Should Malayalam film ‘Jallikattu’ be India's Official Entry to the Oscars?

1-12-2020

Jallikattu is a Malyalam movie which premiered on 6 September 2019 at the Toronto International Film Festival. The movie has also been nominated for the 93rd Academy Awards and has now made its progression into Oscars. The movie features the local event of Jallikattu that goes wrong when the buffalo for the ritual slaughter escapes and begins creating havoc in the village. The entire movie shows us the chase to capture the bull so, it can fulfil its predestined fate of being slaughtered. The movie has been critically acclaimed with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 9.5.

While the movie attempts to show the true animalistic nature of man, that is always present but only needs to be triggered. It also shows how ordinary people can act as beasts, to the point where reasoning fails and only madness prevails. The movie is so centered around the hunt to kill the bull that it hardly focuses on the vile nature of humans. Eventually making the very butchers hunting the bull down become the protagonists of the movie.

Furthermore, the movie even shows the idea of cannibalism when one of the main characters Kuttachan claims “human meat is the tastiest”, leading to a scene where some men are shown feasting on raw meat which is ambiguous, assumed to be either the buffalo meat or the meat of one of their own kin. The selection of the movie as India’s Entry into Oscars is preposterous since the Indian Government had banned Jallikattu in 2014 but the movie brings back the horror to life and is also being promoted internationally.

The movie cleverly ambushes the kind and innocent Buffalo as a beast that creates havoc in the village while completely ignoring the idea that the animals is literally running to save its life from butchers and frenzied villages hankering for buffalo meat. Though one may select a darker theme, but isn't it something completely unacceptable to normalize the killing of the buffalo and glorify the killers?

Such atypical cases also leave a subtle message that violence against animals can be glorified .  Buffaloes are regularly tamed by farmers and rarely act so wildly, they are generally fearful creatures that can be controlled by a mere whip. There is a huge mistrust between the animal species and human. We have made an innocent animal  seem violent through such movies, which make these ideas seem acceptable to the masses.

This misinterpreted version of real-life events  taints the harmonious relationship humans share with animals. Whether you choose to ignore or oppose the decision to choose Jallikattu as India’s official entry to the Oscars, you can only make a difference on an individual level with your choice and by giving your opinions a voice.

Let us know what you think about the decision in the comments below.