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This paper examines the Malayalam film Ee.Ma.Yau. as a critical exploration of the banality of mourning, presenting death as a banal social process deeply embedded within the societal structures. It closely studies the spectacle of performance associated with death rites and reflects upon the human experience shaped by the mundane structures of the society. The study situates mourning within the philosophical frameworks of Hannah Arendt’s banality, Victor Turner’s liminality, Erving Goffman’s performativity, Henri Lefebvre’s everyday life, and Lars Svendsen’s theory on boredom. The funerary rituals in the film are disrupted by institutional authority, communal surveillance, and repetitive social practices. This paper seeks to account for the deeper philosophical engagement with banality, triviality and everydayness of death. It presents mourning as a site of failed communitas where meaning is continually deferred.
Chitra Sebastian. “The Banality of Mourning: Ritual, Community, and the Social Performance of Death in the Malayalam Film Ee.Ma.Yau..” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 2, Apr. 2026, pp. 752–766. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n2.49.
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