Geographies of otherness: films and interstate migrants of Kerala

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article analyses three popular films from Kerala released post-2000, viz. Masala Republic (2014), Acha Din (2015), and Amar Akbar Anthony (2015) that depict the life of interstate migrant labourers. The attempt is to critically engage with the complex processes of narrativisation and characterisation, such as region, ethnicity, culture, body, etc. in Malayalam cinema to make sense of their effect on regional identity and othering processes. The construction of a regional or sub-national identity is explored from the spatial and social configurations of the ‘outside’ and the ‘other’ within the region as imagined by the Malayali public. This article also focuses on the popular imaginings of the assemblage of ‘Bengali migrants’ in these films and their significance in the larger societal spectrum. We argue that Malayalam films reinforce its region by othering migrants and their markers in contemporary cinema.