Tamil Nadu is reeling from the horrifying Tiruttani crime in which a 34‑year‑old man named Suraj was threatened with a sickle on a moving train by four 17‑year‑olds, dragged away, and hacked in a deserted spot while the attack was filmed like entertainment content. This is not just a law‑and‑order story; it is an indictment of a cultural ecosystem that has normalised blood, blades, and intoxication as “style.”
When Minors Copy The Cinema Of Cruelty
Four school‑age boys did not wake up one morning and suddenly invent this grammar of violence. They brandished a weapon on an EMU train, using a sickle as a prop to shoot “reels”. Stalked the victim after he got down, dragged him to an isolated area, brutally assaulted him, and filmed it like a set piece.
This is exactly the visual language that much of present‑day Kollywood has been peddling: slow‑motion swagger with machetes, “mass” entries bathed in blood, and violence cut and packaged like a music video. When teenagers consume hundreds of hours of such content, the line between performance and reality begins to blur.
Kollywood’s Blood‑Soaked Aesthetic
Look at Tamil posters and trailers of the last few years – Guns, sickles, splashes of blood – “first look” itself is a riot of gore.
Films are packed with drug trafficking, bootlegging, hacking sequences, and obscenity, with every other line an abuse and every other scene an excuse to show someone being butchered.
After two and a half hours of glorified mayhem, a line about “drug free society” or “say no to violence” is tossed in at the end as a fig leaf.
This is not accidental. Many directors and stars are deliberately making these films as a profitable formula. When questioned, they shift the blame onto “the audience”: “People like it, so we are only giving what they want.” That is cowardice dressed up as market logic.
Heroes As Upgraded Villains
Once, villains alone smoked, drank, and hacked people to pieces. Today the hero himself does what yesterday’s villain did – deals with gangsters, drinks openly, mouths obscenities, and slashes enemies in lovingly choreographed scenes.
Films that tried to move away from this – the so‑called “thug life” or “coolie” experiments that did not romanticise criminals – were dismissed as flops, and the industry ran straight back to the gangster template.
Tamil and other “gangster” films are steadily turning a section of Gen Z into violence‑worshipping clowns and budding monsters. The message is simple: to be “mass”, you must be merciless; to be “cool”, you must be high.
There is also a cruel class divide at work. Cinematic violence is consumed as “mass entertainment” by audiences who will never face its consequences. But its fallout is borne by the poorest – migrant workers, daily wagers, outsiders – people like Suraj, who lack protection, influence, or outrage capital. Violence is aestheticised in air-conditioned theatres and executed in slums, railway stations, and dark alleys.
Certain filmmakers have played a defining role in this descent. They have pushed the envelope not for art, but for shock. They have dragged even ageing superstars into blood-drenched narratives so extreme that films once suitable for families now require “A” certificates. Responsibility lies not just with directors, but with stars who lend legitimacy and reach to this violence.
Ask yourselves this: if someone from your own family were chased, hacked, and left bleeding by minors intoxicated on this cinematic fantasy, would you still defend it as “art”? Would you still hide behind box office numbers?
Suraj travelled thousands of kilometres for a livelihood. He now lies scarred, physically and forever emotionally, while his family stares into an uncertain future. For a few thousand rupees a month, he paid with his blood. And yes, those who profit from glorifying violence carry a share of that moral burden.
If the obsession with bloodlust, drugs, and weapons continues, both on screen and among cheering audiences, there is no guarantee that today’s 17-year-olds will not be replaced by 10-year-olds tomorrow. Cinema shapes imagination before law ever intervenes.
Kollywood must introspect. What exactly is the censor board censoring anymore? If minors can replicate on screen what passes certification, then the certification process has collapsed into a rubber stamp. When blood-soaked films sail through with cosmetic cuts, the board is licensing consequences. Filmmakers must stop hiding behind excuses. And an industry that once shaped social reform must ask itself a brutal question: when did it become a factory for rage?
When cinema trains children to enjoy violence, the streets will eventually stage the sequel.
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