Rethinking religion redefining politics Malayalam cinema 1970s 90s and beyond

Abstract

This dissertation attempts to explore the concept and practice of `political cinema in the socio-cultural context of Kerala in the1970s and its present contours in the `glocal scenario of the 1990s. The study looks at the process of redefinition of `politics of cinema , using Malayalam Cinema of 1970s-90s as the specific site of engagement of different ideologies and multiple identities like class, gender, sexualities, religion, caste and other factors that shape the politics of cultural products and processes in a given society. Through the narratives of representative stake holders from the three major phases/contexts of this thirty year period, 1970s-90s, and a comparative study of key film texts that demonstrate different trends and discourses in the cultural politics evolved in this period, the present study interrogates that cultural politics in terms of the constituencies it chooses to include or exclude and bring into the foreground or push into the background in its scheme of selective perspectives and priorities. With its keen interest to address the waves of religious revivalism and fundamentalism that has been surfacing across the globe and in Kerala in the 1990s and 2000s, the present study singles out the constituency of religion in its interface with the cultural politics of Kerala as one of its special research concern. It is observed that the responses to the phenomena of religious revivalism and fundamentalism from different quarters and their reflections in Malayalam cinema so far have been mostly one-dimensional, projected as `leftist-secularist response. Such a one-sided campaign only helps to reinforce the stereotypical dichotomies like `private-public , material-spiritual, `secular-sacred and so on. A categorical approach that slots people on two opposite sides as either `secularists or `religious treats all diverse religious and spiritual experiences as a uniform entity.