*Major spoilers ahead
The recently released Netflix anthology film Paava Kadhaigal has drawn all kinds of reactions. While several social media users have praised the filmmakers for daring to take on an issue like ‘honour’ killing, several others have criticised them for insensitive depictions and representations.
Each of the four films, directed by Sudha Kongara, Gautham Menon, Vignesh Shivn and Vetrimaaran respectively, look at how ideas of honour tie in with gender and caste. It is true that though such violent killings are commonplace in our society, they are rarely shown on screen. The family as an institution is considered to be sacrosanct and several films have eulogised giving up romantic love to abide by the wishes of the parents. In that sense, the intention behind making Paava Kadhaigal is laudable. Here, the family, a unit of a prejudiced society, is an unsafe space where love is purely conditional. One has to stick by the norms or else face the consequences. And the consequences are far from pretty.
But, it is also worth asking what impact the filmmakers wished to achieve through their films. Is it shock, sympathy or inspiration to push for change? The first two are easily achievable but the third — where a filmmaker is able to make the audience feel empowered through their art to question the status quo — is a lot more difficult.
Given that the subject is ‘honour’ and the associated crimes that go with it, violence in Paava Kadhaigal was a given. But is the treatment of violence in each of these segments effective? What impact does it have on viewers, especially those who are at the receiving end of it?
Sudha Kongara’s Thangam is about Satthar, a Muslim trans woman (Kalidas), who is in love with Saravanan (Shanthnu), a Hindu shopkeeper. The film is set in an ‘80s Tamil Nadu village. While Satthar is constantly expressing her feelings for Saravanan, the latter only sees her as a friend. He is actually interested in Satthar’s sister (Bhavani) and when the two of them elope, Satthar decides to sacrifice herself for the sake of their safety. Her family disowns her and refuses to help when a gang of men is out to sexually assault her. Satthar dies and the film turns her into a hero for her act.
Many from the LGBTQI+ community have expressed their anger towards the short film. To begin with, it is hugely problematic to have a cis man play the role of a trans woman because society already believes that trans women are cis men ‘dressed up’. The conditioning is so ingrained that several reviews of the film defined the character as ‘transgender man’ or ‘man wanting to be woman’ and used masculine pronouns. In promo interviews, the team that made the film has been using masculine pronouns for Satthar while referring to the character, revealing that not enough effort has gone into understanding the transgender identity. The story has been told through a misguided cis lens even if the protagonist is a trans woman and supposedly based on a real person.
Filmmaker’s are lazy and come up with excuses for not casting a trans person in a trans role. But what excuse do film critiques have to not use the right pronouns? Is it your laziness or transphobia? @Sudhakongara_of @NetflixIndia #paavakadhaikal
— m (@BumpAhead) December 18, 2020
The unwillingness to recognise and acknowledge Satthar as a woman is, in itself, an act of violence — by the makers, viewers and reviewers. However, the film also requires Satthar to die for her to rise in the eyes of the audience. She ‘sacrifices’ herself first for Saravanan’s sake and then for the sake of her siblings, since her mother says nobody will marry her sisters because of her identity. ‘Satthar’ becomes ‘Thangam’ or gold because of her willingness to sacrifice, when she isn’t even treated as human by anyone around her.
Trans persons already experience extreme violence in their lives, including from law enforcers. Such a narrative can only be considered triggering and disempowering, magnifying their lack of power manifold. If the film had cast a trans actor (isn’t that why the OTT platform exists, to break out from the pressures of commercial cinema?), understood the trans identity fundamentally, and taken into account the realities of living as a trans person, it would have been a much better and more sincere effort.
Gautham Menon’s Vaanmagal is on a disturbing subject — the sexual assault of a minor girl and how her family deals with it. This could have been a powerful film if not for the insensitive making. For years, Tamil cinema has been depicting sexual assault scenes by focusing on the rapist’s leery face, his expressions of lust, and a screaming woman running with her clothes in disarray. The voyeuristic gaze of the camera turns it into an act of pleasure rather than a crime.
Vaanmagal takes the same beaten path, and it is even more triggering, considering the victim here is a child. Gautham Menon not only gives the rapist lines on how he’s going to ‘enjoy’ himself, he even includes a joke. The child’s mother, Mathi, is played by Simran, and Gautham, for reasons unfathomable, thought it appropriate to have the villain fantasise about raping Mathi and then say ‘If only I do that, I will be the all thotta Bhoopathy’ (for those who don’t know, this is a famous hit song of Simran’s from the past). The joke is not even between the villainous characters in the scene, it is between the rapist and the audience, which is expected to catch the reference.
Sexual assault is a traumatic experience and a filmmaker must think about how best to depict it, and not go on autopilot. Is it necessary to show how much the victim is suffering? Is it necessary to pan the camera at their face and show the rapist undressing? In the critically acclaimed Netflix series Unbelievable, for instance, there are multiple sexual assaults but the acts are not in focus; the camera doesn’t linger as the rapist commits the crime, giving him a platform to voice his thoughts and humiliate the victims more. Never for a second do we see the scene for anything other than what it is — a crime.
