ABSTRACT
Pariyerum Perumal (God who mounts a horse) is a 2018 Tamil film directed by Mari Selvaraj. The film is paradigmatic of the experiential reality of the Dalit community and their confrontation with questions of caste exclusivity and unscrupulous hierarchisation. This chapter investigates the ethical intervention of the film in foregrounding the meaningful utterances of its Dalit protagonist who questions the ontological restrictions imposed on the marginalised sections. This chapter also analyses how the performative idioms and visual strategies in the film lend themselves to polysemic constructions of meaning. Furthermore, through a discussion of the ‘Madurai formula films’ in the 1990s and 2000s, this chapter explores how cinematic representations of caste privilege and social dominance strengthen caste identities of intermediate castes such as the Thevars and Vanniyars. The chapter meticulously examines how Pariyerum Perumal deconstructs the process of knowledge production in the cinematic realm, which privileges the narratives of the upper caste(s) and conveniently silences the articulations of the oppressed communities.
