What is personal is political. All art forms are political. Cinema is no exception.
Vetrimaaran's latest venture, Viduthalai Part I, like most of his movies, relies on a medley of real-life incidents churned out into a product that awes the macho psyche and manages to get away with critical acclaim.
Vetrimaaran is at his aggressive best in Viduthalai, unfortunately.
Viduthalai yet again proves that any filmmaker with an iota of privilege can easily get away with macho aggressiveness and hubris.
What Vetrimaaran unapologetically indulges in is to strip the dignity of the oppressed people and on the same hand voyeuristically traumatise viewers. The film has scenes where women are shown naked in police custody. It has a scene that shows a rape victim limping on, a tortured woman trying to escape police custody and being shot dead.
That he has an army of fans is another matter. Most Tamil men have discovered in the vulgarity an act of genius. They bow down before the director in a cultist trance.
Viduthalai Part 1 tries to paint a picture of the universal nature of heroism through the story of a cop and his lover. Secondarily, the movie tries to bring forth the horror of police brutality, against the backdrop of a rebel movement in a mountainous countryside. The liberties that Vetrimaaran grants himself to pick up strands from different historical atrocities against the oppressed and stitch them into a film need to be discussed. But now it's high time to draw a line over what can pass as an acceptable depiction of sexual violence and torture in cinemas.
Honest and fair depictions of sexual violence, abuse, and torture on screen are rare but not absent.
We don't see Samir’s wife drinking bleach in Le Passe. We don’t see the rape and murder of Angela in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing. We don't see Eric being assaulted at a bus stop in Sex Education, a show that is very sparing with sex scenes. We don’t see Parthiban dying in Witness.
All of these would have made 'moving', 'touching' and 'heartbreaking' scenes -- by the standards with which Viduthalai is being celebrated -- but the makers deemed such scenes unnecessary and avoidable.
On the other hand, we have Visaranai, Asuran, and Oor Iravu in Paava Kathaigal -- all Vetrimaaran movies feasting on gruesome visuals of violence, police brutality and sexual assault.
It's all about choice. The choice of being cautious not to traumatise the audience versus the choice of being sensationalistic and scandalising for the sake of applause. The latter is never a good quality in artists.
ADOOR GOPALAKRISHNAN COLUMN | Remembering Manikda, the Ray who lit up Indian cinema
Vetrimaaran is assumed to have used love as a weapon that boosts the courage and sense of resistance in a hero. But what he actually does is to exploit a woman and perpetrate violence on her to make a hero.
Aoko Matsudo in her piece The Woman Dies writes the following :
"She is raped so that the man can be angry about it. She is raped to spark his vengeful spirit. She is raped so the man can look to the sky and howl in agony. She is raped so the man can have a car chase. Raped to bring about real action. Raped so the bad guy can be slowly but surely hunted down. Raped to put the man in the mood to blow up the enemy’s hideout. Raped to make him feel like annihilating the enemy. Even we realize that this is a terrible thing to happen. We swallow nervously.
The woman is raped. The woman is raped at the earliest opportunity. The woman who was raped in the first installment is raped again in the second. She’s raped like it’s the only trick in the book. We feel a bit confused. I mean, it’s clearly an unthinkable thing, and it drives the men into a frenzy, and yet they drop it in there at the slightest provocation. Why don’t the men ever get used to their women being raped? Why do they make such a big fuss about it every time? We don’t understand. We don't get that for a very long time, rape has been just about the only way they've been able to hurt and control women. That it's the most comprehensible, most accessible method to hand.
The woman is raped. The woman is raped as a shocking plot development. We don't understand it, and yet the violent scenes traumatize us. It’s so traumatic that even when we reach adulthood, we find ourselves replaying those scenes in our heads. Or else it’s just hinted at. The woman’s mouth is covered by the man’s hand. The woman’s body is covered by the man’s body. The woman’s face distorts in agony. Things fall. Things break. Crashing sounds. Windows shut. Doors shut. The light goes out. Cut to the next scene."
