Philosophical Issues in Indian Cinema: Approximate Terms and Concepts 9780367361822, 9780429344411

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PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN INDIAN CINEMA

This book interrogates the vocabulary used in theorizing about Indian cinema to reach into the deeper cultural meanings of philosophies and traditions from which it derives its influences. It re-examines terms and concepts used in film criticism and contextualizes them within the aesthetics, poetics and politics of Indian cinema. The book looks at terms and concepts borrowed from the scholarship on American and world cinema and explores their use and relevance in describing the characteristics and evolution of cinema in India. It highlights how realism, romance and melodrama in the context of India appear in a culturally singular way and how the aggregation of constituent elements – like songs, action, comedy – in Indian film can be traced to classical theatre and other diverse religious and philosophical influences. These influences have characterized popular film and drama in India which present all aspects of life for a diverse nation. The author explores concepts like ‘fantasy’, ‘family’ and ‘patriotism’ by using various examples from films in India and outside, as well as practices in the other arts. He identifies the fundamental logic behind the choices made by film-makers in India and discusses concepts which allow for a fresh theorizing on Indian cinema’s characteristics. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of film studies, media studies, cultural studies, literature, cultural history and South Asian studies. It will also be useful for general readers who are interested in learning more about Indian cinema, its forms, origins and influences. MK Raghavendra is a film scholar and critic. He received the National Award for Best Film Critic in 1997 and was awarded a Homi Bhabha Fellowship in 2000–2001. He has authored four volumes of academic film scholarship criticism – Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, Bipolar Identity: Region, Nation and the Kannada Language Film, The Politics of Hindi Cinema in the New Millennium: Bollywood and the Anglophone Indian Nation, and Locating World Cinema: Interpretations of Film as Culture. He has also written two books on cinema for the general reader: 50 Indian Film Classics and Director’s Cut:

50 Film-makers of the Modern Era. His essays on Indian cinema find a place in Indian and international anthologies. He has also published extensively in Indian newspapers, periodicals and journals like The Indian Review of Books, Caravan, Economic and Political Weekly, Frontline, The Book Review and Biblio: A Review of Books. His writing has been translated into French, Polish and Russian. He has edited an anthology of writing on South Indian cinema, Beyond Bollywood: The Cinemas of South India, published in 2017. His book The Oxford India Short Introduction to Bollywood was published in 2016. He is the founder-editor of the online journal Phalanx, which is dedicated to debate.

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN INDIAN CINEMA Approximate Terms and Concepts

MK Raghavendra

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 MK Raghavendra The right of MK Raghavendra to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-36182-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-34441-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

FOR PHILIP LUTGENDORF, WHO ORIGINALLY ASKED IF THERE WAS AN INDIAN WAY OF FILMMAKING, THE PRIMARY QUESTION TO WHICH THIS BOOK TRIES TO FIND AN ANSWER

CONTENTS

Introduction

1

1 Realism and reality

6

2 Content, interpretation and meaning

13

3 Causality

20

4 Family and genealogy

27

5 Romance and marriage

33

6 Melodrama

39

7 Faith and devotion

46

8 Fantasy

53

9 Station and hierarchy

63

10 Humour or comedy

71

11 Character and individuality

77

12 Genres

85

13 National cinema

91

14 Regional or local cinema

98

vii

CONTENTS

15 Orality and literacy

105

16 Film music

110

17 Film art and the avant-garde

116

18 Stardom

123

19 Place and time

128

20 Ethics and morality

133

21 Gender

139

22 Radicalism or activism

144

23 Marginalization, oppression and disadvantage

152

24 Patriotism

156

A conclusion

163

Bibliography Film Index Subject Index

171 176 180

viii

INTRODUCTION

‘The meaning of a word is its use in the language.’ Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Philosophical Investigations1

The word ‘philosophy’ has a forbidding sound to the lay public, but this book has no exalted ideas to offer about life or reality through cinema. It does not look at Indian film through the prism of Indian philosophical systems. It does not attempt to deal with the philosophies of film in general but concerns itself specifically with Indian film. But it refers to the proposition (by Ludwig Wittgenstein) that philosophy is an activity focused on removing misunderstandings in the use of language and pertains to the ‘foreign’ meanings of terms commonly used in the study of Indian cinema. Indian cinema is made in Indian languages and relies on a view of the world which was not given expression to in English; still, English is the only language in which theorizing about Indian cinema takes place. This implies that whatever terms or concepts are employed in describing Indian film – for instance ‘realism’ and ‘melodrama’ – are essentially approximations or misuses because the terms arose in non-Indian contexts. They need to be reconciled with Indian cinema by qualifying them – that is, what ‘melodrama’ means in Western studies like that of Peter Brooks2 – and the meanings they have for Indian cinema need to be compared. This will evidently not lead to an ‘Indian’ understanding of Indian film but a revision/correction of the way it has been understood in film studies or criticism. Film theorists in India tend to rely extensively on studies of ‘cinema’ in general,3 indirectly meaning American film, which has been subjected to so much critical theorizing that a reference to the generality of ‘film’ usually depends on American examples. This is despite, at first glance to many an outsider, Indian films belonging to a different cinematic universe4 from American and Western cinema or even cinema from the Far East, Japan, China, Africa and Hong Kong. The proposition here is that grasping these English language terms in the revised context and usage can become a way to understand Indian cinema, since that would help distinguish it from 1

INTRODUCTION

cinema outside of India. But if one wants to first know, as might be natural, why Indian cinema is not studied in terms of Indian philosophical concepts, a basic answer is suggested here: In India it is believed that the role of philosophizing, in the sense of attempting to understand the nature of whatever it is one is focusing on, is directly associated with one’s personal destiny. So philosophy is seen not in terms of a professional intellectual pursuit that can be set aside at the end of the working day, but as an attempt to understand the true nature of reality in terms of an inner or spiritual quest. One might say that what Westerners call religion and philosophy are combined in India in people’s attempts to understand the meaning and structure of life – in the broadest sense.5 Film study may be termed an ‘intellectual pursuit’ in that whatever is learned through it reflects extensively on an external reality that cannot apparently become associated with one’s ‘personal destiny’.6 It is a discipline that would be difficult to implicate in an inner or spiritual quest of the sort suggested above. That virtually excludes Indian philosophy as a means to understand cinema. Cinema is primarily a means of recording external/enacted reality through a mechanical device, and this tends to drive inquiry into its characteristics away from such quests. Given this factor and the suitability of what was proposed – interrogating the vocabulary used in theorizing about Indian cinema as a means of reaching a sharper understanding of it7 – the book is largely constituted around a set of words or terms used in film scholarship/criticism by Indian film theorists. While some of them, like ‘fantasy’, certainly need re-examination in the context of Indian cinema, for terms like ‘film music’ that are more descriptive than conceptual, the emphasis will be on the different use of music in Indian cinema. Each chapter will be devoted to notions connected with the term(s) in the title, examining the following aspects to make the significance of the term(s) clear for the Indian context: a) The original meaning of the term and the broad debates around it, if any. Since an enormous amount of film scholarship has been around classical Hollywood, this will entail references to American or world cinema, much more so than is customary in a book on Indian cinema. In order to make it accessible, the examples chosen are largely familiar films, some key ones being invoked time and again. American cinema is favoured only because it is the cinema that is most accessible. b) What the term means in the context of Indian cinema from its origins onwards and how the notion has developed. Alternatively, it could also explore the cultural specificity of a generic notion (like ‘romance’) and its significance in India. The differences in the Indian employment of 2

INTRODUCTION

a component of cinema (like ‘film music’ or ‘stardom’) might also be explored. c) Certain terms have specific Indian relevance (like ‘regional language cinema’). These need to be explained independently. d) Connections need to be made within Indian culture as a body to explain the development of a phenomenon. e) The issue of ‘ideology’ becomes relevant when certain notions – like nation, gender and dharma – are implicated. A question that might engage the reader is how the terms have been chosen. It is apparent that the terms are not all of the same kind – some are formal, some thematic and some descriptive – but they still have an attribute in common, which is that investigating their employment allows for fresh theorizing on Indian cinema’s characteristics. Terms difficult to interrogate could include industry parlance – terms like ‘blockbuster’, ‘superstar’, ‘emotion’, ‘action’ and ‘climax’. It is essential that examples should also be readily available to convey each term’s meaning, and the characteristic that the term denotes should be identifiable in the film. This book is devoted to Indian cinema, not only to Bollywood, but the examples cited will most often be Hindi popular films because of their familiarity; telling stories, by and large, is avoided. Also, since art cinema – which often follows different conventions from popular cinema – has to be discussed and there could be some confusion when I speak of ‘Indian cinema’, I will be specific about ‘art cinema’ or ‘regional language cinema’ while dealing with it. Unless specifically mentioned, therefore, ‘Indian cinema’ most likely refers to the Hindi popular film. This is simply a matter of convenience and at no point is it implied that Bollywood is all of Indian cinema. Since the different issues tackled in the book are related, there cannot but be a degree of overlap between them; since one of the aims is also to make each chapter as self-contained as possible, there could be a bit of repetition, which I ask the reader to please overlook. Wittgenstein suggested that there were no inherently ‘philosophical’ questions but that philosophy meant the clearing up of misunderstandings in other areas. As an example,‘philosophy’ would be made out of ‘justice’ when two persons offering conflicting propositions about the notion engaged each other in an argument and moved away from their initial positions to arrive at a negotiated ‘correct proposition’, which implies that philosophy is produced out of arguments in other disciplines. In discussing ‘philosophical issues in cinema’ similarly, the disciplines implicated are film theory, anthropology, aesthetics and poetics, politics, etc. Another issue of pertinence here is that since the project focuses on a mismatch between terminology and the phenomena they are applied to, there will be a greater reliance on critical texts on film in general while dealing with the notions but a correspondingly greater reliance on illustrative examples 3

INTRODUCTION

while dealing with Indian cinema. This should not be seen as ‘anecdotal evidence’ since, if there had been Indian critical/theoretical writing describing the phenomena as they were actually manifested and engaging with them instead of the scholarship being doctrine-driven,8 such a mismatch could not have occurred. Also, there will be some citing of the Sanskritic tradition as ‘Indian culture’ but not because it is synonymous with it; it is partly because the classical tradition is backed by theorizing in a way that the folk or the Islamic tradition9 in India are not, since the classical, by definition, links emotional effects to the methods devised to achieve them. But there is a more important justification here based on a factor brought to light by Partha Chatterjee. This has to do with Sanskrit theatre being seen as prestigious by the 19th-century nationalists due to its eulogy by orientalists, elements from it being incorporated into theatrical practices in urban India from the mid-19th century onwards. This resulted in an urban theatre of a notably different kind from traditional folk theatre.10 The Sanskritic theatrical tradition, which was dead, was drawn upon by 19th-century Indian theatre as a way towards national culture; cinema, since it took over from urban theatre, continued in the same mould. There is therefore a strong rationale for the association made between popular cinema and classical dramaturgy. This book attempts to look at Indian cinema in its totality, and it is anticipated that all its aspects can be subsumed under a handful of primary principles, which is why a separate ‘conclusion’ is included in the book. In order to facilitate this by making connections, chapter summaries are also provided. But it is hoped that this ‘conclusion’ will go further than defining Indian film and actually provide a snapshot, however fleeting, of the mindset of a people. That is because cinema is the artefact that reaches the largest sections and, because it addresses their concerns and preoccupations most extensively, may be taken to actually speak for them. Once such a cultural mindset has been identified together with the logic of the various intellectual/philosophical components that go into the conceiving of a film, a useful step might be to use this understanding consciously as part of film-making strategy instead of working by instinct to produce cinema. This book, in its ultimate aim, hence also attempts in some way to bridge the gap between the academic study of Indian film and film-making practice in India.11 Lastly, the chapters are not entirely stand-alone pieces to be read in any order; each one refers to prior observations that make them progressively reinforce each other to constitute a whole. It is therefore recommended that they be read in the same order in which they appear in the book, and not randomly.

Notes 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe), Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953, No. 43, p. 20.

4

INTRODUCTION

2 Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess, New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. 3 Phillip Lutgendorf, ‘Is There an Indian Way of Filmmaking,’ International Journal of Hindu Studies, Springer, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2006, pp. 227–256. 4 Ibid. p. 227. 5 Sue Hamilton, Indian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 1. 6 Indian philosophy discusses issues like ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and aesthetics not separately but together (where the tendency in the West is to create separate disciplines), and this is made possible only by the spiritual quest at the centre. See Satishchandra Chatterjee and Dheerendramohan Datta, An Introduction to Indian Philosophy, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1948, p. 3. It is also been pointed out that Indian philosophy has developed differently from that in the West; each philosopher has attempted to defend or rationalize an ancient system rather than break from it, thus eventually making the commentary the most popular kind of philosophical text. The ancient systems are themselves usually mnemonic sentences of half sentences or sutra-works. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Indian Philosophy: A Popular Introduction, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1964, pp. 1–3. 7 As a first step it would draw attention to the peculiarities of Indian cinema, problematizing the difficulties encountered when it is sought to be contained within standard film study terminology. 8 Academic critics often work under the belief that criticism and historical research must be doctrine driven. Rather than formulate a question with regard to a phenomenon, the critic assumes that his/her central task is the proving of a theoretical position, and the actual film coming under examination becomes an example to illustrate the doctrine. This method was employed in the case of Hollywood genres and then in Bollywood, although the theoretical position needed to be stretched, resulting in the mismatch between the phenomenon and a theoretical understanding of it. See Noël Carroll, ‘Prospects for Film Theory: A Personal Assessment,’ in David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (eds.), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996, pp. 42–43. 9 Islam must have influenced Indian thinking greatly beyond that of the minority belonging to the religion, but the best-known inquiry into its influence on Indian film chiefly examines Islamicate genres (associated with regions in which Muslims are culturally dominant, but not specifically with the religion of Islam) like the Muslim courtesan film (Pakeezah, 1972) and the Muslim social (Mere Mehboob, 1963). The Muslim influence, in effect, is less regarded as influencing narration/syntax/conventions in all of Hindi cinema than being responsible for a few genres, distinct bundles of narrative within the overall body. Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema, Delhi: Tulika, 2009. 10 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 7–8. 11 Such a gap is non-existent with regard to Hollywood; it has been studied extensively by academics and its aspects codified in a way that would assist film-makers. An example would be David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. This is a gesture of respect that can be made to Indian cinema as well, but, as a first step, the cultural peculiarities of the space in which it operates need to be identified and linked to the constituent elements of a film.

