THE ‘ORDINARY’ MEN: AN ANALYSIS OF MASCULINE REPRESENTATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY MALAYALAM CINEMA

Power packed performances of the male lead with the goons flying in the air has become a mundane visual treat for the Malayali audience. It is those heroes with the ‘guy next to door' image that the audience feels acceptable and relatable. Malayalam film industry, popularly known as Mollywood, witnessed in the year 2022 the release of a couple of brilliant films notable for their scrupulous character portrayals. Such characters narrated and detailed the lives and ways of common men and thus were critically acclaimed post release, as noticeable entries in contemporary popular culture. Culture demands and conditions men and women to act out their gender roles in specific ways, which in turn, put pressures on them to live up to the expectations of the societal and cultural standards. The paper intends to focus on these aspects by analyzing three Malayalam films – Puzhu, Malayankunju, and Nna Thaan Case Kodu, all released in the year 2022. All these three movies have different plot settings and character sketches, but are unique in respect of the portrayal of male protagonists in them. According to Raewyn Connell's categorization of masculinities, each of the male characters in the film identified belongs to hegemonic, marginalized, and sub-ordinate masculine categories. The main focus of the paper is to analyze the ideologies of masculine representations in the popular media and thereby to point out the cultural nuances in these portrayals.