ABSTRACT

People in Kerala have had a long-standing love affair with films. Although it may be

only a tiny part of the Indian subcontinent, Kerala has more cinema halls per capita than any other

state in the country and at one time was producing more films than the giant Hindi-language film

industry often known as Bollywood. Kerala has always had more active film societies than any

other Indian state, more film screenings, film festivals, film forums and talk about films. Despite

a seemingly endless series of cinematic crises, professional feuds and acrimonious court cases,

the Malayalam-language cinema of Kerala has continued to persevere. Cinema and politics have

W
been described as the “two abiding passions” of the state’s citizens, “twin streams” that have

sometimes converged to reflect and construct a valued commitment to notions of progress and
IE
modernity at the same time that they reveal anxieties about the future and desires to hold on to an

often imaginary past.

EV
At the same time, it is important to remember that the so-called uniqueness or

“exceptionalism” of Malayalam cinema is a construct that has emerged from a number of

historical and social contexts. The pride shown by many Malayalis in the achievements of
PR

Malayalam cinema and the enthusiasm of its spectators are partly the result of various

overlapping discourses. Film culture in Kerala has been impacted by competing political and

communal ideologies, by the individual trajectories and interests of its practitioners and by legal

regulations and economic restrictions. The tendency to categorize Malayalam cinema as a prize-

winning art cinema has meant that other areas, such as a robust commercial and a critically

lauded middle cinema, not to mention its, at times, thriving pornography industry, have been

marginalized and even rendered somewhat invisible. Although the boundaries of these categories

have become less porous over time, the overlapping histories and technologies of these industry

categories coalesce to form a more complete picture of Malayalam cinema than has often been
available. This ethnography will outline some of these complex histories of production,

circulation and reception and compare the cinema of Kerala to other Indian film industries.

W
IE
EV
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 POLITICS, GENDER, SPECTATORS: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC
EXPLORATION OF THE MALAYALAM CINEMA OF KERALA

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by
IEPatricia L. Swart
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December 2011
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Submitted to the New School for Social Research of the New School in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Dissertation Committee:
Dr. Vyjayanthi V. Rao
Dr. Sharika Thiranagama
Dr. Ann Laura Stoler
 UMI Number: 3495838

All rights reserved

INFORMATION TO ALL USERS

The quality of this reproduction is dependent on the quality of the copy submitted.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.

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UMI 3495838
Copyright 2012 by ProQuest LLC.
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All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
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ProQuest LLC.
789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, MI 48106 - 1346
 © Patricia L. Swart

All Rights Reserved, 2011

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to thank the members of my committee, Dr. Vyjayanthi Rao, Dr.

Sharika Thiranagama and Dr. Ann Laura Stoler, as well as Dr. Simon Critchley, who served as

Dean’s Representative, for coming on board mid-stream, so to speak, and for their patience with

this long process. I would also like to thank an earlier incarnation of the committee, Dr. Rayna

Rapp, Dr. Deborah Poole and Dr. Sumita Chakravarthy, especially for their encouragement and

assistance throughout my time at the New School for Social Research.

I have many people to thank in Kerala, particularly the late Professor A.P. Andrewskutty,

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head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Kerala. From 2001 all the way through

my fieldwork in 2004, Professor Andrewskutty was a wonderful source of support; I owe a great
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deal to him and his wife for making me feel so at home in Kerala. Thanks also to his assistant

Rajesh for all his help in getting settled in Thiruvananthapuram. Very special thanks to the
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Kumar family - Prasanna, Ragheeda, Anu and Balu, for hosting me and making me a part of your

family. Special thanks to Prasanna for all his assistance in introducing me to people, setting up
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interviews and accompanying me to so many film events. For Anu, thanks for your

companionship at so many screenings, for watching late night films on television, for introducing

me to Madhavan’s films. Thanks also to Lily and her family for their warmth and help and Renu,

Suresh and Abhimanu, our next-door-neighbors, for being a part of the experience and helping

with translation.

Thanks also to Fumi Kobayashi for the use of her flat when I really needed it; to Leela

Gulati for all the conversations, delicious food and fun; to C.S. Venkiteshwaran for sharing his

thoughts with me. I want to thank my research assistants Sudha Poduval and, most particularly,

Ambika Rao. Ambika, I miss our travels and time together – this dissertation would have been

impossible without you. I want to express my appreciation as well to Dr. Sudhabhai, Warden of
iii
the Government Women’s College in Thiruvananthapuram, for setting up my interview with the

students. Thanks to Cuckoo Parameshwaran for bringing me to the AMMA meeting; to all the

film society heads and film fans who gave so generously of their time; to B. Ebenezer for his

wonderful website on Malayalam cinema – keep up the great work.

