Ideological Reconfigurations: Privacy, Voyeurism and Form in Recent Malayalam Cinema

Abstract

This paper traces a particular moment in the recent history of Malayalam Cinema when a shift in the representation of the private sphere was attempted. In the period after 2010, a set of new Malayalam films carried a shift in terms of aesthetics and narrative techniques and went on to unfold in a full-fledged manner by the end of the decade. The paper would look at Chappa Kurishu (Head or Tails, 2011), one of the early movies of this tide to shed light on the remarkable shift it achieves in representing the scenes of romantic and erotic intimacy on screen. As the narrative of the movie centers around the fight over a smart phone that ensues between two strangers in the city of Kochi, it gets entangled with questions of privacy, class and contest over the urban spaces. Bringing to the discussion contestations over the meanings of public and private manifested in certain urban-based movements in recent times like ‘Kiss of Love’ protests, it is argued that Chappa Kurishu can be read as a response to the contradictions arising out of the emergence of new subjects in the wake of urban transformations and the conflicting cinematic publics of multiplex and single hall theatre. The formal transactions between cinematic form and video form, the paper suggests, is one of the ways in which Chappa Kurishu attempts to respond to this situation in a way that signals the transitional position of the spectator subject.