CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

This thesis is an attempt to read the ways in which the popular art films operate in

the everyday life of an ordinary Malayali male thereby constructing him in the

hegemonic mode. This happens in spite of the fact that real life in its variety

anticipates multiple masculinities. The correspondences between real life situations

and popular art films in Malayalam can be profitably explored by contextualizing

them within the cultural geography of Kerala. Such a contextualization is also

unavoidable in order to detail the idea of culture as ordinary, a ―minor‖ narrative of

a region. This choice of regional films instead of national films as the subject/object

of study is not upon the recognition that the former is the progenitor and perpetrator

of hegemonic masculinity and the latter a harmless discourse. The choice rests

firmly on the reason that by accessibility, immediacy and availability the former

operates more decisively as an ideological apparatus that targets the ordinary in its

everyday forms in manufacturing consent and effecting co-option.

The concept of ―culture is ordinary,‖ integral to the Marxist interpretation of

Raymond Williams has changed the notion that extraordinary events alone constitute

history and culture (Williams, 1989: 3-14) The focus on the everyday practices of

individuals and social structures is essential to expand the territories of living as well

as to rescue the everyday from conventional habits of the mind. Drawing insights

from such interpretations of culture, the discussion is set to understand masculinity

of the everyday life in all its intricacies and incongruities.

 2

There are staggering advances in ontology and epistemology. The new awareness

created by these advances has radically reconstituted the human perception of the

process of meaning making in relation to various structures and institutions around

us. The understanding of the ideological and hegemonic constitution of knowledge

systems and the constructed character of all these structures and institutions

prevalent in human societies are the objects of study now. For a long time, most of

these structures were taken for granted. But taking them for granted further would

be tantamount to participating in the perpetration of the exploitative institutions.

Theories of language and social construction constantly remind us that all spaces –

the physical as well as cultural – are implanted with signs. So these spaces are

inevitably political and symbolic terrains that are actively contested by various

sections of the society in the process of negotiating the existential realities. The

premises prompted me to pick on categories like ―the everyday,‖ and ―the ordinary‖

and connect them with cultural artifacts, the film and masculinity in particular, to

explore how these terrains of daily existence are contested.

A critique of film as a cultural/ideological entity thus involves an understanding of

its confrontations with the mainstream power structures, which includes the family,

and how it attempts to chalk out a specific regional realm of existence within the

homogenous narratives of the nation. The change effected by the 1990s that was to

lead to a flattening rather than a focus on ideological specificities had its effect

regionally as well. There seemed to be a certain blurring of boundaries in every

walk of life. The 1990s have been identified to be the era during which late

capitalism furthered its ruthless economic and cultural interests unopposed owing to
 3

the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of a unipolar world with America

as the centre. This plunged the Indian left intelligentsia into a terrible crisis. The

response of the Indian middle class including the left variants to the overbearing

demands of the global financial capital was multi-pronged and hectic ideological

activities were initiated to reconstitute the national and local structures for the

maintenance of its domination. This kind of structural adjustment takes place in the

visual culture also and it can be studied by taking stock of the changes in film

culture.

Most of the film studies conducted in India were analyses done in the context of the

nation in its making and unmaking. Reading film as a metanarrative of a national

time and space, as argued by Ashish Rajadhyaksha, makes one a part of the

dominant practice. The political shift that happened in the 1990s with the fall of the

left block had its cultural resonances as mentioned before. Slavoj Zizek keenly

notes this when he elaborates the concept of ideology. He asserts that ideology is

not but some big social, political, project which died in 1990 with the fall of the

USSR, but a still well and alive - not as a big system-but precisely in a most self-

evident, normal, everyday form. But the regional, national and international became

local and at the same time global or rather glocal in the 1990s is the reality that this

thesis is going to address in its analysis. One finds the bi-polar world becoming

unipolar but the manifestations indicate a world that is multipolar too.

The ‗man‘ifestations of the male in the public field became so prominent that Pierre

Bourdieu argued that a masculine domination is getting reproduced through

 4

symbolic violence.1 The males in films are never the manifestations of heterogenous

variants of masculinities available in real life. Those males are reproductions of the

hegemonic vein by appropriating the variants using the possibilities of visual media.

C.S. Venkiteswaran explores the formation of such males in the symbolic space

making use of the insights from Claude Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss locates two

strategies generally employed to cope with the otherness of the other. 2 One is

complete assimilation of the other while the second is the elimination or the

vomiting of the other. Such hegemonic engenderings pressurize the ordinary males

of everyday to cope with the dominant model taken as norm and defined and put in

place by a colonial patriarchal ideology which was actually reforming the ―barbaric‖

life of the Malayalis.

Just like the modifications in the life of women in Kerala following the more than

twenty legislations that reconstituted the joint family into a nuclear structure which

as studied by feminist scholars like G. Arunima, Praveena Kodoth, J. Devika and a

host of academics, the changes that happened in the life of men as husbands and

fathers shouldering extra burdens resulting from the shift to paternal order have to be

studied. This is in no way an attempt to deviate the attention, but address the issues

of ―minor‖ men, or even the major men, and to liberate them from the burdens of

hegemonic masculinity which is a construct. The question is whether we can, as

1
Symbolic violence involves a misrecognition of actions. In cases where this violence is symbolic,
the subjugated individuals see their domination as natural. By viewing different social constructions
as natural, the dominated agents participate in their own subjugation.
http://peacejustice.msu.edu/exhibits/show/symbolic-violence/meaning; accessed on 14/12/13.
2
Claude Levi-Strauss suggests that just two strategies were deployed in human history whenever the
need arose to cope with the otherness of others. The first strategy was aimed at the exile or
annihilation of the others, the second aimed at the suspension or annihilation of their otherness;
http://realsociology.edublogs.org/2013/10/16/summary-of-liquid-times-chapter-three-time-space/;
accessed on 21/09/2013.
 5

Bourdieu implies, delegitimize it. This will be the concern of the thesis in its further

move.

The introduction of films in the school and college syllabi in Kerala, since the early

2000s, saw the seemingly casual entry of this hegemonic male figure and the

irrelevant ―others‖ into the mindscape of millions of school and college students.

These syllabi may be seen to have inaugurated the saga of males as Apu in the

Indian context, and his incarnation as Newspaper Boy in Malayalam. Films, their

production and reproduction through syllabi do not happen in an ideological void. It

is one that is constrained by dominant ideology, happening in definite historical

circumstances, and influenced by socio-political structures. Films, in other words,

reinscribe the patriarchal family structure and reproduce the imbalances of power.

