000 02232 a2200181 4500
020 _a9788125038658
040 _cIIT Kanpur
041 _aeng
082 _a791.43095483
_bW842
245 _aWomen in Malayalam cinema
_bnaturalising gender hierarchies
_cedited by Meena T. Pillai
260 _bOrient Blackswan
_c2010
_aHyderabad
300 _aviii, 242p
520 _aDrawing on contemporary critical theories and academic debates, Women in Malayalam Cinema: Naturalising Gender Hierarchies analyses Malayalam cinema and the question of women from different perspectives. In its focus on woman-cinema interface, as depicted in a century of Malayalam cinema, this book addresses a wide range of themes crucial for a nuanced understanding of Malayalam film culture gender stereotyping, marriage and family, the aftermaths of matriliny, caste and gender relations, hegemonic patriarchy, female friendships and soft porn. These diverse concerns are held together by a key focal point: the paradox of regressive modernisation in Kerala s cultural politics. While the widely discussed and extolled Kerala Model has yielded much grist to the statistical mills of Left-liberal developmental sociologists, questions concerning more precise connections between the impressive developmental indices and the cultural politics that shape the lives and subjectivities of women within this model state have remained relatively unexplored. Deconstructing patriarchal dominance in Malayalam cinema, mainstream and avant garde, this collection elucidates how films offer stereotypical images of women conforming to subordination. Be it Vigathakumaran (1928), or Sthree (1950), or a more recent one Achanarangathaveedu (2005) there is a constant failure across films to look beyond the portrayal of woman as someone who loves to cook and clean, wash and scrub, shine and polish for her man . This volume, a first of its kind on Malayalam cinema, has diverse contributions from litterateurs, film critics and screenwriters, and will be of interest to scholars of film, media and gender studies.
650 _aMotion pictures -- India -- Kerala -- History
650 _aWomen in motion pictures
700 _aPillai, Meena T. [ed.]
942 _cBK
999 _c561161
_d561161