5

1 REALISM AND REALITY

Cinema began as an extension of photography, an imprint of actual reality taken by a mechanical device. Louis Lumière devised a way of synchronizing the shutter movement of the camera with the movement of a strip of photographic film. The Lumières were manufacturers producing photographic film, and Louis Lumière also envisaged cinema as a way of recording real life in movement. The first showing of films to a paying public happened on 28 December 1895 in Paris and lasted half an hour. When this program was scheduled Louis Lumière and his brother Auguste had made about fifty tiny films, the very first one showing workers leaving the Lumière factory in Lyon and shot from the window of the house opposite. All these films were recordings of events, either public – a head of state arriving for a reception – or from family life – Lumière’s father playing cards with his friends. Among those invited to that first screening in 1895 was George Méliès, a magician and illusionist, who saw other possibilities in Lumière’s ‘cinematograph’. When Méliès was filming with his primitive camera, the film jammed and it took a few moments for the camera to resume working. By that time what was before the camera had changed, but the instrument continued to record. In the developed film Méliès therefore saw that a bus had turned into a hearse and men into women. Where the Lumières had seen the cinematograph as a way of recording reality, Méliès hence saw it as promoting illusion. The proximity of the cinematic image to reality would convince the spectator that what was on the screen was a recording of what had happened. The stream of images a cinematograph created were taken for ‘reality’ when they were the result of tricks, and that made it perfect for magic. Among Méliès’s films were The Melomaniac (1903), in which a man juggles with his own head, and The Man with the India-Rubber Head (1902), in which a mad scientist detaches his head and blows it up like a balloon until it explodes. Méliès also adapted fairy tales and stuffed them with inventions like these. This dichotomy between reality and illusion has widely permeated discussions around film practice ever since then. Illusion is not only something that is ‘not real’ but also what a human being might imagine, an inner reality. 6

REALISM AND REALITY

This has meant that reality and illusion became identifiable with objective and subjective reality respectively; still, this contrast did not engage Indian cinema. Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, or Dada Saheb Phalke as he is usually called, is credited with making the first feature film, Raja Harishchandra (1913). The other Phalke silent fiction films to have survived in bits and pieces are Pithache Panje (1914), Lanka Dahan (1917), Sri Krishna Janma (1917), Kaliya Mardan (1919), Sant Eknath and Bhakta Prahlad (1926). Phalke envisaged the future of Indian cinema very differently from the ways suggested by the Lumières and Méliès. He reportedly saw a film called The Life of Christ around Christmas in 1910 and became excited at the prospect of seeing ‘Indian images’ on the screen. A parallel between Phalke’s exercises in film and what Ravi Varma did in the medium of oil painting has been suggested since both of them attempted a recreation of the mythical past to reclaim it as a nationalist proposition.1 If Phalke, who was preoccupied with establishing and nurturing an Indian film industry, was also intent upon bringing ‘real’ Indian images to the screen, these were not just any ‘Indian images’; his aim was to introduce the traditional sacred into the space of the colonial ‘modern’.2 What being ‘realistic’ meant to Phalke was that audiences would recognize pre-existent truths/ beliefs when they saw the films – from their understanding of mythology and the sacred texts. Where realistic/mimetic cinema in the West mimicked what was apparently real in the world, this reality was felt to represent only ephemeral or passing truths because there was knowledge that was ‘truer’ than everyday experience. Where, to the Lumières and Méliès, cinema was an extension of photography, cinema was to Phalke a recording of sacred performance which was a different kind of mimesis – that of the encounter between the human and the divine. What was implicated in cinema was not simply the ‘real’ but the ‘truth’, with a different provenance. Hindi cinema moved out of the genre of the mythological in the early 1940s for a variety of reasons, although the genre continued to be popular in South India. But what is important is that the sense remained that cinema was not an extension of photography but the recording of a sacred enactment that had instruction for all members of the social order. The Natyasastra, which is an ancient Sanskrit text laying down rules pertaining to dramatic and musical performance, may be pertinent here, at least to the extent of indicating their accepted purpose. It states3 that at a time when people were addicted to sensual pleasures, desire and greed, and jealousy and anger, the god Indra along with some of the other gods approached Brahma, the creator, and sought that he should create an object of diversion that would be audible as well as visible. Indra asked that all members of the social order be permitted to hear it. When the show got under way, the asuras (‘anti-gods’) took offence and caused the actors to forget their lines and movements. They contended that the play depicted them in unfavourable light vis-à-vis the gods. 7

REALISM AND REALITY

In replying to their complaints, the creator Brahma articulated the objective of drama and theatre. He explained that drama would be instructive to all through actions and states depicted and through sentiments arising out of it. There would be no wisdom, no knowledge, no craft, no device not found in drama. But the Natyasastra also says that ‘drama should be diversion for people weighed down by sorrow or fatigue or grief or ill-luck; it should be a rest (for the body and mind)’.4 The purpose of sacred theatre, it would seem, was hence not only to instruct all members of the social order but also relieve them of their worldly worries. Since theatre no longer had such propensity, an alternative was needed, and this is where cinema, because of its incalculable reach, stepped in, instructing even while providing solace. What is particularly important here is the clarity with which social purpose of performance is laid down – rather than defined as an occult or ritualistic practice that performance elsewhere (as in ancient Greece where it was meant to ‘honour the gods’) is usually taken to be. Since theatre can only be local, it can be argued that cinema eventually took to addressing a larger part of the social order and continued performing the same role, instructing the audience through familiar truisms (given its social thrust),5 even as it provided escape from everyday anxieties. A charge often made against it – especially in the 1970s when the state demanded social commitment out of cinema – was that it was escapist, but it has always also instructed. Even after the reign of the mythological ended in popular cinema and the ‘social’ (domestic melodrama) took root, the task of instructing audiences across the social order remained central. If cinema is a recording of sacred enactment intended to instruct a public across the social order, it moves into new territory from where it stood elsewhere. Cinema outside India, as already indicated, moved between two narrative functions – that of recording and exploring external reality through mechanical means and using the same technology to introduce the subjective element, that is, either an inner truth or external reality as apprehended/mediated by the subject. Its intent was exploration of the world, which was ultimately not knowable. But in India it avoided these functions and attempted to relay that ‘universal truths’ play a definite social role. Instead of exploring an unknowable universe, it set about propagating what was ‘known’, that is, received wisdom useful in one’s existence. The following are some key characteristics of Indian cinema which result from this approach: a) The camera eye is omniscient, and this means that subjectivity is noticeably absent. Since the camera eye sees ‘everything’, Indian cinema is hard put to produce surprise and suspense, which rely on complete information not being made available to the camera. To illustrate, in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) a murder is witnessed by several persons who give different versions of the events to the authorities, each 8

REALISM AND REALITY

one trying to tell the story to make himself/herself emerge from it as creditworthy. At no point is the ‘actual tale’ told since ‘reality’ cannot be independent of the observer. Such a fractured strategy would be impossible for an Indian popular film, say Suraj Barjatya’s Hum Aapke Hain Koun . . .! (1994) (HAHK) – a film about exemplary family togetherness amidst celebrations associated with conjugality – where there cannot be ‘different versions’ of the narrated events or an ‘authorial viewpoint’ on them. In HAHK what the audience sees is all there is to see and never anything as subjectively viewed.6 b) A second aspect pertains to the nature of the ‘truths’ relayed by popular films. According to the Natyasastra theatre should produce an aesthetic experience reflecting the truth apprehended through the mystical encounter, although only a connoisseur (rasika) will fully appreciate it. The primary consideration is that at the culmination of the aesthetic experience, the rasika7 is forced into a silent understanding of the unity of the world and his/her part in it.8 How this works out today is difficult to suppose, but if popular cinema is proceeding on the same basis (as I believe it is), a key factor may be that there is no connoisseur or rasika for film, which targets mass audiences. Cinema therefore adapts by propagating truths recognizable to every member of the audience, that is, they are impersonal truisms, independent of context. Situational ethics (i.e., particular to the situation) are disallowed – as for instance the impropriety of ‘insider trading’ on the stock market, which one can easily see informing a Hollywood film. The truths must be general enough to be taken for ‘universal’, for example, like sanctity of dosti9 or friendship as in Raj Kapoor’s Sangam (1964) or the need to follow, in a career, the need for self-fulfilment instead of succumbing to the rat race as in Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots (2009). c) Both neo-Aristotelian mimesis (followed by classical Hollywood) and the aesthetic experience posited by the Natyasastra (and drawn upon by Indian cinema) reflect in the story; the shape taken by the story in the two cinemas demonstrates the difference between the two modes of narration. The classical Hollywood film begins with an initial disturbance in the condition of the protagonist followed by the struggle to deal with it, the film concluding with either a victory or a defeat.10 The disturbance could be caused by any circumstance ranging from war to a social obstacle to love. Within this set-up the human dilemma explored by the film is the ‘theme’11 – like the conflict between love and duty – usually associated with the context. If the conflict between love and duty happens in a war film, the film in question could affirm either value. A German soldier in World War II might be correct to choose love while an American would not abandon duty.12 The theme allows the film to choose a slant – and the relationship between the theme, context and slant can be subtle, even meriting interpretation. An illustration would 9

REALISM AND REALITY

be Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942), which deals with love, selfinterest and patriotic duty in the context of the US entering the War. d) The story in Indian cinema has different connotations because it is the vehicle for a pre-existent idea recognizable to the audience as traditional wisdom. There is little in the story corresponding to the ‘theme’ – that is, exploration of a human dilemma – and even the Indian art film usually has a ready truth to relay. Where popular cinema deals with notions like the sanctity of the community (Mehboob Khan’s Mother India, 1956) or the need for reciprocity in true love (Tanu Weds Manu, 2011), art cinema transmits liberal socio-political truths like the oppression of the socially marginalized (Shyam Benegal’s Ankur, 1974) or the cruelty of the patriarchal order (Girish Kasaravalli’s Ghatashraddha, 1977). The pre-existent nature of the truths relayed by popular cinema is responsible for the familiarity of its resolutions – what will happen being generally determined, but how it will happen being variant and remaining open to narrative strategy.13 The notion of the ‘truth’ (as opposed to the ‘real’) manifested in a film’s ‘message’ is one of the foundational aspects of popular cinema in India; many other aspects ranging from stereotypical characters and situations to its unique employment of music owe to the notion. Although Indian cinema has sometimes eschewed it (as in some films of Satyajit Ray), the reach of the notion will be experienced time and again in this book and represents the key factor to differentiate it from the rest of world cinema, including films from Asia and the ‘Third World’. If ‘truths’ are what Indian popular cinema has been broadly relaying, it would be useful to categorize them. They cannot always be subsumed under a prescriptive ethic and in this manner differ from the fable in which a lesson is learnt by the protagonist. In Sangam, for instance, the truth is not prescriptive ethics pertaining to the need for loyalty between friends, since loyalty would then need to be problematized through an instance of disloyalty – which does not happen. (In fables people always learn lessons.) The truth, rather, pertains to an essential, exemplary condition, which is not prescribed but is in some way natural, just as the tragic circumstances of Karna’s life and the end that befalls him in the Mahabharata are ‘natural’.14 This notion will be discussed again when dealing with causality and will recur in the course of this book.

Summary Where cinema has generally pursued mimesis by according places to recorded reality as well as a subjective/expressive viewpoint on it, Indian cinema began by purveying pre-existent truths derived from traditional texts. Hence, it takes a different form from the rest of world cinema in that 10

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it consistently uses the omniscient camera eye, a rule that only a few art film-makers like Satyajit Ray violate when they offer subjective viewpoints on reality. The sense of pre-existent truths with eternal validity means that Indian films do not accept the notion that ethical values are contextual. ‘Nationalism’ as a virtue, for instance, might be upheld in a historical film set long before the nation came into existence. This is so even in the laterday art film where social truisms appropriate to the liberal classes (‘the deceitfulness of the powerful’, ‘the solidarity of the marginalized’) instead of more traditional messages (‘the sanctity of parental dictate’) are offered. Instead of the theme through which a conflict is explored, Indian films relay messages grounded in truisms considered pertinent to the moment, though they are not contextualized. The truths are therefore those like loyalty between friends or the sanctity of the family, which cannot be attached to a historical moment.

Notes 1 Ashish Rajadhyaksha, ‘The Phalke Era: Conflict of Traditional Form and Modern Technology,’ Journal of Arts and Ideas, Nos. 14–15, 1987, p. 61. 2 He believed he could achieve this by providing the public with ‘real’ manifestations of their beliefs, and he was accordingly fascinated with ‘fulfilling the promise of bringing the known alive’. Ibid., p. 67. 3 The Natyasastra is a Sanskrit Hindu text on the performing arts, and its first complete compilation is dated to between 200 BCE and 200 CE. Natyasastra, ascribed to Bharatamuni, Vol. I (Trans. and ed. Manmohan Ghosh), Calcutta: Manisha Granthalaya, 1967, pp. 5–15. Quoted by Farley P. Richmond, ‘Origins of Sanskrit Theatre,’ in Farley P. Richmond, Darius L. Swann, and Phillip B. Zarrilli (eds.), Indian Theatre: Traditions of Performance, New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas, 1993, pp. 25–26. 4 Lothar Lutze, ‘From Bharata to Bombay: Change and Continuity in Hindi Film Aesthetics,’ in Beatrix Pfleider and Lothar Lutze (eds.), The Hindi Film: Agent and Re-Agent of Cultural Change, New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1985, p. 8. The quoted segment is from the Natyasastra. 5 Given the purpose of the instruction, which was to lend stability to the social order, we may suppose that theatre was to be morally edifying, articulate truths recognizable to the public. 6 This is achieved by all elements pointing to subjectivity, like point-of-view being eschewed and the camera eye being consistently omniscient. 7 A rasika is a term for an aesthete. The term, derived from Sanskrit, means full of passion, elegant and with discrimination, a connoisseur and an expert able to appreciate a field, especially in the fine arts. 8 Eliot Deutsch, ‘Reflections on Some Aspects of the Theory of Rasa,’ in Rachel M. Van Baumer and James R. Brandon (eds.), Sanskrit Drama in Performance, Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas, 1993, p. 223. 9 Dosti is male bonding in Hindi cinema and has been written about by scholars. For instance, M Madhava Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 83–84. 10 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, London: Methuen, 1985, p. 157. 11 The theme is, roughly, an idea that recurs in or pervades a film.