The patriarchal regime constructs masculinity not on the basis of men‘s ―real‖

identity but on the ―ideal‖ image constituted in contrast to his ―other.‖ That is,

masculinity, under patriarchy, needs an ―other‖ from which a ―Man‖ can distinguish

himself; for masculinity resides completely in what ―woman,‖ femininity, is not. It

is too simple to assume that, in every instance, the patriarchal white film industry, as

David Considine described it, reduces itself in creating models of femininity alone;

rather, it constructs masculinities as well. Films have a veritable role in formulating

and perpetuating not only femininity, but also masculinity as a social construct.

Women also are made to look at men. Or there is a panoptical eye that looks at both

women and men. They are under surveillance. The study of the films prescribed in

the school and college syllabi become significant in this context.

 6

One need go back to the nineteen twenties to know the beginning of the construction

of femininity as well as masculinity in films. From the very first film, one can trace

of history of masculine subjectification and interpellation. Films serve as manuals

for gender roles, a kind of reference book on how the typical Indian male or female

should dress, move and think. The plural nature of multiple cultures and the diverse

role that wo/men play are not visible, but uni-dimensional projections of their lives

construct another reality. Man has been constructed as a authoritative subject, one

who carries the look, go out in search of material goods and come back to look after

his family and as the sole agent of the change.

The existing studies on Malayalam films are largely confined to the analysis of the

discursive construction of the female, though attempts have begun to address the

issues of the male recently. This construction of the female envisages a male with an

embodied patriarchal self. But, the present thesis would argue that, there are males

who are incomprehensible or unidentifiable. The French thinker Gilles Deleuzes

concept of the ―minor‖ can be employed to make visible the unidentifiable and

incomprehensible male identities. One task of the thesis is to problematize such

―homogenous male‖ and to retrieve the ―minor‖ others that got suppressed by those

studies on otherness limited by ―binary syndrome.‖

The Malayalam film industry has been the domain of men. They produced,

distributed and consumed the product. They constructed the image of an emerging

new Man, masculine in every sense, a result of the project of the colonial modernity

at work as part of the much acclaimed Kerala Renaissance. The web of social

conditions related to the production, circulation and consumption of films within the
 7

economy of power are important thus to the understanding of the mainstream

Malayali public, a domain of different forms of masculinities. A critical analysis of

films is imperative now as films are increasingly becoming part of the academic

curriculum, which means that through a new media culture, the ideal of the

masculine world and the male is inserted into young minds. This aspect needs to be

critically viewed.

As one from Payyanur, my understanding of the popular-art films of the 1990s

requires a contextualization within the cultural geography of Payyanur, 3 a region

which has significance in various ways to film. It has been the business of India‘s

most important historians to write ―the biography of the emerging nation-state.‖ As

with the history of Modern India, the history of Indian cinema has until recently

been written mainly in nationalist hues. In recent years, there has emerged a body of

new writing that is influenced by a ―post-nationalist‖ historiography.4 This attempt

to imagine beyond the nation is significant enough as far as the study of regional

cultures are concerned. Understanding of regional film industries also falls within

the purview of such post national narrative.

While talking about the change in imaginative geography, facilitated by e-literature

and e-learning, P.P. Raveendran describes as to how such a transition has led to a

questioning of a canon, aura, and originality as well as an incorporation of everyday

3
Payyanur was part of Ezhimala Kingdom and was ruled by King Nandan. Later, Ezhimala came
under the regime of the Chera and thereafter the Mooshaka Dynasty. Payyanur was a part of Kolathu
Nadu ruled by the Kolathiri Rajas based in Chirakkal near Kannur. During the British Rule, Payyanur
was part of the ChirakkalTaluk. Soon after receiving independence from British, and the formation of
Kerala state in 1957, Payyanur was taken away from Madras state and joined to Kerala state.
4
Ashish Rajadhyaksha, ―Indian Cinema,‖ Film Studies. Ed. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson
(New York: OUP, 1998) 535-540.
 8

realities.5 William Raymond‘s notion of culture as ordinary has led to a mapping out

of the imaginative geography to include the most ordinary, everyday events as part

of discursive constructions. E.V. Ramakrishnan has emphasized on the importance

of art forms to address the everyday, a trajectory which, according to him, still

remains uncharted as far as Malayalam poetry was concerned.6 The book Elite and

Everyman 7 observes the multiple everyday sites of social spaces of action (work

places and homes, schools and streets, cinema and sex surveys, temples and tourist

hotels) to delineate the lives of the middle classes which are indispensible to show

how middle class definitions and desires articulate the hegemonic structures of

power. Specific and everyday experiences become significant for the study of

construction of masculinity. Just as the understanding of the stabilization of class

relations (Connell 1977), focused on the dynamics of structural change involve the

mobilization of whole classes, masculinity can also be understood only with relation

to specific historical and regional contexts, which results in alternative hegemonic

structures within masculinity and femininity.

Payyanur has been a hub of various political movements since 1928. 8 Payyanur is

chiefly known for its civil disobedience movements like Salt Satyagraha and Khadi

Propagation. There were organized peasant revolts at Karivellur, Korom and

5
P.P. Raveendran in his inaugural talk in the Dept. of English, Payyanur College, ―English Language
and Literature in the e-Era,‖ January 4-5, 2013.
6
E.V. Ramakrishnan, in his inaugural talk in the Dept. of English, Payyanur College,,
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid. Also see E.V. Ramakrishnan‘s AnubhavangaleArkaanu
Pedi? [Who is Afraid of Experiences?]; Damodaran Kulappuram‘s novel Dainam Dinam [Everyday]
and Ambikasuthan Mangad‘s short story collection Saadharana Veshangal [Ordinary ] which
articulate the idea of the everyday in different ways.
7
Amita Baviskar and Raka Ray, ed., Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle
Class (London: Routledge, 2011).
8
It‘s a coincidence that the official history of Malayalam film begins with Vigathakumaran in 1928 as
T. Muralidharan says in his ―National Interests, Regional Concerns: Historicising Malayalam
Cinema,‖ Deep Focus (Jan-May 2005): 85-93.
 9

Munayankunnu. All of them were part of the communist movement, questioning the

oppressive measures of the landlords and the colonial regime. Back in history,

Payyanur Pattu, a ballad of the north, has ample suggestions of how a business

culture was opposed for an agricultural one.9 The importance accorded to land and

agriculture as primary means of production was in keeping with a casteist structure

that segregated the population into various castes based on the division of labour.

The industrial belt in Payyanur had suggestively remained weak, in keeping with the

general atmosphere of North Kerala. The role that Payyanur was to play in the

nationalist and regional struggles for independence against internal and external

colonization ought to be viewed in this backdrop.

