ABSTRACT
The subject of caste has been a major fodder for the Kannada New Wave cinematics since its pioneering ventures. Emerging as a response and reaction to the pseudo-secular constructions of the societal fabric in popular Kannada cinema, the space of the New Wave provided a departure from certain fixed modes of addressing caste. This dialogical relationship ensued in the emergence of caste as a subject of New Wave’s core investigative or representative model. The films that materialised as a conglomeration of social consciousness and the need for an alternative mode of understanding the purpose of cinema generated a distinct archetype in negotiating the crevices of caste as a cinematic subject. However, such narratives have figured largely on the lateral understanding of caste as a ‘system’, constricting its contemporariness. The intersections of gender in the production of such body discourses are also brought to bear its imprint on the critical lens employed. The chapter has further recuperated certain directorial choices within the paradigms of Glauber Rocha’s ‘aesthetics of hunger’ and the concept of ‘voyeurism of the undesirable’, in turn problematising the overall Kannada New Wave cinematics and its operative ideology.
