Research Online at MacEwan :: Browsing by Author "Suresh, Adith K."

Browsing by Author "Suresh, Adith K."

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Between the borders of life and art: Roman Polanski’s transgressive negotiations
(2023) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
Roman Polanski’s films are noted for their subversive psychological style that explores themes of sexuality, desire, alienation, and violence. His narratives often reflect a dark sense of humour through which the director perceives the absurdity of the human condition in relation to his own cultural dislocations and artistic eccentricity. This article investigates how different connotations of transgression play a major role in defining Roman Polanski as a filmmaker. It specifically explores how the polysemy of transgression structures Polanski as an artist whose real and cinematic negotiations are often intertwined. Through the constant subversion of moral, cultural, and social discourses, his visual style and narrative ideology maintain a notorious affinity that disturbs the notion of reality and manipulates it with new narrative texts. It is the idea of transgression that changes the way Polanski’s auteur status is perceived, appreciated, and rejected for his actions and creations in the past and their repercussions in the present. Polanski’s works use historical, social, and personal realities to renegotiate his transgressive image in real life by incorporating his contested victim status and persecuted selfhood in narratives that manipulate both the past and present.
Bodies that need queering: the queer hetero-topias in Malayalam cinema
(2023) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
This edited volume offers a comprehensive understanding of the queer space in tandem with the transforming socio-cultural-political relationships in a country that exhibits diversified shades of ideologies and history – that is, India. The featured essays deal with the presence of queerness in visual media, particularly in films and the digital arena, from multilingual and multicultural perspectives, thus creating an exhaustive discourse encompassing argument and analysis. This book aims to depict the plurality and complexity of the Indian scenario, fostering mass acceptance of queerness, a rare scholastic endeavour.
Bollywood self-fashioning: Indian popular culture and representations of girlhood in 1970s Indian cinema
(2023) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
This article investigates how Bollywood cinema represented girlhood experiences in India in the early 1970s. It argues that the films during this time focused on representing girls who displayed a variety of new fashion styles and attitudes, some of which were borrowed from western cultures. This was a sign that there was a new way of representing girls which broke with the submissive, dull and melancholic sari-wearing Indian female stereotype entrapped within domestic settings. The immediate result of this was the emergence of new style leaders and popular icons in Indian popular cinema. This study uses Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning and Guy Mankowski’s idea of self-design to examine how Indian girlhood was renegotiated in the 1970s as an individual-centric idea with more agency and power. Here, self-fashioning refers to the way girls adopt new elements of fashion, styles and attitudes to distinguish their identity from earlier archetypal modes of representation in film and culture. It specifically analyses the emergence of Jaya Bhaduri in Guddi (1971) and Dimple Kapadia in Bobby (1973) as case studies to understand the transformation of girlhood representations in early 1970s Bollywood that opened a new space for girls to redefine their selfhood through the assimilation of consumerism, western culture and fashion styles.
Cultural monsters in Indian cinema: the politics of adaptation, transformation and disfigurement
(2022) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
In India, a popular trope is adapting cultural myths and religious iconographies into visceral images of the monster in literary and visual representations. Cinematic representations of the Indian monster are modelled on existing folklore narratives and religious tales where the idea of the monster emerges from cultural imagination and superstitions of the land. Since it rationalizes several underlying archetypes in which gods are worshipped in their monstrous identities and disposition, the trope of the monster is used in cinema to indicate the transformation from an ordinary human figure to a monstrous human Other. This paper examines cinematic adaptations of monster figures in Malayalam cinema, the South Indian film industry of Kerala. The cultural practice of religious rituals that worship monstrous gods is part of the collective imagination of the land of Kerala through which films represent fearsome images of transformed humans. This article argues that cultural monsters are human subjects that take inspiration from mythical monster stories to perform in a terrifying way. Their monstrous disposition is a persona that is both a powerful revelation of repressed desires and a manifestation of the resistance against certain cultural fears associated with them. The analysis of several Malayalam films, such as Kaliyattam (1997) Manichithrathazhu (1993) and Ananthabhadram (2005), reveals how film performance adapts mythological narrative elements to create new cultural intertexts of human monsters that are psychotically nuanced and cinematically excessive.
Diaspora dilemmas and deadlocks: the Indian immigration flux and struggled survival in Canada
(2024) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.; Rajan, S. Irudaya
The diverse and complex experiences of the Indian diaspora in Canada are defined by a range of social, political, and cultural parameters. This chapter examines how the recent dramatic increase in the rate of Indian immigration to Canada has intensified challenges related to identity crises, acculturation, discrimination, and racism. It argues that the concept of Indianness unites culturally distinct sub-groups to shape the diasporic community’s existence. Pro-immigration policies often serve political agendas, influenced by Eurocentric biases. The reality of Indian life in Canada restructures transnational Indianness and diasporic existence, and the discourse of immigration plays a significant role in the construction of popular beliefs, which are often misconceptions based on falsehood.
