A Letter to the Editor, The Hindu

The small write up entitled: Kathanar Magic by V Gangadhar, The Hindu, Sunday, August 22, 2004, Magazine, p.4, helps to raise certain questions related to the media and society in the present. How helpful are the media created images in understanding the present and history of a people, and a culture? How could we cite the instance of a TV serial that is popular in a certain time in a specific context on account of many socio-political reasons as representative of the sensibilities of a given set of peoples? Are we doing the right thing when we stretch our points too far in a simplistic manner? How could we generalize and homogenize in these times of glocalsiation? Every age has had its dose of tragedies and evil days. Every age has had more or less in equal measure its own prophets and philosophers who reiterated that those times were the worst in history. It is not as if our times were the only crisis ridden times. However, in comparison with the seventies and eighties ours is a certainly a period when intellectuality and inquisitiveness have almost died down. Critical thinking has virtually died out. Or is it that we have become too critical, in spirit and theory that we have laid aside history? Our memories appear to reach only as far as our yesterdays while the days before remain in the dark murk of forgetfulness. Perhaps we like it that way! It behooves our complacency. Any thinking individual in these critical times is bound to be apprehensive about the lack of communication and understanding among people, nations, cultures. This is an age of information. We claim we are better informed than the others and yet most often we are quite unable to make sense of the information that we are riddled with. Information and speed, critical temperament and lack of historical sensethese constitute the corner stones of our mis(un)understanding our own times and ourselves! We tend to lay aside quite conveniently the fact that we are all implicated in the actions of the present. There are many issues at stake here. Take for instance the programme under referenceKadamattathu Kathanara popular television serial in Malayalam. There are several dimensions of approach possible:1. The legend of Kadamattathu Kathanar ( not only as collective memory of a people but also as recreated in the one time popular Aithehyamala by Kottarathil Sankunni, serialized in its own time in another similarly popular medium, the news paper) 2. The quality of the television serial, its (un/timely) relevance, and its over-hyped popularity in a time when such similar themes of horror and supernatural magic etc are in vogue and fashion, almost every where.3. The entire question and problematic of recreating a cultural narrative true to its matrix and at the same time relocating and deconstructing it from the situation of the contemporary. One may not wave off the entire process in a simplistic manner. Granted television serials are mushrooming out of sheer necessity to keep a commercially viable and economically productive as well as culturally suggestive medium like the television ticking: in the their own jargon to keep feeding the monster. There is apparently a genuine popular demand for the soap, the pulp, simply because they are less demanding and less strenuous on the viewer! And the most easily consumed are the stereotypedthe home varieties which have now come to include the horror and weird kinds too. Now, the whole thing becomes complex when we locate these in terms of a process of understanding a cultural matrix and the reconstruction of a religious position. The themes of the TV Kathanar are certainly pseudo religious. This could simply be on account of the misapprehension of the legend of Kathanar by the production crew; or a deliberate mispresentation (which is quite unlikely considering the less sophisticated language in which the TV serial is recreated and handled). Now, one need not look farther for the popularity of the serial: the times demanded it, the warped sensitivity overlaid by the popular media have conditioned it, and the soapmakers have manufactured it! Why not gloat over all these? Now, let us not dishonour and underestimate a peoples belief of the past by casually watching a TV serial concocted by a set of media persons quite unaware of their own actions and creationshaving only the restricted recourse to the present day tools and machinery and superficial understanding of a healthy and wealthy past!

The legend of Kadamattathu Kathanar hastens back to the early times of the settling in of Christianity in Kerala; its throes of religio-cultural intermingling are easily evidenced in the structure of the narrative itself. One does not need to call into question its relevance to a rekindling of superstitious beliefs in the present. The heroes and heroines of our contemporary films, small screens, media, and to a certain extent in our virtually recreated real/reel life are it would appear endowed with more magical and mystical powers than any poor Kathanar! Why blame someone or something, which we have failed to understand and absorb? Of course, it is quite easy to point out faults and mistakes while it calls for greater understanding and sympathy in order to create. Now, I am certainly not saying that the TV serial under reference is made in any way well at all. It is certainly a shoddy affaircunningly crafted with the stuff that contemporary home-TV viewers demand, extending on and on, conveniently grafted with the stuff of popular fundamentalist ideas too. The question of whether the female ghosts that howl and laugh all about the screen are convincing or realistic is irrelevant. After the welter of contemporary theories of aesthetics and film one does not need to underline the factors of class, race, gender, etc that prefigure in retelling narratives. However, the point I would like to highlight here is the casual approach that these media people take in handling such cultural issues that do reach deep down into the uninformed and unsuspecting viewersI wouldnt call them innocent either. Any work of art needs to recognize its sociological and psychological connections, and any artist needs to recognize his/her responsibility and accountability to the public at large. These are not merely aesthetic questions but reach beyond into the circle of how we construct our beliefs, our worlds (In fact, I for one, do believe that aesthetic constructions have great significance in informing our metaphysics which in turn condition our livesbut that would be theorizing beyond the context of this little note.) Further, when one tends to dismiss the pulp that is mashed to perfection to feed the hungry consumer of the modern day world, as having little or no relevance (or implying their counter-relevance) one needs to recognize the multi-layered manner in which such dialogues could be structured! Now, to dismiss the ur-Kathanar myth as casually as this writer under reference has done (through implication), is sheer imbecility. It is the cherished cultural wealth of a people under the throes of historical change and transformation. And it needs to be self-consciously reread with a sense of history and culture. It belongs to the order of myth. It reaches deep into the atavistic reaches of cultural archetype. If we fail to understand it (because we see only its shadowed reflection in our media), blame it on our own littleness, lack of historical sense and sheer misunderstanding! It is not Kathanar per-se, who has been instrumental in creating confusion in the minds of the folk and rake up their superstitious beliefs; it is the recreated memory that has done the trick. Now blame it on the makers of the popular TV serial. For them it is a question of money and time, or timely money! Memory and recreation are affairs of time. Their relevance and significance are also dictated by the situation and condition under which one remembers and recreates. It is not as if these images have only surfaced in order to counter the thralldoms of political bigwigs in the present. It is not as if the image of Kathanar has been salvaged as a saviour of the masses. The imagery that this encapsulates is as complicated and multilayered as our own thinking. At least let us remember that. To The Editor, The Hindu smurals@gmail.com