Articulating the Silenced: Voice, Voiceless and Structures of Suppression in Maari Selvaraj's Bison Kaalamaadan

Abstract

This paper analyses how voice, the voiceless, and structures of suppression are articulated in the Tamil movie Bison through narrative design (flashback architecture), cinematic voice (sound and silence), embodied performance (sport as public speech), and institutional dramaturgy (police, selectors, party networks, caste hierarchies). The argument is anchored in film scholarship on subalternity and representation, symbolic violence, and cinematic sound, then situated within Tamil Nadu’s caste political history and compared to five key films. Bison Kaalamaadan (Bison) frames sport as a contested public language, kabaddi becomes a space where Dalit lives are disciplined, denied, or permitted visibility, never neutrally celebrated. The film is positioned, by critics and interviews, as a sports drama whose biopic grammar is repeatedly bent towards caste, bureaucracy, and inherited vulnerability bodies carry histories long before they carry medals.