Disruptive desires and creative transgressions in Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe
(2023) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.; Hodge, Matthew; Barkman, Adam; Sanna, Antonio
Julie Taymor’s career as a stage director, filmmaker, and costume designer has demonstrated the many possibilities of artistic adaptations that visualize characters, situations, emotions, and reality as a whole in new ways. Her works deconstruct classic texts and creative worlds to bring an altered visual experience through which she challenges the relationship between creation, adaptation, and perception. Taymor’s investigations seek to extract what an artistic work contains and imagine how it can be presented using different mediums. Whether it is adapting dramas for the stage, directing films, or staging operas, she finds her own versions by incorporating elements and art forms that reinvent a fresh way of telling a story.
Forbidden spectacles of a bygone era: an analysis of Malayalam cinema’s soft-porn noon-show culture
(2024) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
The cultural paradigms of the soft-porn era in Malayalam cinema had an emancipatory quality where the sensationalized body of the ‘bombshell’ starlets captivated the voyeuristic perceptions of regional spectators.* The celebration of these films by a suburban audience constructed a new public space for the realization of carnal desires and taboo fantasies. This article investigates how the soft-porn noon-shows contributed to a unique cultural experience of film-viewing in Kerala in the late 1990s that challenged the cultural elitism associated with regional cinema. It investigates the role of the audience in defining the historical significance of the noon-show theatres, together with their origin, popularity and fall in the larger narrative of the evolutionary metamorphosis of Malayalam cinema. The softcore phenomenon was an organic subversion of the hegemonic ideology of cinema, which has been used by upper-class cultural powers to maintain their moral presuppositions.
From closeness to openness: repositioning of the Indian kitchen and restructuring of the gender system
(2022) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
The concept of the kitchen is an integral part of household interiors that defines a space of interactivity essential to the organic existence of individuals in society. The traditional Indian kitchen is a closed space separated from the living room and other open spaces where members interact regularly. It is conventionally established as a gendered space restricted for women members to partake in activities of food production, serving, and cleaning. The modern idea of the kitchen, especially seen in Western architecture, is articulated through the notion of ‘openness’ which strictly contradicts the ‘closeness’ of the Indian kitchen. This paper examines how the transformation from an Indian spice kitchen (separated structuring of the kitchen in a way to contain the smell of spices from spreading to other parts of the house) to a modern open kitchen redefines the existing gender coordinates of the land. It uses two critically acclaimed Malayalam films—from the south Indian cinema of Kerala— namely Salt N’ Pepper (2011) and The Great Indian Kitchen (2021) to analyze and differentiate the visual representations of the open and closed kitchens in India. It argues that a restructured modern kitchen challenges the traditional gendered kitchen and nourishes a participatory culture that demands open interaction from all participants.
Greta Thunberg in Canada: climate activism, mediated imagery, and public sphere
(2022) Thomas, Ronie; Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
The significance of the ongoing climate debates is characterized by discursive media representations that disseminate mediated constructs of images and ideas to the public sphere. By analysing the recent accounts of Greta Thunberg’s visit to Edmonton, Alberta, this research paper examines the effect of media representations in forming public opinion. It argues that celebrating the emergence of a new Thunberg-era climate discourse through mediated images has reinforced political, cultural, and economic scepticisms that led to repercussions in the form of agitations in the democratic process. Exposure to discourses in the form of activism, counter-activism, and propaganda has had an impact on the oil-based economy of Canada, especially in the results of the 2019 federal election. Through the focused visualization of mediated imagery, these discourses can play an agenda-setting role in shaping public opinion, even in the presence of a refeudalized public sphere.
Indian television and the rise of the local: televised realities of localized sociocultural experience
(2023) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.; Reza, S. M. Shameem; Roy, Ratan Kumar
This chapter explores the idea that the influence of television on the localized public provides new pathways for the 'local' to emerge out of traditional contexts to new grounds of modernity. The visibility of the localized subjects on the television screen and their individual participation in popular programmes distinguishes the television public from earlier forms of interactions in the form of socialization and collective viewing. The current chapter critically approaches the notion of 'localized sociocultural experience' through the analysis of "televised realities" on Indian television. It argues that Indian reality television thrives on the emotional revenue of middle-class aspirations and the commodification of local poverty culture.
