Padmarajan’s Middle Films and Populism: A Paradox

Populism, a loosely defined political ideology, has gained vocabulary with time. The people-centric doctrine, forefronting the binary of the larger group of people versus the elite few, presents a problematic logic. The “us versus them” idea fails to present the right picture. It is in this context that cinema, as a potent system of representation, becomes an appropriate medium for exploration. The entry examines the acknowledged filmmaker P. Padmarajan’s select Middle films (positioned between commercial and art cinema) of the 1980s to help explore how the form adopted for populist communication is navigated by the content. Identifying the different strands of populism in tandem with the socio-political climate of the time and the much-hailed Kerala development model enables us to read the hidden meanings. The entry explores the underlying contradictions structuring his films to comprehend the different shades of populism.