This article focuses on the history of the Sinhala folk dance genre and its connection to Sinhala cultural nationalism in Sri Lanka. This paper aims to examine the formation of Sinhala folk dance as a tradition in the context of the rise of Sinhala nationalism during the 1940s and 1950s. Although performing arts were commonly practiced by villagers, the genre named Sinhala Folk Dance (Sinhala gemi näțuma) did not emerge until the 1930s in Sri Lanka. Around 1956, in the midst of the rise of Sinhala cultural nationalism, it is believed that the stylistic choices that preceded the modern creative work of the new nation were drawn from “folk” sources. A classic example of this genre is E.R. Sarachchandra’s play Maname, which became the marker of modern Sinhala theatre, and which was based on the folk theatre tradition, the nadagama. Here, the assumption is that folk art already existed in the villages, and that the Sinhala literati merely borrowed from it to create new performing art forms that represented the nation. However, this assumption is an oversight in folk dance in Sri Lanka, as demonstrated in this article which presents an alternative interpretation of the history of performing arts in Sri Lanka, a history which has not been highlighted in the 1956 cultural revolution discourse. As I demonstrate in this article, Sinhala choreographer Panibharata invented certain dances which are considered Sinhala folk dance today. Sinhala nationalists groomed Panis, a village drummer and dancer, considered to be a low-caste, underprivileged individual into Panibharata, a cosmopolitan artist. Fulfilling these nationalists’ desires, Panibharata created repertoires of “folk dance” that portrayed village life in an exotic and romantic guise, which is aptly exemplified in his goyam näțuma (rice-harvesting dance). Panibharata’s model of folk choreography continues to be interpreted as the genuine and only Sri Lankan folk dance tradition, a narrative that was institutionalized and disseminated through the system of public education. In contrast to that canonical narrative of the Sinhala folk dance tradition, I argue that the staged model of Sinhala folk dance is a fairly recent invention. I analyze archival records, dance curricula, and secondary sources and interpret them according to my personal experiences as a dancer. To contextualize the purely Sinhala folk dance tradition, I compare the Russian folk dance and the Morris dance of England, that developed as separate national folk dance traditions.
本文主要探讨斯里兰卡僧伽罗民族舞蹈的历史及其与斯里兰卡僧伽罗文化民族主义的关系。本文旨在探讨在20世纪40年代和50年代僧伽罗民族主义兴起的背景下，僧伽罗民间舞蹈作为一种传统的形成。虽然表演艺术在村民中普遍存在，但僧伽罗民间舞蹈(Sinhala gemi näțuma)直到20世纪30年代才在斯里兰卡出现。1956年左右，在僧伽罗文化民族主义兴起的过程中，人们认为，在新民族的现代创作工作之前的风格选择来自“民间”来源。这一类型的一个经典例子是E.R. Sarachchandra的戏剧《Maname》，它成为了现代僧伽罗戏剧的标志，它是基于民间戏剧传统，nadagama。这里的假设是，民间艺术已经存在于村庄中，僧伽罗文人只是借鉴它，创造了代表这个民族的新的表演艺术形式。然而，这一假设在斯里兰卡的民间舞蹈中是一个疏忽，正如本文所展示的那样，这篇文章提出了对斯里兰卡表演艺术史的另一种解释，这段历史在1956年的文化大革命话语中没有得到强调。正如我在这篇文章中所展示的，僧伽罗编舞家Panibharata发明了一些今天被认为是僧伽罗民间舞蹈的舞蹈。僧伽罗民族主义者将帕尼斯(Panis)，一个被认为是低种姓、弱势群体的乡村鼓手和舞者，培养成一个世界艺术家。为了满足这些民族主义者的愿望，Panibharata创作了一系列“民间舞蹈”，以一种异国情调和浪漫的形式描绘了乡村生活，这在他的goyam näțuma(收割水稻的舞蹈)中得到了恰当的体现。Panibharata的民间舞蹈模式继续被解释为真正的，唯一的斯里兰卡民间舞蹈传统，一种通过公共教育系统制度化和传播的叙事。与对僧伽罗民间舞蹈传统的规范叙述相反，我认为僧伽罗民间舞蹈的舞台模式是相当近期的发明。我分析档案记录、舞蹈课程和二手资料，并根据我作为舞者的个人经历进行解释。为了将纯粹的僧伽罗民间舞蹈传统置于背景中，我比较了俄罗斯民间舞蹈和英国的莫里斯舞蹈，它们是作为独立的民族民间舞蹈传统发展起来的。