The march against untouchability initiated by Swami Ananthatheertha and AKG are

landmarks in the making of the alter-native history of Payyanur. There have also

been other regional interactions and interventions that have been carried out at

various levels by environmentalists and other grass root organizations distanced

from the left. The preservation of mangrove forests by Dalits like Pokkudan,

resistance activities by Public Health Forum, Chithralekha and Janavedi action

councils etc. were such non elitist ―ordinary‖ cultural negotiations with the various

kinds of capitalist and patriarchal engendering. However, these negotiations are

exclusively male-only-spaces, which ultimately get a space in the popular weeklies

like Mathrubhumi10 and films like Papilio Buddha.11

9
V. Dinesan, ―Chathuppunilangalile Aavaasaroopeekaranam: Boomisaasthraparavum
Saamskaarikavumaaya Itapetalukal‖ [―Habitat Formation in Marshy Land: Geographical and Cultural
Interventions‖] Payyanur Amsam Desam, Payyanur: Cultural Movement Souvenir (2003): 9-13.
10
K. Ramachandran, K. Sahadevan and a lot many eco-political activists from Payyanur health Forum
are active in the Kootamkulam and such issues through Mathrubhumi nowadays.
 10

The 1990s saw a sea change in themes as well as audience expectations and tastes.

Nehruvian dreams about mixed economy had receded and the national economy was

undergoing significant structural changes. The buzzwords were liberalisation,

globalisation and privatisation. The ―opening up of the sky‖ and the proliferation of

TV channels brought in a virtual flood of images and narratives from all over the

world. The plethora of tele-serials that dominated Malayalam TV channels virtually

ate into the hitherto thematic terrains of the film narratives. The coming of television

also transformed the audience base of cinema. With the sobs and soaps reaching the

drawing rooms directly, there was a withdrawal of the family audience from the

theatres.

Coming to the thematic of Malayalam film, it was an era that gave voice to various

contesting trends onscreen. On the one hand laughter films held sway, through their

not so famous or new faces, a shift from the village to the city etc, on the other, the

parallel stream was tightening its hold through a blurring of boundaries between the

art and the popular, the hegemony of each seeping into the other, and creating a neo-

liberal popular-art consensus, the ideological underpinnings of which would be the

intention of this study. The fact that film has been introduced as part of the school-

college curricula in various universities makes such a critique more urgent than even

before.

11
Papilio Buddha is an Indian feature film that focuses on the atrocities committed against Dalits,
women and the environment. Payyanur-based Environmentalist KallenPokkudan appears in an
important role in the film. The role done by Saritha, an alumnus of Payyanur College is modeled upon
Chithralekha, a dalit autorikshaw driver who was victimized as part of her lower caste identity. See J.
Devika,―The Many Vices of Chitralekha,‖ Kafila. Website. Sulfath and Subrahmanyan and others
have participated in the woman auto-rickshaw driver Chithralekha issue as an extension of their
political interventions in Payyanur [etc]. Sulfath, though a female doesn‘t ‗appear to be feminine to the
mainstream male of payyanur as Indiara Gandhi was not to the popular outlook. See appendix for the
great men of India where the picture of Indiara is given. ―India is Indiara‖ was a slogan in the 1970s
Emergency period.
 11

Popular-art film as a category is elaborated here to describe the neo-liberal

consensus in Malayalam film that happened in 1990s in the realm of the art genre.

The tendency found itself through co-opting of multiple males through a star system

that was a predominant aspect of the films in the early 1990s. This aspect of how the

popular art film makers use the technique of star persona co-opt the multiplicity

inherent in the males in films, can be exposed mainly with reference to the films of

Adoor Gopalakrishnan and his alter-native auteurs of the ―art‖ stream in Malayalam

film, especially the ones where the popular-art divide becomes insignificant.

Family and Engendering the Modern

The abolition of matrilineal kinship by the (post) colonial Kerala legislature in 1976

was a predictable consequence of two centuries of legal interventions of the colonial

rule. Between the 1930s and the 1970s (The Madras Marumakkathayam Act of 1933

and the 1976 legislation) most landed tharavadus all over the state were in a process

of disintegration and a new integration of individuals. The period allowed the

―Papas‖ painted a generation earlier by Raja Ravi Varma to come into their own

houses as husbands and ―property‖ owners. The colonial modernity internalized by

the Malayalis brought the father into the central position. It is this preference for the

male-father that colonialism idealized, is depicted in Ravi Varma‘s painting. A

painting, for instance, by Raja Ravi Varma titled ―There Comes Papa‖ (1983)

(Appendix I) depicts a ―graceful‖ mother with her son standing inside her bedroom,

but pointing outside and telling him that his father is coming home. Father, in his

absence, becomes central figure in this painting. Though he is absent in this painting,

he is very much present there through a caption. That is, the painting itself becomes
 12

possible through the presence of a father. But, this father was not a central figure in

the lived reality of Kerala of the nineteenth century. Further, the ―Papa‖ imagined in

the painting has been sought in houses as husband and ―property‖ owner. That is, an

ideal male is wrought in colonial modernity and is sought inside the home. This male

virtually replaced the ―effeminate‖ Malayali male, which too was a colonial

discursive construction. The new masculine body (who is a protector-owner-judge)

constructed by colonial modernity and imagined in paintings and cinema thus

becomes an alternative to the ―effeminate‖ male and the one similar to the state/male

in the West, potent enough to protect the female. (See the poster picture of Pazhassi

Raja (2009) in Appendix I).

There is a flattening that happens at the level of cultural identities. The colonial

regime took only two centuries to level down the diversity and flatten a culture into

a monolithic one. As part of it, the colonialists who had successfully constituted

their own culture as the ideal and civilized one had also constructed a tradition and

culture for the colonized. By internalizing these colonial constructions as real, the

colonized began to think and act in the way the colonial modernity suggested. This

has been effectuated in Kerala through various sites like schools and colleges,

libraries, print media, art creation, judiciary, and bureaucracy. This internalization

of the colonial modernity as real and the preferred made the construction of colonial

subjectivity possible. It is from this colonial subjectivity that the contemporary

Malayali male as well as his perceptions are created.

The idea of a well-defined and monolithic community is incorrect and even

dangerous. Partha Chatterjee (1998) argues that, during the colonial period there was
 13

a renewed attempt to impose a particular brand of the modernized upper-caste

Brahmanical culture as the true national culture on the grounds that all the great

nations of the West were built through a process of cultural homogenization. Through

such a process, culture, which is a multiplicity of local cultures, diversity in culture,

religion, tradition, etc, is undermined and the multiple ―minor‖ identity

representations are disabled by constructing images of a normative set of

engenderings. The current visual environment is saturated with images of women

presented specifically as sights for the viewing pleasure of a spectator who is

presumed to be male and is thus constituted as male in the very production and

reproduction of these images. Colonialism erased multiple voices and, judging from

their enlightenment rationality, created a monolithic male-centred culture and social

order. The level of misrepresentations of non-European cultures is yet to be

understood. In the case of Malabar, this construction of a monolithic male often

idealized the patriarchal Namboodiri Brahmin male as the model, one could prefer

since he is construed as akin to the white European patriarchic male in values and

practices. G. Arunima (2003) argues that, the Anglo-Indian legal system derived

from a pastiche of different western and indigenous sources on the one hand and the

utilization of customs and practices of the elite and the literate groups which in most

instances meant the Brahmin texts were used by the colonial discourse to forward its

patriarchal ideology of the reinstating of the modern institution of the family to

civilize the matrilineal, ―sexually promiscuous‖ Malayali males and females (17).