Mothers of the South: power, suffering, and identity in maternal narratives of South Indian cinema
(2025) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
The representation of motherhood in Indian cinema is often based on conventional gender norms, its ideology and performance aligning with the traditional patrifocal social structures where women are marginalised and oppressed. This paper dissects the portrayals of motherhood in South Indian cinema that intersect with various identities in which such representations redefine the concept of motherhood with diverse socio-cultural, regional, and personal identities. It examines how motherhood representations in South Indian cinema, with a special focus on two pan-Indian blockbuster movie series: Bahubali: The Beginning (2015) and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017); K.G.F: Chapter 1 (2018) and K.G.F: Chapter 2 (2022) glorify the suffering of the mother and fundamentally elevate the mother’s role as a commanding and influential force, contributing significantly to the heroic stature of hypermasculine protagonists. It also explores Malayalam cinema, the film industry based in the State of Kerala, to understand how select films represent the mother as an emotionally vulnerable and transformative character. This study delves into cinematic examples that illustrate the evolving nature of matrescence, examining how South Indian filmmakers navigate the complex web of intersecting identities to present multifaceted maternal cultural narratives.
Picturing the Anthropocene through flood narratives: the environmental disaster discourse in Indian cinema
(2022) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.; Nicosia, Enrico; Lopez, Lucrezia
Narratives of disaster play a significant role in the construction of perspectives on the Anthropocene. In an age where human activity has crossed many boundaries to explicitly reveal the imminent threat of ecological degradation, environmental disasters need to be addressed with utmost seriousness. Cinema being the popular art of the technologically advanced and globalized world, it is possible to realistically visualize environmental disasters and their impact on the ecosystem. For instance, cinematic representation of geographies of the tropical regions affected by climate change and natural disasters helps one understand the complex sociocultural repercussions that restructure the very fabric of organic life. This chapter examines how narratives of flood in Indian cinema define the notion of ecological disaster in India. Floods are one of the most common natural disasters in India as their sudden and long-term impact on the natural environment puts the lives of millions of people and animals at risk. Films that show floods as a narrative tend to emphasize the cultural disorientation as a result of the monstrosity of water. This can be argued as an anti-romantic approach whereas such narratives essentially subvert the aesthetics of rain, acommon theme in Indian cinema. When floods alter the geography of a region, it reflects the vulnerability of a given population and the consequences of human activity that force them to vacate the premises of their habitat. Using contemporary disaster discourses, this chapter deconstructs the spectacles of flood in Indian cinema to understand their overarching impact on the geography, culture, and life in India.
Postmodern transpositions of Shakespeare in Malayalam cinema – a transformative discourse of regional tragedy
(2021) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
The evolution of Malayalam cinema into a new format of experimental filmmaking is central to the analysis of Shakespearean adaptations in the contemporary era of what can be referred to as a postmodern “New Wave” Malayalam cinema. This is an age where Shakespeare departs from his conventional past, both literary and cinematic, to a new realm of highly disoriented imaginations and fragmented identities. The tragedies that defined Shakespeare are now integrated with the changing landscapes, narratives, and perceptions of the Malayali identity. Therefore, this analysis looks beyond the acclaimed Jayaraj adaptations in Malayalam to understand how this new trend of transposing canonical works of Shakespeare replaces a different localized setting, which is essentially devoid of the previously established characteristics such as the invocation of a mythological tone, visualization of the traditional past of Kerala, and the artistic overindulgence on acting and narration. The outright rejection of this attitude defines the post-Jayaraj Shakespeare adaptations of Malayalam cinema, and films like Annayum Rasoolum (2013), Iyobinte Pusthakam (2014), Eeda (2018), and Joji (2021) are examples of this new approach.
Postmodernity and elevated horror in The Lodge (2019)
(2024) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
The Lodge (2019), directed by Austrian directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, explores dimensions of the disturbed psychological realm of its female protagonist, played by Riley Keough. The film's narrative establishes an unsettling atmospheric horror and is a play with elements of mental health, dysfunctional family, religious iconography, and superstitions. This chapter analyses the film through the notion of "elevated horror," a category of horror cinema that utilizes the artistic aspects of the horror genre to create a cinematic form that transgresses the archetypal jump-scare tropes of conventional horror. It argues that this form of horror relies more on obscure realities and fragmented states of the mind through symbolic and interpretive modes, thus defining postmodernity in horror cinema. This study examines the cinematic form, narrative style, and thematic concerns of The Lodge to analyse how it subverts the rational discourse of modernity and replaces it with a postmodern structure. It specifically investigates how the film's centralization of guilt and grief reflects psychological disorientation that disrupts normative social institutions like family and religion to disseminate a postmodern incredulity towards their many established metanarratives.
Reframing Islam in Bollywood cinema: a study on the construction of the Islamic identity in Indian cinema
(2023) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
This paper examines how stereotypical perceptions contribute to the construction of Muslim identity narratives in the context of Indian nationalism and the history of the Indo-Pak Partition. The main focus of this study is on how mainstream cinema portrayed the historical and nationalistic struggles of Partition through which the Muslim identity was shaped and shared through a range of communicative mediums. The verbal, physical, ritualistic and virtual modes of communication play significant roles in the construction and performance of identity. Analyzing films of mainstream Indian cinema, this article explores how expressions of the Indian Muslim are associated with the concept of Indian nationalism and its violent history of Partition and border politics where the stereotypical perceptions of Islam and Muslim identity contribute to the shaping of public opinion. It argues that whenever the corporeality of Indian Muslims is expressed through such forms, they get incorporated into the existing historic-geographical narratives, fictionalized as ideal stereotypes, normalized to fit into a particular political or ideological view, and finally get solidified into a set of polarized collective identities.
