Conscripts of Cinema: The Dangerous and Deviant Third Wave. (Routledge, 2021), Pp 36-51. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
In the last decade a new kind of Tamil film was noticed, widely celebrated as new wave, neo-noir, 'Madurai genre' and even as a backlash to the 'Rasigar Mandram'(Fan Clubs) Stars of mainstream cinema. The rise of such films was in itself an achievement considering the commercial stranglehold of the politico-cultural ecosystem in the Tamil film industry. The new directors moved away from the bubble of 'mass scene'(grand super hero entry scene) appearances, political innuendos, super star 'punch' dialogues and fan club worship of pouring milk on opening day giant-size 'cutouts'. What the new Tamil films did portray were marginalized, subaltern low-caste characters with aspirations built around grim storylines, expository dialogues and dark themes. This article endeavors to thematically analyse three 'new wave' Tamil films and trace the underlying strains of a new generation narrative drawn out from the dirty underbelly of 'post-Dravidian Rajni-persona Superstar cinema'.
Spectacle Spaces: Production of caste in recent Tamil films (SAPC 13.2, Oct 2015), pp 155-173.
South Asian Popular Culture, 2015
This paper analyzes contemporary, popular Tamil films set in Madurai with respect to space and caste. These films actualize region as a cinematic imaginary through its authenticity markers - caste/ist practices explicitly, which earlier films constructed as a “trope”. The paper uses the concept of Heterotopias to analyse the recurrence of spectacle spaces in the construction of Madurai, and the production of caste in contemporary films. In this pursuit, it interrogates the implications of such spatial discourses.
Contested Narratives : Filmic Representations of North Chennai in Contemporary.
Routledge, London, 2021
In contemporary Tamil films, North Chennai - represented as a spatially distinct urban ghetto - forms the terrain upon which contested socio-political narratives are performed. On the one hand, portrayals of it as a masculine, homogenous, and utterly violent space feed into the casteist anxieties and desires of the Tamil imagination, criminalising the neighbourhood and its inhabitants as pathologically anti-social. Films which both directly and indirectly refer to the space - like Vikram Vedha (2017) and Vadachennai (2018) - cater to a voyeuristic audience instantaneously both attracted to, and repulsed by, an imaginary about the ghetto as a zone in need of state intervention (often police violence), explication and transformation. These representations do not go unchallenged, however, and films like Madras (2014) have challenged the stereotypes associated with Dalits and their spatial aspects in mainstream Tamil cinema. The entry of this genre of ‘Dalit Film’ not only makes a critical intervention in the representational politics of Tamil cinema, but also functions to contest and challenge common stereotypes. The paper will offer a close reading of key films in each genre to highlight these contested narratives and offer a wider socio-political contextualization that helps to explain the changes underway in contemporary Tamil cinema.
VEDA PUBLICATIONS, 2022
Cinema is a popular medium of art. In earlier days, cinema in India did deal with social problems in a peripheral way. It often failed to address the social realities, especially caste disparities. Cate issues were always portrayed as economic backwardness. But recent times have witnessed that popular and commercial cinema has begun to open up towards the discussions of gender and caste. In the case of caste discussion, it is the Tamil Cinema industry that creates more movies on it. Tamil cinema is comparatively rich with Dalit representations in the arena of filmmaking. Some directors, writers, and actors initiated the discussions of caste hierarchy in popular cinema. The political situations of Tamil Nadu have been a deep influence in molding these directors and their courageous ventures of popular cinema with Dalit subjects. Dravidian Ideology, Mandal politics, and the recent revival of Ambedkarite politics have been fuel for this. Still, fitting Dalit issues into the frames of the popular and commercial film have both pros as well as cons. Hence, this article analyses the relevance of the socio-political situations of Tamil Nadu in initiating mainstream Dalit cinemas. It also looks into the pros and cons of the popular narrative of Dalit subjects.
