Dr.Ambedkar said, an educated man if not useful to the society, he or she is worst than a beast?. No, tell me with your anonymous face if you have guts, tell me what you have got?.
Pretty pathetic analysis. Come on get a life…the world is full of opportunities and don’t make it sound like others are to be blamed for the perennial lack of progress. Exactly what black Americans continue to do in the US.
ReplyDeleteWhat an easy excuse…and look you have a bunch of guys admiring and analyzing the issue from all angles