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12 The different treatments meted out to World War II and World War I are brought out by two Spielberg films – Saving Private Ryan (1998) and War Horse (2011) respectively – and it is obvious that while a pacifist viewpoint would be perfectly compatible with a World War I film, it would be inappropriate for a WWII film told from an Allied perspective. Even in a pacifist WWII film like Terrence Mallick’s The Thin Red Line (1998), a deserter rejoins and dies courageously in battle, meaning that it would be wrong to stay away from the fighting in a war when good and bad are clearly demarcated. 13 Rosie Thomas, ‘Indian Cinema: Pleasures and Popularity,’ Screen, Vol. 26, Nos. 3–4, 1985, p. 130. 14 This implies an emphasis on ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’ and will come up once again while dealing with the notions of character and stardom.

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2 CONTENT, INTERPRETATION AND MEANING

Before we move to the exceptional case of Indian cinema, we should examine how world cinema is understood and/or evaluated. Mimesis, as already indicated, imitates what is apparent in human experience, and the fact that its ‘meaning’ is by no means guaranteed results in ambiguities. If human experience can be understood as a series of conflicts or struggles – for example, between humankind and nature, between people on the basis of desires, between human emotions, between the individual and social forces and between conflicting desires in an individual – the ‘theme’ can be taken to represent the kind of conflict or struggle the film is about, though not as an abstraction, but in the specific context created by the narrative.1 The ‘content’ of the film – which can be elusive – consequently emerges as what the treatment (in its totality) brings to the theme. Since each film should (ideally) imitate human experience in all its complexity, ambiguity and complexity become the virtues that enrich a film. The ‘content’ of a film can be elusive, and that, therefore, leads to interpretation (making meaning) becoming important in any critical undertaking. David Bordwell (Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema) posits four different kinds of ‘making meaning’:2 a) In arriving at the ‘referential meaning’ the perceiver constructs a concrete world and creates a ‘story’ complete with character, narrative logic and context. Very often this is quite a simple matter – especially for popular films which reach wide audiences – but in international art cinema information is often deliberately withheld. Sometimes the context is not made immediately clear and, at other times, the story is only gradually revealed as in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (2010), which deliberately confuses objectivity and subjectivity. In other cases (as in Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, 1960) the narrative logic is not easy to grasp.3 Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) is another such film, but one in which the referential meaning needs to be constructed in terms of the film’s chronology, impacting on other aspects such as the development of character and the ethical thrust. 13

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b) The perceiver may assign a ‘conceptual meaning’ to the story as he/she has already constructed it. Very often a line from the film (like, ‘there’s no place like home’ in The Wizard of Oz) points to it. This represents a level of abstraction and corresponds to the ‘moral’ of the story; it is apparent that all stories do not make their conceptual meanings explicit. Some film-makers, especially those who favour satire like Luis Bunuel (Nazarin, 1959), RW Fassbinder (Fear Eats the Soul, 1974)4 and Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut, 1999),5 make their films appear to mean something different from what careful viewing reveals them to be. Nazarin, an anti-clerical film, even won Bunuel acclaim from Franco’s government and the church, who took it to be deeply Catholic. c) Taken together (a) and (b) constitute the ‘literal meaning’ of a film, but a film may also speak indirectly. Just as all the elements of experience are not always ‘compatible’ or capable of being accommodated within a single explanation, all the elements of a film may not be in consonance with each other, and this could be deliberate. If one considers a ploy not used in a detective story – the detective dying accidentally before solving the puzzle and leaving the story wide open – one can still envisage a European art film in which such a happening is allowed.6 But what that film might then be emphasizing could not be the prevalence of justice – as in the standard detective story – but life’s untidiness,7 its refusal to subordinate itself to a humanly desirable order. Such an interpretation excavates the ‘implicit meaning’ which may (or may not) be in conflict with the referential and conceptual meaning. The use of irony could be one way through which the implicit meaning deliberately overrides (a) and (b). d) (a), (b) and (c) (which constitute ‘comprehension’) assume that the film knows what it is doing, but the perceiver may construct a ‘repressed’ or ‘symptomatic’ meaning that exceeds the intent of the film-maker. It might be associated with repressed psychological traits the film-maker might not acknowledge, or social prejudices/attitudes traceable to economic, political or ideological processes. This kind of interpretation is usually aligned with theory of some kind (e.g., Freudianism, feminism). Much academic work on popular cinema is primarily concerned with this category of interpretation (for instance Slavoj Zizek’s use of Jacques Lacan).8 If (a) and (b) are comparable to speech, (c) would be like gestural language that might be in seeming conflict with it but that could also add nuance; (d) would be closer to an involuntary tic or stammer, beyond a film’s intended content and in need of clinical investigation. The kind of interpretation implied by (d) is favoured by academics and is generally termed ‘deep interpretation’9 (as opposed to the ‘surface interpretation’ constituted by [a] to [c]), which Susan Sontag attacks in her essay Against Interpretation.10 It should be noted here that the ‘depth’ in the deep interpretation has little to do with profundity. While 14

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‘surface’ interpretations presume that authors as agents are still in some privileged position with regard to what the representations are, deep interpretations presume that they have no such privilege. Surface interpretations, unlike deep interpretations, refer to the way the intended audiences might understand a film. The reader may ask if ‘interpretation’ as defined here could not also be ‘interrogated’ since it is a notion ‘foreign’ to India, but, to reiterate a point, the effort in this book is not to arrive at an ‘Indian understanding’ of its own cinema but to qualify what Indian cinema means within the domain of film studies discourse, and Indian cinema can be understood through these categories. Coming to Indian cinema’s meaning, I have already indicated that from its very beginnings it chose to relay pre-existent truths (or truisms) rather than ‘imitate’ human experience in all its variety. This suggests that if the perceiver were to interpret it, the ‘conceptual meaning’ would be the first meaning to emerge, the ‘referential meaning’ corresponding more precisely to the circumstantial detail employed in delivering it. But this proposition would be more conspicuously applicable to India’s popular cinema since some of art cinema has tried consciously to be realistic, that is, pursued mimesis though the examples already provided suggest a tendency for art films to also deliver social truths proper for the radicalized liberal class in a democracy. If filmic narration delivers pre-existent truths, the next question pertains to the strategy by which the truth/meaning is encoded in the text. Where classical Hollywood cinema usually begins with an initial disturbance, Indian films also begin thus, but the key difference is that while Hollywood is primarily interested in the protagonists’ struggle following the disturbance, Indian films use it to merely initiate the action and there is rarely a struggle caused by it. In Indian cinema ‘seed’ or ‘germ’ would be a better term to describe the device than ‘disturbance’, finding correspondence in what has been noticed by students of Sanskrit drama;11 one could also deduce that this seed initiates transmission of the core truth relayed by a film. In a mainstream film like Deewar (1975) the ‘seed’ would be the indelible tattoo made on the boy’s hand declaring his father to be a thief. From outside a mainstream Hindi film, the message in Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox (2013) – pertaining to the loneliness of people in a big city – is implied in the instance where a lunchbox meant for someone is mistakenly delivered to someone else and awakens that person’s interest. In Pattabhirama Reddy’s Kannada art film Samskara (1970), a Brahmin scholar steeped in orthodoxy is forced into questioning traditional beliefs when tempted into sex with a low-caste woman on the day of his wife’s death. In these instances, the first cause is less a ‘disturbance’ from an initial condition than a seed implying the film’s full meaning. If one were to compare this with an example from a Hollywood blockbuster, the disturbance in Spider-Man (2002) is Peter Parker being bitten by a genetically altered spider and becoming super-strong12 and 15

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certainly does not imply the film’s meaning. It is an important factor that the first event in Indian film determines the course of the story in which no extraneous major event is allowed to intrude at a later point – because such intrusion would distort the message beyond recognition. As a contrast, Peter Parker’s conflict with Norman Osborne, a.k.a. the Green Goblin, happens later and is extraneous to Peter being biologically transformed by the bite from the genetically altered spider. If both Indian popular cinema and (the major part of) art cinema operate according to this principle, the reader will ask, how are the two categories different? My own understanding is that the message/truth will not emerge simply through the seed; the story that follows should also play its part by using typical characters and situations to ensure that the message only implied by the seed is relayed in full. The relation between the seed and the story could perhaps also correspond to a riddle and its solution. Popular cinema works partly on principles akin to that of the fable in which the fox needs to be cunning and the tortoise steadfast for the moral to reach the reader,13 but its messages can still be developed to a higher level of complexity. To illustrate through film examples, Ritwik Ghatak’s Bengali classic Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960) and K Balachander’s Tamil film Aval Oru Thodar Kathai (1974) (which derives from it) are both about a working woman in a joint family who is exploited by the other members. But while the Tamil film (due to the stereotypical characters and situations) is a tract on contemporary times where the men of the house do not follow dharma and shoulder their responsibilities, Ghatak’s film makes its characters more complex; as an example, people within the family are conscious of their exploitation of the daughter but, despite feeling guilty, find it convenient. Balachander’s film, like Ghatak’s, ends tragically for the heroine, but unlike Meghe Dhaka Tara it pushes a conservative discourse about ‘the working woman’s lot’ being typically constructed around drudgery in ‘Kali Yuga’. Ghatak’s story, it may be noted, also introduces later elements – like the historical context of Partition – extraneous to the ‘seed’, and the film’s meaning far exceeds this ‘message’. Judging from these examples we might conclude that with a few exceptions Indian popular cinema is structured in a way that makes ‘conceptual meaning’ the basis of a story rather than observation. It is for this reason that there are very few Indian films where the referential and conceptual meanings are not immediately intelligible. It is also because of the sense of meaning being definite that there has been little avant-garde experimentation in Indian cinema, although some film-makers who have come out of the Film and Television Institute of India (e.g., Kumar Shahani, Mani Kaul) have attempted it.14 The ‘avant-garde’ are those still experimenting with form and meaning. The implicit meaning of any film is a more difficult notion to understand than the two kinds of meaning elaborated upon hitherto – since it is located in aspects that do not simply underscore the literal meaning. It may even 16

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be found in elements formally outside the diegesis, like lighting, music and characteristics of the performances.15 Alfred Hitchcock’s 1950s works (e.g., Vertigo, 1958) are examples of films which exceed the concepts upon which they are based and only by asking deeper questions is something resembling ‘meaning’ satisfactorily reached. With Vertigo, for instance, one could ask who the protagonist Scottie is infatuated with. It is neither Madeleine (whom he has never met) nor the unrefined Judy, but Judy impersonating Madeleine. Alternately, one could ask questions about Scottie himself and what he is looking for. The ‘implicit meaning’ is fertile ground for film scholars who may not even be in agreement about what aspect of a film deserves the deepest scrutiny, as has been the case with Vertigo. But it is these disagreements that eventually elevate a noteworthy film to the level of ‘classic’. In Indian cinema the supremacy of the conceptual meaning tends to ensure that elements not in consonance with it are excluded from any film. Nuances (like irony), when not wholly compatible with the conceptual meaning, are absent, and each film speaks as if ‘with one voice’. When one looks at the greatest films made in India – like those of Satyajit Ray – one does not find disagreement among critics over what the films mean, implying that elements exceeding immediate comprehension are, by and large, absent. If the implicit meaning could emerge from ambiguities in the referential meaning, film storytelling in India has rarely left the referential meaning unclear. Some exceptions are in Malayalam art cinema, and one might cite Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Anantaram (1987) and G Aravindan’s Esthappan (1980), where doubt is deliberately cast on the truthfulness of the related story. ‘What happened’ and ‘what is imagined’ are not kept separate, and there is a blurring of the subjectivity/objectivity dichotomy. The repressed/symptomatic meaning of Indian film is what engages academics involved in film interpretation most often, and one must begin by saying that since ‘deep interpretation’ (by definition) deals with an artist’s phobias and prejudices it cannot become the basis of an appreciation of film. While, rightly speaking, a classic should be as likely the subject of such interpretation as a blockbuster, what happens in actual practice is that designated masterworks are rarely investigated and popular cinema is, by default, the domain where deep interpretation is at home. The reason for the popularity of deep interpretation among academics is that being theory-down, it can align itself with existing procedures in the academic study of cinema and can fit readily into pedagogic applications. Since most of these procedures have been developed outside India (usually in Western universities) Indian film academics find themselves trying to accommodate products culturally specific to India into ‘foreign’ paradigms, even when the fit is uneasy.16 The justification is that the theory employed (e.g., psychoanalysis) is not culturespecific but universal. Many of the repressed/symptomatic meanings attached to Indian films by academics hence tend to rely on inaccurate descriptions of 17

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the films, resulting from an effort to achieve a comfortable fit with existing theory.17 An interpretive procedure more rewarding than the theory-down one is to identify departures from the norm in representations when it comes to key motifs (as in romance and family relationships) and chart the deviation;18 romance between people of different social stations or religions could be understood as a deviation or an anomaly since traditional marriages are usually between people of the same station. The anomaly can be seen as a direct commentary on social developments in the milieu concurrent to the appearance of the film. There is no missing the anomaly since it is usually problematized in the film as a taboo challenged. The anomaly can then be interpreted as a symbolic rendering of a social development impacting society. An illustration (with regard to Bobby, 1973) is provided in the chapter on ‘Station and Hierarchy’.

Summary Of the four kinds of meaning that can be made of any film it is less the referential meaning (making sense of the milieu and the story) than the conceptual meaning (which corresponds to the ‘moral’) that dominates an audience’s response to any film, in contrast to a film from Hollywood where it would be the story that is required to be first made sense of. This is because, as already indicated, each film relays meanings familiar from tradition instead of allowing meaning to be created in the spectator through the story; in other words, a film story emerges already interpreted. Secondly, Indian films are not rich in implicit meanings, and this means they do not repay interpretation in terms of new layers of complexity being discovered. The absence of a subjective viewpoint (authorial expressivity or character subjectivity) and the omniscience of the camera eye tend to lower this possibility. Exceptions here would include some films by Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and G Aravindan as well as some self-consciously avant-garde works by Kumar Shahani and Mani Kaul. This is why excavating the repressed/symptomatic meaning – which is outside the scope of artistic intent – is the undertaking that film academia engages with most often, since universalist ‘theory’ (post-Marxist, psychoanalytical) can be applied to film fruitfully.

