Meena T. Pillai (ed.) - Women in Malayalam Cinema: Naturalising Gender Hierarchies

W OMEN IN M ALAYALAM C INEMA

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W OMEN IN M ALAYALAM C INEMA
Naturalising Gender Hierarchies

Edited by
Meena T. Pillai

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To

Tara,
watching you grow up unravelled to me the processes of
becoming becoming women in Kerala

Contents

Part I: INTRODUCTION

Meena T. Pillai

Part II: HISTORICAL MAPPINGS OF GENDER

P. K. Nair

C. S. Venkiteswaran

V. C. Harris

Part III: REPRESENTING WOMEN? THE SEXUAL CONTRACT

Janaky Sreedharan

K. Gopinath

Bindu Menon

Part: IV: CONTEMPORARY CROSSINGS: FOILED PROMISES

Jenny Rowena

T. Muraleedharan

Deedi Damodaran

Ratheesh Radhakrishnan

Acknowledgements

I do not have words enough to thank the contributors to this volume for their patience, enthusiasm and perseverance, all of which I put to test umpteen times. Without their untiring support this volume would have been next to impossible. I fondly remember Sivapriyaher encouragement and her trust in me which made this dream come true. I thank Sri N. Gopalakrishnan who generously provided the slides and photos. Thanks to Ms Hemlata K. Shankar and Mimi Choudhury for all their help.

PART I

Introduction

Chapter 1
Becoming Women

Unwrapping Femininity in Malayalam Cinema
M EENA T. P ILLAI

K erala occupies a unique position in the socio-cultural and political map of India and is way ahead of many other states in terms of social development indicators like birth and death rates, infant mortality, maternal mortality, sex ratio, fertility rate, economic growth and literacy. Of late the Kerala Model of development has generated much critical interest worldwide owing to its peculiar pattern of a developmental conceit, which records accelerated social achievements and high development output on a rather depleted and shaky economic base with minimal agricultural and industrial growth. These high social development indices have given rise to the myth of Malayali women as enjoying higher status than their counterparts elsewhere in the country, especially in view of the fact of high female literacy in the state. This myth has been augmented and nurtured by evidence that matrilineal forms of kinship patterns were prevalent among certain communities in Kerala. However, what is to be taken into consideration here is that between 1896 and 1976 as many as twenty legislations were enacted in the erstwhile states of Travancore, Cochin and Malabar, and later on in the current state of Kerala (which is an amalgamation of the earlier princely states), in order to gradually revoke the legal framework of matriliny (Eapen and Kodoth 2001). These legislations sought to radically change the structure and practices of families through changes in marriage, inheritance and succession patterns that were largely patrifocal and aimed at weakening womens access and control over inherited resources, while at the same time curtailing their power over their own lives. The high level of female literacy and employment, one-third reservation of seats in local governance bodies, high sex ratio and low fertility rates together with high female physical health achievements indicate that the women of Kerala have defi nitely achieved a certain amount of social and political empowerment in the public domain. However, the alarming rise in the rate of female suicide, domestic violence, dowry-related issues, gender-based crimes and greater prevalence of mental disorders among women also point towards a fall-back in the position of women within the domestic sphere. Apparently, it is through bargaining and compromising their autonomy and agency within the private sphere that women have been able to negotiate their way into the public domain. Thus, one can safely surmise that it is through double enslavement and reiterative identifi cation with familial norms and ideals that the women of Kerala have managed to acquire a role and visibility in the paid workforce of the state. But here again, paradoxically enough, their pay cheques can hardly ever be encashed for economic freedom or social mobility.
It is no wonder then that though Kerala is one of Indias foremost states in terms of socio-economic status, health conditions and general standards of living, where social history has recorded liberal thought, progressive movements and emancipatory struggles at far higher levels than elsewhere in the country, feminism here remains, in popular parlance, a word evoking derogatory and hostile reactions. Though there have been movements and agitations by womens groups and collectives for equality and gender justice, they have been by and large issue-based and have not really sought to address basic issues such as womens subordination within the family or reframing the parameters of man-woman relation within which is located the main issue of womens oppression. Feminism, perceived as a threat to the bourgeois family, has forced many women to steer clear of the label and adopt a defensive and conservative stance when forced to confront gender reform issues at any level whatsoever.
Keralas peculiar native brand of what I would call a liberal patriarchal pseudo-feminism has provided women a semblance of emancipation with equal legal and property rights, the right to education and other rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Yet education and social grooming have been kept at conservative levels with continuing emphasis on the feminine mystique teaching girls that they are essentially wives and mothers. At no level of education has any attempt been made at raising consciousness to create women of independent thought and action. So the family continues to be the unchallenged bastion of patriarchy, where inspite of the so-called political and legal equality womens subordination begins, brews and spills over to other societal structures at large. Even as a large number of women from the middle and working classes step out of their homes to make a livelihood, there is a visible hurry to get back and re-emphasise their own roles as mothers, wives and daughters-in-law as though to gain sanction and sanctimony for their further forays into the outer world. In this context one can perceive an imperative need in Keralas society today to look at and integrate representations of women, especially in the wake of knowledge of the problematic nature of representation itself, which can only be incomplete and partial interpretations rather than objective description of reality. In a world where femininity is forced upon women, the least they can do is to be vigilant in their representations of themselves and how they read and decode such representations by others. It is in this context that I propose to situate the emergent discourse of cinema in Kerala in the early 1940s and analyse how it has sought from then till now, in varying degrees, to consolidate and reinforce the patrifocal ideology of a society that was and is continually struggling to efface a matrilineal past by pegging down with vigour the contours of normative femininity that deny women their identity.