Many more thanks to P.K. Nair and T.E Vasudevan Nair for all their assistance and to

Emmanuel Teitelbaum – special thanks for the research you conducted. And to Laura Bunt, for

making me keep at it. I also want to express my appreciation to the library staffs at Bobst Library

at New York University, the CSCS library in Bangalore, the ICKS Library, the British Library in

Thiruvananthapuram and the library at the University of Kerala. I also owe a debt of gratitude to

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the staff of the NFAI in Chennai for allowing me to screen films at their facility and to the staff of

the Chalachitra Academy, especially Bina Paul and Louis Mathew, for their help and enthusiasm.
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Without the funding provided by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Fulbright

Foundation, my fieldwork would never have been a possibility. Thanks to my parents, Robert E.
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and Margaret Swart, for an early “graduation present.” Thanks also to the Woodrow Wilson

Foundation and the New School for Social Research for providing much-needed funds for

dissertation writing.
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iv
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations ix

Introduction 1

1. The Impetus for This Dissertation 1

2. Malayalam Cinema’s Place in the Context of Indian Film 8
3. Narratives of Nationalist Cinema 11
4. The Role of the State 18
5. Kerala as “God’s Own Country” 19
6. Development as Identity 27
7. Gender and Malayalam Cinema 28
8. The Invisibility of the Gulf Economy 32
9. Ethnographies of Spectatorship in India 37
10 Description of Fieldwork 38
11. Outline of Dissertation 40

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PART ONE: HISTORIES

Chapter I: Cinema’s Beginnings and the Rise of Film Studios in Kerala 43

1. Introduction
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2. Some Difficulties in Film Research in India 44
3. Controversy and the First Malayalam Film 49
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4. The Beginnings of Cinema 54
5. Early Film Entrepreneurs in India 57
6. The Beginnings of Film Industries in India 61
7. The U.S Film Presence in India 67
8. Film Production in South India and Kerala’s Silent Era 71
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9. The Sound Era in South India 73

10. Establishing the Institutional Structures of Malayalam Cinema 78
11. Links with Tamil Popular Theater: Finding Actors, Creating Stars 83
12. Utilizing Medieval History in Malayalam Cinema: 88
The Vadakkan Pattukal Films
13. Early Films from Kerala’s Studios 94
14. Producer T.E. Vasudevan Nair 103
15. From Mythological Films to Devotionals 108
16. Malayalam Communal Films and Reform Theater 113
17. Conclusion 118

Chapter II: Film-Makers and Films from Kerala’s Left 123

1. Introduction 123
2. Early Political Films in Kerala 127
3. The Radical Triumvirate: Kariat, Bhaskaran and Vincent 130
4. The Caste System in Kerala 135
5. Political Life in Kerala 140
6. A Brief History of the Communist Movement in Kerala 143
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7. The PWA and the IPTA 149
8. The PWA in Kerala 152
9. From Caste Practices to Class Issues: KPAC and Political Theater in Kerala 156
10. From Radical Politics to Commercial Hits 165
11. Conclusion 170

Chapter III: Feudal Oppression and Matriliny in Malayalam Films: Towards 176
a New Cinema in Kerala

1. Introduction 176
2. Feudalism in Indian Cinema 180
3. From Matriliny to Modernity 183
4. The Beginnings of New Indian Cinema 185
5. Feudalism and the Middle Class Address 189
6. Matriliny in Kerala 190
7. The Films of M. T. Vasudevan Nair 198
8. The “Watershed” Film Olavum Theeravum 203
9. Setting the Stage for a New Malayalam Cinema 208

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10. Representing the Nair Male Point of View 218
11. Nostalgia and Political Films in Kerala 225
12. Government Institutions: The KSFDC 228
13. Kerala Film Archives 234
14.
15.
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“God’s Own Country” and Film Censorship
The Centre for Development of Information Technology (CDIT)
235
239
16. Extending the Networks of Malayali Spectatorship 240
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Chapter IV: The Golden Age of Malayalam Cinema 243

1. Introduction 243
2. The Roots of Malayalam Middle Cinema 250
3. A New Triumvirate for Malayalam Cinema 252
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4. Art Cinema Consolidates 268