Notes 1 For instance, the conflict between love and duty would have different connotations if it were duty in war (that of a soldier) and the duty to marry someone because it is socially the right thing, for instance a promise given by a parent. 2 David Bordwell, Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 8–9. 3 David Bordwell notes that the ‘puzzling film’ of European art cinema is a way of privileging the authorial voice (what he/she is trying to say). David Bordwell,

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4 5

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‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice,’ in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (5th Edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 717–722. M.K. Raghavendra, ‘RW Fassbinder: Notes on the Cinema of an Actor-Director,’ Deep Focus, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1990, pp. 21–23. M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Satirizing the Unacknowledged: Interpreting Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999),’ Phalanx: A Quarterly Review for Continuing Debate, December 2015. www.phalanx.in/pages/article_i0011_Eyes_Wide_Shut.html Accessed 11th May 2017. David Bordwell, ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice,’ in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (5th Edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 716–724. Ibid., p. 718. Slavoj Zizek, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016. Arthur C. Danto, ‘Deep Interpretation,’ in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art, New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, pp. 51–53. Susan Sontag, ‘Against Interpretation,’ in A Susan Sontag Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982, pp. 95–104. M. Christopher Byrski, ‘Sanskrit Drama as an Aggregate of Model Situations,’ in Rachel Van M. Baumer and James R. Brandon (ed.), Sanskrit Drama in Performance, New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas, 1993, p. 144. It is apparent that the ‘disturbance’ in classical Hollywood film narrative is quite different from the ‘seed’ that grows into the plot material in Indian popular cinema although it occupies approximately the same position in the unfolding film. There is a continuous struggle thereafter between his strength and the moral imperatives it places upon him. This struggle may be understood in terms of his uncle’s words: ‘Along with great power comes great responsibility’, which corresponds to the film’s conceptual meaning. All the attributes of a character must be visible at first glance, as for instance the portrayal of wise men and sages in film and TV. ‘A beard on Valmiki in the Ramayana – whether on film or on TV – is not a photographic record of a real beard on a real man; it is a photograph, but of the beard symbol of someone who is supposed, by tacit agreement between filmmaker and audience to be a traditional sage’. Chidananda Das Gupta, The Painted Face, New Delhi: Roli Books, 1991, p. 54. Kumar Shahani’s Tarang (1984) and Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti (1970), the most well-known examples, abandon standard realist narrative and use non-acting styles. See M.K. Raghavendra, 50 Indian Film Classics, Noida: Collins, 2009, pp. 114–119, 238–243. For example, the different acting styles used in different parts of Jacques Rivette’s Céline et Julie vont en bateau (1974). See M.K. Raghavendra, ‘World and Text: Interpreting Jacques Rivette,’ in Locating World Cinema: Interpretations of Film as Culture, New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2020, pp. 75–79. For example, using psychoanalysis to explain the mother-son relationship in films like Mother India (1954) as an oedipal fixation when the strategy does not explain why strong mother-son attachments appear in cinema only after independence (1947). M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 238–242. Noël Carroll, ‘Prospects for Film Theory: A Personal Assessment,’ in David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds.), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996, pp. 42–43.

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3 CAUSALITY

Causality, that is, the relationship between causes and effects in the construction of narrative, should have a primary place in the study of any cinema because it points to key beliefs in any cultural system. In classical Hollywood cinema the narrative is structured as a causal chain, with psychologically defined individuals who struggle to solve a clear-cut problem or attain specific goals. In the course of this struggle, the characters enter into conflict with others or with external circumstances. The story ends with a decisive victory or a defeat, a resolution of the problem and clear achievement or non-achievement of the goals. The principal causal agency is thus the character, a discriminated individual endowed with a consistent batch of evident traits and qualities.1 Hollywood, of course, also permits impersonal causes, but they are usually subordinated to psychological causation. Impersonal causes may initiate or alter a line of story action, but personal causes must then take over and move the narrative towards its completion. Coincidences and accidents must confine themselves entirely to the initial condition.2 In the classical Hollywood film, causes are also left dangling to be picked up subsequently by effects.3 This method leads the spectator to anticipation and guarantees that the action does not slacken between any two scenes. To illustrate once again through a well-known film, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002), Peter Parker becomes super-strong by accident but his psychological condition induces him to take advantage of the accident, and each episode is connected to the succeeding one in a similar way. Peter then needs a car to win Mary Jane but he does not have the resources. He eventually finds a possible source but still needs to wrestle to get it. He wins the bout because of his ‘spider-strength’ but the manager cheats him, only to be robbed a few minutes later. Peter encounters the robber after he has just robbed the manager but allows him to get away because of his anger at the manager who cheated him. Outside, the robber kills Peter’s uncle – since Peter permitted him to get away. Peter Parker consequently resolves to fight crime because of his part in his uncle’s death. The causal connections are devised as a series of links in a chain, and one cannot remove a link without affecting the plot adversely. 20

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The fact of causality being driven by the motivated individual is understandably American since one finds the individual (together with the nuclear family) placed at the centre of mythmaking in the US. European cinema sees causality quite differently, and the post-war art film even subverted the practice of placing the stable/motivated individual at the centre of the narrative,4 as evidenced in the films of Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless, 1960). In films by Eric Rohmer (Full Moon in Paris, 1984) the characters are often uncertain about what drives them, while in some Antonioni films (The Passenger, 1975) the characters seem reluctant even to go on living. In post-revolutionary Soviet cinema motivation is often laid at the doorstep of groups/classes as in the films of Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin, 1925), and collective needs initiate action.5 I have elaborated upon role of the ‘seed’ in Indian film narrative, and the seed may be associated with a ‘first cause’.6 In many earlier films the seed would be found in what may be described as the prehistory of the story, confined to a preamble dealing with a boy’s childhood trauma in versions of Devdas and in films featuring the ‘angry young man’ – Zanjeer (1973), Deewar (1975), Trishul (1978), Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978), Shakti (1982) and Agneepath (1990). The trauma becomes justification for ‘anger’, which is carried forward into adulthood. Many of the celebrated films of the 1970s and 1980s include a preamble-as-first-cause; another instance is Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay (1975) in which the liquidation of the Thakur’s family by the bandit Gabbar sets the narrative into motion. A strategy used by other films is to keep the ‘prehistory’ off-screen as in HAHK, in which the college friendship between Kailas Nath and Prof. Siddharth Choudhury (and their common love for the woman who became Mrs Choudhury) is the basis for their loyalty and galvanizes the story about the need for their families to contract marriage alliances with each other. Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots (2009) uses the same strategy, and the prehistory (which is off-screen) pertains to the gardener’s boy wanting to acquire learning and enrolling in college in the guise of Ranchoddas Chanchad, the gardener’s employer’s son, who only wants a degree. Films could also introduce some suspense or surprise by revealing the prehistory in flashback as in Kaminey (2009), in which the story of the father explains the present. The seed, as already indicated, initiates the film’s relay of its conceptual meaning and its nature bears reflecting upon. It does not embody an ethical viewpoint since the genesis of Devdas’s weakness, Vijay’s anger in Deewar or Phunsukh Wangdu’s desire for learning in 3 Idiots points to no discernible ethics. Still, it is important since the whole emotional burden of the film often rests upon it. Once the first cause has been defined, a film sees it as the basis of every subsequent development, rather than as leading to effects which become causes for other events, and so on. There is rarely evidence of a causal relationship between events subsequent to the denoted first cause. Once defined clearly, the narrative unfolds, as though the destiny implied by the first cause 21

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were only acted upon subsequently. With some narratives shifting towards realism, the prehistory located in a distant past has gradually made way for a first event which simply begins the narrative – as, for instance, the exchanged lunchboxes in Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox or the family getting television in Manikandan’s Tamil film Kaaka Muttai (2014), when the boys are drawn to pizzas by advertising. But such films rarely abandon the strategy of relaying a truth/message. The first event is now simply the one used to define the situation in which the action unfolds, one from which individually motivated action has been excluded. When one studies the relationship between the gravest of the messages and the narratives, one sometimes detects a plausibility gap. The gardener’s boy (Aamir Khan) in 3 Idiots becoming a celebrated inventor and the death of aspiring star Om Makhija (Shahrukh Khan) in Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om (2007) leading to his reincarnation as a leading film star are both incredible, but one does not find oneself questioning their credibility. They seem to work by a logic which touches a chord elsewhere. On reflection it would seem that the first cause (embodying the message) has its counterpart in stories in the epics – like Karna’s illegitimate birth (through Kunti, sired by the Sun God)7 in the Mahabharata placing him in a perpetually disturbed state and leading him inexorably to a tragic end. Even when people (seemingly) act independently in the epics – for example, the ‘evil’ Shakuni poisoning the minds of the Kauravas and leading them to cheat the Pandavas at dice – it is not linked to immediate motives but traced to past happenings, often in past births when other happenings determined their karma.8 My argument here is that the first cause, when it is kept distant from the unfolding narrative, mimics the doings of karma and the way it overrides immediate causes. It is perhaps not arbitrary that Om Makhija in Om Shanti Om has his desires fulfilled only in another incarnation. The plausibility gap between the narrative and its prehistory, I propose, mirrors the gap between everyday happenings and the karmic explanations traditionally given to them. Given the inexorability of the way the seed develops into a predictable story, one could also propose that the message in the classical Hindi film – the relay of which has been eschewed by some new cinema – could pertain to the ways in which one’s karma is unerringly fulfilled and people become what they should be, whether angry (Deewar), weak (Devdas) or brilliant (3 Idiots). Alternatively, it could also pertain to dharma and its obligations as in Sangam, in which the needs of friendship are so paramount that a friend kills himself to protect the other’s marriage. But even when dharma is the guiding force, it is not presented as an ethic but rather as the natural order governing all activity, just as it is natural for the seed to grow into a tree. Exemplars are those who simply follow the natural order because they are in harmony with it. If causation is ‘karmic’ as suggested here, a question is what this does to motivation and effort in Indian cinema, and it would seem that, generally 22

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speaking, narration happens in the ‘passive voice’, as it were.9 Indian popular cinema does not rely on psychological causation because characters are usually ideals not endowed with psychology and they rarely initiate action. The dastardly villain (famously played by Ajit) is not associated with a deliberate conspiracy, and he is as if evil ‘by nature’ – that is, without the quality being directed towards a purpose.10 The reader may consider also the clash usually concluding an adventure film. Most of these fights take place after the hate figure has been created and his treacherous nature elaborated upon. Yet, when the moment actually arrives for the villain to be dealt with, the final act of his disposal is postponed time and again, on the most unconvincing grounds. If this method of storytelling prolongs the action, most action films use the method to wring the greatest amount of excitement out of climactic sequences. A distinction must nevertheless be made between the villain’s end at the hands of James Bond and the culminating action in Indian film melodrama. The typical James Bond adventure puts the protagonist initially at a disadvantage, but when the obstacles are surmounted, the film makes the destruction of the villain deliberate and sometimes even contemptuously simple. Action sequences in Indian popular cinema usually arrange a more fortuitous end for the hate figure. In Maine Pyar Kiya (1989) the villain, who is trying to push the protagonist over a cliff, is abruptly attacked by the pigeon he previously ill-treated!11 The pigeon here is apparently in the position of karma’s agent. Instead of offering the spectator the pleasure of watching the premeditated annihilation of the hate object, these sequences actually disregard the potential for such excitement. In the first encounter between Jai and Viru and Gabbar in Sholay, the two are employed to kill the villain, but instead of going out in search of their quarry (as the bounty hunters do in For a Few Dollars More, 1965), the encounter takes place when Gabbar’s men raid the village. This is ‘unassertiveness’ on the part of popular cinema, but the chosen shot construction and the linking work consistently towards it. To illustrate the methods of the popular film through a hypothetical scenario, one could say that, rather than participate in the excitement of a mountainous ascent, an Indian popular film would, more probably, show the summit as ascended. The active pursuit of an end is less sought than the end simply attained. In the Indian epics, the initial ‘disturbance’ is caused when an evil thought is planted in a key player’s mind – by Manthara in Kaikeyi’s mind in the Ramayana and by Shakuni in Duryodhana’s in the Mahabharata – and the reasons for their actions are in their karmas. We can justifiably say that its construction is the visual equivalent of the ‘passive voice’, and it chooses not to generate excitement through a consistent use of the ‘active voice’, as Hollywood does. If one were to compare this with the Greek epics, the element of hubris – arrogance leading to someone’s downfall – is present in them; ‘arrogance’ implies agency, a person being something on his or her own. Martha Nussbaum identifies personal excellence and luck as the twin 23

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notions guiding human lives, for which a person is made accountable,12 and this is different from monolithic karma. Passive and active voice may be said to correspond to a deterministic view of the world and one in which free will predominates, but it is difficult to say what ‘determinism’ in the Indian context is. One accumulates good karma through virtuous acts, which implies that one must show initiative in some way to accumulate good karma. It is difficult at this point not to indulge in some speculation, and a possible explanation is that being ‘good’ or ‘virtuous’ is specifically in relation to the notion of dharma. Dharma is a subtle notion and is largely contextual (and not ‘situational’) in nature, with context related to birth and station (social position). It is ‘the law that sustains creation in its entirety’, but at the same time it can be associated with the duties which ensure social stability.13 It is therefore not the ‘motivated individual’ who follows the path of dharma but the one who is in harmony with society and the cosmic order. That is perhaps why, even when films uphold initiative as in 3 Idiots, the protagonist who bears the message of the film (Rancho, a.k.a. Phunsukh Wangdu) is not shown to be pursuing anything single-mindedly as much as being himself and inspiring others through his presence. When he is finally discovered to be immensely successful, the path he has taken in life is not revealed. Another example would be Jeethu Joseph’s Malayalam film Drishyam (2013), in which the male protagonist’s family is threatened over a murder. It is the man’s duty to use his intelligence to outwit the police investigation in the interests of his family, but rather than show him acting deliberately, the purpose of his acts is made known only after it is achieved.

