B GeethaI recently read this evocative piece by Swarnavel Eswaran titled “Tirunelveli, touring talkies and tent cinemas: multiple stories of single-screens” (2025) in the edited journal volume of South Asian History and Culture on the historical investigation of cinema halls, exhibition cultures, and public spaces in the region of Tamil Nadu. Eswaran’s article illuminated a sliver of film history while pulling me into the memoryscape of my own cinephiliac lineage, which now forms an intellectual prompt for this essay. This form of writing does not simply excavate cultural history, but enables me to attend to the textures of time by tracing both the journeys of people, films, and memories and the origins and inheritances that ground them as routes and roots. These textures emerge through a palimpsestic layering of voices, posters, and images. Reading Eswaran’s piece felt like someone had quietly opened the archives of my mother’s and grandmother’s cinema-going experiences.
While my essay unfolds in a narrative form, it is concretely anchored at the intersection of female spectatorship and cinema studies, particularly influenced by Jackie Stacey’s research on memory, stardom, and identification in women’s viewing engagements in the specific context of 1940s and 1950s Britain, from her foundational work Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (1994). The recollections gathered in my essay are not only anecdotal, but also perform a feminist act of archiving, one that foregrounds the genealogies of film-watching through the gendered enactments of looking and belonging within the leisurely process of film-viewing. Moving beyond the textually constituted spectator of film studies and the psychoanalytic feminism of the male gaze [1], I attempt to interpret what female spectators say about watching films, while working with the caveat that such accounts may contain (un)conscious moments of contradiction and exaggeration. Rather than searching for an “authentic” truth, I am attentive to the fragmented ways in which these narratives are recounted, whose very recalcitrance defies a calcified theorisation. My approach, in particular, is anchored in familial memory as I trace how lower-middle-class Tamil women like my grandmother and mother found presence and pleasure in their viewing practices in the 1960s and 1970s Tamil Nadu. Through their viewing rituals, repeated returns to theatres, and affective investments in stars, I map a female spectatorship that is embodied, sensory, and historically situated. Importantly, Annette Kuhn’s conceptualisation of “memory work” is useful as a methodological move in understanding family archives in Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (1995). As a method and practice, “memory work has a great deal in common with forms of inquiry which — like detective work and archaeology, say — involve working backwards — searching for clues, deciphering signs and traces, making deductions, patching together reconstructions out of fragments of evidence” (1995, p. 4). With its disjunctive temporality, the memory text can be characterised as “a montage of vignettes, anecdotes, fragments, ‘snapshots’, [and] flashes” (1995, p. 162).
My grandmother, R. Sankari, was fifteen when she saw Parasakthi (The Goddess, 1952) in a Touring Talkie in Kallidaikurichi, Tirunelveli. She watched it in the open dark, transfixed by Sivaji Ganesan’s oratorical flourish. Later, in Thoothukudi, she saw Paasamalar (The Flower of Love, 1961) and cried her heart out because Sivaji, as Raju, died in the end. In a world where going to the theatre was already an everyday event, a relative’s job in the Income Tax Department meant an occasional gift — a “special pass” to be seated in a cushioned sofa in theatres. For her, it was an instance of rare luxury. She recounts screenings of many Tamil films at Charles Theatre, Sri Balakrishna Talkies, and Joseph Theatre in Thoothukudi, and distinctly remembers watching Paalum Pazhamum (Milk and Fruit, 1961) and Annai Illam (Mother’s House, 1963) at Krishna Talkies in the Ambasamudram town. Watching Sivaji Ganesan was about witnessing a young star command his presence on the screen through alliterative monologues delivered with searing precision. In her view, Parasakthi became a cinematic manifesto through its performative utterances and political proclamations of the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu.
