Power, Politics, and Identity: Subaltern Narratives in Pa Ranjith's 'Kaala'
Abstract
Cinema is a major cultural medium through which power relations, social hierarchy, and marginalised forms of subalternity are represented. In Indian contemporary reality, there has been a marked move towards representing subaltern narrations beyond sympathetic representation, focusing on themes of subaltern agency and struggle for political legitimacy. Under this framework, Kaala, a Tamil film directed by Pa. Ranjith, is an important site to understand the subaltern political possibilities of cinematic form as a site of subaltern political expression itself. This paper aims to explore the way Kaala interprets subaltern narrations based on the tropes used in its narrative, its use of space, its mise en scene, its symbolism, its dialogical features, and its power relations. The paper has adopted a qualitative approach based on the theories of subalterns as well as film theory. The film is studied as a cultural text through a systematic analytical process, viewing the film many times, segmenting analytical blocks, theory-driven coding, and interpretative synthesis. The results reveal that Kaala utilizes cinematic form in the strategic mobilization of counter-hegemony in several ways, where non-linear narrative form emphasizes historical continuity of marginalization, spatial form affirms subaltern legitimacy, visual and symbolic form acknowledges collective dignity, dialogic form is concerned with refusal and resistance, while institutional form articulates exclusion. The study makes an important contribution to film and cultural studies, as it can be seen to show that subaltern agent is articulated within cinema form, beyond representation.
Keywords: Subaltern narratives, Tamil cinema, cinematic form, power and resistance, Kaala.
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