Review of: Love, War, and Other Longings: Essays on Cinema in Pakistan, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar And Asad Ali (2020) Karachi: Oxford University Press, 275 pp., ISBN 978-0-19070-185-7, p/bk, 750
{"title":"Love, War, and Other Longings: Essays on Cinema in Pakistan, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar And Asad Ali (2020)","authors":"Hrishikesh Arvikar","doi":"10.1386/SAFM_00042_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SAFM_00042_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Love, War, and Other Longings: Essays on Cinema in Pakistan, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar And Asad Ali (2020)\u0000Karachi: Oxford University Press, 275 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-0-19070-185-7, p/bk, 750","PeriodicalId":38659,"journal":{"name":"Studies in South Asian Film and Media","volume":"12 1","pages":"100-103"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44248523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The contemporary Indian state is exemplified by contradictions. Its workings are marked by a simultaneous retreat and deepening of state power under neoliberalism as well as burgeoning governmentalities that both produce and police political dissent. Such framings of the state problematize received political wisdom on the relations between centre and margin, state and government, citizen and subject. Anthropological approaches to the state map out its complex organizational logics, which are further embedded in the exercise of power and violence. Drawing on such approaches, this article examines the 2012 Indian film Shanghai, directed by Dibakar Banerjee. Based on Greek author Vassilis Vassilikos’ 1966 novel Z, Shanghai represents the contemporary neoliberal Indian state’s workings in the fictitious periurban town of Bharatnagar, slated to become a world-class Special Economic Zone. However, when a left-wing activist opposing land acquisition is fatally injured in an ‘accident’, a state bureaucrat’s investigation unravels how the onward march of pragati (‘progress’) is undergirded by violence. Taking Shanghai as an example of ‘realist fiction’, I examine both representations and realities of the neoliberal Indian state using a thick and nuanced reading of the film’s narrative, cinematic details, context and characters, situating them in anthropological discussions on the state and its margins in contemporary India.
{"title":"The poetics and politics of ‘progress’ in neoliberal India: The state and its margins in Shanghai (2012)","authors":"Proshant Chakraborty","doi":"10.1386/SAFM_00035_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SAFM_00035_1","url":null,"abstract":"The contemporary Indian state is exemplified by contradictions. Its workings are marked by a simultaneous retreat and deepening of state power under neoliberalism as well as burgeoning governmentalities that both produce and police political dissent. Such framings of the state problematize received political wisdom on the relations between centre and margin, state and government, citizen and subject. Anthropological approaches to the state map out its complex organizational logics, which are further embedded in the exercise of power and violence. Drawing on such approaches, this article examines the 2012 Indian film Shanghai, directed by Dibakar Banerjee. Based on Greek author Vassilis Vassilikos’ 1966 novel Z, Shanghai represents the contemporary neoliberal Indian state’s workings in the fictitious periurban town of Bharatnagar, slated to become a world-class Special Economic Zone. However, when a left-wing activist opposing land acquisition is fatally injured in an ‘accident’, a state bureaucrat’s investigation unravels how the onward march of pragati (‘progress’) is undergirded by violence. Taking Shanghai as an example of ‘realist fiction’, I examine both representations and realities of the neoliberal Indian state using a thick and nuanced reading of the film’s narrative, cinematic details, context and characters, situating them in anthropological discussions on the state and its margins in contemporary India.","PeriodicalId":38659,"journal":{"name":"Studies in South Asian Film and Media","volume":"12 1","pages":"19-34"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42263891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Review of: Where Histories Reside: India as Filmed Space, Priya Jaikumar (2019) Durham: Duke University Press, 416 pp., ISBN 978-1-47800-475-2, p/bk, $29.95
{"title":"Where Histories Reside: India as Filmed Space, Priya Jaikumar (2019)","authors":"Pujita Guha","doi":"10.1386/SAFM_00043_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SAFM_00043_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Where Histories Reside: India as Filmed Space, Priya Jaikumar (2019)\u0000Durham: Duke University Press, 416 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-1-47800-475-2, p/bk, $29.95","PeriodicalId":38659,"journal":{"name":"Studies in South Asian Film and Media","volume":"12 1","pages":"104-107"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66753528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, I unravel the use of tuberculosis as a metaphor in Ritwik Ghatak's Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star), and locate it within the indices of loss Ghatak uses in the film to designate the tragic and brutal partition of the Bengal Presidency in 1947. Nita’s illness – which was both her tragedy and salvation – had to be a careful selection; it had to be semiotically proximate to the other meanings and metaphors imputed to Nita. To establish the salience of the use of tuberculosis, I underscore the link between the perception of tuberculosis and the ‘being’ of the protagonist (Nita) it sublimates. I further demonstrate that tuberculosis is the most apt disease, because the metaphors that the disease has been imbued with assimilate into the larger symbolic register that Ghatak uses in the film. I posit that Nita – ‘also’, and perhaps more acutely – suffers from the imperatives of tuberculosis – the characteristics associated with the disease in the popular imagination – rather than the mere pathological condition caused by the pathogen, mycobacterium tuberculosis.
