The Grand Illusion Called Kamal

A joke from an eighties stage play goes like this: An aspiring scriptwriter meets a film producer with a script and upon asked to narrate the story, he starts thus: ‘Once upon a time, there were five brothers who had 100 cousin brothers. Both the groups go to a casino to play card game against each other…’

In real life, such things are not very funny but make very serious business propositions. Plagiarism is a serious business here in India. Some of the very big names and bigger money are involved in this activity. Kamal Hasan being the biggest of them all.

For years, especially since his Nayagan changed the face of Tamil films, Kamal has been busy talking and writing about his ambition and efforts to provide better cinema and more importantly take Tamil films to the level of world cinema.

A brief glance at the following links would serve as a testimonial to that claim:

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

These links discuss elaborately and often rhetorically about the plagiarism practiced by Kamal. You would have to cut past the anger of the writer and the abuse showered on Kamal in these pages. Just like how his fans worship him as God his critics render him absolutely worthless, and both voices need to be ignored.

Nevertheless, the claims made here are not to be ignored. Watch some of these clippings and check out the long list of the straight rip offs (a few are not entirely correct) that would indicate the seriousness of the problem.

In the developed part of the world, plagiarism is a serious crime. You lose your career, money and fame. You are brought to the streets, people call you all sorts of ugly names and you’re generally finished for life. Nella Larsen, an African American novelist of late 1920s created what was hailed as ‘best piece of fiction that Negro America produced,’ became a centre of a plagiarism controversy. Though it was not conclusively proved, after that controversy she never published anything, turned an emotional wreck and died a lonely death. As recently as last year, Kavya Viswanathan, a Harvard student, returned her contract money after her book was withdrawn from the stores by the publisher because of a plagiarism claim.

In India however, such plagiarists are conferred series of titles and even revered as geniuses.

However, the ardent devotees of Kamal and other nonchalant moviegoers discount these evidences are ‘mere’ inspirations or worse, comment that it is being done by everybody in India. We are a land of non-creative people and hence it is natural. Look at our achievements in other areas. We aren’t all that creative anyway, these naysayers claim. So why blame Kamal alone when the whole country is aping the West and doing copycat jobs.

Whatever is the validity of these naysayers (which includes yours truly,) these claims are not entirely true. It is hard to believe that the descendants of Kalidasa, Kamba, Vatsayana, Tansen, Thyagaraja, Valmiki, Vyasa, and those who built Taj Mahal, Thajavur temple, Khajuraho and Ajanta cannot be creative. Also, that lacking creativity and plagiarising cannot be a genetic disposition of our race. Such being the case, the derivative could only be the social inclination of the people. How can one attempt to be creative when all he or she needs to do is rip off something from the West and roll it into an Indianised package to be instantly revered as a genius?

When people nonchalantly dismiss voices such as this and continue to patronise copycat creators, a whole new generation grow up believing that it is okay not to rack up your brain for ideas. Then you have Yuvan Shankar Raja lifting tunes from Corrs and Venkat Prabhu going Kamal way in seeking ‘inspiration’ from late 80s Hollywood.

From the links above and from elsewhere too, it is quite evident that Kamal has drawn abundant inspiration on story lines, script techniques, performance styles and even camera angles. It appears that Kamal, the ‘Prince of Romance’ of 80s who was running around trees was indeed real and the one we see now is a masked man with plethora of impersonations. Just like one of those prosthetic facial skins he so ardently wears in many of his films.

Thanks to Dinesh Saravanan for providing useful arguments that helped shape this blog