{"title":"Panibharata and the Invention of Sinhala Folk Dance Repertoires in Post-Colonial Sri Lanka","authors":"S. Mantillake","doi":"10.4038/sljh.v43i2.7270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/sljh.v43i2.7270","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the history of the Sinhala folk dance genre and its connection to Sinhala cultural nationalism in Sri Lanka. This paper aims to examine the formation of Sinhala folk dance as a tradition in the context of the rise of Sinhala nationalism during the 1940s and 1950s. Although performing arts were commonly practiced by villagers, the genre named Sinhala Folk Dance (Sinhala gemi näțuma) did not emerge until the 1930s in Sri Lanka. Around 1956, in the midst of the rise of Sinhala cultural nationalism, it is believed that the stylistic choices that preceded the modern creative work of the new nation were drawn from “folk” sources. A classic example of this genre is E.R. Sarachchandra’s play Maname, which became the marker of modern Sinhala theatre, and which was based on the folk theatre tradition, the nadagama. Here, the assumption is that folk art already existed in the villages, and that the Sinhala literati merely borrowed from it to create new performing art forms that represented the nation. However, this assumption is an oversight in folk dance in Sri Lanka, as demonstrated in this article which presents an alternative interpretation of the history of performing arts in Sri Lanka, a history which has not been highlighted in the 1956 cultural revolution discourse. As I demonstrate in this article, Sinhala choreographer Panibharata invented certain dances which are considered Sinhala folk dance today. Sinhala nationalists groomed Panis, a village drummer and dancer, considered to be a low-caste, underprivileged individual into Panibharata, a cosmopolitan artist. Fulfilling these nationalists’ desires, Panibharata created repertoires of “folk dance” that portrayed village life in an exotic and romantic guise, which is aptly exemplified in his goyam näțuma (rice-harvesting dance). Panibharata’s model of folk choreography continues to be interpreted as the genuine and only Sri Lankan folk dance tradition, a narrative that was institutionalized and disseminated through the system of public education. In contrast to that canonical narrative of the Sinhala folk dance tradition, I argue that the staged model of Sinhala folk dance is a fairly recent invention. I analyze archival records, dance curricula, and secondary sources and interpret them according to my personal experiences as a dancer. To contextualize the purely Sinhala folk dance tradition, I compare the Russian folk dance and the Morris dance of England, that developed as separate national folk dance traditions.","PeriodicalId":436260,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities","volume":"76-77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131050268","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}
This article is based on a case study of (the pseudonymous) Karu Māmā’s life as a gurunnānse, his community, his practices and ultimately the negotiation of his identity as a transgender person within his community. To be more precise, it explores the lives of Karu Māmā and his transgender/nachchi (a local term used by a particular transgender group in Sri Lanka) daughters around the little Pattini shrine in his house and the annual gammaduwa ritual he performs as goddess Pattini. This ritual, I argue, is a unique illustration of his transgender and embodied performativity. It reminds us of the fact that we need to revisit and rewrite certain established discourses on transgenderism in Sri Lanka. Karu Māmā, who grew up with heteronormative, Sinhala-Buddhist discourses on birth, rebirth, family, notions of good and bad, as well as perspectives of gender, counters those dominant ideologies through his practices around his Pattini shrine and associated rituals. Moreover, I argue that this case study challenges the divisions that exist between genders, social classes, and castes around the Pattini ritual and narrates new interpretations. On the one hand, the rituals and practices associated with the Pattini dēvālaya in Daluwatte make a significant contribution to transgender identity negotiation. On the other hand, through well-known discourses of traditions, practices, rituals, and worshipping, this offers us new insights into motherhood, femininity, sexuality, and gender in contemporary Sri Lanka.
