Propaganda via Soap Opera

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 July 1998, 23:59 GMT]
If there ever was a television serial crafted to have partisan political appeal, "Yuga Vilakkuwa", telecast over Sri Lanka's state owned Rupavahini, Saturday evenings, fits the bill eminently.

Few TV serials have been telecast in Sri Lanka with the express purpose of ramming home a political message, but Yuga Vilakkuwa is one such.".

Sagarayak Meda, made for the wide screen soon after the United National Party came into power in 1977, vilified the Sri Lanka Freedom Party regime that had just been overthrown, and lampooned figures like Felix Dias Bandaranaike, the detested minister in that government.

But even Sagerayak Meda, directed by Gamini Fonseka (presently the Governor of Sri Lanka's Northeast Province) had a degree of sophistication and poise, which lifted it from the mire of political propaganda to something of an artistic endeavour.

Yuga Vilakkuwa, however, written by Sugathapala De Silva and directed by Sudath Rohana, is a not-so-subtle attempt to ram home to the audience a political message - a sort of political statement set in the form of a TV serial.

Inevitably, it rings phony.

But first, a brief look at the plot. Doubtless, the serial is based on the life and work of Dr. Rajini Thiranagama, lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine at Jaffna University, who was allegedly killed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

In Yuga Vilakkuwa, Charitha (Palitha Silva) had been friends with Revathy (Ranjini Rajamohan) when they both were students studying medicine. He is Sinhalese, she Tamil. After medical college, they go their separate ways - Charitha joining the army as a medic and Revathy to tend the sick and suffering in Jaffna. Charitha is betrothed to a lovely young journalist, Nilmini (Ramani Fernando). Sam (Tony Ranasinghe) who has befriended the family is an arms dealer and wealthy member of the underworld. He has various shady contacts, one of whom is a thinly disguised caricature of Lalith Athulathmudali, the Minister of National Security in the UNP regime of President J. R. Jayewardene. Sam is the personification of evil, someone who has no qualms of conscience in supplying arms to the Government and the rebels - obviously the LTTE.

Charitha and Revathy are totally opposed to war. The idea is to show that the conventional Sinhalese is not a warmonger hell bent on destroying Tamils and that the average Tamil too does not have a pathological desire to kill Sinhalese.

But the comparison goes a step further, and that is where the propagandist flavour of the TV serial first becomes evident - Warmongering Sinhalese support the army. But it is an army that does not indulge in human rights atrocities. It has humane, decent, upright soldiers. One of them is compassionate enough to give water from his canteen to a thirsty, starving old Tamil woman, but is brutally gunned down by the LTTE.

The war loving Tamils support the LTTE. But alas, the Tigers have no decent blokes who respect the rules of the Geneva Convention. They are brutal savages, crazed by blood lust.

One side fighting a holy war and the other is a band of lawless rebels - that is the primary distinction drawn by Yuga Vilakkuwa .

This impression of the LTTE is created from the very first scene of the serial, where the LTTE massacre devotees worshipping the sacred Bo tree in Anuradhapura. The other episodes are liberally interspersed with the LTTE massacring Tamil civilians, not allowing them to go away from the battle zones, recruiting young children to its ranks, torturing political opponents and indulging in senseless hit and run operations. Violence, perfidy and vengeance are what motive the Tigers according to Yuga Vilakkuwa

But the most blatantly propagandist denouncement of the LTTE is in the portrayal of Revathy. She moves in and out of scenes like a sort of a one woman chorus, complaining in shrill tones against the doings of the LTTE. She expostulates at their behaviour and riles against the actions of Kannan (Kusal Perera), a middle level official of the LTTE, who is in love with her. There is no better condemnation of the LTTE than having a Tamil saying it and that is what the serial attempts to do.

The politico-ideological content of Yuga Vilakkuwa can be best defined not by describing it, but by looking at the forces, groups and individuals who are denigrated and vilified in the serial, or, seen as the 'other'.

The primary 'other' is the Tamils who do not belong to the LTTE- bashing group that Revathy represents. They are portrayed as incorrigibly venal.

The secondary 'other' is the UNP. Whatever is morally and politically abhorrent or diabolical in the Sinhalese, is exemplified in the doings of the UNP, or persons associated with it.

The early episodes of Yuga Vilakkuwa are set in UNP times when the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was on Sri Lankan soil. Though no overt mention is made of it, the political chicanery portrayed - including gun runners like Sam having political backing and efforts to rig elections - is indulged in by UNP loyalists.

