Urvashi on Screen: Undoing The ‘Kula Sthree’ Heroine in Malayalam Cinema

Abstract

This paper attempts to examine Malayalam cinema of the 80s and 90s as an ‘ethnographic site’ to review Urvashi’s performances on screen, giving way to new modes of sense-perceptions of “womanhood” on screen, than what was expected from a ‘kulina’ female star on the screenThis study is an attempt at a feminist recovery responding to call for looking at how audio-visual strategies have been mobilized to create sensory perceptions within the melodramatic form in vernacular cinema, through different iterations. In this paper, I have examined how Urvashi through her own style of acting put together new rhythms of sense-perceptions in Malayalam cinema, that often disturbed and sometimes subverted codes that were used to embody the ideal feminine or the kulasthree heroine on screen.