{"title":"Priest, Woman and Mother: Broadening the Horizons through Transgender/nachchi Identities in Sri Lanka","authors":"Kaushalya Ariyarathne","doi":"10.4038/sljh.v43i2.7269","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/sljh.v43i2.7269","url":null,"abstract":"This article is based on a case study of (the pseudonymous) Karu Māmā’s life as a gurunnānse, his community, his practices and ultimately the negotiation of his identity as a transgender person within his community. To be more precise, it explores the lives of Karu Māmā and his transgender/nachchi (a local term used by a particular transgender group in Sri Lanka) daughters around the little Pattini shrine in his house and the annual gammaduwa ritual he performs as goddess Pattini. This ritual, I argue, is a unique illustration of his transgender and embodied performativity. It reminds us of the fact that we need to revisit and rewrite certain established discourses on transgenderism in Sri Lanka. Karu Māmā, who grew up with heteronormative, Sinhala-Buddhist discourses on birth, rebirth, family, notions of good and bad, as well as perspectives of gender, counters those dominant ideologies through his practices around his Pattini shrine and associated rituals. Moreover, I argue that this case study challenges the divisions that exist between genders, social classes, and castes around the Pattini ritual and narrates new interpretations. On the one hand, the rituals and practices associated with the Pattini dēvālaya in Daluwatte make a significant contribution to transgender identity negotiation. On the other hand, through well-known discourses of traditions, practices, rituals, and worshipping, this offers us new insights into motherhood, femininity, sexuality, and gender in contemporary Sri Lanka.","PeriodicalId":436260,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131809219","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 American foreign missions of the early to the mid-nineteenth century epitomize a project that allowed white American women to share a Kiplingesque “white woman’s burden” with British “sisters,” to civilize the heathen world which gave the former a chance to share in an Anglo-American white identity.1 This imperial endeavor required of them to represent/re-present supposedly the most fitting incarnation of the idealized female of the antebellum or the “American true woman,” the “American mission wife,” a subjectivity that was reflective of the presumed superiority of white civilization, offering a model for the heathen women to emulate. Hence, this paper concerns itself with the manner in which a particular antebellum white women’s genre—the mission memoir—represents/re-presents American mission wives in the Orient (in the then Burma and Ceylon). Reversing the typical Saidian narrative of the West’s production of the Oriental subaltern/other, I show here how the white American mimic woman in the Orient disrupts her identity, thereby rendering herself ambivalent and interstitial.
{"title":"Antebellum White American ‘Mission Wives’ in the Orient: A Tale of Flawed Mimicry","authors":"Gayathri Hewagama","doi":"10.4038/sljh.v43i2.7299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/sljh.v43i2.7299","url":null,"abstract":"The American foreign missions of the early to the mid-nineteenth century epitomize a project that allowed white American women to share a Kiplingesque “white woman’s burden” with British “sisters,” to civilize the heathen world which gave the former a chance to share in an Anglo-American white identity.1 This imperial endeavor required of them to represent/re-present supposedly the most fitting incarnation of the idealized female of the antebellum or the “American true woman,” the “American mission wife,” a subjectivity that was reflective of the presumed superiority of white civilization, offering a model for the heathen women to emulate. Hence, this paper concerns itself with the manner in which a particular antebellum white women’s genre—the mission memoir—represents/re-presents American mission wives in the Orient (in the then Burma and Ceylon). Reversing the typical Saidian narrative of the West’s production of the Oriental subaltern/other, I show here how the white American mimic woman in the Orient disrupts her identity, thereby rendering herself ambivalent and interstitial.","PeriodicalId":436260,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114637475","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":"Rohitha Dasanayaka, Arabs in Serandib: Trade Relations between Sri Lanka and West Asia from Ancient to 15th Century A.D. A Historical and Archaeological Survey. Colombo: S. Godage & Brothers, 2020. Pp. 364","authors":"Sumudu Dharmarathna","doi":"10.4038/sljh.v43i2.7281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/sljh.v43i2.7281","url":null,"abstract":"No abstract available","PeriodicalId":436260,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130456160","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 current paper reports on an empirical study investigating the unlearning of null object pronouns by twenty-four English as a Second Language (ESL) learners from Sri Lanka. Further, the ESL learners are native Sinhala speakers. One of the main crosslinguistic differences between Sinhala and English is that Sinhala allows null object pronouns, whereas English does not. Previous studies have investigated the acquisition of object pronouns by ESL learners, and they report that the acquisition of object pronouns could be problematic for ESL learners due to first language transfer. However, there have been no empirical studies that investigate the unlearning of null arguments by Sinhala ESL learners. Therefore, the present study intends to fill the gap in the research by investigating the unlearning of null object pronouns by Sinhala ESL learners. The data were collected via an audio acceptability judgement task (audio AJT) and a production task (PT). In the audio AJT, the ESL learners accepted null object pronouns to a certain extent, whereas in the PT, they had a strong preference for null object pronouns. Therefore, based on the overall results, I suggest that Sinhala ESL learners have difficulty in unlearning null object pronouns in English.