5. Political Films of the Golden Age 272
6. Campus Films 281
7. The Comedy Film 283
8. From Sex to Pornography 292
9. Beyond the 1980s 303

PART TWO: THE INDUSTRY

Chapter V: Exhibition and Distribution in Kerala: Malayalam Cinema

and the Growth of the “B Movie Circuit” 304

1. Introduction 304
2. Global Changes in Indian Film Industries 307
3. The Impact of Global Film Industry Changes on Kerala’s Film Industry 308
4. The Basics of Film Exhibition in Kerala 312
5. Making an Investment in a Cinema Hall 313
6. Box Office and Releasing Seasons 315
7. Professional Organizations for Film Exhibitors 316
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8. “Walls are There” 318
9. From Full House to the B Circuit 320
10. Meeting Cinema Owners in Palakkad 329
11. Research Difficulties with the B Circuit 333
12. Film Distribution in Kerala 336
13. Modes of Financing in Bollywood 340
14. Financing in the Malayalam Film Industry 342
15. Supplying the Demand: Distributors for the B Circuit 348
16. Bypassing the Distributor 353
17. The Multiplex Audience in India 356
18. The Global Multiplex Model 358
19. Producers and Distributors versus Exhibitors 367
20. Conclusion 370

Chapter VI: The Permanent Crisis in Malayalam Cinema: Producers. Stars and Politics 372

1. Introduction 372
2. Tracing Disputes in the Malayalam Film Industry 379

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3. Star Rivalries 382
4. Stars and Communal Identities 386
5. Mohanlal’s “Real” Rival – Dileep 388
6. The Coca-Cola Brand Ambassador Controversy 393
7.
8. Are Stars Overpaid?
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Mohanlal’s “Silver Jubilee” Celebrations 398
414
9. The AMMA Dispute 417
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PART THREE: SPECTATORS

Chapter VII: Discovering the Film Spectator in Kerala 425

1. Introduction 425
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2. Middle-Class Audiences and the Reach of Malayalam Cinema 431

3. Theories of Spectatorship 437
4. Darsan and Film Spectatorship 446
5. Previous Ethnographies of Indian Film Spectatorship 452
6. My Research on Kerala’s Film Spectators 462
7. Discoveries About Malayali Spectatorship 464
8. Audience Behaviors 470
9. The Kerala Audience 473
10. Sound and Music 476
11. Cinema Hall Sites 478
12. Language and Films 482
13. English-Language Films 483
14. Hindi Films 488
15. Pornography 491
16. Tamil Films 494
17. How the Film Industry Categorizes the Audience 499
18. Categorizing the Kerala Audience 503

Chapter VIII: Networks of Film Spectatorship 509

vii
1. Introduction 509
2. The Chalachitra Academy 511
3. Fans and Fan Associations 514
4. Fan Associations and Politics in South India 530
5. The Role of Fan Associations 533
6. Politics and the Malayalam Film Industry 536
7. Film Societies in India 541
8. Film Societies in Kerala 544
9. Screenings, Festivals and Events 553
10. Events for Women, Students and Children 556
11. Professional Events 558
12. Star Nights and Charity Events 559
13. The IFFK 560
14. The International Video Film Festival 562
15. Kerala’s Other Film Festivals 566
16. Film Awards 569
17. Film Magazines / Journalism 570

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18. Films in Academia 572
19. Promoting Film Awareness 573
20. The Open Film Forum 579
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Chapter IX: Gender and Malayalam Cinema: Spectators, Representations, Careers 583

1. Introduction 583
2. Female Spectatorship in Kerala 586
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3. Controlling Women in the Public Sphere 595
4. Female Spectators and Serials 605
5. Is the Family Film What Women Want? 610
6. Fashion and Women’s Bodies 615
7. Dubbing Voices in Malayalam Cinema 619
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8. Star Actresses and Their Careers 625

9. Marriage and Career 632
10. Conclusion 635

Conclusion 639

Bibliography 651

viii
 ABBREVIATIONS

AIR All India Radio

AMMA Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes
BJP Bharathiya Janatha Party
BKP Bharathiya Kala Peedom
CBFC Central Board of Film Certification
CDIT Centre for Development of Information Technology
CPI Communist Party of India
CPI(M) Communist Party of India (Marxist)
FFC Film Finance Corporation
FFSI Federation of Film Societies of India
FPA Film Producers Association
FTII Film and Television Institute of India
ICC Indian Cinematograph Committee

