I'm not afraid to be naked before the camera - Saumya Liyanage
 

Face to Face by Ranga Chandrarathne

Saumya pronounces that he, as a professional, has a moral right and strength of character to stand on his feet in the field of cinema. Although he had acted naked in celluloid and before camera, he had never been naked with anyone behind the scene seeking undue advantages. He does not seem self-conscious to be naked before camera for the sake of the work of art.

Saumya Liyanage is a vanguard performer of the new generation of actors who explore the vistas of Sri Lankan cinema. He came under ferocious attack by cultural puritans in the media for being bold enough to challenge the dominant tenets in Sri Lankan cinema.

He argues since his father or he had never stripped behind the scene , as some of the puritans, he and his father are not afraid of stripping before camera if a particular work of art demands so. He believes that the body is an instrument at the hand of the artiste to be used to express feelings. Ill-bred critics say that the kind of cinema Saumya engages in, is morally inappropriate; he counter argues with evidence from history and development of Art.

The origin

He challenges the notion that there is a link between Art and morale, a fact that had been reiterated and manifestly argued by Russian literary colossus, Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy says that the purpose of art is not knowledge accumulation but communication of felt experience.

However, some critics interpret art as knowledge, facts, ethics and culture. Though there are those elements in Art, the purpose of it is something else that is still being explored. Tracing back to the very origin of drama, Saumya argues that morality does not simply go in line with the arts.

The modern drama originated in Greece at erotic games and shamanistic practices where people enjoyed drama while sharing liquor. Saumya is of the view that sexuality is only a component of culture and part of human civilization. Human behaviours, sexuality and the eating habits and other human activities constitute culture. According to Saumya, art is a multifarious phenomenon.

Nurturing values

However, dominant cultural discourse ask the artistes to produce more and more works of art aimed at creating a 'cultured being'. Saumya rejects the popular notion that art should be used to propagate culture, moral values, and religion and even to protect race. Some people try to set a criterion on the arts. Protection and nurturing those values are the tasks entrusted to other social institutions such as the Judiciary, religion and the government, but not the purpose of Art.

The artist has a right to touch upon and explore the human nature at extreme ends of the spectrum. However, a section of the media considers this earnest attempts by the new generation of film makers to explore human nature embedded in the recess of the mind as a hysterical attempt.

For instance, Saumya points out, that the subject of sexuality had been extensively discussed in Sri Lankan literature and literary works such as "Kaluwara Gedara". It describes a polygamous sexual relationship of a man with two women in a house in a village in the Southern province.

Therefore, sexuality is not a new subject to Sri Lankans. At any given time, the ideological apparatuses is at work in a society and produces a 'mega narration' that acts as a dominant ideology or Force.

He explains that it never bodes well when gullibles take it upon themselves to decide on what the adult public can and can not view. It usually signals the beginning of the end. This dominant discourse has changed the application of art.

A cultural pundit who often dominates talk-shows made a hilarious comment on a promotional advertisement and declared that the aesthetic quality of the advertisement surpassed songs sung by pundit W.D. Ameradeva. One should take into consideration that an advertisement and a work of art are two parallels that never merge.

Saumya believes that morale issues have no bearing on his application of art and that the purpose of art is to explore the human nature.

This is what Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, or Akira Kurasawa did in their respective fields. As a doctor opens up a patient's heart in order to do an operation on him, the artiste also explores the human nature and in the process, encounters ugly and disgusting facets of it.

Saumya is of the view that within the cinema, there are a number of genres and all of the viewers cannot appreciate all the films. Classical literary work as well as films with deep insight appeals to a section of viewers.

If someone tries to set a criteria for films and requests young film makers to produce films to uplift certain aspects, they are similar to Hitler or Mussolini, as this kind of hegemony would severely affect the artists' creativity and imagination.

It directly contributes to the downfall of the art. This was evident in the contributions made in the latter part of the lives of Maxim Gorky, and Mihaile Sholokhov which degraded as a result of political control.