The Vicissitudes of Modern City: The Spatial Hierarchy in Contemporary Malayalam Cinema

Abstract

This paper intends to discuss how city spaces provide the spectacle in contemporary cinema in Malayalam unsettling the village/city dichotomy. But the spectacular city spaces in these movies also recreate city spaces into class, caste and religious markers. On the other hand, the spaces occupied by Muslims, Dalits, immigrant labourers and homosexuals who are often depicted as goons, criminals, addicts and alcoholics provide the margins which serve in the backdrop of the glitter and glamour of emerging city spaces. These dark spaces in the plot, demarcated as urban slums and dump yards, are often contrasted by synoptic and unified images of the glorified city and its inhabitants. Following Lefebvre’s argument of space as a social construct, the paper goes on to explore the recreation of a modernist model of urban space playing the tactics of inclusion and exclusion in these movies. Analyzing, the production of these spaces also reflects the political character of the processes of production involved in the making of these spaces, highlighting the ethos of cultural and political choices that the spectator of a capitalist/consumerist society empathizes with.