Though the ending of Vaanmagal is heartening, with the conservative family deciding to take a stance and stand by their daughter, it does enough damage all through with the writing. The minor girl is repeatedly painted as someone who has now become a “woman” or too aware of “adult matters”; as if sexual assault is a bizarre rite of passage into adulthood and she is no longer a child. The painful fact is that enough people already believe this. Survivors of child sexual abuse are even kicked out of educational institutions because the staff believe their ‘adult knowledge’ can ‘corrupt’ other children. They face ostracism from their neighbours who don’t want their children to mix with them for the same reason. While it can be argued that this is the thinking of the characters and not the director, nowhere are these ideas challenged in the script.
The Tamil word for ‘rape’ is ‘karpazhippu’ or ‘destroying chastity’. It is a patriarchal word that focuses on how the perpetrator ‘changes’ the victim; it gives him the position of power. Films that hope to shatter such ideas must be willing to go past this primitive understanding of sexual violence and not reiterate it.
Vignesh Shivn’s film is about a pair of twins (played by Anjali) — Adhilakshmi and Jyothilakshmi — and their attempts to convince their casteist father (Padam Kumar) to accept their forbidden love. The film tries to strike a humorous note but gets several things wrong.
To begin with, the promos suggested that this segment was going to feature lesbian women, with Kalki Koechlin playing Anjali’s partner. Till the end of the film, we are made to believe that they are a couple, including an elaborate scene where they touch and kiss each other to prove that they’re in love. But in a strange twist, we are told that they’re not a lesbian couple after all and that Jyothilakshmi uttered a lie to prevent her father from killing her boyfriend who is from a lower caste.
Since #QueerBaiting is trending along with #Paavakathaigal @VigneshShivN here is a brief about it in Tamil https://t.co/Fn6Ts3dbEV#குயர்வேட்டை #பால்புதுவேட்டை
— ~m~ (@BumpAhead) December 18, 2020
Several people from the queer community have called this out, terming it as blatant ‘queerbaiting’. This is a term that is used to describe a marketing technique which suggests same sex love to attract viewers or appear progressive/inclusive, but doesn’t actually depict same sex love in a meaningful or open way. The film deliberately sets out to titillate using the two characters but then pushes their relationship into the realm of imagination.
Further, the film treats the caste killings of Adhilakshmi and her Dalit boyfriend (she is electrocuted and he’s killed in a staged accident) as a ‘by the way’, with the perpetrator (the father) not only getting away with it but also enjoying life in France as a ‘reformed’ man. It is even more ridiculous how this reformation happens — a white woman uttering a sexist and casteist cussword as a punchline. In a film that is supposed to take on gender and caste bias. If only Vignesh had steered clear of the need to be ‘funny’ and stuck to the premise of a lesbian couple taking on a casteist man, this film would have had some hope of making sense. While it is the least violent of the four, it is also the most confused.
Vetrimaaran’s film is about a young pregnant woman, Sumathi (Sai Pallavi), who returns to her estranged family after her father invites her home for a baby shower. Sumathi eloped years ago with a Dalit man and has no idea about the repercussions that this has had on her family in their village. She genuinely believes that her father (Prakash Raj) has changed and goes home happily, only to be cruelly betrayed.
Of the four films, Vetrimaaran’s segment is the most intelligently crafted, but the long-drawn out brutal end that Sumathi suffers offers no hope for a change in the status quo. While such films succeed in functioning as a mirror to society, they don’t challenge existing social hierarchies and only end up strengthening them by making the audience wish that they never meet the fate of the characters. Though Sumathi moves to a big city and is living her dream with her husband, there is no escape for her eventually.
Balaji Sakthivel’s Kaadhal, which came out in 2004, was a hard-hitting film on the notion of caste-based ‘honour’. In the film, a Dalit boy falls in love with a dominant caste girl and the two of them elope, only to be tracked down by her family and cruelly punished. The director has said in interviews that he made the film based on a true story that was narrated to him on a train journey; he was so moved by the story that he decided to make the film to expose the violent reality of caste. However, not everyone in the audience watched the film the way the director intended to. In several southern districts of Tamil Nadu, men from dominant castes celebrated the brutal ending of the film, seeing it as a dire warning to the oppressed castes if they attempted a transgression. People from Dalit castes, on the other hand, felt threatened by the depiction and the response of the dominant castes around them.
The effect that Oor Iravu is likely to have is on similar lines — a mix of sympathy and fear of the forbidden in viewers who are malleable to change, and triumph among those who believe the status quo is desirable. A cautionary tale that preaches conformity rather than a clarion call for change.
Watch: Trailer of Paava Kadhaigal