Viduthalai, Moral Blindness and Adiaphora

Why do we need to see movies through a sociological lens?

I have a problem with how we critique movies. Like many other aspects of life, taking a psychological perspective on movies has ruined the experience of critiquing. The psychological perspective, though, doesn’t come from studying psychology but from a commonsensical understanding of psychological concepts. One of the easiest ways to talk about a movie is to use the phrase “psychologically speaking” without foreshadowing the specific psychological aspect they are discussing. Most critics these days talk about character studies and plot devices without considering the socio-political context in which the movie takes place.

For example, if we take Parasite, critics in India either saw it as a class divide (which is true) or simplified it to a problem of human behaviour. And then, we had the silly comparison to Minsara Kanna. The comparison happened because we see the movie as a plot, not the context behind it. All these criticisms missed one specific point about the movie, the socio-political context. Parasite wasn’t about human behaviour but about the three types of dwellings shown in the movie. The basement where Kim’s family lives are called Banjihas, created as bunkers during the peak of tensions with North Korea in the 70s. Initially, the South Korean government didn’t allow these Banjihas to be rented. But because of the rapid expansion of the economy, they finally budged, and these basement houses were dwelling places for 36,000 Seoul residents when the movie was released.

Post the movie, Seoul authorities are trying to phase out these houses, but Bong Jon Hoo was making a socio-political statement and not a psychological study. The behaviours of the characters are forced by market capitalism and not the psychological underpinnings of characters. Although, at that time, I had stopped writing movie reviews, I wrote this tweet as a response, and it’s true, if Marx had made a Korean movie, it would have been Parasite.

The problem is that most of us need to see the sociological background of a film, but it is not required for the majority of movies made in India. Most are mass masala vehicles or deal with interpersonal relationships (love, family or friendship).

Studying the plot or character arcs is the perfect way to analyse these movies. But using the same lens to examine a sociological film is a gross disservice to the filmmaker and the movie’s content. And that’s why people have extreme reactions to films like Visaranai, Kaala, Natchathiram Nagargirathu or Karnan. The latest in that list is Viduthalai.

Viduthalai is a perfect example of sociological storytelling because it doesn’t individualise the problem to a specific person. It’s not the fight between Perumal Vaathiyar and Sunil Menon, nor it’s a fight between Kumaresan and Ragavendar. It is also not a fight between the government and Tamil People’s Army (Makkal Padai). It’s a struggle between market capitalism and the forest. The establishment here is the representative of the former, while the Makkal Padai is the representative of the forest. Viduthalai is like a grand theory, which can be transferable to any other similar context. Viduthalai is the story of the Dongri Kondh Tribe in Orissa fighting against the Vedanta mines, or it could be the Articulation of Indigenous People in Brazil fighting against the destruction of Amazon forests. It could be the Amadiba Crisis Committee protesting against illegal mining in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.

Vetrimaran has chosen the most violent period in the history of Tamil Nadu (post-independence) as the context to create a debate around the issue of oppression stemming from market capitalism. Although Vetrimaran reiterates that the story is fictitious (probably because of the Censor board rules), it was evident the story is based on the real-life left-wing extremist leader Pulavar Kaliyaperumal (Perumal Vaathiyar played by Vijay Sethupathi) and his Tamil Nadu Liberation Army. Although Kaliyaperumal was part of the Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninst (CPI-ML) People’s War Group, his advocacy of separate Tamil Nadu did not fly with the central leadership. Kaliyaperumal, Thamizharasan and Anbazhagan started the Tamil Nadu Communist Party-Marxist-Leninist (TNCP-ML), and their armed wing was the TNLA (Selvaraj, 2017).

The TNLA’s 1987 sabotage of Rockfort Express over Marudayar Bridge left 25 people dead and 139 seriously injured (Venkatramani, 2014). Vetrimaran has made this incident the crux of the story, and the depiction in the movie is one of the most well-shot sequences in Tamil cinema. The government takes a strong view and then unleashes a wave of police brutality in the name of nabbing Perumal Vaathiyar and his cadres. Vetrimaaran goes into meticulous detail about police brutality and custodial violence. The graphic violence in the movie will make you squirm, but it was intentional because the reality was far more brutal than depicted. The problem is most of these stories are not officially documented but lie in the annals of leftist literature and autobiographies written by the survivors.

