Disciplining the Madhouse: A Study on The Kitchen and Joker

Abstract

Man’s frustrations and sufferings are chiefly attributed to the society in which he lives. The paper unveils the socio-cultural-psychological conflicts reflected in the kitchen sink drama, The Kitchen,  and in the Malayalam movie, Joker. The play, The Kitchen, by Arnold Wesker portrays the traumatic situations occurring on a single day in the busy restaurant named Tivoli. If the world is a stage for Shakespeare, it is a kitchen for Wesker. It is life in miniature form as it deals with a variety of themes like romance, pregnancy, theft, betrayal, conflicts, brutal enmity, follies of class structure and so on.  The hero of the play Peter bursts out in the last part of the play as he realises that he does not fit into the madhouse. The main objective of the paper is to investigate the victimization of class structure which adversely affects the people who belong to the lower strata of society.  Directed by Lohitdas, the film, Joker, unveils the happenings in a circus company. In the first part of the film, the characters live happily as one family in spite of the financial constraints, forgetting individual differences of class, caste and gender. But with the entry of  Sudheer, the whole harmony is lost. The movie and the play focus on the triangular love story, but the paper highlights the problems of the marginalised category in a disciplined workspace. The paper also analyses the works with the Foucauldian concept of discipline.