{"title":"Trauma expressed pathologically: Unpacking the use of tuberculosis as a metaphor in Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara","authors":"N. Gupta","doi":"10.1386/SAFM_00036_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SAFM_00036_1","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I unravel the use of tuberculosis as a metaphor in Ritwik Ghatak's Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star), and locate it within the indices of loss Ghatak uses in the film to designate the tragic and brutal partition of the Bengal Presidency in 1947. Nita’s illness – which was both her tragedy and salvation – had to be a careful selection; it had to be semiotically proximate to the other meanings and metaphors imputed to Nita. To establish the salience of the use of tuberculosis, I underscore the link between the perception of tuberculosis and the ‘being’ of the protagonist (Nita) it sublimates. I further demonstrate that tuberculosis is the most apt disease, because the metaphors that the disease has been imbued with assimilate into the larger symbolic register that Ghatak uses in the film. I posit that Nita – ‘also’, and perhaps more acutely – suffers from the imperatives of tuberculosis – the characteristics associated with the disease in the popular imagination – rather than the mere pathological condition caused by the pathogen, mycobacterium tuberculosis.","PeriodicalId":38659,"journal":{"name":"Studies in South Asian Film and Media","volume":"12 1","pages":"35-48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45284458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article explores how Shyam Benegal’s 1985 film Trikaal (Past, Present, Future) navigates the social and psychic map of postcolonial Indian memory to reveal a pattern of persistent dualities and unlikely convergences of time, space and subjectivities. Via the domestic cosmos of a fictional Goan family, the film delves into the transitional and largely neglected phase of Goa’s decolonization from the Portuguese Empire. While situating itself in this specific moment, the film also puts forth an alternative discourse of approaching national history and the boundaries of the self. This is achieved by rerouting memory away from the high street of conventional history, utilizing the critical prism of reflective nostalgia and allowing the shadows of marginality to spill over the entirety of the narrative stage. Ultimately, we encounter a dialectical fabric of national identity dominated by unsettling intersections of past and present, home and abroad, memory and amnesia, power and oppression, romance and horror.
{"title":"Mapping intersections: A dialectical reflection on postcolonial memory in Shyam Benegal’s Trikaal (Past, Present, Future)","authors":"A. Sethi","doi":"10.1386/SAFM_00038_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SAFM_00038_1","url":null,"abstract":"The article explores how Shyam Benegal’s 1985 film Trikaal (Past, Present, Future) navigates the social and psychic map of postcolonial Indian memory to reveal a pattern of persistent dualities and unlikely convergences of time, space and subjectivities. Via the domestic cosmos of a fictional Goan family, the film delves into the transitional and largely neglected phase of Goa’s decolonization from the Portuguese Empire. While situating itself in this specific moment, the film also puts forth an alternative discourse of approaching national history and the boundaries of the self. This is achieved by rerouting memory away from the high street of conventional history, utilizing the critical prism of reflective nostalgia and allowing the shadows of marginality to spill over the entirety of the narrative stage. Ultimately, we encounter a dialectical fabric of national identity dominated by unsettling intersections of past and present, home and abroad, memory and amnesia, power and oppression, romance and horror.","PeriodicalId":38659,"journal":{"name":"Studies in South Asian Film and Media","volume":"12 1","pages":"67-81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46497628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Refashioning India: Gender, Media, and a Transformed Public Discourse, Maitrayee Chaudhuri (2017)","authors":"Koel Banerjee","doi":"10.1386/SAFM_00041_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SAFM_00041_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Refashioning India: Gender, Media, and a Transformed Public Discourse, Maitrayee Chaudhuri (2017)\u0000New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan Pvt. Ltd, 325 pp.,\u0000ISBN 9386689006, h/bk, INR 895","PeriodicalId":38659,"journal":{"name":"Studies in South Asian Film and Media","volume":"12 1","pages":"97-99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42279196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The study of art cinema has emerged as a richly discursive, but, at the same time, a deeply contested terrain in recent film scholarship. This article examines the discourse of art cinema in India through the prism of sound style and aesthetics. It analyses the sonic strategies deployed in the films of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Mani Kaul, in order to identify the dominant stylistic impulses of sound in art cinema, ranging from Brechtian epic realism on one hand to Indian aesthetic theories on the other. Locating sound as a key element in the discourse of art cinema, the article surveys the different modes through which aesthetic philosophies were translated into formal strategies of sound recording, designing and mixing. Using previous scholarship on art cinema in India as the point of departure, this study combines theoretically informed textual analysis with new historical insights on Indian cinema.
