Readers Write In #768: Tamil Cinema 2024: A victim roundup

By Madhumithaa S

With the New Year almost upon us, it’s the most popular time for reflection. I’ve decided to join the bandwagon of roundup of Tamil cinemas.

Here’s what 2024 Tamil cinema had to offer to a woman who has always loved and believed in cinema as a powerful medium of not just entertainment, but change.

Vettayan

Let me start with the superstar!

A woman gets brutally (brutallybeing the understatement of the year) assaulted, raped, and finally killed. The movie was a great step-by-step manual for you to learn to commit every single step I listed above because the scene is played over and over again, and I lost count of how many times.

The first time though, the director chose the most innovative way of setting the camera.

Innovative how, you ask?

You, the audience, gets to play the person committing the crimes listed above. The crimes of assault – violently hit the woman on her head; then rape her; and watch her die.

Make no mistakes. The audience could be you, your innocent 5 year old son, your sweet little 12 year old daughter, your soft-hearted 60 years old mother, your dignified and respectable 65 years old father. But the moment you decided to watch the movie, the director decided to offer you the novel experience of being a ruthless criminal. 

The superstar investigates and finds the criminal, and the movie ends.

What about the crime of perversion and titillation committed by this movie?

G.O.A.T

Next is the movie of a star who aspires to rule the state of Tamil Nadu.

The consolation in this movie is that you don’t have to commit the crime.  

You just have to watch Thalapathy Vijay slit the throat of a woman.

A split second later, he starts dancing to an item song with Trisha. My only guess is he was really counting on all of our short memory spans to pull this off. 

While I thought that was traumatizing enough, Vijay had more for me.

He gave his first political speech and started it off with the promise of offering leadership roles to women.

Anybody wanna join me in a session of shared hysterical laughter?

Maharaja

Then, we get to the movie of Makkal Selvan Vijay Sethupathi that was really celebrated this year.

He goes to the police station and reports of a missing dustbin.

After watching the entire movie, you realize by dustbin, he meant daughter. 

Oh, what a twist!

And the movie was adored and celebrated by everyone for all of its “twists”.

Why did he have to go with this deliberate choice of “dustbin” to describe his daughter?

Nobody ever asked this question.

The director enjoyed all the limelight he could get while calling women garbage.

The much anticipated Viduthalai 2

The part 1 of the movie ended with a bunch of women including the female lead being unlawfully taken into custody, and brutally tortured by cops. They are all stripped of their clothes, and the cops have chilly powder, letting our imagination go to some very dark places.

And the sequel released only to never let us know what happened to these women.

However, I have to clarify that there was absolute continuity in terms of the film’s mission to torture women.

Women born into weaker sections of the society will in all certainty be raped by men.

The film also has women like Manju Warrier who are born into wealthier families, are educated, and have aspirations.

How about them, you wonder?

They will be romantically pursued, married and eventually, domesticated as mothers to multiple children.

What about their aspirations?

What’s greater than motherhood and being a supportive wife?

Oh that’s right, nothing.

Moral of 2024

What I’ve learned from the Tamil cinema industry this year is that women on-screen have to be victims of heinous crimes. Since we started raising our voices against being portrayed as glamorous dolls, the industry is now giving us roles of substance – play a victim, and suffer. There’s no saying how heinous or how violent the crimes shown on-screen will get because every film manages take it one notch higher than the previous one. Every time I think to myself a movie cannot get gorier than this, the next movie goes ahead and does exactly that, leaving me speechless with dread and fear.

So, I’m guessing we should just raise our glasses to increasing standards?

Cinema and society don’t operate in isolation from each other.

But I’m left to wonder if this is even true anymore because something does not add up when the same society celebrates a movie like Maharaja, but is outraged and gets to the streets in support of women when there are incidents of sexual assaults.

When you don’t object to a woman being called a dustbin for the entire duration of a movie, you have long missed the bus to stop women from being treated like trash in the society.

When you don’t call out an actor with political aspirations on the gross violations in his movies, how do you expect him to suddenly become accountable to you as a politician? Accountability and answerability are traits that come from decades of conscious practice. They are not Christmas miracles that happen overnight!     

While I’m not saying movies are the only cause of violent crimes in the society, multiple ethical lines that should not have been crossed have been deliberately crossed in these movies, and the makers have just gotten away with these violations.

They didn’t just get away. They have made crores of money, becoming symbols of success, giving out a loud and strong message that these are the kind of movies that work well with the audience – movies that leak of venom, bloodshed, gore, perversion, malice…I am deliberately stopping myself here although I am in no shortage of words to describe these movies.  

The regular exposure and easy access to content of this kind is certain to have an impact on its audience, and what control do any of us have on how it shapes to reality?   

It’s time to voice out your objections at the very initial stage of a crime in a society, which is when a movie or any content you consume unwarrantedly goes out of its way to glorify or normalize wrong practices. It could be crimes, sexist remarks, regressive practices, patriarchy, misogyny, and so on.

What’s the point of crying failure if you were sleeping while the enemies set up their camp right in front of your eyes?

It’s time to pause and take a look at the atrocities we’ve normalized, and initiate some much need urgent course correction.

Here’s hoping for safer cinema for the Tamil society in 2025.