LEC052019Devikiran. An Analysis of Portrayal of the Visually impaired in the Malayalam movie Guru

        Movies play a significant role in the society. Like any other art form films entertain as well as work towards shaping the mindsets of the masses. Formulation of different conceptions among  people         are possible through the medium of cinema. Thus it is paramount important to be conscious about the form and content of a movie as it contribute to the concept formation process in an individual. The portrayal of persons with disabilities in Malayalam movies has multifaceted aspects. .This essay tries to answer questions such as how visual impairment has represented in the Malayalam movie Guru and how accurate is the representation in connection with the changes and development happened within the community across the decades. According to Norden: The way in which we can examine films dealing with disabilities as reflection of a society’s attitude towards the subject is to study thoroughly the history of account when disabilities and films have had shared a common audience (Norden, 1994). 

           Guru is a Malayalam movie released on 12th of September 1997. The movie was directed by Rajiv Anchal. Genre of the film is fantasy drama. The film stars Mohanlal, Suresh Gopi, Madhupal, Sithara, Kaveri, Nedumudi Venu and Sreenivasan. Mohanlal played the role ofRaghuraman, a man whose family is affected by the communal violence orchestrated by a corrupt local politician donned by late NF Varghese. Consumed by vengeance, he joins a radical group to hit back at the people responsible. This decision leads him on a dark path that unexpectedly lands him at the doors of a holy guru's ashram. There he meets one of his followers, Vaidehi (Sithara), who manages to put him under a state of trance, subsequently transporting him to an alternate reality.The world of this alternate reality is populated by a tribe led by their king Vijayanta (Suresh Gopi). 

            Raghuraman, to his surprise, sees that everyone here is blind. In this land of the blind, Raghuraman becomes the "one-eyed king" who’s repeated attempts to convince them of the existence of a world of sight met with strong resistance. They refuse to believe his theories, dismissing them as lies and the blasphemous ramblings of a madman. Raghuraman discovers that their blindness is caused by the flesh of a special kind of fruit; and he is told that its seeds, when consumed, can cause death. In an interesting turn of events, Raghuraman learns that the seeds have the power to bring back their eyesight and that the tribe has been deprived of this secret for a long time. While the fruit symbolizes religion, its seeds represent the truth. 

       In the usual sense, this movie has been appreciated all over the world, but if we think critically in a perspective of a blind person, it has a lot to say. An intense analysis of the movie Guru, gives a message that the blindness or the darkness is the symbol of ignorance. Film is full of instances to prove the same. Firstly, this film gives a message that this world is blinded by the various evil deeds.In a scene, Sithara the disciple of the holy Guru in Shanthigiri tells Raghuraman “You are living in the world of fanatics who are blinded” (30:01). This raises a lot of questions among the real visually impaired persons who live in a social stigmatic condition.The first question; is blindness a symbol of evil deeds or ignorance? Is the real blind person infected with the bad or unconditional evil attitudes? The film paves way for several questions. Rajiv Anchal through his cinematic narrative makes a clear statement that the blindness means ignorance. 

           In the movie, character Raghuraman enters into a fantasy land where everyone is blind. The people of this land believe that there is nothing called vision or sight. They have a civilization which denies the presence of light. For them only four senses exist. There is a scene in the movie that Nedumudi Venu, the teacher of the village teaches to the children.‘’Children, this world is very small, smaller as an ilama fruit”. The statement itself says that whatever matters to a impaired person is whatever they peruse through touch, smell, taste and ear. The movie is filled with such instances which create certain misconceptions in the minds of the spectator. There is also a scene in which the hero says that the people of the valley have a good looking dress up and cap on their head. The assumption that he makes from this dress code is that there might be people with eyesight once lived in this valley to design everything beautifully. It means that the people with visual impairment have nothing to do with the concept of beauty. They do not care about beauty and whatever beautiful must be the product of the sighted community.

         What we have discussed above finds clarification in the argument ofMartin F. Norden. In his book, The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies (1991) he argued that makers of silver screen boast a general tendency to isolate disabled characters and this tendency comes in lineof the way the disabled minority has been treated in the society for centuries. Moreover, Neelima Menon observes that In Malayalam movies "Rarely are the characters portrayed as people with feelings just like everyone else, especially when it comes to romance and enjoying life.Difference and diversity - physical, neurological, mental - have never been accepted wholeheartedly by our society. Even the most privileged of us have to conform to bodily ‘norms’ and ‘normality’." In short, though the movie Guru is an excellent depiction of the opposite terms knowledge and ignorance, the presentation of the visually challenged in the movie has certain underlying problems. 

Works Consulted

Norden, M. F. (1994). The cinema of isolation: A 

history of physical disability in the movies. 

Rutgers University Press

Menon, Neelima. “Pitied and Desexualised: How Malayalam Cinema Has Portrayed People with Disability.” Google, Google, www.google.com/amp/s/www.thenewsminute.com/article/pitied-and-desexualised-how-malayalam-cinema-has-portrayed-people-disability-101614%3famp.