Article
Mental Health, Legal Awareness, and Social Responsibility in Regional Cinema: A Study of the Tripura Short Film Stutter
This paper examines the Tripura short film Stutter through the interdisciplinary frameworks of Disability Studies, Psychoanalysis, Affect Theory, and Critical Health Humanities to analyse the relationship between communicative disability, mental health, and social exclusion. The study proposes an analysis of stuttering that goes beyond the medical model of communication and illustrates that disfluency in speech is socially disabling because of the ridicule, humiliation and exclusion from fluent communication imposed by the dominant norms of communication in society today. The research also proves that the prolonged denial of communication and emotional estrangement results in psychological vulnerability and broken identities. By analyzing the protagonist’s transformation or metamorphosis through a psychoanalytic and affective perspective, the research provides evidence for the link between the shame of communication impairment, emotional repression and aggressive behavior. The study further discusses the role of regional cinema in raising awareness about mental illness and in developing legal consciousness and social accountability towards communication disabilities. The final conclusion of this research is that Stutter criticizes ableist ways of social organization and advocates more inclusive, sympathetic and psychologically sensitive perspectives on disability and mental illness in today’s society.