{"title":"First Language Transfer in the Acquisition of English Object Pronouns by Sinhala-Speaking ESL Learners","authors":"C. Gunawardena","doi":"10.4038/sljh.v43i2.7280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/sljh.v43i2.7280","url":null,"abstract":"The current paper reports on an empirical study investigating the unlearning of null object pronouns by twenty-four English as a Second Language (ESL) learners from Sri Lanka. Further, the ESL learners are native Sinhala speakers. One of the main crosslinguistic differences between Sinhala and English is that Sinhala allows null object pronouns, whereas English does not. Previous studies have investigated the acquisition of object pronouns by ESL learners, and they report that the acquisition of object pronouns could be problematic for ESL learners due to first language transfer. However, there have been no empirical studies that investigate the unlearning of null arguments by Sinhala ESL learners. Therefore, the present study intends to fill the gap in the research by investigating the unlearning of null object pronouns by Sinhala ESL learners. The data were collected via an audio acceptability judgement task (audio AJT) and a production task (PT). In the audio AJT, the ESL learners accepted null object pronouns to a certain extent, whereas in the PT, they had a strong preference for null object pronouns. Therefore, based on the overall results, I suggest that Sinhala ESL learners have difficulty in unlearning null object pronouns in English.","PeriodicalId":436260,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125785831","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}
Over the past two decades, historiography of Southern Asia has increasingly looked to the sea. This has yielded a robust sub-field of “Indian Ocean Studies,” illuminating cultural connections and exchanges over borders and boundaries, and emphasizing mobility across wind and wave as a means to think past “area studies” and other colonially inherited categories and conceptions of space. 1 Ronit Ricci’s recent book, Banishment and Belonging: Exile and Diaspora in Sarandib, Lanka, and Ceylon, represents the best fruits of such oceanic studies, tracking Javanese and Malay literary movements back and forth across the greater archipelago of the southern seas. In this way, the book takes Malay texts and people beyond the nationalized boundaries of “Malaysia,” moving over a number of island worlds, including Bali, Borneo, Java, Sulawesi, Sumatra, and of course Sri Lanka, the subtitle of the book indicating its importance in Malay imaginations of homeland and exile. While writing Malays into Sri Lankan history, Ricci acknowledges that she is not trained as a Sri Lankanist. Oceanic studies broadly conceived ultimately runs up against a scholar’s linguistic limits. So while Ricci’s analysis of Javanese and Malay sources is highly nuanced, she is unable to access local Lankan texts in the same first-hand manner to corroborate her argument.