Its effects in the everyday lived world in the succeeding period were the dividing of

the matrilineal household along the lines of patrilocal residence with concomitant
 14

rights to property to the male. The young professional middle class male became part

of the colonial notions of morality. With their engagement with the colonial state, the

men in matrilineal families, who were the agents of change, dismantled the last

vestiges of ―barbarism,‖ even as they raised the demand for marriage reform to gain

control over the sexuality and fertility of women. This colonial reconstitution of the

female self and the masculine self is integral to the constitution of the reality that gets

circulated in Kerala even today. This modern male and female become the heroes of

the modern novel form. For example, the nineteenth century novels in Malayalam,

especially O. Chandu Menon‘s Indulekha (1889), makes a clarion call for the end of

matriliny. The extension of the Hindu code in the 1950s to govern Nairs (Chakravarti

25) made Indulekha - a Hindulekha12 and Man - a Madhavan.13

Filmic construction of the gendered subjectivity could be treated as a continuation of

the construction of gendered subjectivity in other genres of cultural productions in

colonial Kerala like painting and novel. The beginning of this construction is through

making a series of statements (or discourses) centered on an object (here male or

female). The discourses and practices generated within the sexual regime or the sex-

gender system is the mechanism that differentiates both the male and female. The

male subjectivity produced within the gendered patriarchic order creates its ―other‖ to

designate itself as its superior with multiple capacities as creator-spectator-owner-

judge. The Malayalam Film industry, for more than a century, right from

Vigathakumaran (The Lost Child; 1928) to, for instance, Keralavarma Pazhassiraja

12
A.C. Sreeahri. Kamala Das and Malayali Men: The History of the Readings of My Story,
Unpublished Mphil Thesis, M.G. University, Kottayam, 2009. p. 23.
13
E.P. Rajagopalan. ―Madhavan – Oru Yathravivaranam.‖ [Madhavan – A Travelogue‖]. Samakalika
Malayalam Vaarika. 56 (8 March 2002): 40-44.
 15

(2009), continue this production of the male. The films produced in more than eighty

years of the industry in Kerala, thus, presented stereotyped images of men. Men with

a strong individuality have always been imagined in these films. They have been

presented as characters with aself. This is attributed to the fact that filmmaking

has always been done from a male point of view in Kerala as elsewhere. These

films, a product of the ―patriarchal, white industry‖ (Considine 13)14 depict men as

powerful and omnipotent. While men‘s writings - most of the writers were upper

caste reformers - often legitimized the existing patriarchal structures, the filmic

adaptations are seen to cement them up.

Films have the ability to reach large audience previously untouched by other means

of expressions. Its potential permits the development of new expressive techniques,

not possible in literature and traditional or modern arts. Films have to be seen, more

than anything else, as fundamental to the creation of history and culture and as modes

of signification through which social realities get constructed. Films can manipulate

the world more skillfully than the human eye and provide great immediacy than

verbal reporting. Hence, the dynamics of the discursive field of films needs to be

understood.

Films are political. They reproduce the existing social order. Very few of them act

against this and try to challenge the existing or imagine an alternative reality to the

present dominant order. First variety of films could be called major cinema, since it

tunes with the existing hegemonic voice. The latter, which appears very rarely as

well, could be called minor cinema, where the truth produced by the existing
14
David Considine, ―On Viewing Television.‖ Higher Secondary English Course Book. Part II.
Thiruvnathapuram: S.C.E.R.T., 2006. p. 82-85
 16

hegemonic order is always challenged and unsettled. A major literature is a literature

of masters: oppressive, founded upon transcendental justifications, it is hard and

ungiving. A minor literature, in contrast, is a project of de-territorialization: in the

place of the exclusive rights of the privileged "majority," a minor literature gives

free play to the disenfranchised, to minorities - women or people from developing

countries - who comprise in reality the majority. Nevertheless, the project of

"becoming minor" (the unraveling of hegemonic structures of identity and the

machinery of "minorization" are open to everyone and not restricted to specific or

actualized minorities. Although minor literature arises from the reactions of the

minority within a major literature and culture, its literary and socio-cultural project

points toward a "becoming minor" of the whole world, in which all structures of

hegemony and privilege give way.

A ―minor literature‖ is skeptical, yet produces ―an active solidarity‖ (Deleuze 17)

among the members of the collective group. The evolutionary potential of a ―minor

literature‖ is written from the margins, deterritorializing the ―fragile community‖

from the border from whence it is possible ―to express another possible community

and to forge the means for another consciousness and another sensibility‖ (17). The

question thus would be more about a deterritorialising of the major language of film,

and becoming its minor, rather than toppling down a majoritarian hegemonic

structure, which would be utopian. It is a fact that the major voice is easily

recognized and accepted.

The powerful male subject, who can handle everything single handedly and who

represents a downtrodden collectivity, has been the centre of all films. However, the
 17

mass whom this super human male represents is more or less absent from

representations, visual or literary. In Cinema 2, Deleuze, discusses what he calls

―minor cinema,‖ in relation to Eisenstein‘s political films (216). It is impossible to

say that the revolutionary proletariat pre-exist the cinema; the revolutionary

proletariat is a being-in-formation and the cinema is one of the mediums through

which it comes into existence. What interested Eisenstein was the ability to not

simply entertain his audience but also to transform them. It remains a question as to

whether Eisenstein really presumed the existence of a revolutionary proletariat, or

saw it as his – and other artist‘s – responsibility to provoke or stimulate this

revolutionary form of consciousness through the work of art.

In such a context, deterritorialisation is significant. Minor languages are

characterized not by overload and poverty in relation to a standard or major

language, but a sobriety and variation that are like a minor treatment of the standard

language, a ―becoming of the minor‖ or the minorization of the major language. The

problem is not the distinction between major and minor language; it is one of a

―becoming.‖ It is a question of deterritorialising of the major language. Black

Americans do not oppose Black English but transform the American English that is

their own English into Black English.

The minorization or deterritorialising of the major language of Malayalam cinema

would demand new modes of language which serve the purpose of minorization.

However, as may be seen, films, in general, have been conceived as a patriarchal

industry, falling within the ambit of the developmental state, with little

deterritorialisations in its wake, and helping to maintain the realist status quo of the
 18

major cinematic language. The deterritorialisation of the major language in

Malayalam film requires an understanding of its processes of co-option of multiple

masculinities in various ways in both popular and art films. The next section would

situate the study within the larger discourse of Film Studies in India.