Vetrimaran takes us through this journey through the eyes of Kumaresan (eloquently played by Soori). My interpretation of the movie is Kumaresan is the epitome of us (the audience or the public). Initially, we are exposed to the train sabotage, the plight of the lower-rung police officers and how their superiors treat them, and slowly we are exposed to the brutality of the police. Kumaresan gradually gets demystified from his blind belief in the system like us. He understands that there is another side to every event. For example, like Kumaresan, we are exposed to the story of a police officer being brutally murdered while begging for his life as he will have a child. Then, we are shown the brutal side of Perumal Vaathiyar, and later Kumaresan understands (also us) that the police officer has killed his girlfriend’s father and raped her mother. The act of Perumal Vaathiyar is retaliation and not as portrayed by the police. The gradual change of mind is depicted by the letters that Kumaresan writes to his mother.

But what is the role of Kumaresan in this tussle between the establishment and the revolutionary group? Or in other words, what is the role of people like us in the struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed? What does market capitalism make us?

Moral Blindness and Adiaphora

Bauman, one of the foremost 20th-century philosophers, proposed that we live in liquid modernity (in contrast to Post Modernity) as we live in a world of constant change, mobility and uncertainty in relationships, identities, global economics and politics (Rattanasi, 2014). What was once solid is liquid and fluid now. The best example I can think of is how our jobs have changed. When we had industries, human labour was tied to the human body and, in turn, the capital. So, the companies had to provide breaks, rest, maternity holidays, overtime and safety precautions. Human labour is no longer tied to capital in the digital gig economy. We have temporary contracts instead of long-term commitments (Gane, 2001). For example, a Swiggy or a Deliveroo employee has no rights to a delivery guy employed by a hotel 20 years back. We no longer buy songs or albums; we subscribe to a streaming platform. Even your playlists are temporal.

People may argue that we are now more unrestrained in this world with more choices. But the market also has choices, and the power is free to move. The power is no longer constrained as a contract between the two people. As a result, humans slowly lose the will to undertake collective action against the powerful because we live in a privatised, individualised version of modernity. Bauman says that there is no public cause anymore as the public interest is reduced to curiosity about the private lives of public figures and the public display of the private affairs of individuals (Ohaekwusi, 2018). As we see on various social media, we discuss in detail the private lives of celebrities and even elections are fought on personal issues and not public policies. As a society, we no longer share common public interests. The common interests are based on which side of the ideology you are part of or, in other words, on which side of the culture war you are siding with. So, for example, even appreciating a movie or music has become an ideological endeavour.

But what’s the problem? Why do we need to worry about these issues? Bauman says we are becoming individuals with moral blindness. Here, moral blindness doesn’t mean that we do evil or immoral things, but we are insensitive to the moral and ethical issues that are otherwise important to us. Bauman uses the metaphor of how Pontius Pilate washed his hands when they wanted to crucify Jesus Christ. He uses the phrase “adiaphorisation of human behaviour”, deriving from the Greek word adiaphoron, which means an unimportant thing (Ohaekwusi, 2018).

“An adiaphoron is a temporary withdrawal from one’s own sensitivity zone: an ability not to react, or to react as if something were happening not to people but to natural physical objects, things, or non-humans” (Ohaekwusi, 2018: 78)

People exhibit adiaphora, not because of their behavioural issues but because they live in the liquid modern world that dehumanises the victims. In the movie, Kumaresan is torn between his moral principles and the oppression he witnesses. Kumaresan is helpless and powerless to act against the atrocities inflicted by his fellow policemen on the people of the village. His mother raised Kumaresan with the spiritual outlook of Vallalar, who taught the morals of compassion, non-violence and service to every living being.

Kumaresan joins the police force to help people and gets reprimanded when he helps save someone's life. He doesn't understand his mistake but gradually understands that he is powerless in the system. On the other hand, his fellow police officers have gone to the far end of moral blindness that they are numb and follow the orders of their superiors. They are tools of the system that consistently inflict pain on powerless victims. Hannah Arendt says that moral blindness is the banality of evil. It changes non-psychopathic people into cold-blooded murderers (Ohaekwusi, 2018).

