Kumbalangi Nights as the counternarrative of Manichithrathazhu: delineating the gendered nature of madness in Malayalam cinema

Name of Author : Anitta Anna Moncy

Abstract: Michael Foucault has famously defined madness as “false punishment of a false solution, which by its own virtue brings to light the real problem, which can then be truly resolved.” Even though madness is regarded as a culture-neutral and objective phenomenon, aberration from the normative of a culture has always been considered as ‘madness’. Construction of ‘normal’ is a political process, and when it comes to gender, which is a socio-cultural construct, the definition of normative behaviour varies from culture to culture. Chronological and regional factors can also affect this construction of ‘normal’. This paper is a comparative analysis of two cult classic Malayalam films- Manichithrathazhu (1993) and Kumbalangi Nights (2019), based on how they portray normalcy and deviance and how the gendered colouring of madness in Malayalam film industry changed within three decades. When the former film portrayed the madness of a woman inside a patriarchal culture and family, the latter proclaimed that patriarchy itself is the madness. Among the rising lot of films which exemplify this paradigm shift, these two films are carefully selected for this analysis, as they are packed with powerful semiotic codes for the audience to decode and deconstruct.

Keywords : Patriarchy-Madness-Gender-Culture-Normal-Toxicity-Submissiveness-Masculiniy-Docility-Binary-Malayalam Films-New Normal

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