The politics of fat positivity and fat acceptance: Exploring select post-millennial, South Indian “fat films”

ABSTRACT

While the representation of the fat body in post-millennial mainstream South Indian films has often been problematic due to the inherent biases against non-normative bodies, a promising trend has been visible in recent post-millennial South Indian movies centered on fat protagonists. Known as “fat films” within fat activism for their stance on fat positivity and fat acceptance, these movies claim to promote liberatory discourses regarding fat bodies. However, we argue that the liberatory potential of these movies often becomes limited due to the structurally similar, formulaic plots that construct fatness as a liminal, alterable state of being. For our analysis, we have chosen three mainstream South Indian “fat films” released in three different Indian languages in which the narratives navigate through the complex life experiences of the fat protagonists: Da Thadiya (Hey Fatso) (2012), a Malayalam movie directed by Ashiq Abu; Inji Iduppazhagi (Size Zero) (2015), a Tamil movie directed by Prakash Kovelamudi; and Laddu Babu (2014) a Telugu movie directed by Ravi Babu. It is found that the subversive potential of these films is undermined by a host of issues, both specific and general, such as a) their construction of fatness as an abject form of embodiment where it becomes a constant source of laughter b) their reductive and redundant portrayals of fat subjectivities and inability to contribute alternative narratives which aren’t centered on the fat protagonists’ “eternal” conflict with their bodies and c) their inability to interrogate the larger body politics behind the aestheticization of certain bodies as normative.

KEYWORDS:

• Fatness
• fat films
• fatphobia
• liminality
• South Indian Cinema

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Mubarki (2018) argues that early Indian cinema offered alternative possibilities of masculinity to the actors who didn’t possess “perfect, symmetrical, sinewy bodies” (p.9). For instance, B.C Darua, who played the lead role in Devdas (1935), embodied spiritual masculinity in contrast to the Western model that emphasized “the physical strength, virility, and assertiveness” of heroes (p.8). Though there were muscular actors like John Cawas (famously known as “Indian Eddie Polo” for his stunt sequences) who acted in popular films like Toofani Tarzan (Typhoon Tarzan) (1937), Diamond Queen (1940), and Sher-E-Baghdad (The Lion of Baghdad) (1946), the popularity of these films remained confined to the working-class spectators (Mubarki 2018).

2. One exemption to this was Jayan, who had a sculpted physique and rebellious zeal, unlike other prominent heroes of early Malayalam cinema such as Prem Nazir and Madhu, who were gentle and soft-spoken in the movies they acted in.

3. The body transformations of singers like Adnan Sami, Himesh Reshammiya, and Sunidhi Chauhan have been celebrated by the media; elaborate accounts of their work-out routines and diet charts, comparisons of their body measurements before and after the body alteration, have been circulated widely.

4. Even though South Indian cinema is not a homogenous category, the term is usually employed in popular culture to refer to different regional cinematic industries from the southern part of India to show its richness and distinctiveness from Bollywood cinema. The term encompasses cinema from regional languages of southern states, such as Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil, characterized by differences in cinematic approaches, stardom, and fan cultures. We use the term South Indian cinema to foreground their common approaches and representations to depict fat positivity on screen while acknowledging the heterogeneity within the individual cinematic cultures in this broad category.

5. We use the term “fat films,” as employed by Samata Biswas (2017) in her study on the representation of fat characters in Indian cinema, to refer to films that have “active, agential fat protagonists” and sensitize the issues associated with fat bodies (p.159). The filmmakers often claim that such cinematic productions uphold the notions of fat positivity and offer resistance to stigma and fat-shaming in popular culture.

6. G R and Justin (2018) point out the radical shift in the representation of bodies and the emergence of the thin body ideal in South Indian Cinema after the 1970s due to several external factors such as the mushrooming of fitness centers, the popularity of beauty contests, and the influence of Bollywood.

7. The term “tyranny of slenderness” coined by Kim Chernin (1981) refers to the obsession with slim bodies in contemporary culture. It implies how bodies, especially of women, are policed and monitored to produce socially desirable bodies (Richardson 2010).

8. Inji Iduppazhagi was released in two South Indian languages: Tamil and Telugu. Its Telugu version, directed by Prakash Kovelamudi, is known as Size Zero (2015). Later, the film was remade into Odiya as Chhati Tale Ding Dong (2016), directed by Mrutyunjaya Sahoo.

9. The weight-normative approach relies on the popular perception that body weight is dependent upon one’s willpower and choices in lifestyle, ignoring factors such as the complexities involved in the determination of body weight of individuals, genetic and environmental components, and inequities in health (Pace 2014).

10. When Sweety’s friend Jyothi’s condition becomes critical after consuming a lot of fat burners to participate in beauty contests, Sweety leaves Size Zero Clinic, where she had joined to lose weight instantly. Soon after that, she releases an online video known as “Size Sexy,” in which she appears in song sequences where her fat body is fetishized as “trendy, desirable, and glamorous” (Singh 2018, 8). When it becomes successful, Sweety launches “the Save Jyothi campaign” in which participants are encouraged to burn their body fat, and each calory adds one rupee for the surgery of Jyothi. She also aims to expose the harmful practices employed by Size Zero Clinic for instant and easy weight loss.

11. One of the formulaic depictions in the select movies involves fat protagonists, who may seem unapologetic and unbothered about their fatness, losing their self-esteem and beginning to hate their bodies when their lovers seem uninterested in them due to their fatness. Luka, Laddu Babu, and Sweety are portrayed as venturing out to discipline their bodies to conform to normative body standards. Dum Laga ke Haisha (2015) (Give in All Your Energy) by Sarath Katariya, revolving around a confident, bold fat heroine named Sandhya is a notable exception to this trend. Even when her husband and his family discriminate against her based on her body weight, neither does she attempt to alter her body nor does she indulge in self-loathing behavior. When her self-respect is challenged in a scene where her partner openly humiliates her, she confidently walks away from him, seeking a divorce.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aswathy A.

Aswathy A. is pursuing her research on Fat Studies in the Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages in Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore. Her research interests include Film Studies, Fat Studies, Gender and Sexuality and Dalit Studies.

Meenu B.

Meenu B. is working as Assistant Professor in the Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu. Her Ph.D from the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, was in the area of Monster Studies. Her Ph.D. thesis titled “The Woman who Walks the Night: Yakshi as Myth and Metaphor in Kerala’s Cultural Imaginary” tried to explore the (under)world of Kerala’s culture through its popular monster, the Yakshi. Her areas of interest, apart from Monster Studies, include Early Indian Fiction, Social Reformist Novels, Gender Studies and Cultural Studies. Her most recent publication has been “Historical Time and Mythical Monsters: Negotiating of Mortality in MT Vasudevan Nair’s ‘Little Earthquakes’, in Horror Fiction in the Global South: Cultures, Narratives and Representation (Bloomsbury India, 2021).