Aesthetic reconfiguration and theformation of the cultural self in popular media representations: a study of the visual culture practices of Kerala in the 1990s

Abstract

With the introduction of neo-liberal economic policies in the 1990s by the Government of India, Kerala also fell in line with consumerist tendencies. These economic changes brought about shifts in popular attitudes, thereby affecting popular culture as well. Long-standing traditions of aesthetic expressions in popular culture were replaced by newly emerging combinations. This study aims to map the underlying cultural patterns that brought about these changes, particularly those that emerged in visual media aesthetics. One of the significant factors that altered the way Malayalis expressed their aesthetic preferences was the new visual media configurations. The thesis hypothesizes the existence of a field of hybridized culture in Kerala in 1990s resulting from these new visual media configurations. Therefore, the study posits an aesthetic reconfiguration as a combined result of all these factors. This inherently points to a changed cultural self that assimilated the new aesthetic values of the globalized idea of modernity and thereby liberated from conflicting traditional and textual anchorage. Television played a definitive role in this context as it effectively educated people in the new visual media aesthetics. Visual technology stirred up new forms of aesthetic experience for the masses. Traditional frameworks lost their hold on aesthetic values since the new experiences were closely related to a new global context played out by corporate capital. In the new cultural terrain, there was evident visual overload that overshadowed other forms of experiences. Everyone in the new space began to occupy subject positions by engaging in the consumption and reproduction of the new visual experience. The study examines the nature of these visual cultural practices and the changes they brought to the cultural self of Kerala. A historical examination reveals how the cultural space of Kerala is inherently open to ideals of Western modernity assimilated through historical factors like trade relations, migration, and English medium education. In the context of colonial modernity in the second half of the nineteenth century, these ideals converged into new aesthetic practices associated with ‗fine art‘.This change resulted in a conflict between tradition and modernity, which in turn created a split in the cultural self. The popular aesthetic choices reflect this split in various forms and themes. Raja Ravi Varma, as an iconic artist of this period, expressed this split of cultural self in his art. Many characteristics of his art recur in the popular aesthetic practices in the twentieth century, such as the illustrations in the Painkili periodicals. In other words, this split in the cultural self remained as the core driving force in cultural practices of Kerala until the 1990s. Malayalam cinema, through its popular and parallel pathways, marks this conflict internally. Cinema, as a form of technological innovation, represented modernity. It tried to remedy the conflict arising from its affiliation with modern technology by adapting traditional aesthetic experiences in its themes and visual representations. The emergence of middlebrow cinema in the 1980s is an evident form that addressed this situation. It was a new combination for the middle class that emerged as a deciding factor for the convenient and stress-free enjoyment of the modern value system. Until 1990s Malayalam cinema continued to express the same conflict in various forms. Television emerged as a national medium and, as a product of technology; it has been associated with cultural pollution from the West. In Kerala, it faced many forms of cultural resistance, including being regarded as a representation of imperialistic power. Despite the resistance, it could make a strong cultural impact, especially among the growing middle class. Television, as an object of modernity and as a form of visual entertainment, expressed the same conflict between tradition and modernity in various forms. However, by the 1990s, television was able to prepare the cultural and aesthetic attitude of Malayalis for accepting the new visual culture entering the cultural milieu through various channels of globalization. With the entry of satellite television channels in the 1990s, a new age of visuality emerged. The concept of tradition lost its textual anchoring and turned out to be a consumer object with imagined nostalgic value. Malayalam cinema, as a visual aesthetic experience, underwent many transformations by accepting this change and recognizing the aesthetics of leisure, imagined nostalgia, and celebration of the new floating concepts of life as its core themes and forms. In this context, the visual cultural practices do not carry the conflict of tradition and modernity. These transformations in the visual cultural practices endorse an altered attitude towards aesthetic choices that have lost their lodging in the traditional value conduits. The cultural self emerging from this is expressive of its liberation from textual bondage and celebrates its capacity to float free.