Param Sundari and Bollywood stereotypes of Kerala

An expansive green carpet of coconut trees is probably the first sight of Kerala for someone about to land in any of the airports in the State. It might not be a coincidence that a ubiquitous presence in the average Bollywood screenwriter’s imagination of Kerala is, well, coconuts. Those who take the trouble to look a little closer might also include the other favourite touristy cinematic tropes – women wearing jasmine flowers in their hair, a capsule version of Kathakali, houseboats, Kalaripayattu and tea plantations.

Param Sundari, directed by Tushar Jalota and starring Sidharth Malhotra and Janhvi Kapoor in the lead roles, ticks most of these boxes, along with a version of Malayalam which most Malayalis could not decipher even after a couple of listens. The expert linguists among them decoded Janhvi Kapoor’s self-introduction in the trailer as “Thekkapetta Sundari”, which colloquially means “deceived beauty”. What the makers probably intended to convey was that Sundari belongs to “Thekkeppattil”, a house or family name.

It might sound like a minor slip up, but this and a flurry of other mispronounced Malayalam lines in the movie point to a larger problem in Bollywood’s attempt at representing unfamiliar cultures below the Vindhyas. The actors are not really to blame in these cases, but the makers of such big-budget cinematic ventures betray a refusal to do the bare minimum to understand another culture that they are attempting to portray on screen. Not much spending would be required to bring in someone who understands the language to listen in and tell them whether the dialogues sound authentic or laughable. The irony is that Malayali actor Priya Prakash Varrier was used as an extra with no dialogues in one of the scenes in the film.

Bollywood, just like Hollywood, has been reluctant to choose actors belonging to the ethnic background of the characters they are supposedly portraying. But even if we ignore this issue, which is dictated by commercial considerations and box-office pull of the stars, another glaring problem persists. Evidently, there is a lack of that little bit of extra effort to bring in the much-needed rootedness and authenticity to the portrayals or the performance, which could do wonders to the film.

Although it is not strictly a Bollywood or Hindi film, as a work by a non-Malayali, one need not look further than Payal Kapadia’s much-feted All We Imagine as Light for how she effectively used original lines in the language with the help of a Malayali co-dialogue writer. On the other hand, the team behind Param Sundari was busy issuing copyright strikes to take down online videos by Malayali influencers critical of its portrayal of the State and the language. Shreya Ghoshal has become a household name in the South for her near-perfect renditions of songs in all the languages, mainly through the hard work she does to understand the right diction and meaning of each word she sings.

Although actresses from South India have found stardom in Bollywood, mainly by assimilating into the culture up north, the film industry has often leaned on worn-out stereotypes in its attempts at representing the southern States. The intention in such attempts is not to depict a State in all its glorious diversity, but to stitch together the most identifiable, and thus overused, characteristics to make something which would fetch box-office returns. The curiosity about another culture or the yearning to study it to portray it convincingly is clearly not a priority.

This pattern has perpetuated itself over the decades. While the exaggerated portrayals in the initial years could be forgiven as disparate people of a vast country trying to discover and understand each other, the caricaturish approach seen in the post-Internet decades, be it of Tamilians in Chennai Express and Two States or of Malayalis in Param Sundari, is unfortunate. Though South Indian film industries have also in the past resorted to caricatures of those up north, the films in recent decades are notable for perceptive portrayals of characters from other States.

Part of the anger against Param Sundari in Kerala has to do with the fact that it came close on the heels of the National Award for The Kerala Story, a movie many Malayalis view as an attempt to defame the State. Ahead of the film’s release two years ago, various organisations from Kerala had moved the Supreme Court calling for a ban. Though the Supreme Court and the Kerala High Court refused to stay the film’s release, the makers of the film had to remove its teaser after their claim about “32,000 women” from Kerala joining the IS was proved to be false. They also added a statement to the film which said that it was a work of fiction, but the damage was done.

Although Param Sundari is a harmless romantic comedy compared to that film, it still makes one wish for filmmakers to do better. Its defenders argue that commercial movies made for the sake of entertainment should be taken lightly and spared from harsh criticism. Taking the point further, they also claim that caricaturish representation of other cultures is part of the game for such movies, while accurate representation is required only in the case of documentaries. Such uninformed, distant portrayals of other cultures are the first step towards othering them.

Art is meant to build bridges and bring people closer, not to perpetuate misconceptions about each other and pull them further apart. Cinema, even with all of its inherent commercial considerations, can be used more responsibly and meaningfully. Rather than a distant, aerial view from which only the coconut trees can be seen, filmmakers should strive for a more complete picture, with their feet on the ground.