'Paava Kadhaigal', Shallow Tales Masquerading the Corny Rural-Urban Dichotomy

'Paava Kadhaigal' (Sinful Tales), an anthology web series produced by Netflix is the new talk of the town in 2020. People have been showering praises over the Tamil series which discusses how pride, caste honour, community social norms, code of ethics, and decorum complicate individual relationships. It consists of four short films by various working directors of the industry and each focuses on a different aspect of the social life in Tamil Nadu. This write-up tries to explore how much the filmmakers have succeeded in sketching reality.

The plots of each segment should be mooted to evaluate the whole series as a text dealing with social issues. And these segments are:

'Thangam' (My Precious) - Directed by Sudha Kongara, this is set in a rural town of Kovai district and about a Muslim Trans woman. She helps out her Hindu childhood friend to elope with her sister to Coimbatore which irks the whole village irrespective of religious faiths. She gets ostracized and would meet a terrible fate.

'Love Panna Uttranum' (Let them Love) - Vignesh Shivan’s segment tells the tale of twin sisters being cornered by conservative, casteist villagers for their unorthodox love affairs. Being the leader of this gang, their father has to reevaluate his own social outlook here.

 'Vaanmagal' ( Daughter of the Skies) – Revolving around a girl rape victim and her family, Gautham Vasudev Menon’s short film deals with the duel of traditional norms like chastity and modern civility. The family is shaken by the incident but confused about how to deal with the victim and the public shame it might bring.

'Oor Iravu' (That Night) - This segment is about how a father tries to come to terms with his daughter’s decision to marry and live with a Dalit man. The whole village ostracizes the father and his family. Directed by Vetrimaaran, this segment shows how the father tricks his pregnant daughter to bring her back to the village for a tragic end. 

The basic plotlines show that 'Paava Kadhaigal' basically works on a so-called dichotomy of the rural-urban cultural divide. There is a recurring motif of travel between these two landscapes in all short films. And both these spaces are very clearly defined.

·         The Rural- It is defined as highly casteist, primitive, and conservative. And caste here is a cultural specimen on which only the village folk has rigid sentiments. They live according to the code of honour set by the community. Modern institutions like schools (and higher education facilities), police, court, and political parties do not have a say here. Any challenge to the community norms and values is a threat and brutal violence is unleashed to rein this.

·         The Urban- This is a highly modern, humane, and civilized space. People living here are well educated and they do not follow any social discriminatory practices as in a rural space. Modern institutions control their lives and inculcate values like liberty, equality, and fraternity in them. Basically, people have ultimate autonomy over their individual choices.

All four segments have characters moving around these two landscapes. In 'Thangam', the eloped inter-religious couple return from Coimbatore city after a reconciliation in their village. But they find out the Trans woman’s fate and get perturbed by it. They leave immediately upon realizing how hopeless the place is.

'Love Panna Uttranum' is more explicit. One girl is living in the city and shown to have the liberty to make her own choices. The other girl lives in the village with her father, a political leader. She meets a brutal fate. The henchmen of the father are uninformed and uneducated about a larger world outside. The twin sister returns home and gets dismayed at her sister’s bad luck. Upon realizing that her fate would be the same, she begs her father to let her leave this claustrophobic place.

'Vaanmagal' has a family living in an urban space. But they hold on to their beliefs and social norms like a normal rural household. And it makes them proud too. They find time to visit a temple far away from the city to celebrate special occasions. But the rape ruffles their stable lives and fear of losing prestige haunts them. But this film at the least is hopeful in the end.

'Oor Iravu' clearly demarcates the urban/rural spaces with a clear mention of mobility. The urban space is defined as where the eloped inter-caste couple lives in peace. The father comes from the village knowing his daughter is pregnant and is avowed by their lives. He is highly respected in their village for upholding the honour of the community but his daughter’s misdeed has ruined it. And now he wants to sort everything.

So, all the “sinful stories” show the villagers as pompous, patriarchal, casteist, and rigid enough to go for any barbarity to uphold their honour. They are unaware of many liberal values modernity bring such as rationality, sense of justice, democracy, equality, and respect for an individual agency here. And the urban space is portrayed as where people live regardless of their caste, creed, and community sentiments. 

This is a neoliberal political construct. Neoliberal economies produce metropolitan urban spaces where labour force settles down for stay and work. These cities have spaces for spending based on their asset generated through labour. If you have more, then you can spend more and be integrated into this consumerist society. No other social factors and divisions prevent you from leading such a life of satisfied consumption than your own spending power.

Political theorist Sarah Joseph points out that in neoliberalism, the notion of social rights of an individual protected by the modern democratic state is reduced to individual freedom such as right to property in a market (the couple in Oor Iravu). Social activities are “pure” individual choices and actions. Social activist Shankar Gopalakrishnan says neoliberalism heavily drew from neoclassical economists’ approach of reducing everything to rational, utility maximizing individual’s voluntary transactions.

American economist Edward Lazear argues in his iconic essay 'Economic Imperialism' that neoliberalism sketches racial discriminations as based on individual tastes, family relations as “marriage capital” and religious devotion as methods to control “free riders”. So, anyone or any community which stand outside of this milieu are uncivilized and uncultured. These “external factors” would endanger or produce “disharmony” within the society. And they should be educated into the “understanding” of society’s functioning.

Here, that “other” is the village folk who follow evil practices like untouchability, honour killings and ostracism in the name of communal pride. So the victims of these brutalities flee to urban spaces in order to live with dignity offered by sophistication of the market.

The anthology basically works on this neoliberal logic of civilized people of the market versus uncivil people outside it. And urban spaces are shown as the arena of no social barriers and discriminations of rural societies. But the realities point to the persistence of caste in urban affairs, slavery to consumerism, and individual competitions which create very complex hierarchical relations in urban areas. Scavenging workers, sanitation workers, housemaids, sweepers, guards, construction workers and most of the manual labour force belong to lower castes, especially Dalits.

Hence, 'Paava Kadhaigal' is a bunch of reductive interpretations of complex realities in India. All the short films vilify the rural and suggest urban life as modern and democratic. They glorify individuality in consumerist societies as real liberation from conservatism. The political and social scenario of Indian life are more than a cultural duel of rural rigidity and urban sophistication. And this anthology fails to portray any such intricacies in clear light.

Works Cited:

Gopalakrishnan, Shankar. "Defining, Constructing and Policing a 'New India': Relationship between Neoliberalism and Hindutva." Economic and Political Weekly (2006): 2803+2805-2813. Article.

Joseph, Sarah. "Neoliberal Reforms and Democracy in India." Economic and Political Weekly (2007): 3213-3218. Print.

Lazear, Edward. "Economic Imperiaism." Quarterly Journal of Economics (2000): 99-146. PDF.