Contesting Heroines and Critical Subjects: Caste in Recent Tamil Films
The paper seeks to study, critically, a component of popular contemporary Tamil cinema, especially foregrounding the films – Kadhal, Veyil, Paruthiveeran and Subramaniapuram – produced from the years 2004 – 2008, to read it differently, against itself, while departing from a general critique of the film, so as, to recover the portrayal of subaltern subjects – men and women - as critical interventions. I explore, to take issue, with the double stereotype – constructed within the claims - essentially stereotyped, by the PMK chief, of the men and women, implicated in his tirade against “lower” castes; of what is now being termed as prejudiced and casteist. The paper studies the disintegration of the type-heroes, heroines who contest and succumb to the caste imaginary, and the critical subjects who intervene.
Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century
Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century, 2020
Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century explores the current state of Tamil cinema, one of India's largest film industries. Since its inception a century ago, Tamil cinema has undergone major transformations, and today it stands as a foremost cultural institution that profoundly shapes Tamil culture and identity. This book investigates the structural, ideological, and societal cleavages that continue to be reproduced, new ideas, modes of representation and narratives that are being created, and the impact of new technologies on Tamil cinema. It advances a critical interdisciplinary approach that challenges the narratives of Tamil cinema to reveal the social forces at work.
Malayalam Research Journal, 2020
This paper critically studies the manifestations of ‘realism’ propagated by Malayalam cinema during 1980s and ’90s — the period when “Kerala model of development” became popular. The modern obsession with reflexivity over sentimentality, and its employment in Malayalam cinema as ‘middlebrow,’ was also experimented in films that were made on cinema during this period. This is foregrounded in films such as Lekhayude Maranam Oru Flashback (The Death of Lekha: A Flashback, Dir. K.G. George, 1983), an example of the middlebrow. Studies on metanarratives and reflexivity, just like how modernity affects people, largely focus on Brechtian ‘alienation.’ The paper, however, argues that Malayalam cinema produces ‘double mystification’ instead of alienation. Though this is executed through self-referentiality at the surface level, it reiterates realism as a hegemonic mode of production at the latent level. Thus, it is purposive realist aesthetics in middlebrow cinema that create the spectatorial Malayalee modern self. In other words, the cinema during this period makes middlebrow as the ‘popular’ by devising the figure of Malayalee citizen-spectator, who is made to distinguish oneself, from the ‘mass-ified’ other. The paper goes on to theorise that the ‘real’ within/of Malayalam cinema exorcises its own excess — sentimental melodrama, caste and sexuality — to the Tamil Other.
Pariyerum Perumal: A film that manifested the casteist reality of South Tamil Nadu
The Station, 2020
Indian cinema, born under the clutches of imperialism, had undoubtedly maintained the space or difference between the elites and the marginalised. In recent years, the audience as well as the cinema industry have made a gradual but apparent shift in the screen space for sharing the voice of the voiceless in mainstream cinema and celebrating the identity and understanding the film critically. Caste has been considered as one of the elements of oppression in the society. Caste stratification attached with religion, particularly the Varna system with Hinduism is undeniably a benchmark of the Hindu society to establish caste differentiation. When it comes to Tamil Cinema, it showcased caste either as glorification of the elites and intermediate castes or as eradication of the prevailing caste system. Many scholars in the domain of caste and cinema opine that mostly films try to eradicate caste dominance between the higher and submissive caste groups, but it is very rarely represented in mainstream Tamil Cinema. Tamil cinema maintained a space and difference in terms of projecting the dominant and the subaltern classes through the cinematic medium. It represented the subaltern as a sidelined body, submissive and impure; whereas the dominant- intermediate caste are heroic characters with imaginary heroism – lordly, generous, fearless, gore, assertive, violent and even trouble-makers. As similar to the Gramscian thought of hegemony and counter-hegemony, the dominant caste holds the hegemony and the narratives of subaltern caste groups in Tamil Cinema holds the counter-hegemony. Many scholars in this realm of caste and Tamil Cinema have used the ‘common-sense theory’ of Antonio Gramsci to critically analyze subalternity in Tamil Cinema.