Colourism- The unchanging theme of Tamil movies

I simply refuse to engage with works that deny my right to be confident in my own skin.

For someone who used to go to the cinemas fairly often, I did not miss theatre-going in the pandemic. Of the 26 movies I've streamed on Amazon Prime and Netflix in 2020, not one is Tamil. It didn't take much for me to realise the reason- I've always had an impossible time sitting through the movies of Kollywood. Any time I settle to watch one, the routine has been worryingly the same. Few minutes into a movie, its annoying cliches and abounding sexism have me stop it halfway through. Movies that let me squirm successfully till the end, give me the worst headache. But there's more to why I instinctively refuse to watch a Tamil movie - Kollywood's obliviousness to Tamil women.

I am justifiably angry at the industry's under-representation, rather no representation of us. Twenty-six years of my existence on earth, and I am yet to come across anybody like me or my mom on the TV. The film fraternity, transfixed by dark brown male superstars, remains negligent of strongly pigmented women, for reasons best known to all of us. Representation isn't all, but to deliberately deny it to the womenfolk of an entire ethnic community must be something.

Interestingly, despite championing colourism, Kollywood has a strong content game, leaving very few themes unexplored in its works. Tamil movies have never shied away from speaking politics or problematising social affairs. Yet, even moviemakers who are ardent fanboys of Dravidianism and Tamil nationalism (comic genres), delicately outsource the role of Tamil women to Mumbaikars and Malayalis. Unfortunately, I cannot put them to the toughest tests of representation as their works are usually heavily characterised by casteism and sexism. It would be immoral - rather senseless to question colourism in a movie that treats non-Savarnas and working-class folks as sub-humans.

And so I had high hopes when the tides began to turn in Kollywood recently. A collective reckoning in the industry made way for inclusive plots, bringing marginalised communities into the frame and breaking the stereotypical image of the subaltern culture. The joke is on my hopes - even the supposed progressive directors refuse to cast dark brown women. Worse than their predecessors, the newbies either brownface or cast light-skinned Tamil women as mere tokens of representation. Well, their tokens are only fifty shades lighter than the darkest brown women of Tamil Nadu. Perhaps, the colour-biased casting in their movies is evidence enough that progressive politics and men's perceptions of women (as human beings) are disparate.

As an industry that has propelled actors into statesmanship and even godhood, Kollywood has a large role to positively influence the public discourse. But the film fraternity time and again choose to further the notions of internalised colourism in people. By attributing colour-biased casting to colonisation, Tamil moviemakers easily wash their hands off the shabbiness. Lack of representation in Kollywood is deplorable and its reasons are very much black and white - men haven't really learnt to see women past their skin and shape.

I had always wanted to hold a megaphone to the ears of anyone making intellectual-stimulating artistic analysis of Tamil movies in Tharoorish English, and shout, "No, Ratnam and Ranjith are not the unchallenged giants you claim them to be. How can one be a great director when they willingly commit a flaw as silly as character-cast mismatch?"

I wouldn't be this angry at the Tamil cinema industry if it hadn't tricked me into believing that I'm unworthy of being in the spotlight and hence had me silent in places where I was pushed aside for my skin tone. I'm unsure what might persuade moviemakers to cast dark brown women in their movies or when that might happen. But until then, I simply refuse to engage with works that deny my right to be confident in my own skin.