98. Roshini Prabhakaran

Abstract 98
Roshni Prabhakaran   

A Different Sheen: A Queer Reading of Thilakkam

Abstract

Queer reading of Malayalam cinema is an academic project that has barely begun. Due to the absence of any significant gay/ lesbian mainstream movie, queer studies focused on problems in representation of seemingly straight narratives. In the world of New Queer Cinema, sexuality is often a chaotic and subversive force, which is often brutally repressed by dominant heterosexual power structures. In Malayalam cinema, homoeroticism is indicated through male intimacies and overt physicality. Films like Harikrishnans, Thenkashipattanam, Ayal Kadhayezhuthukayanu, Deshadanakilikal Karayarilla, Pranayavarnangal, etc. elaborate this by depicting the intimate relationship between two men or two women with queer undertones.

This paper is an attempt to analyze the popular Malayalam film, Thilakkam (2003) from a queer perspective to tease out the implications of same sex/ gender desire.  The paper goes through the potentiality of the queer discourse over the non-queer normative structural pattern, which may threat the hierarchical order of the sexual identities and the normalization of the non-queer.

Alexander Doty, the prominent queer studies scholar, suggests that cultural texts like movies offer potential for queer readings that focus on connotative meaning rather than denotative meaning in order to find credible readings hidden in the text.

 It undertakes a close reading of the cinematic codes of the film to articulate the hidden aspects of queer experience.  At the very outset, it is conspicuous that this is a different mainstream cinema as it contests traditional gender roles. It offers more than visual pleasure as the cinematic codes of the movie puts the heterosexual cliché into interrogation. By isolating implicit signs in the film and by radically questioning the taken-for-granted assumptions like the celebration of male bodies, it looks at how cultural texts can embody different types of sexual politics.