Time to Introspect - Racial Slurs & Insensitivities in Movies

Bharath Vijayakumar

In this day and age when Tamil Industry and fans are proud of the millions of dollars collected at the box office revenue globally, it is imperative that filmmakers should take utmost care when including racially sensitive dialogues or scenes in their films.

Example: Singam's Double Standards

In Singam 2, Suriya does name calling of the villain, Danny Sapani, as "African animal" and "African monkey". What impression would this leave about Indians when Africans, including Danny, who must have watched this film? How did Suriya, who is usually sensitive about such things, allow this to happen when he dubbed the scene?

The Singam-2 hero plays the role of a sincere cop whose blood boils when something bad is said about any Indian police officer. In a particular scene he also sermonizes about the respect that needs to be given to teachers. It is ironical that the same movie features a scene where the movie's lead comedian refers to one of the teachers as "Konda Vecha Gorilla". Double Standards?

Singam-2 is just an example from a recent movie to illustrate this issue. Our Tamil movies are littered with many such examples.

Tamil Industry's obsession with ridiculing dark skin

And there is no point in accusing filmmakers when we applaud these offensive scenes and laugh at some of these cruel jokes. Obese people, those belonging to the third gender and those with a dark complexion are often the laughing stock in many a scene in Tamil cinema. You would lose count of how many such movies you may have witnessed where dark complexion is looked down or ridiculed by even the best directors such as Shankar in Sivaji (Angavai/Sangavai) and Nanban (Jiiva's sister). Even the legendary director Balachander has fallen for this in Paarthale Paravasam.

Recent Controversy - 'Ghutka' Mukesh

There was a controversy about the teaser of a recently released film, All in All Azhaguraja, which imitates an anti -tobacco awareness video. One really cannot comment for sure about the intention of this particular scene. But if the director's intention was indeed to make a mockery of the awareness video then it is downright distasteful. Thankfully the makers were sensitive enough to remove it after few objections were raised. We have people in the auditorium making cat-calls whenever this deceased young man makes an appearance on the screen. Hope these fans realize that this is a true incident and refrain from mocking at it even if they disapprove of such screenings before a feature film.

Audience Responsibility - Time to Introspect

And what about us, the audience? Unless we stop laughing at such jokes, filmmakers are not going to stop making such scenes. There are people who might argue that all this is fun and should never be taken seriously. In a civilized society, good humour should never be at the cost of hurting someone.