Fatherhood and precarity: protective fathers and dysfunctional families in Jeethu Joseph’s Drishyam and contemporary Malayalam cinema

Abstract

This chapter examines how the notion of fatherhood is associated with precarity as a sign of a dysfunctional family in contemporary Malayalam cinema, the film industry of the South Indian state Kerala. It argues that recent Malayalam films such as Drishyam (2013) have portrayed the family as a manifestation of the identity of the father. In other words, the psychological state of the father, his secrets and motives, ultimately decide the fate of the family as a structural unit in crisis, because the actions and anxieties of a paternal protagonist often emphasise the need to depend on masculinity and patriarchal privilege to solve problems. A detailed analysis of these films reveals that a male father figure is an essential component in conceptualising the notion of family in the Indian context, and his interventions and transgressions disturb the natural order of the family to conserve what is ideal for the father.