The Gulf in Malayalam Cinema

Abstract

Abstract This chapter looks at the representation of the Gulf and the Gulf migrant in Malayalam cinema. Beginning with Vilkkanundu Swapnangal, the first ever Malayalam film to be shot on location in the Gulf, the chapter proceeds to present in broad brushstrokes the representation of the migrant in mainstream Malayalam cinema. While the Gulf was hitherto imagined to be a space of riches and illicit wealth, with the coming of new technologies in the early twenty-first century, there is a shift in this representation. The Home Cinema, a marginal film genre, associated with Salam Kodiyathur, is an emblem of this new energy in narrating the migrant story. The chapter recognizes the appeal of Kodiyathur films in marrying the discourse of good cinema that marked the debates in the early twenty-first century Malayalam public sphere with that of Islamic religiosity. The last section of the chapter reads the Gulf migrant experience as a structuring factor in the dominant genre of the 1980s and early 1990s—the laughter film—even as the Gulf was absent as a diegetic space.