Remastering Prince and authenticity: marketing the posthumous cultural artefacts of a past musical life
(2022) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
Hailed as one of the most versatile artists of his time, Prince is marked in history for his revolutionary music that rendered his appearance as a cultural icon across various music aficionados around the world. The posthumous evolution of Prince’s legacy is largely embedded in the reproduction and (re)release of material that not only presents him as a music artist but a commercial product for the market. This created a new cultural space where the reception of an exceptional creative artist found new dimensions, and the commercial value of his musical life became equally important as its cultural and artistic significance. The release of the Super Deluxe Sign o’ the Times 2020 box set is one of the recent evidence of such a situation in which material enacted as cultural artefacts preserves and transposes Prince to a new generation of musical reception. This article analyses the ideas of marketability and authenticity in the contemporary era reception of Prince and its ongoing attempts to appropriate cultural artefacts through commodification and commercialization. It argues that cultural artefacts do not replicate the authentic lived career of Prince but, on the contrary, they reflect the past legacy of an iconic star to maintain his marketability in a new era of music, performance and cultural activities.
Representing Anthropocene trauma: disaster narratives of the Bhopal gas tragedy in Indian cinema
(2025) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.; Lim, Yiru; Lye, Kit Ying
This chapter addresses the evolving genre of disaster adaptations as engaging spectacles of popular cinema. It contextualizes South Asian disasters in the Anthropocene and examines how the representation of trauma and violence defines the notion of disaster through which cinematic interventions blend fiction and reality. This study examines the infamous Bhopal gas tragedy in India in 1984, one of the worst industrial disasters in the world, as a cinematic text representing the cultural, environmental, and historical dimensions of the regional spaces in shaping the perception of an Anthropogenic disaster. It explores whether such adaptations are effective in educating the masses about the problems associated with environmental disasters that are imminent threats to the future.
Sacrilegious sisters: the sanctification of nunhood in Malayalam cinema
(2024) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.; Harmes, Marcus K.; Harmes, Meredith A.
This chapter delves into the unique portrayal of nunhood in the context of Malayalam cinema, highlighting differences from Western perceptions rooted in Christianity. It contends that the way Malayalees perceive nuns is deeply influenced by cultural norms that promote the subjugation of women through narratives centered on male authority. The concept of nunhood emphasizes chastity, austerity, and devotion– moral elements that reflect the dynamics of male-female relationships in Indian society. By analyzing films that depict nuns conforming to submissive gender roles, this study critically examines how nuns who challenge societal norms and gender stereotypes in response to exploitation create a new discourse of “nunsploitation” in the Indian public sphere. The representation of reformed spiritual femininity on-screen mirrors the real-life transformation of nuns into “new nuns,” who are more aware of their sexuality and are willing to question institutional misogyny within both religion and culture.
Screaming mothers in Malayalam cinema: motherhood as a genre-defying identity in Malayalam cinema
(2022) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
The image of the mother is perhaps one of the most recurring identities in cinema. Even if we do not count those films where a mother is the main protagonist, there are countless films in which the presence of mothers cannot be overlooked. This familiarity with which mothers get over-identified in films makes their representations stereotypical and strictly adhering to the cultural and political mores of the society. Traditionally considered as the most powerful version of femininity, motherhood is often overtly romanticized as the symbolization of ideal female expression. The visual language of Indian cinema has been contributing greatly to the construction of the ideal mother image for a long time, and it chiefly consists of a semiotics full of signifiers that glorify the emotional vulnerability, sacrifice, courage, and suffering associated with motherhood. The performative aspects of motherhood can easily be observed as important in the context of the melodramatic and sentimentalist tradition of Bollywood cinema.
Search for empathy: poverty porn popular culture in Indian television
(2023) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.
The bipolar political conditioning in the Cold War era was perfect for media discourses to find propagandist methods to frame stories in ways that help set special agendas. The coloniser's curiosity for the indigenous and ritualistic cultural forms of these lands was a sign of exploitation rather than inclusion; the looting and importing of natural resources and artistic assets from colonised regions attest to the desire for things that had pure materialistic value. The revulsion associated with the visual perception of these "outside spaces" is fundamental to the construction of power dominance as it signifies notions of social acceptance and rejection. [...]the notion of "disgust" gets associated with the body of the colonised Other, and the representations of the "disgusted other" essentialises cultural identities.

Browsing by Author "Suresh, Adith K."

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