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IFFI International Film Festival of India
IFFK International Film Festival of Kerala
IVFF International Video Film Festival
JSS Jeeval Sahitya Samiti
KCEF
KFEA
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Kerala Cine Exhibitors Federation
Kerala Film Exhibitors Association
KFFC Kerala Film Chamber of Commerce
KFPA Kerala Film Producers Association
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KSCA Kerala State Chalachitra Academy
KSFDC Kerala State Film Development Corporation
KSHRS Kerala State Historical Research Society
LDF Left Democratic Front
MACTA Malayalam Cine Technicians Association
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MGR Maruthur Gopalan Ramachandran

MNC Multi-National Corporation
NFAI National Film Archives of India
NFDC National Film Development Corporation
NRI Non-Resident Indian
NSS Nair Service Society
NTR Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao
PSS Payannur Sahitya Samiti
RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
SFI Student Federation of India
SNDP Shri Narayana Dharma Parapalana
UDF United Democratic Front

ix
Introduction:

1. The Impetus for This Dissertation:

People in Kerala have had a long-standing love affair with films. This freely expressed

affinity and desire for films stands in marked contrast to the commonly held negative attitudes

about cinema found throughout the rest of India. Although it may be only a tiny part of the

Indian subcontinent, Kerala has more cinema halls per capita than any other state in the country

and at one time was producing more films1 than the giant Hindi-language film industry often

known as Bollywood.2 Kerala has always had more active film societies than any other Indian

W
state, more film screenings, more film festivals, more film forums, more talk about films. Despite

a seemingly endless series of cinematic crises, professional feuds and acrimonious court cases,
IE
Malayalam3 cinema has continued to persevere. Cinema and politics have been described as the

“two abiding passions”4 of the state’s citizens, “twin streams” that have sometimes converged to
EV
reflect and construct a valued commitment to notions of progress and modernity at the same time

that they reveal anxieties about the future and desires to hold on to an often imaginary past.

At the same time, it is important to remember that the so-called uniqueness or

PR

“exceptionalism” of Malayalam cinema is a construct that has emerged from a number of

historical and social contexts. The pride shown by many Malayalis in the achievements of

Malayalam cinema and the enthusiasm of its spectators are partly the result of various

overlapping discourses. These discourses include a number of strands, such as the nature, history

1
In 1978, the Malayalam film industry produced 128 films, as compared to 122 Hindi films produced that
year; see Thoraval, Yves. 2000. The cinemas of India: 1896-2000. Delhi: Macmillan: 380.
2
The current name for Hindi cinema.
3
Malayalam is the language of the state of Kerala.
4
Website of the Chalachitra Academy, www.keralafilm.com. The Chalachitra Academy is the state's
governmental agency that is charged with promoting cinema, especially in the area of spectatorship.

1
and scope of social and political reform in the state, the central importance of education and its

role in shaping the modern Malayali5 citizen, the construction of gender, and the political realm

of artistic production, not to mention the state’s long-standing need to define itself in a variety of

ways against its national and regional “others.” Additionally, the state has played a crucial role

not only in fostering the productions of Malayalam cinema but in shaping the attitudes and

activities of its spectators as well. Film culture in Kerala has been impacted by competing

political and communal ideologies, by the individual trajectories and interests of its practitioners

and by legal regulations and economic restrictions. Malayali cultural critic Muraleedharan has

cautioned against accepting an “easy definition” of a regional entity like Malayalam cinema or

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taking unwarranted pride in its putative “superiority.”6 The tendency to categorize Malayalam

cinema as a prize-winning art cinema has meant that other areas, such as a robust commercial and
IE
middle or parallel cinema, not to mention Kerala’s, at times, thriving pornography industry, have

been marginalized and even rendered somewhat invisible. Although the boundaries of these
EV
categories have become less porous over time, mainly through the discourses that seek to define

and limit them, the overlapping histories and technologies of these industry categories coalesce to

form a more complete picture of Malayalam cinema than has often been available. This
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ethnography will outline some of these complex histories of production, circulation and reception.

The people of Kerala have faced a series of social and political upheavals beginning in

the last half of the nineteenth century, continuing through the 1970s and manifesting as a series of

crises in the present day. These include enormous transformations in marriage practices, family

5
The term “Malayali” actually comes from a nineteenth-century Tamil expression meaning “Nair,” but it is
commonly used today to refer to anyone native to Kerala. See Arunima, G. 2006. Imagining communities
– differently: Print, language and the (public sphere) in colonial Kerala. Indian Economic and Social
History Review 43: 74.
6
Muraleedharan, T. 2005. National interest, regional concerns: historicizing Malayalam cinema. Deep
Focus January-May 2005: 85.