Literature Review

Films were controlled by the Censor Board quite early in Colonial India. Except for

the enquiry undertaken by the Indian Cinematic Committee appointed by the

government of India in 1927-1928, no systematic and thorough investigation had

been made about films (Deshpande 50).15 Colonial censorship was strict because the

British understood the influence of the cinema. Films which criticized the British

rule in India were banned. The same state encouraged imperialist films which

glorified the Anglo-Saxon mission in India and stereotyped Indian communities

(99). Colonial constraints deflected early Indian cinematic ventures towards the

relatively safe mythologicals with intended or unintended consequences. Indian

films took recourse to allegories which defined and reinforced textbook versions of

historical conflicts in India, glorifying caste norms and patriarchy (122). Literature

on films began to proliferate in India quite early, although academic research on

films began after 1947. The credit for pioneering film studies in India goes to the

sociology department of Bombay University and Penna Shah‘s research work in

1950 done here would perhaps be the first doctorate on Indian cinema (97).

15
Anirudh Despande, Class, Power and Consciousness in Indian Cinema and Television (Delhi:
Primus Books, 2009).
 19

Most books untiringly claim that cinema remains academically under-examined.

Some volumes, like The Cinemas of India, are encyclopedic in which numerous

Indian films are analysed. Ashish Rajadhyaksha‘s Encyclopaedia of Indian

Cinema,16 though selective in parts, is more than a reference guide.

Theodore Bhaskaran says that ―the arrival of subaltern studies and culture studies

and the recent shift in emphasis from conventional historiography to new methods,

specifically using film as a source of information, has drawn scholarly attention to

Indian cinema. In many research institutes in India and in a number of universities

abroad, researchers‘ have begun to take close look at Indian cinema. Scholars from

varied disciplines such as Literary Criticism, Anthropology and History are engaged

in studying cinema‖. In India, there is only one university that has a department of

cinema, Jadavpur University in West Bengal. Whatever research that goes on in this

field is in private research institutions such as the Centre for the Study of Culture

and Society [C.S.C.S.] in Bangalore or L.V. Prasad T.V. and Film Academy in

Chennai.17

According to C.S. Venkiteshwaran, the number of publications on cinema in each

language, the number of books and studies been multiplied during the last decades.

With film studies included in the official curriculum of the Universities, attempts are

also being made in the regional languages, though a comprehensive or exhaustive

16
Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, eds., Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1999).
17
Theodore Baskaran, History through the Lens: Perspectives on South Indian Cinema (Hyderabad:
Orient Black Swan, 2009); Thoraval, Yves. The Cinemas of India (1896-2000) (New Delhi:
Macmillan, 2000). [Reprint 2007]; John W. Hood, The Essential Mystery: Major Filmmakers of
Indian Art Cinema (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2009).
 20

account of the same is near to impossible (16).18 What is generally termed ―Indian‖

film criticism are writings, studies and reviews mostly about Hindi films that too

written in English film magazines and blogs or by academics in professional

journals. The non-Hindi films that constitute the bulk of Indian film industry seldom

find a place there. Like the various International Film Festivals all over the world

where Indian Cinema means Bollywood, Indian film writing/literature/criticism too

falling into the same logic.

Most of the writings on cinema from around the world or about respective ―national‖

cinemas about the ―art‖ films and film movements and auteurs etc. now, the new

emphasis on to popular films, which is also the academic byproduct of globalisation.

Jyotika Virdi, a scholar in the new generation, maps out the difficult terrain the

studies on popular Indian cinema traverses especially with the field‘s saturation with

Hollywood and western cinema: ―... film studies stands at the brink of a sea change

if we ―unthink‖ eurocentrism, decentre Hollywood/western cinema, and explore

non-western film cultures and that multicultural comparative film studies curricula

will provide the sorely needed disciplinary reinvigoration‖ (ix).

It is not surprising that if one looks at the major film theorists from India, they have

made Hindi films their main field of study, except for scholars like M.S.S. Pandian,

S.V. Sreenivas, M.K. Raghavendra 19 etc. In this process of selective exclusion,

18
C.S. Venkiteswaran, Film Literature and Critical Discourses on Indian Cinema. Deep Focus, (1,
Issue IV, 2013):10-20.
19
M. Madhava Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction (Delhi: OUP, 1998);
Vinay Lal and Ashis Nandy, eds., Fingerprinting Popular Culture: The Mythic and the Iconic in
Indian Cinema (New Delhi: OUP, 2006); Chidananda Das Gupta, Seeing is Believing (New Delhi:
Penguin, 2008); Chidananda Das Gupta, The Painted Face: Studies in India's Popular Cinema (New
Delhi: Roli Books, 1991), Ravi S. Vasudevan, ed., Making Meaning in Indian Cinema (Oxford:
OUP, 2002); M.S.S. Pandian, The Image Trap: M.G. Ramachandran in Film and Politics (New
 21

vernacular cinema became invisible and ―unrefereable.‖ The vernacular is denied the

opportunity to ―talk back‖ to the national and global. While the dominant cinemas of

the first world and Hindi cinema within India dominate the scene, other cinemas

occupy the margins. So far as the vernacular cinemas are concerned, the global

circulation of films has only facilitated their flow within their language community

all over the world, and not triggered a synergetic engagement between the

vernacular and the global. As a result, regionalism has been globalised, but not

universalized in terms of its communication or discursive engagement with its

national and global other (Venkiteshwaran 19).

There are hundreds of studies on Malayalam films both in Malayalam and in

English. This includes popular 20 and promotional writings to that of serious

academic analysis and interpretations. There are exclusive journals dealing with film

and film industries in Kerala. Journals like Deep Focus have also published serious

articles on Malayalam Film. Yet another factor one could see reading these studies is

that, films has been studies and analysed from different political and methodological

perceptions. There are studies from Marxist perception,21 gender studies, and post-

Delhi: Sage, 1992); S.V. Srinivas, Megastar: Chiranjeevi and Telugu Cinema after N.T. Ramarao
(New Delhi: OUP, 2009); Susmita Dasguptha, Amitabh: The Making of a Superstar (New Delhi:
Penguin, 2006); Pramod K. Nayar, Seeing Stars: Spectacle, Society and Celebrity Culture (New
Delhi: Sage Publications, 2009).
20
K. Gopinathan. ―Return of the Popular,‖ Deep Focus 8.1-2 (1998): 11-15; Janaky ―Folklore and
Fraud,‖ Deep Focus 3.4 (1991): 13-17; V.C. Harris, ―On Films, Structure and Ideology,‖ Deep
Focus 2.1 (Sept. 1989): 48-54., ‗On the Uneasy Pleasure of Watching Deshadanam,‘ Deep Focus, 7.1
(1997): 5-7., ―Stock Taking Questions,‖ Kerala Calling (Nov. 2006): 33-35., M.V. Narayanan.
―Kathapurushan and the Aura-Matics of Cinema.‖ Deep Focus, 8.1-2 (1998): 29-35., C.S
Venkiteswaran. ―Desadanam: A Zone Bereft of Time.‖ Deep Focus 7.1 (1997) 19-23., ‗Regional
Cinema: Globalisation and the Elusive Adulthood.‖ Deep Focus 7.3&4 (1997-98): 102-104.,
―Contemporary Malayalam Cinema.‖ The Book Review XXXIII.2 (February 2009): 23-25.,
―Reflections on Film Society Movement in Keralam.‖ South Asian Popular Culture. 7.1 (2009): 65-
71.
21
T.K. Ramachandran. ―Hindu Revivalism and Contemporary Malayalam Cinema: An Introduction.‖
Deep Focus, 7.1. (1997): 8-18, G.P. Ramachandran. ―Commercialism and Fundamentalism- A
 22