The emergence of Tamil actors like Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth, and Bhagyaraj in the 1970s opened a new diegetic world: youthful, stylish, and adventurous. As a teenager in the 1970s growing up in Srirangam, my mother, B. Padma, recalls feeling like a queen in a dream world, watching the flamboyant and desirable Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan light up the screen. Films like Apoorva Raagangal (Strange Tunes, 1975), Bhuvana Oru Kelvi Kuri (Bhuvana is a Question Mark, 1977), Aarilirunthu Arubathu Varai (From Six to Sixty, 1979), and Sakalakala Vallavan (Master of all Arts, 1982), which she first saw at a theatre near Main Guard Gate in Tiruchirappalli, would later reappear closer to home at Sri Rengaraj Talkies in Srirangam. She returned to them, often more than once. Her descriptions turned playful as she recalls how, while boys were chasing her, she was chasing Rajini and Kamal by envisioning herself as their heroines and partaking in the romantic escapades of her vivid inner world. For her, cinema truncated the distance of stardom as she actively negotiated the terms of her spectatorial uptake through registers of flirtation, fantasy, and aspiration. She especially remembers watching Ilamai Oonjal Aadukirathu (Youth is Swinging, 1979), where both Rajini and Kamal pursue their love interest named Padma; it was a coincidence that felt fated, as she shares that very name. In those moments, cinema offered a mediated modality of desire to inhabit the world differently in the theatrical space, without falling into the trap of total identification and solipsistic longing. [2]
Main Guard Gate, Tiruchirappalli, was the heart of their cinematic world. There was Raja Theatre where they watched films like Kizhakke Pogum Rayil (Eastbound Train, 1978), Billa (The Don, 1980), and Thanneer Thanneer (Water, Water, 1981); Ramakrishna Theatre where Annakili (The Bird, 1976) played; Old Prabath Theatre (now permanently closed) where Kaakki Sattai (Khaki Shirt, 1985) was screened; and Kaveri Theatre with the screenings of Idhu Namma Aalu (He is our Man, 1988); Thirumangalyam (Holy Thread, 1974) in Palace Theatre. For Nizhal Nijamagiradhu (Illusion becomes Reality, 1978) and Sattam Oru Iruttarai (The Law is a Dark Room, 1981), they would head to Gaiety or Jupiter Theatre. Malaikottai (Rockfort), Tiruchirappalli, a stop after Anna Salai, would be buzzing on weekends with films like Dhavani Kanavugal (Dreams of the Sister, 1984) and Udaya Geetham (Morning Song, 1985) playing at Maris, Maris Rock, and Maris Fort. My grandmother also remembers riding the No. 1 bus from Srirangam to Tiruchirappalli Junction, scanning every poster for the sign — “Indrey Kadaisi (the last day of screening) — to catch one final viewing of their favourite films to ensure it was concretised in their memory. My mother joked that her mother’s visits to the relatives’ place were often just a way to confirm show timings. “You came this way for Devi Talkies, not me!” her Ayya chittappa at Thiruvanaikaval would tease; often, he was accurate in his observation. Athimber would often rib my mother too: “Rengaraj Talkies must be missing three tickets this weekend!” he would say, referring to the “triumvirate” — my grandmother, my mother, and her close friend (also named Padma) — making their ritual pilgrimage to catch the latest Rajini, Kamal, or Mohan release. For these three women, it was a sparkle of mischief and shared delight amid the routines of domestic life.
