Meena T Pillai

In the context of the recent sexual molestation of an actor in a public space in Kerala, this article analyses Malayalam cinema’s language of neo-liberal governmentality that seeks to police gendered subjectivities and regiment them within its diegetic and social terrains. It looks at the new kinds of networks forged between culture industries, the ideological state apparatus, a transformed civil society, corporate agendas, and individual actors in evolving newer forms of surveillance and punishment of bodies marginalised by gender and sexuality. The aporia of Kerala’s modernity that results in certain retrograde tendencies is most evident in its cinematic discourses, especially those built around its current investment in male superstardom.

The recent furore over the "Kiss of Love" protest march in Kerala reveals the paradoxical nature of the state's polity and the link between discourses on morality and the maintenance of regimes of power.

The 2014 National Film Awards for the best film on environment conservation was bagged by a Malayalam film on the nameless workers who keep a city running.

For all its applauded elan, Malayalam cinema has engendered the myth and the mystique of the “empowered” Malayali woman.