structuralist studies. While the early studies plunged into an act of aesthetic

appreciation, latter studies began to focus more on ideologies that films disseminate

and its social consequences. For example, how films create communal

consciousness, de-legitimized economic exploitation of the feudal era, normalizing

of political corruption.

There have been attempts at studying various aspects of cinema in Malayalam. The

attempts to constitute an autonomous field of ―Malayalam cinema,‖ different from

the Tamil or Bombay industry have been studied. Much energy has been spent

recently on the question of the father of Malayalam cinema. Criticisms based on the

storyline predominated in the early phase of film criticism by those like

Kozhikkodan, 22 Nadirsha and Cynic etc. Using films as a source of historical

knowledge of the region23 has been a recent trajectory. T. Muraleedharan‘s (2005)

essay that attempts to identify various socio-historical imperatives specific to the

region that determined the early filmmaking attempts in Malayalam, Bindu Menon‘s

(2005) work on the governmental regulations and the anxieties about the exhibition

halls in Travancore during the 1920s and 1930s are the two very few significant

Melting Point: Readings on Kaalapani.‖ Deep Focus 7.1 (1997): 24-26; Kazhchayude Koyma [The
Supremacy of Seeing]. Kozhikode: Mathrubhumi Books, 2006., Raj, Dilip. Re-Vision. Calicut
University: Home page, 2002; V.K. Joseph. Cinemayum Prathaiyayasasthravum (Cinema and
Ideology) Thiruvananthapuram: Department of Cultural Publications, 1997. ―Indian Cinimayil Ninnu
Indiaye Kandethumpol‖ [When India was Discovered from Indian Cinema].Thiruvananthapuram:
Chintha, 2009; G.P. Ramachandran. Malayalam Cinema: Desam Bhasha Samskaram [Malayalam
Cinema: Nation, Language and Culture]. Thiruvananthapuram: The State Institute of Languages,
2009.
22
O.P. Rajmohan. Ratriyum Moodalmanjum [Night and Mist]. Kottayam: Current Books, 1997.
Mangad Rathnakaran. Marx Kanatha Kala [The Art that Marx Didn‘t See]. Kochi: Pranatha, 2005.,
N.P. Sajeesh, ed. Purushaveshangal [Male Performances]. Alappuzha: Fabian,2006., T.K.
Santhoshkumar. Kazhchayude Rasantharagal [The Pleasures of Seeing]. Thrissur: H&C, 2010. M.F.
Thomas. Adoorinte Chalachithrayathrakal [The Cinematic Journeys of Adoor]. Thiruvananthapuram:
Sign Books, 2006.
23
T. Muraleedharan. ‗National Interests, Regional Concerns: Historicising Malayalam Cinema.‘
Deep Focus (Jan-May 2005) 85-93., Niranjana, Tejaswini. ‗Integrating Whose Nation? Tourists and
Terrorists in ‗Roja.‘‘ EPW 29.3 (January 1994): 79-82.
 23

attempts that looks at cinema in Kerala before the 1950s. Critics like I.

Shanmughadas24 and C.S. Venkiteshwaran have also focused on the social realist

films of the 1950s and later on the 1970s as setting up standards of artistic

excellence and artistic expertise respectively. The films of the 1980s, a period of

compromising or middle cinema, have also been studied. Critics like Nissar

Ahammed (2000) had essayed on it in detail. Construction of femininity, 25

masculinity and transgender too has been themes of analysis in studies on

Malayalam film. Since this thesis too addresses issues like these, the following

pages will provide a critical review of such studies.

Studies on Malayalam films associated with the auteurs, 26 star/fan systems, 27

laughter films, periodizations and history of films, 28 nation and films 29 etc. have

24
I. Shanmuhadas. Malakalil Manju Peyyunnu [It‘s Snowing on the Mountains].
Thiruvananthapuram: The State Institute of Languages, 1988., Sanjariyude Veedu [Home of a
Traveller]. Thiruvananthapuram: The State Institute of Languages, 1996. C.S. Venkiteswaran.
Malayala Cinema Patanangal [Studies on Malayalam Cinema]. Kottayam: D.C. Books, 2011.,
Udalinte Tharasancharangal [The Sojourns of Star Bodies]. Kottayam: D.C. Books, 2011., Cinema
Talkies. Kottayam: D.C. Books, 2011., Vijayakrishnan. Chalachitra Sameeksha [Perspective of
Cinema]. Thiruvananthapuram: The State Institute of Languages, 1982., Malayala Cinimayude Katha
[The Story of Malayalam Cinema]. Kozhikode: Mathrubhumi Books, 2004., Marakkanakatha
Malayalacinemakal [Unforgettable Malayalam Cinemas]. Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha, 2008. , P.S.
Radhakrishnan. Charithravum Chalachithravum [History and Films,]. Thiruvananthapuram: The State
Institute of Languages, 2010.
25
Deedi Damodaran. ―The Real-Reel Dichotomy of Rape.‖ Women in Malayalam Cinema. Ed.
Meena T. Pillai. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2010. 178-193., Geetha, J. ‗Feminism and Cinema.‘
Deep Focus 4.1 (1992): 43-55., ‗Disciplining the Feminine.‘ Deep Focus 4.1 (1992): 56-58., K.
Gopinathan. ―Durga‘s Daughters.‖ Deep Focus 7.3&4 (1997-98): 92-96.Ashalatha. ―Kazcha
Utpannamakumbol.‖ [―While Seeing Becomes Product‖] Malayalam Weekly (2011 August 12): 100-
104., Geetha. ―Basheeril Ninnu Sreenivasanilekku.‖ [―From Basheer to Sreenivasan‖] Madhyamam
Weekly (12 May 2006): 30-36., S. Saradakutty. ―Chemmeen: Thirayum Kathayum.‖ [―Chemmeen:
The Waves and the Story‖]. Mathrubhumi Weekly (17-23 December 2006): 13-17.
26
I. Shanmughadas. ―A Note on Newspaper Boy.‖ Deep Focus 7.1 (1997): 27-28; K.N Shaji., ed.
John Abraham. Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha, 2011., Madhu Janardanan, ed. T.V. Chandran:
Cinema, Jeevitham, Darshanam [T.V. Chandran: Life, Cinema, Philosophy]. Thiruvananthapuram:
Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, 2010; Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Cinemayute Lokam [The World of
Cinema]. Thiruvananthapuram: The State Institute of Languages, 1983., Cinema Sahithyam
Jeevitham [Cinema, Literature, Life]. Thrissur: Current Books, 2005.
27
R. Nandakumar. ―The Star System: A Note towards its Sociology.‖ Deep Focus 4.2 (1992): 44-45;
Chandra, Bipin, ed. Mammooty: Kazhchayum Vaayanayum [Mammooty: Perception and
Interpretation]. Kottayam: DC Books, 2007; Chandrasekhar, A. and Girish Balakrishnan. Mohanlal:
 24

