In a broad sense, controversies symbolically represent the advances a society makes in relation to ideas, notions and systems of faith and belief. The emergence of new ideas and attitudes does indicate a change in the consciousness of a society, and its political and cultural structures, quite often leading to bitter and acrimonious debates, and in extreme cases, unleashing terror and suffering on those who engender new categories of thought and understanding. The history of human civilisation is loaded with such examples and one can go as far back as one wishes to while underlining this aspect of socio-cultural life -- philosophers, scientists, political thinkers, social activists and artistes of all kinds have, over the centuries, experienced various kinds of torture and pain while articulating ideas and experiences strange and alien to their times. The range of controversies humankind has been a witness to is quite wide-ranging and goes beyond conceptual categories and intellectual positions. One can also see how attempts to reconstruct and reconfigure paradigms established through archetypal patterns -- which is the attempt to create massive icons out of historical figures – have indeed contributed an enormous lot to our understanding of human essence. The struggles to build icons and the great efforts to break them have always had a dynamic dialectical relationship, constantly altering stereotypical notions of human beings. In fact, all these have, in very different ways, shaped the mythological imagination of individuals and the communities they belong to. However, the tendency to break the mythological imagination, to demythologise, has gone hand in hand with the process involved in myth making and, in certain cases has taken away the very basis of mythologies. But what needs to be recognised through all these is the fundamental fact that through constructions, revisions, and dissolutions, the realms of spirituality, rationality, creative imaginations have been deepened and elevated. Iconoclasm, in particular, has worked at many levels, the most important of them being the opening up of liberal, democratic spaces giving individuals the right to free expression. The tyranny of institutions and systems has been checked by daring iconoclastic endeavours. Myth breaking is obviously related to the free will of thinking individuals and the autonomy of societies and cultures. One cannot regard iconoclasts as irresponsible and irrelevant idol breakers with no regard for the health of the society they are a part of. In fact, all their endeavours are intellectual and political explorations, vitally necessary for the creation of open societies. The historical location of the philosophy of iconoclasm is what we need to keep in mind when we turn to accounts of vulgarisation of the high destinies of the iconoclastic spirit in our times. A great spirit of enquiry and an outstanding impulse to build alternative spaces of thought and understanding constitute the edifice of the traditions of genuine iconoclasm.
Icons from the world of cinema have generally been used in the most sensational manner, whipping up idle curiosity in society that most certainly violates all notions of dignity and decency. What is most nauseating is the manner in which the tempestuous personal relationships are bandied about with least regard for human dignity. The torment, the agony that men and women, as human beings, go through is commodified, specifically in films that are designed to succeed commercially and packaged for consumption by society that eagerly waits for juicy material that would keep its libidinal instincts alive and strong. The recent outburst against the film being made on Putanna Kanagal is an addition to the long list of works of gossip and slander that pass off as creative works. Puttanna Kanagal himself made forays into the inner world through a film like “Manasa Sarovara” giving full expression to all his anguish and suffering. Puttanna went through enormous pain and experienced a deep sense of betrayal in his personal life. But these were the scars created by his intense personal relationships that none with any sense of self respect and honour would transform into juicy material fit for gossip and slander. Creative works, or biographies for that matter, probe deep into the lives of women and men only to comprehend the realms of the unconscious states human beings happen to be in. It is essentially an ontological search not governed by shallow considerations of commercial success and popularity. In fact, there have been a number of works on sexuality – quite shocking in their enquiries that only try to uncover the hidden layers of the human self in the most complex manner. Such attempts are real enquiries into the unfathomable nature of human consciousness and behaviour.
Puttanna’s films were truly women oriented though quite heavily melodramatic, sentimental, and on occasions conservative. But Puttanna fore-grounded a different image of women, especially in films like Belli Moda, Gejje Pooje, Ranganayaki and Masanada Hoovu (and several others) that was refreshingly different from passive and insipid images of women that commercial cinema had manufactured all through. Puttanna did display a serious preoccupation with the woman’s being and never treated his female protagonists as rich sources to be exploited for commercial gains. What is ironic is that a film that has generated a lot of controversy centres around a woman who was a major star in the late 60s and early 70s and whose personal life was filled with great sorrow and suffering, with her end being very tragic. One only hopes that this film has atleast a semblance of dignity and seriousness that any creative work ought to possess.
It is against this background that the rather iconoclastic modern narratives on sanctified figures like Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Sri Aurobindo, M.K. Gandhi, Jesus Christ, Rabindranath Tagore and several others have to be understood. Similarly, apparently scandalous pieces on towering political personalities like Lenin or Mao need to be contextualised in a nuanced manner, going beyond reductionist ideological positions and stifling eulogising attitudes. A serious interrogation of venerated human beings either from the spiritual or the political or the religious orders or of lofty philosophical/ ideological schemes is but a profound examination of the limits of human understanding and does not suggest a trivialisation or slandering of human beings. Creative works that deal with history exercise a kind of freedom that runs beyond social conventions and norms. Creativity acquires a certain kind of Anarchic licence that, at times, moves into forbidden areas, especially in their engagements with the lives of individuals. This hostile relationship between public morality and artistic freedom has existed at all times. The hostility between the two has gained a new dimension in our own times, when in the name of freedom of expression, the personal lives of icons of the film world in particular are presented in an exaggerated and sensational manner drawing enormous public responses, wild and ill regulated most of the times, causing enormous anguish and humiliation to those related to the icons portrayed in the works. The major crisis in such cases is created by utterly insensitive and decadent minds who, without a shred of talent and artistic dignity use human material as tools that can be exploited for commercial purposes. The crisis is intensified when a gross and decadent society laps it up uncritically and without any sense of propriety. It is cross voyeurism that parades shamelessly as freedom of expression, especially when it concerns the lives of others.
Eventually all texts that are built on and promote malicious gossip and cheap slander reveal the conscious and unconscious desires, aspirations and ethical states of the communities, societies and individuals celebrating such ‘revelations’. To increase laws, legislations and to strengthen the police machinery to curb them is a sure indication of maladies of civil societies. Only sanity and collective wisdom of a culture and a society can ever flush away viciously decadent ‘texts’ than socio-cultural contexts.
