The Power of Representation: How Malayalam Movies Shape Attitudes towards Theft

As we live in a visual world, what we see has a great impact on us. Media, especially the visual media influences today’s world immensely and movies top the list. The influence Indian cinema has on the Indian audience is boundless. The primary assertion, the paper makes is that, visual media especially movies have significant impact on the psycho, social and cultural dimensions of the society. Theft being an oft portrayed element in movies, thievery is displayed as an act of heroism in films rather than a crime, especially in Malayalam movies. Crores are pumped in the Malayalam film industry to showcase or exhibit stealing as an act of intelligence. Movies which are mirrors held up to the society, is not only a source of entertainment, but also a medium of propaganda. The message that movies deliver is indeed powerful due to its reach to the masses and since they succeed in influencing both the intelligentsia and the ignoramuses. No other medium is as powerful as the cinema and the impact it creates in the human psyche is incomprehensible. The present article scans through the Malayalam movies namely Meeshamadhavan directed by Lal Jose where the protagonist who is a thief emerges as the saviour of his village, Kinnam Katta Kallan directed by K.K. Haridas in which thievery is taught and designated as a skill and Kayamkulam Kochunni directed by Rosshan Andrews which depicts the famed highway man Kochunni who is considered as a deity and has a shrine dedicated to him in the district of Pathanamthitta in Kerala even in this 21st century. The paper is a genuine attempt to explore the above cited movies in which stealing is not depicted as an unpardonable crime which affects the victims or as a threat to the society but as an act of heroism and intelligence. The paper would deal with the elements that are found in the selected movies by employing the theoretical tools such as Deconstruction, Power, and Encoding and Decoding as explicated by Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall respectively.