22 Female Kottayam Stereotyped!

ster·e·o·type (A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing: "sexual and racial stereotypes".)

Stereotyping is an offence in some countries. In the US there is the Indian stereotype, in India there is the South Indian stereotype and in South India there are further regional stereotypes.  I personally hate stereotyping, because it is the mind product of limited exposure. People see a very small and finite number of a certain sect of people and arrive at a common description of them.  And I strongly believe that a group of people who are being stereotyped should not go on stereotyping sub-sects of their pool. 

“Mallu” (I simply hate the word) is a title given to the Kerala lot as a whole. People from other parts of our country make fun of our regionally biased English accent. I do agree that most of us have an accent when we speak English; if we have our southern English accent, the North Indian’s have their own equally ridiculous accent. Most disgusting is the fact that we have our own porn genre “Mallu Aunty”, “Mallu Lady”, “Mallu bgrade” and the list goes on. 

I wrote about all these stereotyping because, I just want to point out that all Aunties of Kerala are not two bit prostitutes. And we don’t deserve to be stereotyped; I mean no one does. 

However you try to defend the movie “22 Female Kottayam”, there is no doubt that it stereotypes a profession and a region; and that is just plain wrong. 

The characters in this movie are not well researched. The life style followed by the lead character is at times very contradictory. And not all Christian females from Kottayam drink alcohol; in the movie it seems that it is some kind of a standard for girls from that side. The only regional accent in the lead girl’s speech is when she uses the sound “bha” (fa). 

Fahad Fazil is excellent as always, but I fear that in the long run he will be imprisoned in this kind of roles for ever. Reema has done a decent job. 

I never expected this genre from Abu. It would have been very natural coming from Samir Thahir, Sreenath Rajendran, Lijo Jose etc. If everyone is going the dark way, then from where can we expect movies like Salt and Pepper? 

Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Sriram Raghavan’s Ek Hasina Thi and N. Sankaran Nair’s Cabaret Dancer are the 3 films listed as inspirations for the movie. I guess Ashiq Abu intentionally forgot to mention the more strickingly similar Meir Zarchi’s  I Spit on Your Grave.  Hard Candy by  David Slade might also make it to the inspiration list. I don’t find this movie to be a novel concept in Malayalam films, remembering the old movies like “Panchangini”, “Kallichellamma” etc.