The cinematic pleasures of these three women survived through half-truths and small acts of concealment. My mother and grandmother would often tell my grandfather that they were going to watch a bhakti padam (devotional film), while their actual destination was a popular star vehicle. It was a theological tussle between faith and fandom, between darshan [3] and desire through their overlapping modes of looking. My grandfather, a man of classical sensibilities who preferred Carnatic music and katcheris (musical assemblies), detested what he called the “corrupting populism” of commercial cinema, which, in his view, filled young women’s minds with ideas of deceit and romantic elopement. When he would tease my grandmother by saying, “Your horoscope is in my hands”, she would retort, “You speak as though you are watching us through a television!” These surveilling registers were capably thwarted by the paradoxes of consumption, as divine benediction, whether through the gaze upon gods or stars, became gestures of equal sanctity for the female spectators. His invocation of natchathiram (stars) carried a double valence; they signified both the celestial stars of fate and the luminous star system of Tamil cinema. Between horoscope and screen, and destiny and desire, these women straddled dual constellations at once by embodying the split between fantastical identification and the familiar domestic context. My mother mentioned her own sharpness of “looking” in her account; when she once spotted her father at the Srirangam bus stand, she and her friend Padma would feign innocence by taking a circuitous route through the streets, pretending to return from the Ganesha temple. Padma, with her ever playful rhetoric, would cite a line from Mullum Malarum (A Thorn will Bloom, 1978) to enquire about their minor transgressions —“What did you say to him today?” This selective reworking of their identities before the patriarchal gaze reveals how women’s spectatorship was centred around everyday performances of evasion, mimicry, and mutable female subjectivity, as they continually rehearsed the tenuous balance between domestic propriety and affective freedom.
Their cinematic memories were not confined to the screen as they unfolded through lived rituals of spectatorship: coffee at Singarathoppu, Ayyanar kadalai mittai (crunchy peanut and jaggery snack), and shared meals from Meena Shankar Hotel in Tiruchirappalli. My grandmother listed off the tobacco brands of the era — Sokkalal beedi, Seyad beedi, Pattanam podi (snuff powder), Angu Vilas tobacco — each name rolling out like an incantatory verse, curling into the air between us. On the walk to Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam, my mother recalls the snuff advertisements through material statues, resembling sandwichmen, as striking, stylised embodiments of the commodity form. Apart from their function as marketing gimmicks, these were textural extensions of a lived cinematic landscape, which merged the sensorial, the devotional, and the commercial dimensions of the streets they traversed. In this sense, they illustrate what Sigfried Kracauer referred to as the “ornament”: “aesthetic reflex of the rationality aspired to by the prevailing economic system” (1975, p. 70). The cinematic experience, then, exceeded the boundaries of the theatrical space by inscribing itself onto the rhythms of urban life, consumption, and memory.
My mother also described the pacing of films back then: the very rhythm of film form. She recalls how ritualistic the beginning and end of films used to be. Just before the film began, there was always that sacred signal, she said, “Ganapathi Arulvaai” (Bless us, Lord Ganesha). That was the cue that the reel was about to roll. The opening credits would stretch on for several minutes, and she remembers the childish impatience that would follow: “When will the film begin?” But there was a dignity and assurance in those slow openings that marked the film as an event. The ending, too, carried a sense of finality, announced by a solemn, singular card: “The End”. That was closure. She noted how the actor-director Bhagyaraj, with his sharp sense of comic timing and narrative structure, would subvert this rhythm; his name would appear under story, screenplay, and direction precisely at a moment of tension or punch, and never at the start in a predictable way. It added a performative enunciation to authorship itself. Today, she observes, everything feels rushed; end credits roll over the final song, audiences shuffle out, half-watching and half-leaving, breaking the spell of viewing too soon. Even now, she lingers until the last image fades by watching the full song before stepping out. Back then, the beginnings and endings conveyed a ceremonial weight, as if consecrated by unseen and omniscient forces.
Eswaran’s writing reminded me that cinema, especially in the experiential terrains of Tirunelveli, Trichy, Thoothukudi, and Ambasamudram, was a conscious social practice that intertwined memory, ritual, and community through their bodily choreographies of film viewing. It breathed in the spirit of filmgoers who returned to the theatres seeking, in their repetitive viewings, not novelty but recognition of something true, something grand, and something their own. This affective economy of spectatorship explains why Rajinikanth was “Rajini” and Kamal Haasan was “Kamal”, because the stars appeared as extensions of the viewers’ intimate story arcs. Such spectatorship evokes the affective charge of Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso (1988), where the cinematic experience becomes a fertile site of collective remembrance by forging bonds with the stars, albeit provisionally, by crossing the invisible line between the performer and the spectator. As the audiences conjured these filmic worlds, they felt that these stars performed for them, danced for them, and emerged on screen for them, productively discussed by S. V. Srinivas as “the inseparability of loyalty and entitlement” (2021, p. 83) in fan cultures. In listening to these recollections, I realised that attending to specific accounts of gendered spectatorship and its mnemonic processes foregrounds the intimate ways in which cinematic experience is inherited, embodied, and transmitted across generations.
