The ‘Good’ Muslim -‘Bad’ Muslim: Cinema, Tropes and Islamophobia

Cinema reflects the political context of its times and in India’s contemporary polarised public discourse, state patronage has been extended to the alarming trend of propaganda films like The Kashmir Files or Kerala Story. Films that lend weight to the Hindutva project of otherising the Indian Muslim. 

In this video, we address this negative stereotyping and locate it in the larger world of the cinematic tropes, history and representation.  What is the history of Muslim representation in mainstream Indian cinema? What do its ‘Good’ Muslim and ‘Bad’ Muslim tropes look like? What is representation and why does it matter what we see on the silver screen?

And not to forget, who is telling these stories?