Summary Causality is the logic by which causes are linked to effects in the narrative of any film. Hollywood favours individual motivation as way of driving a narrative: an initial condition is disturbed, the protagonist struggles with the disturbance and the film concludes with his/her victory or defeat. Indian films do not follow this model, and a popular strategy is to have a first cause (sometimes in a preamble) that takes the place of the ‘disturbance’ but serves as the raison d’etre for all future actions. In Devdas (1936) his father’s beatings in childhood reduce the adult protagonist to a state of permanent ineffectuality, and in Deewar (1975) the legend ‘Mera baap chor hai’ tattooed on the boy Vijay’s forearm declaring his father a thief propels his adult self into a permanently angry state. This is not psychological causation since the characters are not endowed with interiors but more epic in character as those in the Mahabharata. Vijay in Deewar has, in fact, been compared by scholars to the tragic hero Karna of the epic. The gap between the first cause (which is like the seed out of which the story grows) and the subsequent events mimics the one between the karma of the past and the situations 24

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the present places us in. It is the sense of our karmas guiding us that makes popular film narratives emerge in the passive voice, rather than the active voice that Hollywood favours.

Notes 1 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, London: Methuen, 1985, p. 157. 2 David Bordwell, ‘The Classical Hollywood Style,’ in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson (eds.), The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, p. 13. 3 Kristin Thompson, ‘The Formulation of the Classical Style,’ in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson (eds.), The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, p. 170. 4 David Bordwell, ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice,’ in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (5th Edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 716–724. 5 David Bordwell, ‘The Classical Hollywood Style, 1917–60,’ in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson (eds.), The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, p.  12. How this can be achieved is demonstrated by Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925), which allows transference between characters in motivated action: B responds when he sees something done to A or tells C and D, who mobilize a group. If the film was made by Hollywood, A would need to respond directly to the provocation. 6 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 48. 7 The character of Karna – termed the ‘good-bad hero’ by critics/theorists. Sudhir Kakar, Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality, New Delhi: Penguin, 1989, pp. 37–40. This has inspired many creations, including the angry young man played by Amitabh Bachchan in films like Deewar (1975) in which, as well, a first cause placing the protagonist in a disturbed state is included. 8 There also are tales in which suggest that Shakuni, widely seen as the villain of the Mahabharata and the Pandavas’ adversary, poisoned the minds of the Kauravas against the Pandavas as revenge against the Kauravas because he wanted them destroyed by the Pandavas. No fates are final and there is even a temple dedicated to Shakuni in the southern state of Kerala. 9 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 45–46. 10 It could also be proposed that the villain is a ‘composite creation’ performing the same role that malevolent nature did in earlier films. As evidence, while the family is split in Waqt (1965) by an earthquake, the villain’s doings achieve the same end in its later version, Yaadon Ki Baraat (1973), with the villain being played by Ajit. Minor villains are more in the nature of obstacles that karmic causality allows, and they do not interfere with the end result. An illustration here would be the loyal servant of the Pakistani household whom the heroine kills in Raazi (2018). 11 As contrast, consider the climax of Taken 2 (2012) when the protagonist returns his principle adversary’s gun to him and allows him to walk away. Instead of walking away the man tries to kill the protagonist, who has taken the precaution

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of removing the bullets, and who then kills him. In Maine Pyar Kiya, the villain is destroyed by his own actions and not by the protagonist. 12 ‘We need to be born with adequate capacities, to live in fostering natural and social circumstances, to stay clear of abrupt catastrophe, to develop confirming associations with other human beings’. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 1. 13 The term ‘dharma’ is impossible to translate into English simply. In Hinduism, dharma signifies behaviours that are considered to be in accord with the order that makes life and the universe possible and includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and ‘right way of living’. The Classical Sanskrit noun ‘dharma’ is a derivation from the root dhr, which means ‘to hold, maintain, keep’, and takes a meaning of ‘what is established or firm’ and hence ‘law’. It is derived from an older Vedic Sanskrit n-stem dharman-, with a literal meaning of ‘bearer, supporter’, in a religious sense conceived as an aspect of Rta. Terence P. Day, The Conception of Punishment in Early Indian Literature, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982, pp. 42–45.

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4 FAMILY AND GENEALOGY

The family is a setting in much of world cinema, but it is much more than that in some of them. Two cinemas of the world in which they have a substantially greater role to play are those of the US and India. In mainstream Hollywood cinema love of family, love of father/ruler and love of country are intertwined concepts, and the family provides a legitimizing metaphor for hierarchical society: father as the head, mother as subservient and children as dependent.1 Romantic love and the institution of the family are also logically linked as lovers are transformed into fathers and mothers, and romance necessarily terminates in the founding of the family. The family, paradoxically, both legitimizes and conceals sexuality and is presented in cinema in a completely de-eroticized way and made an object of deep loyalty. As Alexis de Tocqueville (in his monumental Democracy in America)2 notes, for the majority of the nations of Europe, political existence commenced in the superior ranks and was gradually communicated to the different members of the social body. In the US, on the other hand, social organization began at the smallest level. The township was organized before the county, the county before the state, the state before the union. The simplest kind of social organization led to more complex forms. It is clearly beyond the scope of this study to examine this history deeply, but the proposition that in America the simplest kind of social organization existed independently before leading to more complex forms helps us make an association between the mythical dimensions assumed by ‘individuality’ in American popular culture. It also accounts for the moral significance of the family (heterosexual monogamy) in cinema since the family can be understood to be the simplest unit of social organization. If the genre of the western creates a mythology out of the origins of the American nation, John Ford’s classic westerns (The Searchers, 1956) look to the white nuclear family as the civilizing influence in the frontier,3 even while the heroic individual is fighting natives and making the land safe for civilization. It is difficult to provide an exhaustive account of how the centrality of the family manifests itself in narrative, but infidelity to one’s partner is the standard way in which moral turpitude is connoted. Two of Woody Allen’s 27

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films, Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Match Point (2005), implicitly justify murder when it is committed to protect a marriage by showing that it produces no guilt. In Arbitrage (2012) a fund manager into shady dealings because of a bad investment is conclusively damned only when his marital infidelity is discovered by his family and he loses their respect. Indian popular cinema’s treatment of the family differs vastly from that of Hollywood, and we can consider the differences. Indian film theorists cite Louis Althusser while discussing the family in popular cinema, but the aforementioned factors suggest that treating his conclusions as universally valid could be misplaced, and they need to be qualified. Althusser (Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays) described institutions like family, school and church as ‘ideological state apparatuses’4 (as opposed to the police and the military, which he called ‘repressive state apparatuses’)5 since they exert coercive pressure upon the individual to conform socially/politically to state authority; the portrayal of the family in 1950s Hindi cinema was interpreted in that way. Althusser’s ideas are certainly applicable not only to Hollywood but to much of world cinema as well; as an illustration of their validity, Antoine Doinel needs to break with his family to gain freedom in Francois Truffaut’s 400 Blows (1959). The family is an instrument of oppression in Mizoguchi’s films like The Life of Oharu (1952). In Satyajit Ray’s Janaranya (1976) family pressures play their part in the protagonist’s moral compromise. When Hollywood films like those of John Ford (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962) eulogize the nuclear family, they are aligned with the nation-state.6 What keeps these films apart from Indian popular cinema is their being mimetic and dealing with actual family in a political world, while the Indian family is an ideal taken from mythology and accepted belief. Indian myths praise both characters who are loyal to their families and those who have broken away. The ascetic who is highly eulogized in society has abandoned his family, but the householder who performs his duties is also praiseworthy since the dharmas of the two are considered different.7 This suggests that genealogy and the family can be portrayed in more than one way. It is only in art cinema (Court, 2014) that the mimetic role of the story sees it following Althusser’s formulations; popular cinema with its affinity to timeless myth is different.8 In Indian cinema romantic love and the institution of the family are not associated since family means genealogy and, because of this factor, the joint family rather than the nuclear family is connoted by term ‘family’. By and large, films conclude with the culmination of a romance, and love is not carried forward and transformed into marital relationships within the story. Parents are kept distinctly apart from romancing couples. It should be noted here that ‘father’, ‘mother’ or ‘mother-in-law’ are ‘dharmic’ emblems connoting qualities and not relationships. The fact that a ‘mother-in-law’ should necessarily be someone’s mother does not mean that the standard motherin-law can exhibit overly warm qualities. Very often there were actresses 28

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specializing in mother-in-law roles – Lalitha Pawar in Dahej (1950) – who are remembered for them. When Hindi cinema and cinema in the regional languages were made in the 1950s, the qualities associated with the parents were usually laudable, although the strict father of Bimal Roy’s Devdas (1955) appeared to belie it. The mother emerged as the site of virtue in films like Awaara (1951) and Mother India (1956). In Kannada language popular cinema, the father was accorded the status of lord and master while the wife and children conducted themselves as his subjects.9 But where Hollywood remained consistent in treating the nuclear family as inviolable, the parental presence (often with parent-surrogates) took other shapes in India, and by the 1990s we see them in different avatars. In Rajkumar Santoshi’s Damini (1993) the heroine’s parents and in-laws are both morally culpable for abetting in rape, and the latter are consigned to jail. In the new millennium, when personal aspiration became the cherished value in Hindi films like Bunty Aur Babli (2005) and Guru (2007), the parents become obstructions. The changing moral value of the parent in film narrative has us wondering until we realize that regardless of the value attached to him/her, there are only a few popular films in which the parent’s presence is not crucial.10 Sometimes a parent-surrogate (as Thakur Baldev Singh is to Jai and Veeru in Sholay) in the shape of an elderly person who commands respect (or wields authority) takes the parent’s place. The parent or parent-surrogate is someone who points to an aspect of the past which may not (or may) be eulogized in the film. In PC Barua’s Devdas (1935) the father invokes hierarchy to prohibit Devdas’s marriage to Parvati, and in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995) the father’s nostalgia for his Indian roots sees him rejecting Raj as a match for Simran. In Baazigar (1993) the wrong done to his father prompts Ajay Sharma to murder his fiancée. SS Rajamouli’s Baahubali (2015) has the protagonist discovering that he is son to a king. These instances lead one to conclude that parents do not represent valorized tradition but simply the past; in each example, a parent (or genealogy) is also implicated in the ‘first cause’, implying that his/her presence plays some part in a film’s ‘meaning’. What is important is only that the action takes place in relation to that, either affirming or denying its value.11 The association of the parent with the past or tradition gives us a clue as to the employment of the parental presence within film narrative. When dealing with the production of meaning by Hollywood I made an association between the theme and the context and noted how Indian popular cinema, in contrast, does not specify context – that the meaning relayed by each film is independent of it. I now propose that genealogy replaces context in popular cinema and that actions ‘mean’ something only in relation to past social/ moral conventions.12 Past conventions are not necessarily a model for conduct, and sometimes breaking with them is deemed correct – as in films of the 1990s and after, when ‘personal aspiration’ became a cherished notion in 29

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cinema. At the same time every moral notion upheld today is not contextualized, and Bunty’s parents in Bunty Aur Babli are wrong in wanting their son to take up government employment. These contrary representations of the family may make the family seem a contextual notion, but the changing view of the family is not problematized. There is little sense to be obtained that whatever act is ‘right’ in one context could be ‘wrong’ in another. Although different values are valorized at different times, each value is presented as ‘universal’. If dharma is the ruling principle the aforementioned contradictions point to its slipperiness as a guiding ethic. It is not easy to explain popular cinema’s flexibility with its prescriptions with regard to conduct – why some kinds of conduct are favoured at certain times while the same conduct is judged negatively at others. I earlier noted the absence of ‘situational ethics’ in Indian popular cinema, and I need to elaborate on that notion in order to eliminate the possibility of confusion. ‘Dharma’, which is the code of ethics operating in Hindu thought, is understood to be a ‘contextual ethics’, but this is not the same as ‘situational ethics’. Dharma is ‘contextual’ in the sense that prescribed individual conduct depends on one’s place in the social order, largely determined by genealogy. It can be understood as a function of station and is not historically engendered, which is what (situational) ethical notions pertaining to ‘insider trading’ or ‘video piracy’ would be. Dharma is a nebulous and ‘subtle’ doctrine, and evidence is found in the debates perpetually under way in the Indian epics, in which the players justify their positions ethically, often to each other.13 This suggests that although dharmic values are timeless, their nebulousness allows some flexibility in their interpretation, and this may account for popular cinema’s changing ethical standpoints, even while insisting that its values are universal. It is perhaps because what is one’s dharma can be defined only in relation to genealogy that the parent is implicated in the first cause – and plays a part in the relay of meaning.

Summary Where ‘family’ usually includes family formation as a component, genealogy and romance are kept distinctly separate in Indian popular cinema, with the parental presence and the joint family taking on diverse functions, denoted differently at different times, and sometimes a parent-surrogate replacing the parent. This means that it cannot be interpreted uniformly (in Althusserian terms) as an ‘ideological state apparatus’ playing a politically repressive role. The argument in the chapter is that the parent or parent-surrogate plays the part of ‘the past’ or ‘the context’ in popular cinema since its ethical thrust is chronically non-contextual; actions are charted in relation to this ‘past’ or ‘vestige of tradition’. There is no compulsion for characters to follow family dictate in films, and this is true even in the epics, where a character may be loyal to his family or break with it with equal justification. Dharma is a 30

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nebulous/slippery term and a seemingly contradictory notion which allows the popular film to present sometimes contrary ethics as equally valid or laudable – at different times. Still, since genealogy is the key basis on which dharma is most often defined – either being in tune with it as in Hum Aapke Hain Koun . . . ! or departing as in Bunty Aur Babli – it is usually a key ingredient in the way a film defines the correct course for the protagonist(s).

