A man and his dog stir controversy

A Malayalam film creates a meme. Tamil Twitter mistakes it for a slur against LTTE leader Prabhakaran

Ironically, although the entertainment industry has come to a standstill, controversies around it have not.

The biggest controversy of the lockdown era yet has been around a dog in the Malayalam movie ‘Varane Avashyamundu’, which over the course of the week, turned toxic and even crept into politics.

The film ‘Varane Avashyamundu’ (meaning ‘Groom Wanted’) was released in theatres early in February in Kerala. It was released on the OTT platforms Netflix and Sun NXT on April 20, which is when things took a turn for the worse.

One scene in the movie has the actor Suresh Gopi interacting with a dog. In mock anger, he calls the animal “Prabhakara!”. Dulquer Salman, the lead in the film, later spoke about the scene on social media, with a Facebook post that read, “What is the funniest dog name you have heard? Ours is definitely Prabhakaran”.

The responses have ranged from people abusing Dulquer and his family in the choicest of phrases, the uploading of videos where people are calling dogs ‘Dulquer’ and even Mammootty (Dulquer’s father), to people threatening anyone who “dares to offend the Tamil community” with violence.

It all began when some people claimed on social media that using the name Prabhakaran to address a dog was insulting to the slain Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, although there was no reason to believe that the scene or the rest of the movie referred to the militant leader.

On the first days of the controversy, it did not look like anything serious. Social media frequently sees people getting offended, with or without reason, and there was no reason to believe this was anything more than that.

But the offended lot would not be abated. Dulquer has since apologised, but the outrage has continued even after that.

The ‘Prabhakaran’ joke can only be understood with context. It was born 32 years before ‘Varane Avashyamundu’, when the movie ‘Pattanapravesham’ was released. ‘Pattanapravesham’ is the second movie in a trilogy of parody films where two well-meaning but clumsy detectives solve cases by fluke.

The films have become increasingly influential over the decades, and since the Internet boom, has been fodder for memes.

The Prabhakaran joke is one of the most popular memes, some of which have been used to comment on every major cultural or political issue of the past couple of years.

The worst case that can be made against the makers of ‘Varane Avashyamundu’ is that they monetised a popular meme, but it is far-fetched to claim that they politicised it. And to say that any mention of the name Prabhakaran must refer to the LTTE leader is ridiculous because ‘Prabhakaran’ is as popular a name among Malayalis as it is among Tamils.

But what magnified the controversy was how unhealed wounds opened up. People who understood the Prabhakaran joke no more than those abusing Dulquer came out attacking Prabhakaran, calling him a “terrorist” responsible for the murder of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Prabhakaran supporters, in turn, came out attacking Rajiv, with some even saying the former Indian PM deserved his assassination.

Things have calmed down a bit after Dulquer’s apology, but the incident sets a dangerous precedent about how powerful outrage can be.