In the movie, Sunil Menon, when he sees the treatment inflicted on women, warns Ragavendar not to do things to feed his perversions. But later, he does the same by torturing an older man and psychologically abusing him by asking to strip the older man's daughter-in-law in front of him. Is Sunil Menon viler than Ragavendar? The system allows them to be such monsters. The system dehumanises the victims, and society agrees to it. It can be seen in how the PR machinery is used in the movie to create a narrative that the people in the revolutionary group are monsters and the villagers are helping them. The PR and news media are used to dehumanise the victims and, in turn, lead the public to turn a blind eye to the broader issues. Although I was a school-going kid when these events happened, I have been exposed to the heroic deeds of the police. Walter Devaram (who headed the anti-naxal operations then) was hailed as an icon and a hero in the newspapers.

Bauman argued about moral blindness through the Holocaust and Abu Gharib (Americans' human rights violations against Iraqi citizens). The atrocities of these events are attributed to the individual psychological aspects of the people, but it doesn't implicate the system that enables them with power. We are never exposed to the fact that the majority of human rights violations in Iraq were done by employees of Blackwater PMC, a private military contractor working for the US Department of Defence.

Moral blindness has seeped into our lives. We choose to exercise or discount our morality based on various aspects, including caste, religion, culture, language and many other aspects with that we align ourselves. The best example that one can see is the way people react to "Me Too" allegations on social media and other public spaces. Irrespective of the predator, there is someone to defend them based on the ideology they are associated with, the caste they belong to, or the religion they follow. The predator is given a free pass because he follows the ideology that the supporters are aligned with. At the same time, there is a fervent call for action if the same predator is on the other side of the culture war. We discount our moral belief system based on who the perpetrator is. Even in political discourse, we criticise based on who said it, not what was said.

This moral blindness can be seen in how we react to various social issues. As our lives are already privatised and individualised, we respond based on some preconceived notion. For example, we might have strong opinions against how Amazon forests are being destroyed. Still, we will discount the same moral belief if the issue concerns illegal mining in Orissa. We exhibit adiaphora whenever it doesn't suit our ideological bent. We will criticise the Taliban for stopping women from education, but we will not blame Saudi Arabia's policies on Women's rights. We will fight against the caste atrocities inflicted by the Caste Hindus but will turn a blind eye to the caste issues in Indian Christianity. Morality cannot be a choice, but we choose.

Bauman does give us hope amid this moral delinquency. The resistance that Kumaresan shows against his superiors at various times gives us hope in the movie. He also exhibits ethical impotence — the inability to act against unethical behaviour because of the lack of power. He is powerless, yet he is resistant. He wants to help his girlfriend and her village, so he thinks catching Perumal Vaathiyar is the only way. But the movie's second part will expose us to more moral-ethical dilemmas. We also exhibit ethical impotence every day of our lives. We are unable to resist and fight against the atrocities. We discount our moral principles to turn a blind eye, or we replace that action with a tweet or post online. It's yet another way of exhibiting adiaphora.

The reviews of Viduthalai are in a similar vein. Several reviewers have stuck to the character arcs and not talked about the socio-political issues surrounding the event. Individualising the problem allows us to refrain from discussing the movie's sociological aspect. On the other hand, another group is stuck with the context of the film. The context of the armed revolution against the establishment is the main critical point. They raise a valid question what if the people rekindle the armed conflict? To criticise that aspect, they also instantly denigrate the leftist ideas. It is in the same vein as McCarthy, and even if you talk about Marx, you are an extremist. On the other end of this culture war is another group that believes in armed conflict to liberate the Tamil community. Their ideology is so mangled that it is impossible to decipher the head or the tail. But they think that the movie speaks about their ideology. Vetrimaran is not pushing the agenda of armed conflict through Viduthalai. It was the most extreme form of retaliation against oppression, but it was not a solution. The horrors of violence are shown in the movie, and the retribution for armed conflict from the establishment was far more brutal. Vetrimaran would know the history and how it ended. It's like taking the movie about Che Guevara. Are we going to understand the ideology of Che Guevara, or are we going to be hung up on the method he chose? Again, there is a borderline difference between glorifying violence and showing the truth. I didn't think Vetrimaran was glorifying the violence like the way some of the mass masala movies are doing it. For example, the same police have been glorified as encounter specialists and doling out instant justice. I am expecting much more clash of ideas between Kumaresan and Perumal in the second part.