Notes
[1] For a robust account of the psychic investments in the looking relations between the spectator and the screen in Hollywood cinema’s heterosexual split between the active/male/looking and the passive/female/looked-at, see Mulvey (1975). According to Mulvey, within the parameters of patriarchal visual logic, the female body as the object of desire evokes, in psychoanalytic terms, the morbid image of the “bearer of the bleeding wound” (1975, p. 7) for the male subject within the diegesis. For Mulvey, this dynamic reduces the female spectator to a masochistic identification with the female figure on screen. Expanding on the in-built “masculinisation” of the spectatorial position, Mulvey’s later writing, “Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’”, focalises the “transvestite” position of female spectatorship to allow greater flexibility in articulating the restless and shifting tensions of the gaze question (1981, pp. 12–13). In a recent dossier in Screen, Mulvey’s note on the temporal specificity of the essay to study the images of women and its relevance beyond its times aptly makes the relationship between cinematic form and psychoanalysis of the 1970s conspicuous: “Both were ‘in the air’ at the time” (2015, p. 482). Contributing to the discussions on psychoanalysis and spectatorship, Julia Lesage’s essay poses a feminist challenge by proclaiming: “Stop reducing the human norm to the male and stop elevating the male to the norm” (1975, p. 83).
[2] While recounting some of these instances, she was moved and overtaken by memories only to use vague terms repetitively like “happy home”, “pure times”, and “best days”. As Kuhn writes, “Memory becomes tinged with the bittersweet, death-defying sadness of nostalgia” (1995, p. 160).
[3] For studying the visual logic of “looking” and its divine inflections in the Indian filmgoing cultures, See Prasad (2021).
References
Eswaran, Swarnavel. 2025. “Tirunelveli, Touring Talkies and Tent Cinemas: Multiple Stories of Single-Screens.” South Asian History and Culture, 16 (2): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2025.2516876.
Kracauer, Siegfried, Barbara Correll, and Jack Zipes. 1975. “The Mass Ornament.” New German Critique, no. 5: 67–76. https://doi.org/10.2307/487920.
Kuhn, Annette. 1995. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination. London and New York: Verso Books.
Lesage, Julia. 1975. “The Human Subject – You, He, or Me? (Or, the Case of the Missing Penis).” Screen, 16 (2): 77–83. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.2.77.
Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, 16 (3): 6–18. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6.
Mulvey, Laura. 1981. “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ inspired by Duel in the Sun.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, no. 15/17: 12–15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44111815.
Mulvey, Laura. 2015. “Dossier.” Screen, 56 (4): 481–485. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjv059.
Prasad, Madhava M. 2021. “Darshan(a).” BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 12(1-2): 53–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/09749276211026138.
Srinivas, S. V. 2021. “Fan.” BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 12 (1–2): 83–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/09749276211026075.
Stacey, Jackie. 1994. Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. Routledge.
Bio
B. Geetha is an Assistant Professor of English and Cinema Studies at the Department of Liberal Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (DLHS), Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India. She is a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Fellowship in Visual Arts. Her research interests include star bodies, genre cinemas, film history, and archival studies in relation to South Asian visual cultures. Her book chapter on the anti-caste politics of the Tamil film Pariyerum Perumal (2018) is a part of the anthology titled The Routledge Companion to Caste and Cinema in India (2023).
