Aesthetic dislocations Ratheesh Radhakrishnan

Ratheesh Radhakrishnan ‘Aesthetic Dislocations: A Re-take on Malayalam Cinema of the 1970s’, South Asian Popular Culture, 10:1, 91-102, 2012

Abstract: The centrality of South Indian cinemas in ‘New Indian Cinema’, one of the many cultural constellations of the turbulent and vibrant 1970s, has been widely acknowledged. Focusing on the aesthetic structuring of select moments from Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Swayamvaram, K.P.Kumaran’s Athithi and P.A. Backer’s Kabaneenadhi Chuvannappol, this paper investigates the contestations central to the emergence of a realist aesthetic in Malayalam cinema. It unpacks the movement towards the consolidation of realism as a mode of address that generates certain spectatorial responses, as opposed to understanding this turn inMalayalamcinema as foregrounding a new version of the social. The status of popular cinema and cinephilia are at the center of these contestations, as these film texts actively intervene in debates around aesthetics.

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