2
and economic structures, caste identities and regulations, land ownership rules, employment

opportunities, and educational venues. Out of a number of princely states and small kingdoms

riddled with indigenous disputes and suffering the exploitation of various foreign colonizers, and

out of a region where caste identities were rigidly conscribed and where the existence of many of

its inhabitants was highly precarious, the state of Kerala was formed as part of an independent

India. The need to produce narratives to imaginatively process these rapid shifts in political,

economic, social, communal and community identities was taken up in part by Kerala’s film-

makers. Much as political discussions in Kerala's many teashops helped to build a collective

memory of resistance,7 so too have Malayalam films attempted to create a collective and, at

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times, historically revisionist sense of a specific regional identity, albeit an identity with major

absences and silences.

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In 1996, I visited the state of Kerala in southwestern India for the first time, doing

fieldwork for a master's thesis on the temple dance ritual known as padayani. I was living in
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Aranmula, a large town of approximately 5000 people in south central Kerala, which did not have

a cinema hall; the closest movie theaters were in the market town of Kozhencherry, some 10 km.

distant. During that time, many of the people I met in the course of my work there owned
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television sets, but there were only a few channels available in the mid-1990s and these television

sets were rarely turned on. The major exception to this state of affairs took place on Sunday

afternoons, when Doordarsan, the government television station, would run regional-language

films. I often spent Sundays at the home of T. Bhaskaran Shastry, a local astrologer who was

considered to be an expert on padayani. Shortly before four p.m. every Sunday afternoon, Mr.

Shastry would regretfully end our discussions, telling me that "the children need to see their film"

7
See Menon, Dilip. 1994. Caste, nationalism, and communism in south India: Malabar 1900-1948.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3
and, since the television set was located in the room he used as his home office, we had to vacate

and give the space over to these young film fans.

One particular Sunday, I was returning with a young man who occasionally served as my

translator to his home near Aranmula. It was late afternoon and he asked me if I would like to

stay and watch the Malayalam film that was due to begin at any moment. Although my grasp of

the Malayalam language was then quite shaky, I was curious to see if these films differed from

the few Hindi movies I had seen, the only kind of Indian cinema I actually had any exposure to at

the time. When the film began, the rest of the family entered the front room and settled in front

of the television set. From what I could gather, the film was a serious drama about a farmer's

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collective, starring Mammootty, one of Kerala's two current and longtime male superstars.8 I was

as much taken with the rapt attention displayed by the spectators as by the film itself - the family
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seemed totally enthralled by what was happening on screen. I felt a bit lost as I waited for the

obligatory lavish dance numbers, songs and multiple costume changes I was sure were to come,
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although I couldn't imagine how they would fit into the serious political narrative of the film. It

was my first experience of what some have termed the "political cinema" of Kerala state.

Contrary to what I had heard and read about Indian cinema, this entire event didn’t seem to fit
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into the common finding put forth by many social scientists who have researched film culture in

the subcontinent, which is that most people in India claim that watching films is a waste of time,

something that only “lower class” people or unemployed “rowdies” can indulge in

wholeheartedly and without shame. Yet here in Kerala were “respectable” people watching a

“serious” film, one that seemed to merit the focused attention it was receiving. They weren’t

8
The film was Dinarathrangal (1988). Mammootty and Mohanlal continue to be Kerala’s two main male
superstars.

4
hiding or downplaying what they were doing. The experience in that home also gave me a sense

of the importance of historical and political events to people in Kerala, of their need to see

representations or interpretations of what are, in effect, fairly recent upheavals in the constitution

of families, in caste regulations, in how people participate in public, political and economic

spheres.9

Some years later, while studying the Malayalam language at the University of Kerala, I

was introduced to another aspect of Malayalam cinema. Some of the graduate students in the

linguistics department were charged with selecting Malayalam films for us to watch to help with

our language skills. Although I was expecting more of the same serious political cinema I had

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been exposed to in Aranmula, the students brushed aside my suggestions of Gopalakrishnan or

Aravindan10 films and insisted on showing us comedies, in particular the films of Dileep, at that
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time an up-and-coming star and a former mimicry artist. Dileep’s films often reminded me of the

satiric interludes (vinodham) 11 that are always a part of padayani performances, during which
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individuals and even entire groups are publicly ridiculed and teased. The students who chose the

films for us would also stay and watch, laughing and trying to explain the finer points of what

was occurring onscreen.

