Abstract
An enormously loaded term in the current political scenario, ‘fan’ originates from the Latin word fanaticus, which translates to ‘fanatic’. Though the literal meaning points out to mere devotion to a particular person or practice, the idea of fanatic quickly metamorphosed to inculcate several negative (deviant) connotations. While media representations have continued to marginalize the subversive category of fans, academic inquiry into the terrain of fan studies has begun to disseminate the negative undertones that underlie the collective understanding and cultural construction of the said category. Therefore the dialectics of fan representations within the Indian cultural scenario appropriated the gendered hierarchization entrenched in the nation’s cultural psyche, thereby rendering Indian fandom a predominantly gendered space. The tendency within the mediated representations to associate Indian female fans with transgression/deviancy gets further complicated when the age variable comes into play. Anchoring on the disciplines of Fan studies and Gerontology, this paper examines the Malayalam films Manasinakkare (Beyond the Mind, 2003) and Mohanlal (2018) through the framework of intersectionality to analyze the multiple axes of inequalities that prompt complex discrimination against aged female fans in India and thereby tease out the inherent codes of social dysfunction these narratives highlight.
