Desire, Youth, and Realism in Tamil Cinema

Abstract

This article first examines representations of women's desire in Tamil cinema, from highly implicit and non‐transgressive representations of desire in an older movie to linguistically explicit and transgressive representations of desire in a recent hit movie. We then examine how such contemporary filmic representations are related to what we call a mode of realist spectatorship, and how this mode of spectatorship is linked to a particular social group (male youth) and to film form. We argue that the emergence of this mode of spectatorship, the films associated with it, and their connection to male youth are due to changes in the film market and to differential socialization by generation. Finally, we argue for realism in film as holding when film form and spectatorship are highly calibrated in the following way: some set of filmic representations are evaluated by viewers and filmmakers through culturally mediated classifications of "real" and "unreal" which are operationalized truth‐functionally in events of evaluation; such representations presuppose these classifications, and by virtue of regular presupposition can entail an experience of "reality" for viewers.

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