Pain as a Queer Feeling: An Affective Analysis of the Queer Malayalam Movie Moothon (The Elder One)

Human emotions are often perceived in opposition to intellect, as though they exist beneath the faculties of thought and reason. To be emotional is equated with being fragile and affected by others. Darwin considered emotionality as a primitive and flawed element of human existence. Among all the emotions, pain plays an integral part in human experiences and has the power to inflict an enduring mark on the self. The experience of pain affects one in ways that shape fundamental reality and alter one's world perception. People tend to consider pain as an inevitable part of one's existence, and in such a context, it is vital to ask whether some bodies endure more pain than others. Because of the existing social structures and power relations, bodies often become the site of discrimination and violence. In such a context, the movie Moothon emerges as one of the poignant films in Malayalam that experiments with a narrative centred around gay and non-normative lead characters whose lives are perpetually at stake. The plot deals with the narrative of a fourteen-year-old child who absconds to Mumbai in search of their lost brother, Akbar, also known as Moothon. The avant-garde nature of the movie lies in the portrayal of forbidden love, intimacy and the eventual demise of the queer couple. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's work, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, the paper aims to analyse the lead queer character, Akbar, to understand what pain does to a queer body and how it shapes their relationship with the world around them.