We know what Aoko is talking about. We grew up and grew old with such movies. Hey Ram, Anjaathe, Nandha, Vaanmagal in Paava Kathaigal, Amaithi Padai, Varalaaru, and Paruthi Veeran are all such movies. This sickening trend has actually given rise to an informal genre called 'rape-revenge movies'. Viduthalai doesn’t fall far from this genre.
"The culture of using caste violence and sexual violence only to further the progress of the story and justifying it under the name of 'visualising true events' is a convenience only privileged male filmmakers have. Let’s take the example of Thevar Magan where a Dalit character depicted by Vadivelu has his arm chopped off. That violence remained only as an event to add to the other 'atrocities' of the villain. It was never addressed. It was used to further the plot,” says Maya*, journalist-cum-filmmaker with more than nine years of experience in the Tamil cinema industry.
Noting that sexual violence, rape and harassment of women are used to add oil to the fire, she says, "It's almost like 'do you need to turn up the heat against them villains -- bring a woman, harass her, up the story, move on!' This reflects in real life when something is not considered violent unless it's a rape and a rape with proof. We all become 'doubting Thomases' who need to touch the wound to believe."
"Internationally and even in Tamizh films of recent times like Bommai Nayagi, filmmakers much younger and less privileged are making tougher choices in order to tell their stories. The filmmaker chooses the dignity of the victims over voyeuristic depictions born out of privilege," Maya says.
"The position of the spectators in the cinema is blatantly one of repression of their exhibitionism and projection of the repressed desire onto the performer," Laura Mulvey writes in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.
ALSO READ | Gods and the gods of Bollywood
Laura implies the shrinkage of the distance between the spectator and the action on screen. Spectators live and internalise what they watch in a movie, which brings us to questions Vetrimaaran wilfully ignores: "Who is assaulted when a character is assaulted on screen? Could it be the watcher? What happens when the watcher has already been assaulted?"
While it can be argued that the filmmaker has attempted to showcase the depth of police brutality, it is quite easy to figure it was a failed effort.
"If this was created with a motive to make people realise the horror of police brutality, the director has failed there too. Spectators don't feel anger and resentment towards the police, because of the film’s narrative. I feel dissatisfaction towards Vetrimaaran for such a traumatising portrayal because he repeatedly affirms the police throughout the movie. You see Gautham Menon torturing people being shot in a way to glamourise the police. This is not at all expected of the director. But, I still have high hopes for him. I feel like this is an 'even elephants do slip' moment for him," says Kavin Malar, journalist.
She also says the movie has not depicted oppressed caste women with dignity.
"I find the torture and sexual violence scenes in Viduthalai to be problematic. One must not depict women in such a way on screen. One definitely must not depict oppressed caste women on screen in such a way. It is very important to portray women with dignity on screen and the filmmaker must put all their efforts to ensure this. Suggestive shots could have been used like so many other films. Vetrimaaran has not done that," Kavin Malar says.
Theories explaining the attraction towards violent content often point to the gratification of the experience, say A Bartsch & M.-L. Mares in a paper titled Making Sense of Violence.
"One set of explanations focuses on gratifications related to intense emotions and arousal, such as voyeurism and curiosity about taboo actions, rebellious tasting of the 'forbidden fruit' of violence," the study says.
"Individuals' motivations for entertainment use may not only reflect hedonistic regulation of mood and arousal but may also involve a search for deeper insight, meaning, and purpose in life," it adds.
Vetrimaaran’s quest to make sense of the father who kills his daughter in Oor Iravu and the attempt to romanticise the heroism of a cop in Viduthalai may rise either from the gratification linked to the rebellious tasting of the 'forbidden fruit' or a search for a deeper purpose in life. One can never be too sure, but he cannot carry on doing this at the cost of the oppressed. Will Vetrimaaran learn?