The Magic of ‘Why This Kola Veri Song” – Altering Value Premises of Masses or Just a Media Hype?

This evening, while returning home from my University, I heard a boy in the neighborhood aged hardly five, singing Kolaveri Song with his tender voice; unavoidably the following questions keep haunting me:

Who is singing in the tender voice of the five year old boy?

a.    The Media?

b.   The Corporate World? 

c.    The Changing Value premise that has got a popular approval?  Or

d.   All put together?

Before going into the premises of understanding of the popularity of the Song “Why this Kolaveri?” Let us examine the background of mass psychology of our people involved in “Film Appreciation”.

History had left unshakable evidence of the “influencing effect” of Cinema. The Dream Factory, the celluloid world and the gate way of virtual reality has been literally ruling the senses of the masses in the past century. When motion pictures were identified as a source of recreation, the creative intelligence of mankind converted it as a medium for reflecting intellectual prowess. Unfortunately in India, those movies that are depicting the sublime state of human nature and conveying life as it is, the passions and perversions as they are get branded as unhealthy for Indian Culture. Hence great men like Satyjit Ray and Shyam Benegal have to travel a path of picturing the periphery of human nature and often never remained to traverse deep into the absolute nakedness of Truth.

In India, we have a national and a statutory body called the “Central Board of Film Censor” – literally a watch dog of the moral, ethical and the cultural standard of movies that are released in India. While there are debates whether we need a censor board, this present essay is not going to question the relevance of the censor board but just its effectiveness in contemporary political and social space. Just like any other institution enforcing moral policing resulting in failures, when the terms and references of enforcement are opposing popular approval, the censor board is apparently a toothless saw, sometimes very remorseful against the basic liberty of a creative thinker.

Subaltern Minds and Inspirations from Movies

            The film icon turned Chief Minister Mr.M.G.Ramachandran( 1917-1987) who literally ruled the minds of a majority of the people of Tamil Nadu visited a place called Dharmapuri in western Tamil Nadu, soon after winning a land slide victory in 1977. He was received by the people as a great hero, who have won the war defending the country. An old lady approached him and reported to have said the following “My Lord, My King, I know you will become our ruler some day and you have become. You would certainly lead us to the best life and hence forth all our lives will attain prosperity. As Chief Minister, you will do all well. But one thing my son, please be cautious about that bloody villain Nambiar, who might upset all your plans of making Tamil Nadu as a prosperous state”.

            The reality is that in real life, Nambiar was a hero and a spiritual Guru who led a disciplined life until his death.

Moral Values Films Preached

            Moral Education and reinforcing values like “One man for One Woman and One Woman for One Man”, “Veneration of Husbands, however a rogue he was”, “the sacrosanct nature of “Chastity”, were some of the key areas upon which the characterization of the protagonist were built upon. There were actors and actresses who died for the cause of chastity and veneration of husbands, but in reality they had multiple partners and divorced and remarried many times. It is a strange thing that people never bothered to deal with the contradiction the film stars exhibited with their presence in the silver screen and instead the masses, hypnotized by these strange phenomena saw the silver screen as their alter ego and drenched in voyeurism.

            However this had one disadvantage: The Girls (Heroines) who were the pairs of Heroes lost their stardom if they get married in their real life, because every man who patronized the movies married the girls (the heroines) in their voyeuristic dream and any could not tolerate those girls getting married in their real life. Whereas the male actors were completely insulated from this moral standard – They can marry even more than once and get children and grand children still in the silver screens can attend Undergraduate College that too in the first year.

            In a block buster movie “Baadshah(1995)”, the Tamil Movie through  which Rajinikanth got elevated as a potential rival for sitting Chief Ministers, he would marry a girl who is a daughter of his friend who is of his age! Imagine this was a block buster movie!

The Hermeneutics of “Why this Kolaveri?” Song

The rhythmic arrangements, simpler words that would be repeated very easily and the fusion of English-Tamil words have created the hype indeed. However one cannot rule out the corporate strategies employed in the marketing – yes the marketing of this song. Than song, it is a flow of a monologue of an aimless, irresponsible and a youth reflecting subaltern world. The deliberate pollution of the language depict the voice of the excluded and the very shooting of the recording session convey the class of the actors involved in the making of the song narrating the  inbuilt self contradicting nature of “Indian Film Appreciation” – the fantasy-reality divide discussed afore.

When people appreciate and get a pep watching a rowdy as a hero, a serial killer as a symbol of bravery, would they prefer such a person to be their son or son-in-law?

Corporate Marketing Strategy

The appearance of the news item about the movie in the first page of “The Hindu”, the social networks and websites like You Tube depicting the song as a Featured Video, face book users – a majority of them fake ones created as an extension of Corporate Promotion, the wonder how this song took an “All India” version, sometimes even the Sri Lankan Tamil version indicate the quick grasp of international marketing strategies by Tamil Film Industry. Undoubtedly this is a simulated act that has been perfectly timed and orchestrated with money and muscle power.

We are in a period where arts and aesthetics are sold by corporate world. The satisfying needs of the inner realms of mind and heart have become commoditized, which is certainly not a healthy practice.

The worrisome aspect of the Song’s Popularity – An Indicator of dying Creative Intelligence?

            The protagonist of the song is a “Love Failure Youth”, that is a perennial issue since ‘Devadoss’ in Tamil Cinema. But what is the nature of this modern youth when compared to the yester year’s icons? Today a hero is pictured as a Loafer, drunkard, a guy who fails in the exams repeatedly and also as a boy who emotionally blackmails a girl who is forced to love him. In this song “Why this Kolaveri?” the inbuilt meaning is that a fair girl has cheated/deceived a dark complexioned boy. A Girl who rejected the love of the boy is pictured as if her attitude is murderous! What nonsense is this? Also the liberal advocacy of alcoholism pictured in the song seriously undermines the position of the foundation of ethics and public morality. This is a classical demonstration that popular choice is self-contradicting and cannot be always rational.

Henceforth, the flimsy justification that “I am selling filth and dirt through my movies, because they are a popular demand, itself is a bogus, malicious and an antisocial claim” by film producers and directors.

That too when kids sing it innocently reminds a passive listener of the state of affair of the “Prohibition Policy” of popularly elected democratic governments. It is at this instance, one could easily get a doubt that the very enjoyment and attainment of soul satisfaction of this kind of songs/movies have something hidden. The enjoyments thus remain beyond what it appears at a superficial level – a metamorphosisation of “Value premises”. This is no joke, but a fore warning of a moral and an ethical disaster!

            When the parents enjoy their kids singing this song, would they relish if this happen in reality?  This is again the inbuilt self-contradicting nature of Indian minds, which certainly indicate the decay, death of the creative intelligence of the Argumentative Indian Minds.

Hope things change for the better!

(Picture Courtesy: picsocius.com)