When Life imitates Art (Movies)

                 From the typical roadside dramas to the present astonishing multiplex theaters, art has come a long way. From the day, when artists were treated with disdain, to the present day, where they are treated with esteemed admiration, artists have come a long way. In this current scenario,  this blog post is all about finding the answer to the question "Does life imitate art? or Does art imitate life? If art influences life, is it in a positive manner? Come on with me to explore the answer to these intriguing questions. To be familiar with the Tamil audience, most of the examples mentioned in this post will be with reference to the Tamil Cinema. 

           Art has imitated life in many cases. For instance, the movies released in the early 20th century, where there won't be much meetings and physical contact between two people in love with each other, before their marriage. This is a reflection of the real life. Tamil people, then, believed in one woman to one man culture and strictly prohibited any physical contact before marriage. They even were against widow re-marriage. A widowed woman can never think about any other man in her life even if she is young. This trend has been going on quiet long until a movie named "Paithiyakaran" was released in  1947  which made a clear opposition against old men marrying young women and addressed widow re-marriage.The stage has been set. People started to realize that widow re-marriage is nothing wrong. This way of life imitating art is such a positive thing and should be encouraged. 

          Two young people were in an intimate relationship.A sudden tragic kills the man. Even though they have not married  to each other, the girl suffers from his memories and refuses to take up a new life. The feeling of her lost love intimidates her. She feels its unnatural to feel committed towards someone else other than her lost love.  The girl has two options; either to end her life or to get ready for the new one.  This issue was addressed in a movie named "Mouna Ragam". It was scripted and directed by the legendary director Mani Ratnam. Even in this movie, the woman continues to have feelings for her lost love up until the near end of the movie. But once she realizes that it will never come back, she is ready for the new life. I am not sure if Mani Ratnam took inspiration for this movie from real life or not, but he has made his point that its not unnatural to feel committed towards a new one once you feel that your first love can't come back. This is a major break-through. You cannot deny the fact that this movie would have been instrumental in avoiding suicides of many broken up people who have lost their loved one. Here also, life has imitated art in a positive manner. 

           Hence, art has a lot of positive influence on the life. But wait. The story doesn't end here. The same director Mr.Mani Ratnam, has directed a movie named "OK Kanmani". Its such a romantic movie for all young couples. This film portrays a concept called "Live-in Relationship" which means an unmarried couple can stay together in the same house. They may not be in love, no commitments to each other, no feelings for each other but still they can live together merely like a husband and wife (to say it decently). This concept of Live-in Relationship might be common thing in the northern part of the country when the the movie released. This movie's target audience are from Tamil Nadu, where such a culture is not famous or some people may not even be aware of it. What was not known to a group of people has now been spotlighted. Whether "Live-in" is a good thing or not is beyond the scope of this article. But according to Tamil culture, its something not acceptable. After the release of this movie, in recent years, I hear lot people being in "Live-in". Even a web series was released in the YouTube in the same name. Its worthy note here that in the movie "OK Kanmani" the couple who were in Live-in end up being married to each other. Those people who are in "Live-in" in real life, will they do the same thing? Will they marry the person with whom they were in "Live-in" if they were to imitate art (by seeing OK Kanmani)? If they were so keen on taking the negative thing from the movie, they should also take the positive aspect of it. 

            There are many instances where the life has imitated art in a lot more negative ways. There are innumerable number of movies that focus on adolescents' love during their school days. Once again, it may be an imitation of real life., but many teenagers' behavior before and after such movies is entirely different. They might not have developed feeling of love (or lust) during their adolescent age, if they hadn't seen those movies. But after watching such movies, they feel its unnatural not to have the feeling of love at that age. So they try to fall in love. They use the signs used in the movie to propose their loved one. Is this a good thing? This trend has resulted in many school-goers falling in the so called love and ending up broken and alone. Break-ups at the age of just 14 or 15. In this way, art has a very negative impact on life. This may sometimes result in suicides also. 

             Dialogues delivered by legendary comedians like Goundamani and Vadivelu, are still being used by people of all age to troll someone. But when asked to these legends, what they say is that they didn't create those dialogues by themselves but took from the people in the daily walk of life.  So what Art (the movies) are doing is that they take incidents and ideas from real life and they end up delivering in areas where such incidents are not know to have happened. 

             So its up to us to take only the positive aspects of art. A hero smoking a cigar doesn't imply that you should do the same. If you were to imitate him in this negative aspect, are you ready to imitate him in positive aspects like punishing those involved in social crimes, donating the whole wealth to the charity, showing care to the strangers, etc as they depict in the movies?

This post is not an advice but an caution. Take only the positive aspects of art and let the negative ones pass. 

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