Notes 1 Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir,’ in Anne Kaplan (ed.), Women in Film Noir, London: BFI, 1980, pp. 22–34. 2 Alexis de Tocqueville, ‘Origin of the Anglo-Americans, Part II,’ in Democracy in America, Volume 1 (Trans. Henry Reeve), Project Gutenberg Ebook, 2006. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/815/815-h/815-h.htm#link2HCH0003 Accessed 10th September, 2020. 3 Thomas Schatz, ‘Film Genre and the Genre Film,’ in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (5th Edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 647. 4 Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,’ in Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays (Trans. Ben Brewster), New York: Monthly Review, 1971, pp. 143–144. 5 Ibid., pp. 142–143. 6 The protagonist is a senator who recollects an instance in his own past, which becomes the story. 7 Dharma is a highly complicated notion, but schools of philosophy have tried to accommodate it anyhow. They can define (contradictorily) dharma both as the cause of the prosperity in the world and also liberation from it. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Indian Philosophy: A Popular Introduction, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1964, p. 164. 8 Althusser also categorized church and school under ideological state apparatuses (ISA), and the school is frequently shown in the same light in international cinema (as in Kiarostami’s Where is the Friend’s Home? Truffaut’s 400 Blows or Ozu’s I was Born But . . . [1932]). It is significant that schools/colleges in Indian popular cinema are simply emblems of education and carry none of these connotations. It is, similarly, the emblematic nature of the family that prevents it from carrying the purport of ISA. The college in 3 Idiots is critiqued in the film but on different grounds: for stifling creativity, as manifested in career success in the liberalized regime in India. 9 Kannada language cinema catered initially to the citizens of a princely state, and the relation between the king and his subjects was seen to mirror that between the father and the rest of the household. M.K. Raghavendra, Bipolar Identity: Region, Nation and the Kannada Language Film, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. xxix. 10 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 36–37. 11 If one were to look at traditional mores through the Manusmriti, which represents Hindu orthodoxy, one finds enough contradictions in it to justify opposite kinds of actions. 12 Actions can be on behalf of a parent or parent-surrogate as in Sholay (1975), in which the two ex-convicts fight a bandit for the retired police officer whose family was liquidated by him. Or it can be opposition to the parent in the way Raj

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opposes Judge Raghunath in Awara (1951), although without knowing that he is his father. In Andaz (1949), the heroine’s actions which cause tragic misunderstandings are related to her being spoiled by her widowed father. In Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017) the soon-to-be king acts as directed by his mother, the dowager queen, and loses favour when he declines on the grounds of a promise to his loved one. 13 A useful guide here would be Gurcharan Das, The Difficulty of Being Good: The Subtle Art of Dharma, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

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5 ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE

There are various ways in which romance in Indian cinema can be looked at, and the strategy usually adopted is to look for popular models. The models usually referred to are the Krishna-Radha model and the Laila-Majnu model, and it is the Laila-Majnu ‘doomed lovers’ model that theorists often identify as the more popular one, even Devdas owing to that. The story has been traced to the tradition of the qisse, a term of Arabic origin meaning ‘story’, and the Laila-Majnu story owes to Amir Khusrau. Over the years, Hindi cinema would produce numerous versions of Majnu reincarnated as Devdas and in other forms. The other cinematic romance that has paralleled Devdas’s popularity in India is Mughal-E-Azam (1960), in which the legendary lover who competes for space in the Indian romantic imaginary is Prince Salim, whose compulsive love for the slave girl Anarkali leads to her incarceration by the Moghul emperor Akbar. The actor, Guru Dutt, and the character he played in Pyaasa (1957) and Kaagaz ke Phool (1959) of a poet smitten by his muse and his destruction by an apathetic social order offer direct translations of the Majnu lover. It has also been noted that the Urdu language is more hospitable to notions of love since terms like ashiqi and mohabbat have a resonance that pyar and prem lack.1 Still, while this model has excited the Indian imagination, romance as a motif is more ubiquitous than suggested by it, and that is a phenomenon that requires explaining; ‘doomed love’ hardly dominates narrative in Indian cinema. As indicated while writing about the family, the ‘family’ in Indian cinema is kept apart from romance and marriage or, rather, there are two aspects to the family, and if one is associated with family formation (romance and marriage), the other is genealogy, which has importance on its own. Individual films are often described as ‘love stories’, but that is not a legitimate description, since virtually all films are love stories. Romance is a motif in films across the world, but in few cinemas outside India does it feature as such a staple of plot construction. But before going on to examine how romance is represented in Indian cinema it will be useful to see how Hollywood deals with it. Indian film theorists often apply arguments used on Hollywood to Indian cinema,2 and distinguishing between the two is a first step if Indian cinema is to be understood/distinguished. 33

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The closest Western relative of the love story from Indian cinema does not come from film but from the literary genre of the ‘women’s romance’, which has been subjected to psychoanalytical interpretation and shown to exorcise latent emotional fears in women about their dealings with men. A study apparently revealed that in the ideal romance an intelligent and independent woman is overwhelmed, after much suspicion and distrust – and some cruelty and violence – by the love of an intelligent man, who is transformed in the course of their relationship from an ‘emotional pre-literate’ to someone who cares for her.3 Feminist critics have subjected this kind of fiction to extensive analysis largely because it caters to women readers. The typical plot described above has been interpreted as a fantasy about reciprocation; the wish to believe that men can bestow upon women the care and attention that women are regularly expected to bestow upon men, recalling a time when the (woman) reader was the recipient of intense material/ maternal care.4 This narrative model, it may be noted, pertains even to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Among Hollywood films, the plot device of the intelligent woman overwhelmed by an emotional pre-literate may be said to inform even classics like My Fair Lady (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965), not to mention ‘romedies’ like When Harry Met Sally (1989). The notion of love’s trajectory represented by a narrative of interpersonal conflict presumes that characters are conceived as individuals rather than types – since people change to accommodate others, while types (as in popular cinema) do not have the capacity to transform. Sometimes, the message itself involves people changing in their dealings with the other sex – like Junglee (1961) or the Kannada film Nanjundi Kalyana (1989), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. But in these films the person changes because what he/she appears to be is due to his/her departure from an essential condition, for example, being ‘spoiled’ (by wealth/comfort). Where transformation in Pride and Prejudice is negotiated, Elizabeth Bennet losing her prejudice and Darcy his pride, in these Indian films, only one person changes – on account of the other. A person reverting to his/her ‘true nature’ is the only change in character generally allowed,5 and other instances would be the bad brothers becoming good when they see the light (Upkaar, 1967). After accounting for the exceptions where interpersonal conflict transforms into love, whatever obstacles are placed in love’s path are external to the persons. There is no doubt in the spectator’s mind that the two are meant for each other, although that may not be true only of Indian film romances, since pairing off of stars naturally takes place. But Indian films keep making affirmations of love through songs and dreams that could even precede the first meeting of the future lovers6 (Saudagar, 1991). Love is a constant condition and the audience does not need to see it affirmed. The conclusion is only the moment when impediments have been removed so that a union takes place. 34

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When one looks at the history of popular cinema one finds that the culmination of a romance to leave the couple poised for a wedding is the most common ending, but there is also the family reunion with the photograph (usually in South Indian cinema). There is also the occasional film in which the family does not include a female presence, as in Kaante (2002) in which a man and (surrogate) sons are united – although in flashback. One may therefore propose that romance is a way to bring the narrative to closure. The term ‘closure’ needs elaboration at this point. Critics have sometimes classified narrative films under the categories ‘open’ and ‘closed’.7 In a closed film the world of the film is the only thing that exists, everything within it has its own place in the plot of the film – every object, every character, every gesture, every action. In an open film the world of the film is a momentary frame around an ongoing reality. The objects and people in the film existed before the camera focused upon them, and they will exist after the film is over. They achieve their significance or interest within the story of the film, but, unlike the objects and people in a closed film, the story of the open film does not exhaust the meaning of what it contains. We may infer that the ‘open’ film is associated with realism. Going back to what was said earlier, Indian popular cinema relays messages that are not situational, that is, their meaning is not engendered by a historical situation. This means their narratives need to be conclusively closed off from history and universal time; since the family is the largest social unit to exist independently of history, ‘closure’ needs to take place through the family.8 Even a war film like Haqeeqat (1964) concludes with the lovers dying, holding hands as they fight the Chinese army. If one studies plot construction across cultures it would appear that a story inevitably closes with a transition in the condition of the protagonist(s). The protagonist may have gained in experience or may have been defeated in an undertaking, but the conclusion of a narrative must nonetheless signal a transition of some kind in the life of the individual. In the various acknowledged states in the life of the individual, those listed are childhood, the juvenile/adolescent state, adulthood and retirement. The transition in the state of the individual in stories often focuses on an awakening or maturity of some sort which may be taken to imitate the transition from the juvenile state into adulthood. Marriage, although important, is not usually a key moment of individual transition in cinema, and one can cite romantic films which continue after the wedding, as in The Sound of Music (1965). Moreover, romances also come to fruition after the lovers understand each other more deeply indicating a growth in maturity, and the most useful model may be Pride and Prejudice. The romance culminates only when interpersonal issues are fully resolved and a stable relationship is in place. Other kinds of individual transitions are also allowed as narrative conclusions, but since cinema looks at the potential for drama, those transitions like the one into retirement do not offer the same possibilities. De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948), for 35

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instance, may be understood as concluding with the boy’s evolution out of childhood, when he becomes equal to his humiliated father. But when we look at the ‘ashramas’ or stages of life traditionally acknowledged by Hinduism, we find that they are as follows (after allowing for a two-year period of infancy): brahmacharya or the student/unmarried state, grihastha or the life of the householder, vanaprastha or the retired life and sanyasa, the life of renunciation. The ashramas are defined according to the code of dharma, and there are different kinds of prescribed conduct for different stages in one’s life when one also has different stations. But what is pertinent is that there is no state corresponding to ‘adulthood’.9 The transition into adulthood, I therefore propose, is not the way a popular Hindi film story could conclude, and the closest available transition is that of the brahmachari into householder or, in other words, the culmination of a romance. We are aware of films in which a ‘romance’ also takes place after the marriage when other tensions are resolved as in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008). But the important transition here is not into maturity (or adulthood) but into the life of the householder after he/she has lived as a brahmachari, even while wed. Since ‘adulthood’ is not an acknowledged state for the individual, stories cannot revolve around notions like work, and the transition can take place only through romance. The family reunion where the patriarch/matriarch is together with grown son(s) as in Mother India may then correspond to the transition from grihastha to vanaprastha. Romance is ubiquitous in Hindi cinema but, paradoxically, successful romances rarely contribute much to the drama. If we list out the most memorable melodramas in Hindi cinema, we find that, rather than romance, it is the failed romance which contributes to the dramatic impact; it is the kind of romance that goes far beyond the closure imperative. The failed romance can be defined as a heterosexual relationship involving the protagonist, which does not or cannot culminate in her/his transition to householder. Devdas, the most durable of Hindi film characters, lives in people’s hearts because of his failed romance. Many Hindi films are remembered not as love stories but as stories about failed romances, and one can cite Aadmi (1939), Andaz (1949), Dhool Ka Phool (1959), Deewar and even Sholay (1975) as examples. Laila-Majnu is a key influence, but not always, as with Andaz and Sholay. Some of these films provide a parallel romance taken to fruition, but the drama comes from elsewhere. In Andaz it emerges because the protagonist mistakes the feelings of the woman for love when her heart is given elsewhere. In Sholay it comes out of the unrequited feelings that Jai and the Thakur’s widowed daughter-in-law Radha have for each other, rather than out of the story of Veeru and Basanti which concludes the film, thus fulfilling the closure imperative. A relatively recent film which seems not to conform to what has just been said is Vikas Bahl’s Queen (2013), and the issue is whether the heroine moves into adulthood through her ‘failed romance’. The film is about 36

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a girl dumped by her fiancé on the eve of her wedding who decides to go on a ‘honeymoon’ to Europe on her own and rejects the same fiancé-suitor when he changes his mind. One is tempted to see Rani as emerging as an ‘adult’ in Queen, but I do not think she progresses into any kind of maturity because of the care taken to see that she steers clear of sexual/emotional entanglements in Europe. There needs to be a mind-altering emotional crisis of some sort for her to move into ‘adulthood’, and a sexual/romantic liaison might have provided it. But that does not happen and her rejection of the man happens much more gently than might have been appropriate. She is, in effect, retained in a state of brahmacharya so that she is fit to become a householder at the appropriate moment. I remarked earlier that describing a popular film as a ‘love story’ is not a legitimate description since all films are love stories; the successful culmination of a romance is simply strategy for closure. For ‘love’ to become subject material it must appear alongside something else, and it is the elaborate stories built around love, for example, the other elements coming into conflict with love, that make the best ‘love stories’ in Indian cinema memorable, and not love itself.10

Summary Romances are much more common in Indian popular cinema than elsewhere, but the characteristic usually marking romances elsewhere – the interpersonal conflict before matters are resolved (as in Pride and Prejudice and most other romances) – is missing in the Indian popular film. There is an immediate pairing off of protagonists even as they meet, and the general sense is that they are destined for each other. Obstacles, when they arise, are external to the couple, and there is no need for them to make adjustments towards each other. On scrutiny it becomes evident that the culmination of a romance is simply closure strategy for the story. By and large, it is necessary for any story to conclude with a transition in the condition of the protagonists, and aligning this transition with a natural one is most convenient. The various stages in a person’s life are infancy, adolescence or the juvenile state, adulthood and retirement. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth and Darcy coming together goes along with their growing maturity, their ascent into true adulthood. In India, tradition recognizes infancy, the unmarried state, the state of the householder, retirement and the state of the ascetic as the ashramas, and there is nothing corresponding to ‘adulthood’. Instead of the transition from immaturity to maturity, most stories hence conclude with the transition from the unmarried to the married state, that is, the culmination of a romance. The most successful popular film romances need to bring in other elements beyond mere romance – which is simply closure within the narrative – and failed romances are often much more memorable. This shows the influence of the Laila-Majnu romance, and some of the most 37

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durable stories (like that of Devdas) betray evidence of this, though there are films in which love fails for other reasons, on account of neither family rivalry nor social differences.

Notes 1 Anjali Gera Roy, Cinema of Enchantment: Perso-Arabic Genealogies of the Hindi Masala Film, New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2015, pp. 15–20. 2 Ravi S Vasudevan, ‘Shifting Codes Dissolving Identities: The Hindi Social Film of the 1950s as Popular Culture,’ in Ravi S. Vasudevan (ed.), Making Meaning in Indian Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 99–121. 3 Janice Radway, Reading the Romance, London: Verso, 1987, pp. 42–48. 4 Rosalind Coward, Female Desire, London: Paladin, 1984, p. 196. 5 ‘If the story line chooses to depict the hero as an apparent mixture of good and evil, he must be shown to be essentially good, whose badness is thereby reduced to a temporary aberration’. Ashis Nandy, ‘The Popular Hindi Film: Ideology and First Principles,’ India International Center, Quarterly Special Issue, Vol. 8, No. 1, March 1980, p. 90. 6 M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Structure and Form in Indian Popular Film Narrative,’ in Vinay Lal and Ashis Nandy (eds.), Fingerprinting Popular Culture: The Mythic and the Iconic in Indian Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 30. 7 Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame: What We See in Films, New York: Doubleday, 1976, pp. 46–47. 8 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 38–39. 9 M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Anatomy of Romance,’ Frontline, 8th August, 2014, www. frontline.in/arts-and-culture/anatomy-of-romance/article6237023.ece Accessed 9th May, 2017. 10 Here are some important films where this formulation would apply: Andaz (1949), Mere Mehboob (1963), Pakeezah (1971), Bobby (1973) Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), Hum Aapke Hain Koun . . . ! (1994) and Bombay (1995).

