Women, Men And Tamil Cinema

It’s a story as timeless as love itself. Happy go lucky loser falls for a smart girl. Book smart, not street smart. Approaches girl, girl says no. Guy persists, girl says no again, until he murders her in broad daylight in a railway station.

“Wait, what?!”, you’re probably not exclaiming because you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Let’s talk about happy go lucky losers for a second. By one definition or another, we all fit the bill. No matter how deep and brooding you are, there’s something appealing about casting yourself as the happy go lucky loser. To be able to shrug at every difficulty and get over them by simply being righteous. Let’s call them HGLLs because I’m too lazy to type out Happy Go Lucky Loser, or even Loser every time. Something about abbreviations. HGLL and hero are four letters each, yet one is easier than the other to type. Go figure.

While Hollywood is pretty taken by brooding heroes, Tamil Cinema very much loves it’s HGLLs. Now the traditional HGLL, inspite of being what he is, always stands for what is right and won’t take shit from fools. They quip, they swagger — hold up, when did Cowboys become losers?

Either way, the HGLL faces great odds, rarely breaking a sweat, and beats the bad guy. Cool right? He also gets the girl. Everybody’s happy. The Traditional HGLL has transitioned into the True Hero (TM). Hey, I want to be that guy.

My personal HGLLs of choice would be Spider-Man and Luffy (from One Piece). I’m lucky. These are great HGLLs. But not everybody reads comics and manga. Some people, they get their HGLLs from Tamil Cinema. The problem is, between adolescence and a lack of any other real source of information or communication of certain moral codes and behaviors, Tamil Cinema makes for a very bad textbook.

Main bad guy bashing story aside, every Tamil movie has a romantic sub plot. It has three acts.

Act 1: Happy go lucky loser falls for a smart girl. Approaches girl, girl says no.

Act 2: Guy persists, girl says no.

Now the third act is quite variable. Let’s look at the more common Act 3s:

1. Guy threatens to kill himself, so girl says yes.
2. Guy kills himself.
3. Guy threatens girl, so girl says yes.
4. Girl says no, so she’s a hoe, and some witty, humorous and definitely not humiliating revenge is exacted which makes her realize the error of her ways, and say yes, only for him to be too cool for her now.
5. Guy drinks till the girl says yes.
6. Guy drinks himself dead.
7. Guy bribes his way into her heart.
8. Guy bribes his way into her parents hearts.
9. The girl gets killed off or abused by the villain and becomes hero’s motivation in the main plot.

If I’ve missed anything, it doesn’t matter. It ends with the girl saying yes, the guy saying no, or somebody dying.

I’d like to say that people aren’t influenced by the things they see in the movies. It’s true to the most part. Many people can tell the difference between real life and a movie, and understand that murder and rape are bad things. But you get the occasional dude who decides that he too, is a HGLL, and he too will turn into a hero. When escapist fantasy becomes ambition, you make the True Hero (TM) To Do list. First step, there’s no bad guy to beat up, so get the girl!

But what happens when he doesn’t? When the girl simply says no? Suicide? Not uncommon among students. But what happens when he’s too scared to do that? How does his character develop? What would happen in the movies? Rape? Murder? If he can’t be the hero, does he become the villain?

Fuck Tamil Cinema for writing the same old cheap lazy-ass stories over and over again. For giving the people the wrong kind of role models. For making people think that the girl is obliged to say yes. Guy worked so fucking hard after all. Worked so hard to win the girl. To get the girl. He earned her. Earned it.

Our artists are our leaders, often. Not our Prime Ministers and Presidents. Those aren’t people that actually inspire us. Our films do. Through their art they talk to us. Teach us. Tell us. This is all true. Artistic responsibility is a complicated topic, and for the longest time I believed that artists should be able to always fully express their vision. People need to learn that fantasy isn’t the best place to get your morals from. To not stalk. To not kill. To not rape. To not harm. Have we not progressed far enough to know these things are wrong regardless of what we see in the movies? No we haven’t. As long as our artists remain our teachers, they have to behave like them. Its morally imperative. They cannot normalize the stuff that we see on the screen.

Remember Swathy? The girl who was killed at a railway station by a spurned man.

Swathy. Who was she? Is she your mother? Your sister? Your best friend?

Maybe. But, are you your mother’s son? Your sister’s brother? Your best friend’s best friend? You are. But above all, are you not you?

Swathy is Swathy. She was a human being, as you are. Maybe you sat next to her in a bus once, stood next to her on a train. Not knowing that an evil son of a bitch would one day, have plans for her. Not knowing that her dreams would never come to pass.

They can learn to fight, they can stay at home all day, they can wear burqas, they can surround yourself with able bodied men. But evil finds a way. You can only wait and hope for the best.

Or we could work towards changing this terrible culture. Change the way men see women. For an education through school, it would take years of reform. But for cinema? They can start teaching and inspiring even tomorrow. Our artists have to lead this charge.

Until such a change does occur, I am boycotting the Tamil film industry, and I urge you to do the same. We must put the pressure on artists to stop normalizing this shit. Hit them where it hurts: Sales. I might not be able to get many people to do the same, but I am open to more productive ways of getting the message across. I for one though, am completely done with Tamil Movies and their endless stream of bullshit.