'Mediacracy' and Transcreation: Problematising the Fabricated Paradigm of Honour in Drishyam* Manu Mangattu Assistant Professor, Department of English St George's College Aruvithura Mobile: 9496322323, Email: manumangattu@gmail.com Abstract The movie Drishyam (2014), hailed initially as a gripping family tale, has of late been hounded by controversies. The narrative revolves around the efforts of the protagonist to cover up a murder to save his family. The audience prodded on and applauded each lie that the protagonist uttered; fair became foul, foul became fair; the mesmerized spectator left the theatre pleased that poetic justice prevailed. Soon, however enchantment gave way to ratiocination. The custodians of law reacted aggressively; the media took centrestage; 'well executed' murders got attributed to the 'Drishyam effect'. The director and the actor openly expressed their dissent over the arrogance of 'mediacracy' that blamed the movie for the ills of society. The quintessential Drishyam discourse manifested the complex media- culture interaction. It got garbed as a site that negotiates and transcreates social values and norms. The movie, whose script was inspired by thrillers and real accounts of criminal behaviour, has as protagonist a commoner who uses ideas from the movies he has watched to outthink the enforcers of law. The function of art - didactic or aesthetic - is yet again problematised. The success of the movie hinged on the nonchalance of a culture that flouts codes and conventions to salvage the honour of a 'criminal' family. Worse, this very culture later ostracizes the movie for inspiring and perpetrating crimes. Further examination sheds light on some other hitherto unexplored aspects of the movie that lay bare the role media plays in fabricating the contours of an 'Indian' culture. Drishyam boldly unravels the hypocrisy of a culture that inextricably links a woman's identity with her "virtue", that approves as didactic, adult-movies that closes with the tragic end of a fallen woman, thus imparting a "lesson". A culture created and sustained by the media can perhaps behave no better. This scrutiny feels that making criminal-thinking public is beneficial in that it would forestall possibilities of criminal behaviour stemming from such ingenious but deviant thinking. By unravelling the multiple facets of the complex relationship between media and culture as instanced in Drishyam, this paper attempts to put in perspective the role media plays in moulding, altering and controlling public opinion.
In Mass Media and Popular Culture (1984) K. Turner states "popular culture and the mass media have a symbiotic relationship: each depends on the other in an intimate collaboration" (4). Facts and stories get modified, altered and subverted through popular transmission to such an extent today that the symbiotic and reciprocal relationship between media and culture gets monitored and scrutinised frequently. Values, norms and taboos become increasingly designed and popularised by the media. The Mohanlal-starrer Jeethu Joseph thriller Drishyam (2014) is a case in point. This paper attempts, by unravelling the multiple facets of the complex relationship between media and culture as instanced in Drishyam, to put in perspective the role media plays