Belittled Cultural Representation: Critiquing Disability Discourses in Malayalam Cinema

The concept of normalcy presented in popular media and mainstream culture is complex, causing marginalised sections to be subjugated further. Indian cinema has always conformed to the conventional norms that glorify non-disabled, heterosexual, masculine bodies where minority communities are treated as ‘the other’. Ableism is still prevalent in movies, where they continue to create a hierarchy of disability stigma, negative stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination in multiple ways. Malayalam films, while trying to foreground aesthetic, traditional and moral values, knowingly or unknowingly become tools that promote the ‘ideal’ utopian world where there are no impaired bodies/minds. Over the course of time, the invisibility of disability in movies gave way to mocking, objectifying and commodifying persons with disabilities. Even those that come out with the label ‘disability films’ sometimes seem to be doing very little justice to themselves. The depiction of disability in an infantilised as well as an institutionalised manner occurs as a result of the harmful misconception that it is associated with illness, pity and dependency. Portraying disability as the ultimate punishment for one’s ancestors’ sins and using the particular idea to indicate evil omens is a trend even in contemporary narrative film. Desexualising disabled bodies diverts attention from individuals to physical structures and misleads the non-disabled audience to believe that disabled people lack sexual desires. Supporting characters who are disabled mostly turn out to be over-dramatising and end up being comic elements. The reluctance of the entertainment industry to cast disabled performers in disabled roles is another example of how ableism works. The paper does not limit its focus to a particular text alone but identifies a couple of Malayalam film narratives post 1990s, from the perspectives of a disability studies researcher and a film student. This study is also an attempt to destigmatise disability by rejecting the politically-incorrect notions that have been normalised over decades. Although the term constitutes a single category, disability as a cultural theme is diverse, with a plurality of different individual groups through which disabled people embrace and celebrate their identities. Considering how cinema impacts national consciousness, contributes to public opinion and influences their socio-political understanding, it is very significant to talk about and question the wrong ways in which sensitive topics like disability are placed on screen.

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