It is no coincidence that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated exactly fifty years ago, in 1968. It is just a verifiable fact. That Black Panther from the Marvel Studios hitting the screens exactly in 2018 too may not be purely coincidental. Perhaps, it was a designed tribute. But me chancing upon Watermelon Man (English, Melvin Van Peebles, 1970) in the fiftieth anniversary year of the great soul's departure from the face of the planet is purely coincidental. The movie is about what happens to a white, racist, successful man when he turns into a black - overnight!
The lead role is by Godfrey Cambridge. His electric performance at the start is enjoyable, but only to be overshadowed by his brilliantly nuanced show as he struggles as a man with black skin. Finally, his own lovely wife disowns him. The script works on you like a softball with a iron core to it. Made with copious dose of humour (dark comedy?), Watermelon is a seminal work on racism. Yes, there are landmark movies that range from biopics like Malcom X, to hard hitting small canvas films like Do the Right Thing to the stylised, blood spitting Django - but everything pales (in varying degrees) before Watermelon. This one strikes right at the heart of the matter - only your skin colour decides your societal standing.
Our country too is not so different. In the pecking order of the devices created to divide people if you have gender discrimination and racism at the top echelons, casteism, sort of lifeline of our land, will not be a distant loser. The only solace is that unlike racism, where the gates of negativity are opened as if it were controlled by a switch by a mere look at the skin colour of the person standing in front of you, caste switch due to its inherent design takes a little longer to kick in. It gets activated only once you get a few added trivia like surname, slang, place, etc. Yes, in many cases skin colour is a marker for caste that rightly reverberates in songs like 'கருத்தவெல்லாம் கலீஜா?' from Velaikkaran (Tamil, Mohan Raja, 2017).
May be it is this indoctrinated and ingrained hate for the colour black that plays its best in the beautiful paintings that we see of Krishna (Lord). All of us know Krishna was black in colour, from his birth. (Yes, he lived here eons ago and he had a dark complexion. Krishna means dark/black in Sanskrit.) Even, Rama (Lord) had dark skin. Yet, right from in those tiny, dense Amar Chitra Katha books to the dreamlike pictures of ISKCON, Krishna is always shown as someone with blue skin; and it is not even the dark navy blue, it is the summer sky blue. I can understand blue blood, but blue coloured skin? Odd. Interesting. (Remember we are not talking about the Na'vis.) Not only in most paintings, but barring a few temples, even when Krishna statues are made out of marble the preferred base seems to be the white rocks. Colour is in our blood.
For all the terabytes of memory wasted in explaining and glorifying Unity in Diversity, the bitter truth is - the castes of our hallowed heritage form the rigid rungs of our social ladder. And skin colour is supposed to be a proxy for caste. May be it is less pronounced in certain houses, may be it is all gone soon, but honestly it is just wishful thinking; Like saying, one fine day the world will cease to have racists. It is not going to happen. But kids, don't lose hope.
Our country too is not so different. In the pecking order of the devices created to divide people if you have gender discrimination and racism at the top echelons, casteism, sort of lifeline of our land, will not be a distant loser. The only solace is that unlike racism, where the gates of negativity are opened as if it were controlled by a switch by a mere look at the skin colour of the person standing in front of you, caste switch due to its inherent design takes a little longer to kick in. It gets activated only once you get a few added trivia like surname, slang, place, etc. Yes, in many cases skin colour is a marker for caste that rightly reverberates in songs like 'கருத்தவெல்லாம் கலீஜா?' from Velaikkaran (Tamil, Mohan Raja, 2017).
May be it is this indoctrinated and ingrained hate for the colour black that plays its best in the beautiful paintings that we see of Krishna (Lord). All of us know Krishna was black in colour, from his birth. (Yes, he lived here eons ago and he had a dark complexion. Krishna means dark/black in Sanskrit.) Even, Rama (Lord) had dark skin. Yet, right from in those tiny, dense Amar Chitra Katha books to the dreamlike pictures of ISKCON, Krishna is always shown as someone with blue skin; and it is not even the dark navy blue, it is the summer sky blue. I can understand blue blood, but blue coloured skin? Odd. Interesting. (Remember we are not talking about the Na'vis.) Not only in most paintings, but barring a few temples, even when Krishna statues are made out of marble the preferred base seems to be the white rocks. Colour is in our blood.
(For a moment, imagine a black Krishna baby. How do you feel?)
90th Academy Awards, March 2018. It is a tricky coincidence that a black movie, Get Out won the award for the best original screenplay. The film's premise? It is a contemporary film (not a period film) where a white girl brings home her boyfriend and what they do with him.
Yes, the boyfriend is a black and again yes - the white family almost destroys him.
# கருத்தவெல்லாம் கலீஜா? = Black is not dirt.