What is interesting in the portrayal of characters representing 'the other' in the serial is that they are all intrinsically evil. Up to the last episode telecast (Saturday), the characters representing the LTTE and UNP do not change. Like Iago in Shakespeare's Othello they are shown in Yuga Vilakkuwa as the very incarnation of the devil.

The script writer and director one suspects, are aware of the one sided rendition of good and evil in the script. But though the script acknowledges bad human beings (besides UNP loyalists) among the Sinhalese, they are only a minority - insignificant in comparison to the good and noble in that community.

For instance, there is only one instance up to the most recent episode telecast, where a soldier indulges in killing a non- combatant civilian. A man is seen running, furiously pursued by three soldiers. They catch the terrified man and interrogate him. The soldiers find that he has no identity card. While two soldiers walk away, one man puts a bullet through the man's back. But one of the other soldiers is at hand to condemn the act. He says that some people become animals when given a gun.

In other words, senseless brutality is indulged in by the army, but they are isolated incidents. The majority of the soldiers are good, upright men, quick to condemn moral turpitude - quite unlike the Tamil LTTE which is run by a pack of barbarians, none of whom know right from wrong.

Ideological underpinnings apart, there are fundamental artistic flaws in the script. The principal characters are wooden. Up to now we have not seen change or transformation in any of them - the good continue to be good, the bad are incapable of becoming better.

A reason for the figures to lack flesh and blood is because they are conceived of as mouthpieces for one or another ideological position, and not as living human beings. Thus: Charitha is always a troubled young man who has nothing else on his mind except the war and how it kills people. Even during intimate moments when he is with his girlfriend, Charitha can only repeat high sounding phrases full of noble intent. Revathy seems incapable of discussing any issue. The moment a matter comes up she sprints to the moral high ground from where she preaches, denounces the Tigers and remonstrates. Sam, the gun dealer, is always plotting and planning, to make money and nothing else. This contributes to a singular lack of passion in the characters - they seem to be interested in repeating their lines and going away.

The other flaw in the script is that the situations portrayed lack conviction. For instance, the open denunciation of LTTE killings by Revathy, followed by a march to the LTTE camp by slogan shouting mothers are implausible given the portrayal of the LTTE. Another is the surprising gentleness of the average soldier portrayed. They seem better equipped to take holy orders, rather than go about the grim business of war and killing. But more than everything else, what violates Tamil sensibilities is the dialogue and the accents of the actors. Except for Revathy none of the other major roles are played by native Tamil speakers. This results in Sinhalese actors mispronouncing, or not articulating at all, some of the words in the dialogue. The most charitable explanation for this is that the director would have tried to cast native Tamil speakers and failed for one reason or another.

But the effect of the dialogue to a Tamil speaking audience, is as if a deliberate attempt is being made to mock their language and caricature it. The dialogue and accent of Kannan, the LTTE official in the serial, is especially offensive and insulting.

There is however a positive feature in the series which has to be commented upon. Episodes in Sinhala TV serials are well known for lack of movement. Each episode is only 20 minutes and scenes drag on interminably with long pauses between conversations and changes of scenes. A refreshing feature in Yuga Vilakkuwa is that there is a lot of movement and snappy scene changes. However, one cannot help feeling that a 20 year old war spawns incidents which has dramatic potential. And when there is much library footage which can be used - such as the fighting scenes - departing from the beaten track in local TV production is not too difficult!

It would have been nice if the library footage had been used creatively. The battle scenes only show fighting which has nothing to do with the main story line. One is forced to conclude either that the director lacks the ingenuity to weave the fighting into the plot, or that it has been deliberately introduced to increase the number of episodes in the serial.

It seems that the tragedy of Dr. Rajaini Thiranagama has powerful allure for the Sinhalese artistes. The theme has been explored by novelists as well. Perhaps it is because she is a doctor and thus middle class, and writers and artistes find it easier to get into her shoes, than into those of hard-boiled LTTE loyalists who are from other walks of life. Dr. Thiranagama was also married to a Sinhalese. But most of all she was a critic of the LTTE. A very appealing combination indeed.

In its haste to propagate political propaganda, Yuga Vilakkuwa reveals the wide gap in thinking and attitudes that exists between Tamils and Sinhalese. Ironically, it is this cleavage the Government has attempted to ford, but the serial fail to do. It merely exacerbates existing enmities. It shows that despite subtitles appearing in Tamil, there is no interest in the sensitivities of Tamil viewers. What is more, the Sri Lanka Government seems to endorse this point of view too - otherwise how is such grossly insulting material allowed to be telecast over the State run TV?

Yuga Viakkuwa is to be screened in many western cities. Sinhalese and Tamils abroad have a chance to see for themselves what this review has tried to point out.