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When I was first exposed to Malayalam cinema, it was often not so much the content of

the films that interested me but rather the ways in which people watched these movies, as well as

the sense of pride many people in Kerala expressed about their regional cinema. As one

padayani spectator said to me, “If you want to understand Malayalis, if you want to understand

9
This is not to imply, however, that people in Kerala are only interested in watching “serious” cinema.
10
Adoor Gopalakrishnan and G. Aravindan (d. 1991) are considered by many to be Kerala’s best art
cinema directors.
11
See Chaitanya, Krishna. 1971. A history of Malayalam literature. Bombay: Orient Longman and
George, K.M. 1968. A survey of Malayalam literature. New York: Asia Publishing House, for descriptions
of the importance of satire in Malayalam literature.

5
Kerala culture, you have to know about Malayalam movies.” The intensity and respectfulness

that film spectators in Kerala often displayed, along with a cynical delight in seeing people’s egos

punctured, made me question how films, especially local film products, can impact the

construction of new forms of identity as well as transform the identities we already lay claim to.

Of course, growing up in the United States, I had watched movies virtually every day, on

television as well as at Saturday matinees at the local movie house. Movies helped form my

impressions about masculinity, femininity, romance, heroism, history, death, the nature of evil--

the experience of watching films was and is so pleasurable that formally analyzing films had

never been a priority for me. Watching Malayalam films has also become a pleasure. Despite

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some of the very poor examples recently released at the box office, Malayalam cinema, which has

really only been in existence since the 1950s, consists of an extremely wide range of films, from
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political melodramas to thrillers to examinations of feudal decay to slapstick comedies.

Because Indian films have been so often ridiculed and marginalized, even by their own
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audiences, I was particularly struck by the marked difference between Kerala’s film spectators

and the kinds of reactions to film that other researchers on film spectatorship in India have

uncovered. The primary attempts to study Indian film spectatorship have come from Dickey,
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working in Tamil Nadu, and Derne, studying male audience reactions in north India.12 Both

Dickey and Derne share the finding that most people they interviewed claimed that watching

films is basically an embarrassing waste of time. It is not clear whether this outlook actually

reflected the private feelings people had, since many of these subjects did watch films and were

knowledgeable about them.13 This kind of negative public attitude towards film spectatorship is

12
Dickey, Sara. 1993. Cinema and the urban poor in south India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Derne, Steve. 2000. Movies, masculinity, and modernity: An ethnography of men’s filmgoing in India.
London: Greenwood Press.
13
For a longer discussion of these and other ethnographies, see Chapter Seven.

6
practically non-existent in Kerala, although some Malayalis may criticize others for watching

“bad” films or for being too invested in watching lightweight comedies. Many Malayali film

goers may and indeed do valorize “art” cinema over commercial film products. But I have almost

never heard anyone in Kerala disparage the actual act of watching a film, aside from parents who

worry that their children are spending too much time away from their studies. From professional

men and women to teenagers and college students to families and widows, people in Kerala love

to watch films, talk about films and make films. It was the kind of energy and enthusiasm that is

routinely displayed towards Malayalam film that initially made me want to study film

spectatorship in Kerala.

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I noticed a profound difference between the way Malayalis discussed aspects of padayani

with me, especially those aspects that had to do with ritual sacrifice or superstitions, and the way
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people spoke about films. When interviewing people about padayani, I noticed that many of

them spoke with a kind of heightened awareness of what they assumed my reaction would be to
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ritual practices or superstitions that might be categorized as “backward.” Since one of the

primary sites of Malayali identity is located in the concept of the educated, modern progressive

citizen,14 admitting that one believed their garden was inhabited by a yakshi,15 especially to a
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supposedly rational westerner, would seem to contradict this very important and widespread

sense of identity. When Malayalis spoke about films, however, this kind of self-consciousness

was completely absent. I never felt that people were worried about what I might think about their

film industry or their tastes in films. The only exception to this was when I interviewed

14
See Osella, Filipo and Caroline Osella. 2000. Social mobility in Kerala: Modernity and identity in
conflict. London: Pluto Press and Jeffrey, Robin. 1992. Politics, women, and well-being: How Kerala
became “a model.” New Delhi: Oxford University Press, among others.
15
A spirit, usually female, often vampire-like in aspect.

