Politics of laughter: An introduction to the 1990s’ Malayalam popular comic film

Abstract

This article attempts to consolidate the genre of Malayalam popular comic film of the 1990s. It argues that the comic film cannot be theorized by using categories like ‘star’ and ‘fan club’. It also argues that a true and complete symbolization/representation of the (existing) social field is absent in the Malayalam comic film. It attributes this absence to the comedian‐hero's telling economic and cultural disability. It explores briefly the historical reasons behind the ‘representational shortcomings’ of such heroes in Kerala, and relates those reasons to the emergence of melodrama and comedy/laughter. It claims that in the comic film melodrama results from the failure of representation and, given that the existing socio‐symbolic order is a bourgeois one, it considers this failure positive. It also claims that the inadequate representation allows for the viewer a radical experience of the failure of the existing social field to symbolize the subaltern classes/castes.

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