Published Online:March 2025
Product Name:The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJES050325
DOI:10.71329/IUPJES/2025.20.1.55-70
Author Name:Sucharita Sharma and Ankita Choudhary
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:55-70
The study locates films within the social, political and cultural context to analyze them as cultural products and social documents. According to French philosopher Louis Althusser, films are vehicles of ‘ideological dissemination.’ These cultural products, therefore, work as apparatuses or mediums of certain beliefs, values and ideologies which are prominent in a culture. They implant these ideologies in our consciousness with the aid of hegemony. These dominant ideologies divide the society into two groups—the core self of the nation, and ‘other’ minority identities which are marginalized. The representation of Dalits in Indian cinema started in the year 1936 with the film Achhut Kanya. Since then, caste discrimination and Dalits have been prominent subjects for filmmakers. However, even after more than eight decades, movies on these subjects are biased portrayals targeting commercial benefit rather than piercing through the stubborn issues of the society. This paper brings into its ambit the narrativization of Dalit-scape creating its own space in Indian films in Hindi and other languages. It closely examines the movies Article 15 (2019) and Jai Bhim (2021) to shed light on Dalits’ representation in Indian cinema. The paper further explores a fresh unconventional voice of Dalit narrative, challenging the upper caste descriptions. It investigates the role of movies as ideological apparatuses with specific reference to the selected movies featuring the marginalized and ‘other’ identities—with a voice and agency here— thus, subverting the dominance of the ruling caste through a fair legal system.
Williams (1993) delineates the view that culture is the sum total of shared beliefs and values of a society.