7
spectators or exhibitors about pornography; here the same kind of awareness of what I might

think often became a factor in peoples’ responses. For the most part, in regard to the topic of

cinema, Malayalis often demonstrated the kind of outspoken and passionate behavior they are

well-known for.16

2. Malayalam Cinema’s Place in the Context of Indian Film:

The majority of writing on Indian film has concentrated on Hindi or Bombay cinema and

its latest avatar, Bollywood. This writing has particularly focused on looking at Hindi film as a

national, pan-Indian cinema. Despite the growing spread of critical and historical writing on

Indian film, Malayalam cinema, along with Tamil and other regional film industries, has often

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been either overlooked or stereotyped. As Velayuthan points out in his introduction to a study of

Tamil cinema, “the cultural hegemony and dominance of Bollywood within the Indian film
IE
industry has both marginalized and erased the rich complexities and ethno-linguistic specific

cinematic traditions of India.”17 Thoraval, who has produced one of the few works on Indian film
EV
industries to give equal consideration to regional cinemas, has described the emphasis on Hindi

cinema as comparable to the idea of “the trees for which one could not see the woods.”18

This intense focus on the Hindi film industry has further complicated the picture by
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introducing the element of what Govil has termed as “Hollywood’s destabilization of local

cultural industries,” in which these local industries are only seen “in opposition to Hollywood

import.”19 As he reminds us, national cinema is not just seen as an entity that implies “a degree of

16
For more on this aspect of personality, see Chapter Six.
17
Velayuthan, Selvaraj. 2008 “Introduction,” in Tamil cinema: The cultural politics of India’s other film
industry. Edited by Selvaraj Velayutham. London: Routledge: 1.
18
Thoraval 2000: 38.
19
Govil, Nitin. 2005. Something to declare: Trading culture, trafficking Hollywood and textual traffic.
Unpublished Dissertation, New York University: 2.

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normativity, coherency and uniformity across a range of cinematic practices,”20 national cinema

also “derives its meaning from its circulation and imbrication with other cinematic forms”21; for a

small regional cinema like Kerala’s, engagement with the U.S. film industry and European

commercial films has become increasingly marginal. The particular discourse developed so far

about Indian national cinema not only obscures the histories and cultural productions of India’s

various regional cinemas as well as their rich engagements with both diasporic audiences and

non-western nations, it has also tended to erase the history of what Bhaumik calls the “long-

standing …dialogue…between Hollywood and Bombay.” This erasure has meant that “charges of

being a clone of Hollywood have dogged the development of the Bombay film in all phases of its

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history.”22 This perspective has tended to underscore the notion that cinema is inherently a

western invention and that India’s cinemas can only play “catch up” with Hollywood, existing in
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a permanent state of what Prasad has called a “not-yet” cinema.23 The end result has been that,

despite the many critical attempts to separate out Indian film from western cinema, there is still a
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persistent sense of inferiority displayed even by those Hindi film-makers who lay claim to the

mantle of having fashioned a nationalist cinema. In addition, much critical writing on Indian

cinema still relies on the deployment of stereotypical views of U.S. cinema, its industrial
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practices, its artistic conventions and its audiences. By examining the histories of some of India’s

regional film industries, we can come to a clearer understanding of the development of Indian

cinema in all its many manifestations.

20
Ibid.: 4.
21
Ibid.: 7.
22
Bhaumik, Kaushik. 2007. “Lost in translation: A few vagaries of the alphabet game played between
Bombay cinema and Hollywood, in World cinema’s ‘dialogues’ with Hollywood. Edited by Paul Cooke.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 201.
23
Prasad, M. Madhava. 1998a. Ideology of the Hindi film: A historical construction. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press: 5.

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 Vasudevan has outlined what he terms a “dominant narrative” or “stock account” for the

story of Indian cinema, one that has been uncritically applied across the spectrum of films made

in India.

The tale runs something like this. Following a brief inception in which the films
were exhibited as a scientific curiosity, film-makers introduced the genre of the
mythological film to cater to popular taste. Subsequently, in alliance with
literary culture, a middle-class social cinema of reform evolved in the sound
period, one at variance with other genres such as the stunt, mythological and
costume films which catered to the plebian film-goer. These currents continued,
with greater or lesser influence after Independence and into the 1950s, the
heyday of a nationalist ideology with socialist aspirations. From this period too,
a more specifically art enterprise, one attuned to cinematic language, emerged,
supported towards the close of the 1960s with systematic state investment in art
cinema. The “parallel” cinema emerged as the object of middle-class
spectatorship, especially in the wake of the “massification” of the commercial

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form into an encompassing and alienating package of spectacle, action and
titillation. 24

