Screening trans narratives: representation of transwomen in Indian regional cinema

In India, the cinema industry has gotten a facelift with the absorption of regional cinema into its defined and confined boundaries, which was earlier a monopoly of commercial Bollywood films as well as award-winning Hindi films. One of the pertinent problems it deals with is the societal, political, and individual negligence towards the marginalised and underprivileged gender minority communities in different parts of the country. This essay traces how transwomen are represented in Indian regional cinema and how the two representative South Indian films, Nanu Avanalla Avalu (2015) and Njan Marykutty (2018), chosen for study, become visual texts which mark clear demarcation from the existing trans narratives and call for a progressive perception to the representation of transwomen in regional cinema. A critical analysis of these films brings forth the nuances and politics of the representation of transwomen on screen by emphasising the construction and contestation of transfemininity and its association with the visible and invisible cisheteronormative patriarchal power play prevalent in society. It also examines the cinematic construction of transphobia directed towards transwomen and concludes on how such progressive narratives can pave the way for an inclusive society through sensitisation of their experiences and issues to a mass audience.