been done by critics, based on a perception of a normative male, thereby being a

critique of the male as a part of the mainstream patriarchal ideology.30 Also there has

been a proliferation of film scripts and their studies recently. 31 However, there have

been studies by T. Muraleedharan, who have looked upon the non-hetero sexual

overtures in Malayalam films.32 Ratheesh Radhakrishnan discusses the modern male

with reference to Nair masculinity. Jenny Rowena, 33 who has talked about a

Oru Malayaliyude Jeevitham [Mohanlal: A Malayali‘s Life]. Thiruvananthapuram: Viewpoint, 2009;

Abdulla, Anvar. ―Pattelarum Madayum‖ [―Pattelar and Mada‖]. Nityavismayam, Thrissur:
Mammootty Times, (May 2008): 138-141.
28
Chelangattu Gopalakrishnan. J.C. Danielinte Jeevithakatha [The Life Story of J.C. Daniel].
Thrissur: Current Books, 2011; Eravankara, Madhu. Malayala Cinemayile Avismaraneeyar [The
Legends of Malayalam Cinema]. Thiruvananthapuram: Chintha, 2009; Thottam Rajasekharan.
Cinema: Sathyavum Midhyayum [Cinema: Truth and Falsehood]. Thiruvananthapuram:
Navasamskara Publications, 1981;
29
V.K. Joseph. Desham Pourathwam Cinema [Nation, Citizenship, and Cinema].
Thiruvanathapuram: Chintha, 2009; Neelan. Kazhchayude Velivu [The Rationale of Perception].
Kottayam: D.C. Books, 2007.
30
T.K. Ramachandran. ―Samskarika Vimarsam–Apagradhanakurippukal.‖ Kalavimarsam Marxist
Manadandam, 1983; P.P. Raveendran. ―Abhiruchiyute Vyakaranam: Thaaram, Thaaramoolyam.‖
[―The Grammar of Taste: Star, Star Value‖]. Madhyamam Weekly (19 April 2002): 17-21; K.M.
Krishnan. ―Malayala Cinemayute Desavazhikal,‖ [―The Regional Roads of Malayalam Cinema‖]
Kala Kaumudi Weekly 1455 (20-26 July 2003): 28-31; M.N. Vijayan. ―Cinema: Nizhalinteyum
Velichathinteyum Viralatayalam‖ [―Cinema: A Signature of Shadow and Light‖]. Thrissur Current
Books Newsletter (October 2007) 8-9; K.A. Beena. ―Cinemayute Sreekovilinu 50‖ [―50 Years for the
Sanctum Sanctorum of Cinema‖]. Kala Kaumudi Weekly (14 November 2010): 42-46., N.P. Sajeesh,
―Anandanatanam Aatinan….‖ [―The Dance of Delight‖] Mathrubhumi Weekly (2006 October 29-
November 4): 32-41., V. Rajakrishnan. Kazhchayute Asanthi [Torments of Seeing].
Thiruvananthapuram: The State Institute of Languages, 1987.
31
Adoor Gopalakrishnan. Vidheyan [The Servile]. Thrissur: H & C Publications, 2007., Zacharia.
Bhaskarapattelarum Ente Jeevithavum. [Bhaskarapattelar and My Life]. Kottayam: Current Books,
1998., T.V. Chandran. Pondan Mada. Kozhikode: Pappiyon, 2004., C.V. Sreeraman. Ponthan Mada.
Thrissur: Nishagandhi Publications, 2002.
32
T. Muraleedharan. ―Aanshareeranghallum Aduppanghallum Malayala Cinemayil‖ [―Male Bodies
and Desires in Malayalam Cinema‖]. Pachakuthira 1.2 (September 2004): 6-13., Ratheesh
Radhakrishnan. ―1970-kalil Sombhavichathenth Athava Malayaliyum Mohanlalum Thammilenth?‖
[―What Happened in the 1970s or What is in between Malayalis and Mohanlal?‖]. Pachakuthira 2.5
(December 2005) 06-12., E.P. Rajagopalan. ―Ole Puruvan.‖ [―The Henpecked‖]. Vaayana Monthly
2.22 (August 2004) 18-21; K. Gopinathan. ―Mammootty: Tharavyakthithvavum Desha
Charithravum‖ [―Mammootty: The Star Personality and Regional History‖]. Mathrubhumi Weekly
(19 September 2004): 26-33.
33
S.V. Sreenivas. Fans and Stars: Production, Reception and Circulation of the Moving Image. Diss.
University of Hyderabad, 1997; Rowena, Jenny. ‗Reading Laughter: The Popular Malayalam
‗Comedy-Films,‘ of the late 80s and early 90s.‘ Diss. Central Institute of English and Foreign
Languages (now TEFLU), 2002; Ratheesh Radhakrishnan. ‗Masculinity and the Structuring of the
Public Domain in Kerala: A History of the Contemporary.‘ Diss. Manipal Academy of Higher
Education (MAHE – Deemed University) 2006.
 25

―benevolent masculinity‖ with reference to Mammootty, suggesting the way in

which patriarchy has created not only stereotypical femininities but masculinities as

well. Rowena talks about how ―Thamashapaadanghal‖ or ―Chiripadanghal,‖ a set of

films that focused on the generation of humor and laughter that started trickling into

the Malayalam cinematic scene in the early 1980s, which fully established itself by

the early 1990s. According to Roweena, the comedy-films circulated a cinema of

normative "masculine" values as a means to male identity especially aimed at the

non hegemonic communities of men. The themes of rivalry, fraudulence, emotional

distancing, etc. were all used towards the re-masculinizing of hegemonic

masculinities. Vipin Kumar also talks about how the comedy films of the 1990s

effected various kinds of subversions. He traces the proliferation of new heroes in

the comic film with reference to its reformulation of the relation between city and

country which is also characteristic of the nineties. Caroline and Filippo Osella,

bring together masculinities and popular culture to think about how they are

configured within the arena of cinema.While these studies have been largely

restricted mostly to the popular films in Malayalam, the present study would be an

attempt to contextualize the male anxieties in the realm of the ―popular art‖ films of

Adoor and a host of auteurs.