I think Vetrimaran is doing something other than that. The context is only important to the level of relatability to the audience. The violent phase is still etched in the political memory of many, but simultaneously, it provides a canvas to create a debate around ideological issues. In my opinion, what Vetrimaran is trying to achieve is the debate around market capitalism and our moral blindness towards oppression. The movie questions our moral discounting when it comes to specific issues. It points the finger at us that we are morally blind to the issues because we are an individualised society.

The funnier aspect is how these culture wars have pushed how we approach the movie. The extreme leftists love the movie but don't like that Ilaiyaraaja scored for the film. So they harshly criticise the music irrespective of how it accentuates the movie. The right-wing knocks the movie's theme because it has a leftist ideology. The same goes for the people who call themselves progressive because they associate progress with neoliberalism. They also do not like Ilaiyaraaja because he wrote that foreword comparing Modi and Ambedkar. So, it is easy to bash him because he has joined with a leftist director who doesn't conform to their neoliberal ideological bent.

And there are the younger fans who think people made Tamil movies only after the millennium, and they cannot traverse the film’s context. They are born in the liquid modern world, and collective action against an atrocity is impossible to imagine. They expect Kumaresan to take the gun and shoot Ragavendar to save his girlfriend and the villagers with a mass background score. They have been exposed to such kinds of movies in Tamil and expect every other film to follow the pattern.

Vetrimaran is showing a mirror towards us. Even the heroic background score during the encounter sequence that people think is jarring is a way to show how people expect it to be (only when Vetrimaran explains it to us would we know). Vetrimaran knows there will be pushbacks on the movie, like the perspectives of various people in Viduthalai. If you take it craft-wise, there are a lot of issues in the film with respect to editing and dubbing. But can I overlook the flaws? Yes, I can. Yes, I did.

My interpretation is my own, and Vetrimaran probably wanted to make a movie about the TNLA. Still, somehow I think it's a movie that shows the ethical impotence of our society to act collectively against oppression. I don't think the film is a manifesto to create a socialistic country, but it is a critique of market capitalism and its unbridled quest to oppress people through the establishment.

There is a quote by Periyar about oppression which I like to follow and the one most forget.

“If a larger country oppresses a smaller country, I’ll stand with the smaller country. If the smaller country has majoritarian religion that oppresses minority religions, I’ll stand with minority religions. If the minority religion has a caste and one caste oppresses another caste, I’ll stand with the caste being oppressed. In the oppressed caste, if an employer oppresses his employee, I’ll stand with the employee. If the employee goes home and oppresses his wife, I’ll stand with that woman. Overall, oppression is my enemy.”

The question is, are we standing with the oppressed? Or are we morally blind to issues that don't fit our ideology?

PS: Through this article, I also earnestly appeal to the reviewers to stop seeing a sociological movie through an individualised psychological lens.

References

1. A, S. (2017) Puthur Police Station Attack Case: Court acquits 6 ultras: Chennai News — Times of India, The Times of India. TOI. Available at: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/puthur-police-station-attack-case-court-acquits-6-ultras/articleshow/56964161.cms (Accessed: April 5, 2023).
2. Gane, N. (2001) “Zygmunt Bauman: Liquid modernity and beyond,” Acta Sociologica, 44(3), pp. 267–275. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/000169901750528386.
3. Kim, V. (2020) The halfway underground homes of ‘parasite’ are real spaces of desperation and dreams, Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times. Available at: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-02-12/movie-parasite-korea-bong-joon-ho-banjiha (Accessed: April 5, 2023).
4. Ohaekwusi, A.C. (2018) “Bauman on moral blindness,” Forum Philosophicum, 23(1), pp. 69–94. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5840/forphil20182313.
5. Rattansi, A. (2014) “Zygmunt Bauman: An adorno for ‘liquid modern’ times?,” The Sociological Review, 62(4), pp. 908–917. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954x.12214.
6. S H, V. (2014) Tamil Nadu: Rockfort Express Sabotage leaves 25 dead, 139 injured, India Today. India Today. Available at: https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/indiascope/story/19870415-tamil-nadu-rockfort-express-sabotage-leaves-25-dead-139-injured-798733-1987-04-14 (Accessed: April 5, 2023).