Certainly this thumbnail description holds true in some respects for both Hindi and
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Malayalam cinema, as well as for other regional film industries. At the same time, a wholesale

application of this general perspective glosses over the significant differences that Malayalam
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films have from both Hindi films and Tamil cinema, with which Malayalam films have been

closely connected in terms of production, exhibition and content. As one example, mythological
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films constituted a large percentage of the Tamil industry during the 1920s and 1930s but were

never particularly popular in Kerala, unless they featured local deities or religious sites; most

available evidence points to the Kerala audience’s stronger taste for so-called social films. Some

of the differences between Kerala’s cinema and that of other areas of India are due to the fact that

Malayalam cinema did not really even get off the ground until the 1950s, long after the rest of the

country had produced a number of thriving film industries. Some aspects of Malayalam cinema

are simply reflections of a particular regional sensibility, a sensibility that did not promote films

24
Vasudevan, Ravi. 2000a. “Introduction,” in Making meaning in Indian cinema. Edited by Ravi
Vasudevan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 3-4.

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that stressed nationalism, mythological subjects or even a marked financial dependence on the

state.

Of course, Malayalam cinema has its own set of competing discourses, in which a fairly

robust commercial cinema has become marginalized by the push to identify films in Kerala as

expressions of a radical political perspective or as art cinema. Just as the divide between the

political Left and Right in Kerala has become progressively more polarized, so too have the

dividing lines between art cinema, middle cinema and commercial films become increasingly

rigid. Malayalam cinema has shifted from being an industry where film-makers held and

expressed both politically radical and romantic sensibilities and from a fluid industrial structure,

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where film-makers served alternately as directors, production executives, writers, lyricists and

even as actors for one another’s productions, to one in which the director serves as primary author
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of a film and the competition among iconic directors and superstars has become the order of the

day. The boundaries between production, distribution and exhibition also became less fluid.
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While early industry figures moved from distribution to production and built their own theaters as

well, later configurations have seen the pitting of interests among competing groups of producers,

distributors and exhibitors.

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3. Narratives of Nationalist Cinema:

The drive to fashion a nationalist narrative of Indian cinema has sometimes resulted in

the erasure of a number of contradictions or competing histories. As Athique has indicated,

“there has been a longstanding convention in Film Studies of positioning the cinemas of the

world as primarily national, indigenous institutions arranged in a hub-and-spoke relationship with

an ‘international’ Hollywood industry [and] the imperative for Indian scholars has generally been

to situate the Indian cinema within the construction of a coherent narrative of postcolonial

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India.”25 As Vitali has stated,26 however, the whole idea of a nationalist Indian cinema founders

somewhat when taking into consideration the fact that cinema in India existed long before India

gained independence in 1947. The nationalist account leaves out many of the specific local

colonial histories of Indian cinema as well as the surprising number of western directors and

technicians who were directly engaged with Indian film-making from its very beginnings, not to

mention the long-standing popularity of Hollywood film products with India’s film audiences.

Nationalist accounts of Indian cinema also tend to emphasize the early existence of studios over

the network of itinerant film-makers, exhibitors and distributors who were also responsible for

spreading the practice of film spectatorship in India.

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The push to create Indian linguistic states furthered the drive toward beginning or

consolidating film industries based on language, as regional audiences began to demand films that
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more accurately reflected their particular sensibilities. Even here, the tendency to equate Hindi or

Bombay cinema with a nationalist film industry may prove to be problematic, as Gooptu points
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out in regard to the Bengali film industry, which she claims actively contested the preeminence of

the Hindi-language “all-India” film as emblematic of the nation.27 The activities of major film

industries located in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta overlapped in areas of personnel,

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infrastructure and narrative/musical texts for so long that it is difficult at times to determine the

actual distinctions between national and regional entities. The need for accounts of regional film

industries which not only take into account these overlapping trajectories but outline as well the

25
Athique, Adrian. 2006. “The global dispersal of media: Identifying non-resident audiences for Indian
films,” in Medi@sia: Global media/tion in and out of context. Edited by T.J.M. Holden and Timothy J.
Scrase. New York: Routledge: 189.
26
Vitali, Valentina. 2006. “Not a biography of the ‘Indian cinema’: Historiography and the question of
national cinema in India,” in Theorising national cinema. Edited by Valentina Vitali and Paul Willemen.
London: BFI Publishing.
27
Gooptu, Sharmishta. 2011. Bengali cinema: “An other nation.” London: Routledge.

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