There is no dearth of books and articles dealing with Adoor films. The first book

produced in English is A Door to Adoor, edited by Lalith Mohan Joshi and C.S.

Venkiteswaran, in 2006. It is a collection of articles ―adoring‖ Adoor by some of the

bigwigs of cinema in India and abroad and hence no critical idiom has been used in

evaluating his films. An authorized biography, Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life in

 26

Cinema by Gautaman Bhaskaran, published in 2010, traces the ebbs and flows of the

life of Adoor. Apart from these, there are write ups in Malayalam on Adoor most of

which eulogize his contributions in representing Kerala society realistically. 34 Studies

on other directors in Malayalam are less, compared with this. A general pattern that

these studies follow is to narrow down film as a representational medium rather than

look at it as part of historicization. Critics have focused on the feminist perspective as

well as on the progressive ideology in these films. There are books, journals and

articles in Malayalam on actors, partly academic and partly journalistic.

Methodology

Masculinity as a monolithic structure has been integral to the institutionalizing of

middle class hegemonic power. Masculinity is not a fixed entity embedded in the

body or personality traits of individuals. Essentialist interpretations of the

male/female dichotomy are a major problem in comparative studies of gender. In

any given setting, gender differences are often presented and perceived as absolute

and dichotomous. Moreover, such gender differences, when viewed from an

historical or cross-cultural perspective, often appear stable or repeat themselves as

variations on a single theme. However, essentialist explanations cannot explain

variation and the fact that cultural forms are never replicated exactly. An essentialist

male/female dichotomy cannot account for the ways people are gendered in different

places at different times. Once comparative studies expose a diversity of meanings,

the idea of ―being a man‖ can no longer be treated as fixed or universal (Lindisfarne

3). ―Masculinity‖ represents not a certain type of man but, rather, a way that men

34
M.A. Baby and host of people from the left and right wing politics have written volumes on him.
 27

position themselves through discursive practices. Hegemonic masculinity is the

pattern of practice (i.e., things done, not just a set of role expectations or an identity)

that allowed men‘s dominance over women to continue. It was not assumed to be

normal in the statistical sense; only a minority of men might enact it. But it was

certainly normative. It embodied the currently most honored way of being a man, it

required all other men to position themselves in relation to it, and it ideologically

legitimated the global subordination of women to men. Films document the various

patterns of this hegemonic male and become a social history in itself of patriarchal

male power. In Deleuzian terms, film embodies a modern conception of movement,

capable of thinking the production of the new.

Film as a means of documentation of masculine history becomes indispensable for

this study. Deleuzian insights as well as those of Bourdieu regarding critique of

dominant masculinity as well as those from cultural theorists like Raymond

Williams and the notion of Culture as Ordinary as well as recent film theories are

used in analyzing the films coming under the present discussion. The concepts like

―Culture Industry‖ and ―Minor Cinema‖ are fundamental in the present analysis.

Such an understanding of film demands a regional perspective of reality rather than

a reproduction of the meta-narratives of a national reality. The emphasis on film as

part of the regional everyday and the ordinary, as referred to in the thesis, thus

involves a regional critique of the global masculine as constituted in Malayalam

films since the 1990s as well as how such a constitution is suggestive of the

flattening of the cultural realm in Kerala that happened during the 1990s.
 28

Chapterization

The thesis has five chapters. The first chapter is ―Introduction.‖ The second chapter

titled ―Multiple Masculinities‖ charts the history of masculine studies and agues for

the need to conceptualise masculinity also as a construct of a patriarchal society. It

looks at the problematics of constructing a normative masculinity, as to how it

forbids the heterogenous manifestations of being male. The making of the dominant

male in the context of Kerala would be discussed. The transition from matriarchy to

patriarchy in the 1930s in Kerala dawned an era of the modern male and female in

Kerala‘s public space. The second part considers why examining the construction of

males in cinema becomes important especially in the context of film studies being

included in academics, especially as it got perceived by English Studies. The

colonial impetus that had informed the latter was to have its effects on the former as

well in the way in which Film Studies was to become a part of the Orientalist

discourse. The films that get perpetuated and circulated through these texts belong to

the art and the popular art category, which are informed by the dominant patriarchal

discourse in their masculine disseminations. In the chapter I would argue the

necessity for a critical viewing of mediated realities that film as a cultural text offers,

and demands a critique of a construction of a set of patriarchal male models, that an

Orientalist discourse had produced.

In the third chapter, ―Art Films and Patriarchal Co-Options,‖ I choose to look at how

a close analysis of eighty years of the male in Malayalam films shows that the films

were not producing a single unchanging male. Rather, the male appears here as a

changing subjectivity, nevertheless his domination is always reproduced. The films

 29

produced in more than eighty years of the industry in Kerala presented multiple

incarnations of men. This is attributed to the fact that filmmaking has always

been done from a male point of view in Kerala as elsewhere. These films, imagine

men as powerful and omnipotent, but having different facets. This obsession with the

male would be analysed with reference to the adaptations of the work of Kamala Das

as well as the regional art form of Theyyam35 in the second half of the chapter. It

would look at how the filmic adaptation of her novella Rugminikkoru Paavakutty,

removes it off its minor politics of gender and sexuality, moulding it to suit the

patriarchal gaze of Malayalam film. As far as Theyyam is concerned, it is reduced to

a museum piece, cast off its regional dimensions. Film fails to fairly depict the female

and male minorities. It does the same thing with the low cast(e) men who perform

Theyyam.

The fourth chapter, ―The Making of Male and The Popular Art Films,‖ elaborates

the concept of the popular art in Malayalam film. It looks at the processes of co-

option of multiple masculinities that happened in the art film in the 1990s. In a

context where the boundary between the popular and the art were quickly

disappearing, a new category called popular art was emerging in Kerala. Art film

makers were to capitalize on the phenomenon of star system and other elements of

the popular that defined the popular Malayalam film during the 1990s. The popular

films, on the other hand, exhibit artistic minimalism. I would discuss in detail the

process of co-option with reference to the popular art films of the 1990s and argue

how the star system facilitated the politics of hegemony of the art film makers. I

35
The spelling ―Theyyam‖ has been retained throughout the thesis except in cases where it is used as
―Teyyam‖by those like K.K.N. Kurup, C.M.S. Chandera and V. Dinesan.
 30

would scrutinize the films of Adoor Gopalakrishnan and his alter-natives so as to

expose the process of co-option of multiple masculinities in the art film during the

1990s. The conclusion ―Instead of a Conclusion,‖ reconsiders the preliminary

analysis made here. As masculinity is a fluid category, it is not available for a

conclusive theorization as a solid and concrete category.