Take a sad song and make it better: an alternative reading of Anglo-Indian stereotypes in Shyamaprasad’s Hey Jude (2018)

This Paper provides an alternative approach to understanding the function of Anglo- Indian culture in Shyamaprasad’s Malayalam language film Hey Jude (2018). Drawing on his theorization of Anglo-Indian Stereotypes in his book Midnight’s Orphans: Anglo-Indians in Post/Colonial Literature (Peter Lang, 2006), the author contests the reading of the film offered by Rajesh James and Priya Alphonsa Mathew in their recent article, ‘Between Two Worlds: Anglo-Indian Stereotypes and Malayalam Cinema.’ Rather than hastily dismissing representations of Anglo-Indians in Hey Jude as stereotypical and offensive, this critique of James and Mathew’s argument underscores the importance of situating the film in a broader context and paying more detailed attention to the cultural work performed by its themes and tropes.