{"title":"On an Unfamiliar Island: A Sri Lankanist Review of Banishment and Belonging; Review Essay of: Ronit Ricci, Banishment and Belonging: Exile and Diaspora in Sarandib, Lanka, and Ceylon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. First South Asia edition 2020. 296 pp.","authors":"Alexander McKinley","doi":"10.4038/sljh.v43i1.7264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/sljh.v43i1.7264","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past two decades, historiography of Southern Asia has increasingly looked to the sea. This has yielded a robust sub-field of “Indian Ocean Studies,” illuminating cultural connections and exchanges over borders and boundaries, and emphasizing mobility across wind and wave as a means to think past “area studies” and other colonially inherited categories and conceptions of space. 1 Ronit Ricci’s recent book, Banishment and Belonging: Exile and Diaspora in Sarandib, Lanka, and Ceylon, represents the best fruits of such oceanic studies, tracking Javanese and Malay literary movements back and forth across the greater archipelago of the southern seas. In this way, the book takes Malay texts and people beyond the nationalized boundaries of “Malaysia,” moving over a number of island worlds, including Bali, Borneo, Java, Sulawesi, Sumatra, and of course Sri Lanka, the subtitle of the book indicating its importance in Malay imaginations of homeland and exile. While writing Malays into Sri Lankan history, Ricci acknowledges that she is not trained as a Sri Lankanist. Oceanic studies broadly conceived ultimately runs up against a scholar’s linguistic limits. So while Ricci’s analysis of Javanese and Malay sources is highly nuanced, she is unable to access local Lankan texts in the same first-hand manner to corroborate her argument.","PeriodicalId":436260,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115835578","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":"A Cosmopolitan Literary Culture with a Façade of Nativism: A Re-evaluation of the Sinhala Literary Culture around 1956","authors":"L. Amarakeerthi","doi":"10.4038/sljh.v43i1.7288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/sljh.v43i1.7288","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":436260,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128461723","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":"Orthodoxy and Order: The Denial of Religious Liberty to Ahmadis in Colonial Ceylon","authors":"Shamara Wettimuny, G. Gunatilleke","doi":"10.4038/sljh.v43i1.7277","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/sljh.v43i1.7277","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":436260,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities","volume":"327 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132143364","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":"Pedagogical Activism and Ideological Duality as seen in YouTube Videos","authors":"Sameera Tilakawardana","doi":"10.4038/sljh.v43i1.7289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/sljh.v43i1.7289","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":436260,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128825278","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}
This article explores the distinctive silence seen in the background spaces of selected Sri Lankan films, produced in the post-1990 era, namely: Asoka Handagama’s This is My Moon (2000), Prasanna Vithanage’s Death on a Full Moon Day (1997), Vimukthi Jayasu ndara’s Forsaken Land (2005), Sanjeewa Pushpakumara’s Flying Fish (2011), and Prasanna Vithanage’s August Sun (2003). The article observes the phenomenon of silence in relation to Sri Lanka’s social, political and cultural history and contemporary leanings in national cinema. The selected film-backgrounds echo the forces of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism that prompt the civil war, youth uprisings, and the systemic inequities prevalent in the socio-political landscape of Sri Lanka. This article suggests that the alteration of the dynamic, melodious and breathing village into a static, silent and non-living one is not simply limited to the occurrences of the films but also has deep socio-cultural connections.
{"title":"Reading the ‘Silent’ Space: Background Setting of the Post-1990 Sri Lankan Art Cinema as an Expression of Socio-Cultural Silence","authors":"Priyantha Fonseka","doi":"10.4038/sljh.v43i1.7287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/sljh.v43i1.7287","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the distinctive silence seen in the background spaces of selected Sri Lankan films, produced in the post-1990 era, namely: Asoka Handagama’s This is My Moon (2000), Prasanna Vithanage’s Death on a Full Moon Day (1997), Vimukthi Jayasu ndara’s Forsaken Land (2005), Sanjeewa Pushpakumara’s Flying Fish (2011), and Prasanna Vithanage’s August Sun (2003). The article observes the phenomenon of silence in relation to Sri Lanka’s social, political and cultural history and contemporary leanings in national cinema. The selected film-backgrounds echo the forces of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism that prompt the civil war, youth uprisings, and the systemic inequities prevalent in the socio-political landscape of Sri Lanka. This article suggests that the alteration of the dynamic, melodious and breathing village into a static, silent and non-living one is not simply limited to the occurrences of the films but also has deep socio-cultural connections.","PeriodicalId":436260,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities","volume":"72 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121590092","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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