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6 MELODRAMA

The aspect of Indian popular cinema to have been studied most extensively by scholars is perhaps its melodrama, and the strategy is usually to regard it in the light of Western studies of the notion.1 The major difficulty with the strategy is that the term ‘melodrama’ largely loses its significance when applied to Indian popular cinema (at least until the 1990s) because there is little that cannot be described as ‘melodramatic’. While Western texts have something to offer instead of melodrama (realism, for instance) and the term is a useful form of identification, it is necessary to identify individual films that are ‘not melodrama’ before the term can be usefully applied.2 Broadly speaking, melodrama is seen to indulge in strong emotionalism, moral polarization and schematization; it portrays extreme situations and actions, overt villainy, the persecution of the good and the final reward of virtue, inflated or extravagant expression, abrupt changes in fortune and dark plotting and suspense.3 Many of these attributes are also those of Indian popular cinema, and this seems to justify using Western theories to understand it. Melodramas are normally seen to use strongly emotional material from everyday life: murder and crime, natural calamities, trials, arrests and impoverishment. The dramatic violations of emotional relationships – mother losing child, spouses undergoing imprisonment – and the perfidies inflicted upon people unable to repay kind with kind – defenceless girls and truthful men – are also favoured. Melodrama always consoles, punishes, teaches and rewards, and Indian popular cinema’s methods appear to conform to this description.4 The origins of Western melodrama have been located (Peter Brooks: The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess) within the context of the French Revolution and its aftermath when the traditional sacred and its representative institutions (church and monarch) lost their centrality.5 The agent of morality became the Republic, and where narratives had depended on the traditionally sacred institutions for mediation, a substitute in the shape of a ‘moral occult’ was incorporated into narratives, a metaphysical system without affiliations to the church or the monarchy to provide resolutions. Melodrama, as an aesthetic form, is 39

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therefore regarded as a corollary to the democratization of society, and this gives it special value. Indian film theorists working on melodrama have also relied on Hollywood’s domestic melodramas, with women being regarded as a result of the ‘feminization of mass culture’6 in the West, but Indian film melodrama addresses (in terms of gender) an undifferentiated audience. The woman’s melodramas of the 1950s by Douglas Sirk (All that Heaven Allows [1955], Written on the Wind [1956]) employ a feminine viewpoint, but its Indian counterpart of the 1950s is evenly poised between male and female focal characters. Moreover, ‘seeing from a feminine viewpoint’ implies treating women as individuals with characteristic subjectivity stemming from gender, while Indian popular films deal with women as types – like the modern woman in Andaz (1949) and the sacrificing mother in Mother India (1957) – and use the omniscient camera eye. A difficulty with linking Indian popular cinema’s methods to Western models also arises out of similarities between Indian and Western texts having been noticed earlier outside cinema. Sanskrit drama is seen to resemble some of the work of Elizabethan playwrights. Common to both are plot contrivances like the writing of letters, the introduction of the play within the play and the restoration of the dead to life. Often cited are the similar devices in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Bhavabhuti’s Malati-Madhava, though the latter ends happily. These affinities are cited as instances of how similar devices can be invented independently.7 Indian popular cinema may therefore have arrived at some of its ‘melodramatic’ methods independent of the West. This is probable since the cultural effects of the French Revolution could not have readily found their way to India to become a favoured form here. Moreover, one cannot assert that the story of Harishchandra is not ‘melodramatic’, and it may be revealing to compare film melodrama in India with the Western model more closely. As noted, the most celebrated melodramas in Hollywood’s history are those of Douglas Sirk, like Written on the Wind (1956). A factor to be acknowledged about these films is that while the emotions given expression to in them are of a heightened kind, they are nonetheless ‘mimetic’ in that the characters and the motives they act upon invite interpretation. Written on the Wind is set in and around the household of an oil baron and begins with the shooting of his son Kyle Hadley, the story then being revealed in flashback. Awaara (1951) uses the same strategy, relating its story also in flashback, suggesting similarities with Hollywood melodrama. Sirk’s film, on deeper scrutiny, nonetheless reveals aspects scarcely ever to be found in Indian melodramas. In the first place the moral centre of the film is occupied by Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson), a level-headed geologist and friend of the Hadley family, wary of the spoiled alcoholic son Kyle and his nymphomaniac sister Marylee, who has a crush on Mitch. Mitch is secretly in love with Lucy, a secretary who marries Kyle and tries to steady 40

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him. Kyle is initially responsive to her efforts but cannot contain the demons inside him and becomes jealous of Mitch, who he falsely accuses of fathering Lucy’s child after his own marriage to her. The two characters in the story who are not super-rich are Mitch and Lucy, and both are honourable. They are also the only ones escaping the moral sickness of the milieu around them. One detects in Written on the Wind the democratizing imperative of the melodrama,8 and that is not a characteristic one usually encounters in Indian cinema – in stirring melodramas like Andaz, Awaara, Mother India, Deewar, HAHK or Krishnan-Panju’s Tamil film Parasakhti (1952). Many of these films have characters with wealth who do not conduct themselves correctly, but never is their wealth treated as a malaise – which is what Sirk’s film does. In fact, rather than escape from wealth, the reconciliation between the initially estranged wealthy father and poor son in Awaara implies that the son has moved up socially towards a ‘happy ending’ and there is no sense of wealth itself being morally debilitating. The wrongdoings of the wealthy (if any) are also specifically in their actions towards the protagonists. Written on the Wind offers no justification for the malaise associated with wealth, but Mitch and Lucy flee wealth it as though they might be infected by it. I propose that the explanation lies in (in Brooks’s terms) the ‘moral occult’, which rewards and punishes so as to impose a moral order on society, an order in which the egalitarian impulse is primary. The recognition of the ‘occult’ element in film melodrama from the West could be a key factor in our understanding of Indian cinema. In common usage, the occult refers to ‘knowledge of the paranormal’, as opposed to ‘knowledge of the measurable’, usually the purview of science, but I am simply opposing ‘occult’ factors to ‘mechanistic’ ones as explanations, on which melodrama can also rely, Even when ‘magic’ is allowed for, the sense that an adopted procedure or an event naturally produces certain predictable effects makes the cause-effect relationship ‘mechanistic’. Melodramas use coincidences to convey the sense of a hidden order that brings redemption to the lost, true of most Douglas Sirk films. A more recent (and unconventional) use of the strategy of melodrama is by Pedro Almodovar. Almodovar’s Talk to Her (2002) employs ‘occult’ elements to bestow humanity upon society’s discards; a male nurse gets a comatose woman pregnant and later kills himself in jail. The woman loses her child but miraculously comes out of her coma – with no awareness of what transpired. This becomes, in Almodovar’s hands, a way of affirming the male nurse’s ‘love’ for the woman he was taking care of. Regardless of what it meant legally, good ultimately does come out of it.9 Indian film melodramas also use coincidences and accidents copiously, and the films I cited provide instances. But these are not employed to make similar affirmations – although miracles happen frequently. In Awaara Judge Raghunath’s car runs over his wife, who he cast out years earlier. In Deewar the smuggler Davar, who saw Vijay’s potential as a child, meets him as an 41

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adult. In Parasakhti Manickampillai follows his son-in-law to give him the good news of his fatherhood, sees him being run over by a truck and dies of a heart attack on the spot. All these are coincidences but none of them affirm a moral order; they do not point to a hidden ‘occult’ element working for the social balance. When we examine the actual miracles – the atheist Vijay’s prayer for his sick mother in Deewar leading to her recovery and the dog being miraculously empowered in HAHK to engineer the resolution – they involve divinity rather than the ‘occult’ element. What they allow for is divine intervention of a mechanistic kind – as in the story of Harishchandra, when the gods step in to save the king. It may be noted here that each of the above films prepares us for divine intervention by cutting from the face of the deity (an idol) to that of divinity’s agent, to suggest an actual exchange between them.10 From the foregoing observations and what has been said earlier, we may arrive at two conclusions. In the first place the ‘occult’ pertains to unseen powers, the doings of which we cannot be certain about, and necessitates a mimetic approach to cinema – that is, consciousness of the illegibility of nature’s laws. Indian popular cinema constructs a universe with a given meaning, one in which even divine will is not an uncertain quantity, and this precludes the possibility of the occult entering it; whatever ‘miracles’ are seen are mechanistically ordained. It may be pertinent to note that in two Vishal Bhardwaj films based on Shakespeare’s tragedies (Maqbool, 2003, and Haider, 2014) the occult elements (ghosts, witches) are replaced by mechanistic motifs. Macbeth is not melodrama, but the witches are similarly occult elements guiding the action and the fates of the characters in a way not mechanistic.11 The second aspect of importance is that the moral discourse in Indian popular film narrative is instantiated inevitably around personal wrongs. If one considers Written on the Wind in this regard, Kyle is not culpable for any deliberate wrong as for his self-destructive urges. In the Indian melodramas cited above, on the other hand, a sense of personal injury is pervasive whenever an evil is identified. Right and wrong are more personal ethics and less embedded in the social order; it is hence not unusual, even in the ‘socialist’ Nehruvian era, to encounter astoundingly rich people who are noble and also contented.12 The motif of the protagonists’ enormous wealth being founded upon illegality (as in The Godfather, 1973), popular in Hollywood, is notably absent. Similarly, while one does not lack for the powerful who are corrupt in Indian popular cinema, there is little sense in it that power itself corrupts, as in Raajneeti (2010), in which a powerful man who has participated in the most heinous acts can regain his innocence without exhibiting remorse.13 It would appear, therefore, that Indian film melodramas are not constructed around a social ethic as much as around personal rights and wrongs. The noble King Harishchandra, the reader may be reminded, is lauded for keeping his personal promises and telling the 42

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truth. This may explain why, when the issue of rulership comes to the fore as in K Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam (1960), Akbar’s impartiality is demonstrated by his sentencing his son to death for a romance below his station. The ethics associated with the ruler include disavowal of partisanship in public life, while love is a personal matter. In other films featuring the Moghuls (Humayun, 1945, Shahjehan, 1946) ethics are embedded in personal relationships and loyalties. Unlike in many other genres, ethics and morality are key issues in the melodrama, but the differences between Indian melodramas and those from Hollywood (and the West) suggest different moral foundations. Karma may have some similarity to ‘fate’: it impinges upon an effect for which the cause is not visible, since that is consigned to other births. But it is nonetheless mechanistic in its emphasis, which could explain the absence of the ‘moral occult’ in popular cinema. Karma14 and dharma are doctrines associated with personal acts; they may have little bearing on accepted social values like justice and egalitarianism. The emphasis of Hinduism, as a way of life, on the person – rather than on societal matters – could also account for the shape taken by melodrama in Indian cinema. This also explains the decline of melodrama in Indian cinema in the new millennium with the personal ethics of loyalty to friend, kin or community making way for self-fulfilment, which is not an ethical notion at all.

Summary Melodrama in Indian popular cinema is the aspect perhaps most engaging the film theorist. The approach of the film theorist is to treat Indian melodrama as comparable to Western melodrama – to associate it with the democratizing imperative (after Peter Brooks’s influential work The Melodramatic Imagination that traced melodrama to the aftermath of the French revolution when the traditional sacred, i.e., church and monarch, were replaced by the Republic as the agent of morality) and the feminization of mass culture. But there are issues standing in the way of Indian popular film melodrama being given these explanations. In the first place there is the notion of the ‘moral occult’ in Western melodrama, a metaphysical system that rewards and punishes and maintains the social balance. Charles Dickens’s novels like Great Expectations provide instances of how mysteriously this system works. Indian mythology provides an instance of a stirring melodrama in the story of Raja Harishchandra, when the good king is tested by the gods and made to undergo every kind of hardship before they intervene to pull him out of his troubles. The point made here is that there is no ‘occult element’, and the forces that render comfort are mechanistic. Secondly, right and wrong in the context of Indian cinema are due to personally inflicted rights and wrongs and not to societal ones. The sense in a film like The 43

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Godfather or in the melodramas of Douglas Sirk that being phenomenally wealthy could itself be a malaise is absent. Karma may have some similarity to ‘fate’: it impinges upon an effect for which the cause is not visible since that is consigned to other births. But it is nonetheless mechanistic in its emphasis, which could explain the absence of the ‘moral occult’ in popular cinema. The ‘occult’ pertains to unseen powers, the doings of which we cannot be certain about, and necessitates a mimetic approach to cinema – that is, consciousness of the illegibility of nature’s laws – while Indian cinema eschews mimesis. Moreover, karma and dharma are doctrines associated with personal acts; they have little bearing on accepted social values like justice and egalitarianism.

