Food, film, and femininity: Politics of gendered foodscapes in postmillennial malayalam films

This article analyses the role played by private and public foodscapes portrayed in mainstream, com-mercial, Malayalam films (1950–2020) in which they either propagate or sub-vert the nationalistic agenda of constructing the “ideal Indian woman” as a singular stereotype. Based on Partha Chatterjee’s postcolonial theory of the public/private (ghar/bahir) division, it analyses films that connect gender and space through food, and the pro-cesses of cooking, serving, and eating as catalysts. The foodscapes are mapped in terms of role and location: as kitchen in the private realm, and tea-shop, toddy-shop, and hotel in the public realm. The article argues that on-screen visualization of foodscapes can affect the societal relations of gender, and from this perspective it documents the impact cinema creates in the collective unconscious as it regis-ters social change. It claims that, as cultural carriers of societal structures, regional cinemas contribute to decolonization of the spectatorial psyche.