{"title":"Sound and the masters: The aural in Indian art cinema","authors":"I. Bhattacharya","doi":"10.1386/SAFM_00037_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SAFM_00037_1","url":null,"abstract":"The study of art cinema has emerged as a richly discursive, but, at the same time, a deeply contested terrain in recent film scholarship. This article examines the discourse of art cinema in India through the prism of sound style and aesthetics. It analyses the sonic strategies deployed in the films of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen and Mani Kaul, in order to identify the dominant stylistic impulses of sound in art cinema, ranging from Brechtian epic realism on one hand to Indian aesthetic theories on the other. Locating sound as a key element in the discourse of art cinema, the article surveys the different modes through which aesthetic philosophies were translated into formal strategies of sound recording, designing and mixing. Using previous scholarship on art cinema in India as the point of departure, this study combines theoretically informed textual analysis with new historical insights on Indian cinema.","PeriodicalId":38659,"journal":{"name":"Studies in South Asian Film and Media","volume":"12 1","pages":"49-66"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46036438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hearts in other places: Cinema of the South Asian diaspora","authors":"Laura V. Morales, Soumik Pal, N. Sathe","doi":"10.1386/SAFM_00044_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SAFM_00044_7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38659,"journal":{"name":"Studies in South Asian Film and Media","volume":"12 1","pages":"109-121"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47275764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Review of: Dark Fear, Eerie Cities: New Hindi Cinema In Neoliberal India, Sarunas Paunksnis (2019) New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 172 pp., ISBN 978-0-19949-318-0, h/bk, $30 Unruly Cinema: History, Politics, and Bollywood, Rini Bhattacharya Mehta (2020) Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 233 pp., ISBN 978-0-25208-499-7, p/bk, $25
{"title":"Bollywood studies at 2020","authors":"Ajay Gehlawat","doi":"10.1386/SAFM_00039_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SAFM_00039_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Dark Fear, Eerie Cities: New Hindi Cinema In Neoliberal India, Sarunas Paunksnis (2019)\u0000New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 172 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-0-19949-318-0, h/bk, $30\u0000 \u0000\u0000Unruly Cinema: History, Politics, and Bollywood, Rini Bhattacharya Mehta (2020)\u0000Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 233 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-0-25208-499-7, p/bk, $25","PeriodicalId":38659,"journal":{"name":"Studies in South Asian Film and Media","volume":"12 1","pages":"83-91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45986631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, I analyse screendance texts from Hindi cinema to introduce a theoretical framework called the ideology of amateurism which, I argue, made space within the narrative of the Hindi film for the ‘ideal’ Indian woman to dance publicly while simultaneously disavowing modernity. Through an analysis of selected film dance texts, I show how this turned the dancing heroine into the restorer of the moral order of the narrative. I argue that this ideology of amateurism amounted to a denial of dance labour, which was a necessary precondition for the cultural legitimation of the viewers’ desire for the screendancer in particular and a disavowal of the desire for modernity in general. Following this, I show how with the liberalization of the Indian economy and the rise of neoliberalism, and interestingly, also the replacement of the erstwhile ‘union-dancers’ on-screen Bollywood film dance texts today not only acknowledge the labour of screendance but promotional materials lay out the ‘labouring process’. This, I suggest, is symptomatic of the emergence of a new work order and the entry of a new class into this sphere. I read this in conjunction with the rise of dance as an established profession, as seen through the mushrooming of Bollywood dance schools, in order to show how the ideology of amateurism is challenged through a reconfiguration of work practices in neoliberal economies.
{"title":"The disavowal of dance as labour in popular Hindi cinema","authors":"Pritha Chakrabarti","doi":"10.1386/SAFM_00029_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/SAFM_00029_1","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I analyse screendance texts from Hindi cinema to introduce a theoretical framework called the ideology of amateurism which, I argue, made space within the narrative of the Hindi film for the ‘ideal’ Indian woman to dance publicly while simultaneously disavowing\u0000 modernity. Through an analysis of selected film dance texts, I show how this turned the dancing heroine into the restorer of the moral order of the narrative. I argue that this ideology of amateurism amounted to a denial of dance labour, which was a necessary precondition for the cultural\u0000 legitimation of the viewers’ desire for the screendancer in particular and a disavowal of the desire for modernity in general. Following this, I show how with the liberalization of the Indian economy and the rise of neoliberalism, and interestingly, also the replacement of the erstwhile\u0000 ‘union-dancers’ on-screen Bollywood film dance texts today not only acknowledge the labour of screendance but promotional materials lay out the ‘labouring process’. This, I suggest, is symptomatic of the emergence of a new work order and the entry of a new class into\u0000 this sphere. I read this in conjunction with the rise of dance as an established profession, as seen through the mushrooming of Bollywood dance schools, in order to show how the ideology of amateurism is challenged through a reconfiguration of work practices in neoliberal economies.","PeriodicalId":38659,"journal":{"name":"Studies in South Asian Film and Media","volume":"11 1","pages":"209-223"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45552265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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