Notes 1 For instance, Ravi S. Vasudevan, The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010. 2 A notable occurrence that needs explaining is the gradual disappearance of melodrama from popular cinema in the new millennium, when it was the only form even till the 1990s. 3 Idiots might not qualify to be called that. For a treatment see M.K. Raghavendra, The Politics of Hindi Cinema in the New Millennium: Bollywood and the Anglophone Indian Nation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. xix–xxiv. 3 Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess, New York: Columbia University Press, 1985, pp. 11–12. 4 Characteristics identified by Sergei Balukhatyi (Poetics of Melodrama) and cited by Daniel Gerould, ‘Russian Formalist Theories of Melodrama,’ Journal of American Culture, No.1, 1978, p. 158. Anthologized in Marcia Landy (ed.), Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film, Television and Melodrama, Detroit: Wayne University Press, 1991, pp. 121–129. 5 Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess, New York: Columbia University Press, 1985, p. 15. 6 This does not mean that mass culture is feminine but that it is perceived by patriarchal society to be feminine and theorized as such. The phenomenon has to do with the increasingly marginal presence of literature and the arts in a society in which masculinity is identified with action, enterprise, progress and the realms of business, science, industry and law. Within the arts of the 20th century, high modernism is masculine while mass culture is its ‘feminine other’. Andreas Huyssen, ‘Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism’s Other,’ in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986, pp. 44–62. 7 Arthur A. Macdonell, A History of Sanskrit Literature, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1958, pp. 352–353. 8 Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, where there is discourse implying punishment of people for their arrogance – usually brought on by wealth – consistently, but at different levels, is another example of this tendency. 9 M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Pedro Almodovar: Recasting Melodrama,’ in Director’s Cut: 50 Film-makers of the Modern Era, Noida: Collins, 2013, 15–18. 10 Philip Lutgendorf, ‘A Made for Satisfaction Goddess: Jai Santoshi Maa Revisited, Part 2,’ Manushi, No. 131, 2002. Jai Santoshi Maa (1975) was a devotional film which became a super hit in the 1970s, but every other film with divine

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11

12 13 14

intervention as a motif uses the strategy. Lutgendorf notes this shot composition and editing strategy in Jai Santoshi Maa (1975), p. 28. M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Mimesis and the Scrutable World: Adapting Shakespearean Tragedy for Bollywood,’ Phalanx: A Quarterly Review for Continuing Debate, No. 11, December 2015. www.phalanx.in/pages/article_i0011_Adapting_the_ Shakespeare.html Accessed 15th May, 2017. If they suffer – as in Andaz (1949) or Awara (1951) – it is not on account of their being wealthy. M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Politics and Enterprise: Rajneeti (2010),’ in The Politics of Hindi Cinema in the New Millennium, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 150–152. Karma here refers to a conceptual principle often descriptively called the principle of karma, sometimes as the karma theory or the law of karma. As theory, karma is complex and difficult to define. Indologists include in the definition of karma theory that which explains the present circumstances of an individual with reference to his or her actions in past. These actions may be those in a person’s current life or, in some schools of Indian traditions, possibly actions in their past lives; furthermore, the consequences may result in current life, or a person’s future lives. The law of karma operates independent of any deity or any process of divine judgement. For instance, see Jeffrey Brodd, World Religions: A Voyage of Discovery, Winona, MN: Saint Mary’s Press, 1998, p. 47.

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7 FAITH AND DEVOTION

By and large, if we were to consider possible lines of intellectual enquiry, we can identify some broad directions – the relationships between human beings and society (the social sciences), the study of living beings (the biological sciences, psychology), humankind in the universe (the physical sciences, religion) and the study of texts (the humanities). These compartments are not airtight and there could be large overlaps; for example, chemistry could provide the bridge between the physical and life sciences, and there is a branch of the life sciences (‘Intelligent Design’) which is a development of religion. The study of texts is not separate from the other compartments but intersects with each one. It could find itself under ‘humankind in the universe’ when the texts are religious, or under the ‘social sciences’ when its purpose is anthropological. In the study of cinema, from the critic’s point of view, religion is as pervasive as psychology and politics in the interpretation of film texts, and there are not many that will not submit to religion. In order to arrive at some useful conclusions about faith and devotion in Indian cinema, therefore, it would be appropriate to focus our attention on only a few categories in which religion is the focus and not on all films with mythological or religious motifs. The following have been identified as the ways in which religion or faith can feature in cinema:1 1

2

Films could make use of religious themes, motifs or symbols in their titles. This is a very large category and includes examples as diverse as Larissa Shepitko’s The Ascent (1977), a war film set in World War II, and Terrence Mallick’s Days of Heaven (1976). In Indian cinema it would even include Karan Arjun (1995) or Puttanna Kanagal’s Kannada film Paduvaaralli Pandavaru (1978), which are not specifically religious. There are films with plots that draw upon religion broadly to incorporate the supernatural and the occult. This would include The da Vinci Code (2006), the vampire genre, The Exorcist (1973) and, in India, Ramsay brothers’ films like Purana Mandir (1984). The tendency of the category is sensationalist. 46

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3

4 5

6

7

The films could be set in the contexts of religious communities with religious practice informing them. This category would include Carl Dreyer’s Ordet (1955) and Pavel Lungin’s Ostrov (2006). Art films like Pattabhirama Reddy’s Kannada film Samskara (1970) might have belonged to it, but their viewpoint is entirely anti-religious. The films could use religion for character definition. This is too pervasive a category for study and akin to (1) above. The films could deal directly or indirectly with religious characters (e.g., the Buddha, Jesus), texts or locations (such as heaven or hell). This would be the most fruitful category to explore and includes The Ten Commandments (1956) and Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Mathew (1964). It would include Indian mythological films like the preindependence Sant Tukaram (1936) and the South Indian mythological films, especially in Kannada (Bedara Kannappa, 1954) and Telugu (Sampurna Ramayanam, 1971). The film could use religious ideas to explore the experiences, transformation and conversion of characters. This category could also be useful to explore and would include Ben-Hur (1959). The film could address religious themes and concerns, leading to ethical issues since most ethical issues have their basis in religion. This category is, once again, too broad for its examination to be helpful in a study of Indian films.

If one considers the various categories above, categories (2), (5) and (6) are the only ones that hold out promise. Considering (2) first and examining The Exorcist or The Omen (1976) we can say a few things about the motifs and conventions of religious horror inspired by Christianity. In the first place the basis of the supernatural element is its justification by an ancient text (for instance, The Book of Revelations for The Omen), then proved to be relevant in a literal sense. In many such films the text eventually provides the deliverance from the occult threat as well. Secondly, there is a sense in the films of the Christian world being contaminated by pagan elements. This is most deliberate in The Exorcist, where an amulet depicting Pazuzu, a pagan deity, is excavated in Iraq, and the montage of images thereafter suggests ‘evil let loose’. In the Dracula films the motif of the interred vampire brought to life and breaking out of his coffin is a recurring motif to show a contaminant abruptly entering the Christian world. Many of the films draw on the fear of the religion being under threat, and this is true even of The da Vinci Code, although what that threat is actually from is not made clear. It is perhaps not true that all these films see the church as under threat since there are films (e.g., Norman Jewison’s Agnes of God, 1985) in which the sinister element is notably absent. But the recurring tension in the films is between belief and unbelief; virtually all the films demand that the unbelieving should take a fresh look at the object of their scepticism. The fact that 47

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the miraculous/unexplainable even within religion is treated as ‘occult’ is indicative of how it is poised – since the ‘occult’ is not the domain of metaphysical certainty – and what is proposed is that the faith of even religious people needs sharpening today. This is different from Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), in which the parting of the Red Sea is not an ‘occult’ phenomenon but the open will of God; this is a film in which prior belief on the part of the spectator is assumed. It differs from The Exorcist, which addresses people steeped in rationality. Indian horror films,2 although often deriving from the vampire genre, are different in their relationship to faith. In the first place they are not consistent in the paranormal phenomena they are about; while it could be a devil (‘shaitaan’) it could also be the ghost of a dead person, and the treatment in either case is not different. The source of deliverance could be mainstream Hinduism (an idol of Shiva in Purana Mandir), but it could also be an occult practitioner (a ‘tantrik’) from the religion’s margins. This lack of specificity implies that Hinduism is neither the threatened entity nor is its capacity to ward off evil asserted, since the ‘tantrik’ often behaves as an occult practitioner trained in the ‘black arts’ might in a Hollywood film. In The Exorcist, the exorcism involves some recognizable Christian emblems (Bible, cross, rosary), but the ‘tantrik’ in a Hindi horror film dresses in black and is not a holy man (who dresses in saffron). But a recurring motif in the Indian horror film is modernity, which may be represented as the ‘modern’ lifestyle adopted by people due to encounter the awakened monster (as in Purana Mandir), or it could be an investigating ‘professor’ who has published scholarly books on paranormal phenomena as in Vikram Bhatt’s Shaapit (2010). These aspects suggest that the tension in Indian horror films is not between belief and unbelief but between a traditional way of life and the modern making inroads into it. Modernity itself is not so much a ‘threat’ to tradition as an element striving for absorption. Category (5) pertains to films in which actual religious figures are portrayed, and these would include the entire genre of the mythological film in which the gods (e.g., Rama, Krishna, Shiva) as well as holy men and women (Sant Tukaram, Adi Shankaracharya, Sri Ramakrishna) are portrayed. On examining Western examples – The Ten Commandments and Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), which are both about Moses; Pasolini’s The Gospel according to St Mathew, which is about Jesus; or Rosselini’s The Flowers of St Francis (1950) – we see that the tension in the films, as in the earlier case, is between belief and unbelief. The attempt at giving plausible physical explanations to the miracles in Ridley Scott’s film points to this, as does Pasolini’s attempt to turn Jesus into a political person with ideas for today.3 In the Indian mythological films such tension does not exist and miracles happen effortlessly, as if the film-maker knew that the veracity of what was shown would not be doubted. GV Iyer’s Adi Shankaracharya (1983), an art film, eschews even the miracles and presents everything as the actual 48

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portrayal of how the philosopher might have lived in the 8th century CE. The attitude of the films is tantamount to speaking only to those in the fold, making an icon available to those likely to respond and not intending to address/persuade the non-believer. Category (6), which is extremely important in Hollywood, does not appear to exist in Indian cinema. In the Kannada film Bedara Kannappa (1954) a sceptical tribal becomes a devotee of the god Shiva, but the man is actually a Gandharva (a celestial being) cursed to be reborn as a human because of misbehaviour in heaven. The film begins with this preamble or first cause. In a classic Hindi film dealing with an atheist’s love for a holy woman, Kidar Nath Sharma’s Jogan (1950), the atheist and the holy woman part without the man embracing belief. This is consistent with Hinduism not admitting proselytizing – because there is no dogma pertaining to any kind of essential belief holding the flock together. Category (6) suggests, as do (2) and (5), that Hinduism is a set of social practices conferring identity rather than a matter of faith; devotion itself is social practice. ‘Anti-religious’ art films like Samskara and Ghatashraddha (1977) critique social practice. It may be noted here that ‘religious faith’ presumes an omnipotent God who stands distinctly apart from humankind, but in Hindu belief the dividing line between the soul (atman) and the divine (paramatman) is nebulous. Hindi cinema – as much of the rest of India’s popular cinema – is Hindu cinema in that the characters are Hindu, and non-Hindus are often (as in Dhool Ka Phool, 1959) given the status of outsiders. But as if to allow for its mirror image, there are the Islamicate genres (not the exclusive territory of Islamic film-makers) – films like Mere Mehboob (1963) and Pakeezah (1972) – in which everyone has a Muslim name with an occasional Hindu, perhaps signifying the outsider. In the Islamicate category, correspondingly, Islam is not a set of beliefs that impinge upon faith4 but social practices centred on matters like love, marriage and divorce along with affinity to the Urdu language. The idols worshipped in Hindu temples are conceived as objects of devotion and, while the Hindu gods are anthropomorphic, these idols are often cruder cult symbols that do not imitate human proportions with any particular faithfulness. They are often in the nature of ‘found objects’ to which powers are attributed. The more artistic/naturalistic sculptures in temples are outside the sanctum sanctorum and their function is perhaps more decorative than sacred. Film scholars have sometimes invoked the tradition of darsana in Hindu worship, where muteness on the part of the devotee5 and mediation by a priest are prerequisites, but devout moments in Hindi films do not follow this prescription. The devoutness in popular cinema is usually directed towards idols that are sculpted in a (naturalistic, Western) way that makes their human attributes manifest. These gods are sometimes muscular and seem capable of movement where traditional idols are solid in their immobility. Where the object of worship in a usual Shiva temple is a sculpted lingam 49

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(a stone phallus), a Shiva temple in a popular film enshrines a ‘lifelike’ statue of the god. Where the deity is kept at a distance from the devotee in the actual temple, the idol to which people appeal in films are usually in the open to signify the god’s accessibility to the devotee, a kind of reassurance that points to the possibility of divine intervention. In some films where the idol is not lifelike and reassuring but crude as in actual temples (Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, 1988) or a lingam, the stories end tragically when the crisis occurs and divine intervention does not happen after application has been duly made.6 This does not mean that we do not see lingams in popular cinema. For example, the pre-title sequence in Raj Kapoor’s Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978) shows people worshiping a wayside stone shaped like a lingam to demonstrate that it is faith that renders the object of worship sacred. Yet, application to the divine in Satyam Shivam Sundaram is made to anthropomorphic deities (usually Krishna and Radha), and devotion is also directed towards them in the song sequences. In many other films, the scenes are shot and edited during the devotee’s address as though an actual dialogue was in progress between the devotee and the god. The entreating face of the character is cut to the reassuring countenance of the idol (employing the eye-line match and shot-reverse shot editing). What is presented is not an icon more reassuring to the spectator as an accessible deity capable of intervening with human understanding in human stories.7 Darsana has another aspect which is that the deity within the icon is made available through the eyes that are painted last, and ‘darsanic contact’ implies an exchange with the devotee (darsana itself means ‘to see’). It is not so much seeing the deity as being seen by it and the eyes are therefore appropriately large. Darsana is also a term used with regard to auspicious sightings of holy places or powerful people, and making eye contact is a way of receiving benediction or even acknowledgement for future favours.8 One sees in this a parallel with the shot-reaction-shot routine in popular film where the gaze of the icon is cut to the gaze of the devout, and later developments fulfil this reassurance. Indian popular films often employ divine intervention (as in HAHK, where the family dog becomes the deity’s agent) but to resolve the narrative; this is not faith or belief as much as storytelling strategy. This is substantiated by Hindi horror films in which the vampire is equally defenceless against the Koran, the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita, thereby privileging no religion. One could hence conclude that religion in Indian popular cinema can be equated with social practices conferring identity. This is also consistent with art cinema, by and large, not exploring religious ideas and focusing entirely on social life.9 ‘Humankind in the universe’ is not a line of thought art cinema pursues, and this cannot be unrelated to the complexity/obscurity of Hindu metaphysics, in which much depends on the notion of mystical perception. But that is only for a few select members of society while the multitude is only allowed their truths second hand. 50

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It may lastly be proposed that a religious dogma, because it is fundamentally a proposition about the world and the order governing it, presents a partial mystery to those of the faith, and it is the multiplicity of interpretations that makes heresies out of unorthodox interpretations. When a religious artist creates an artistic text, therefore, the ‘mysteries’ inherent in the dogma assist in mimesis. An association can perhaps be made between the absence of dogma in Hinduism, its focus on living in the world rather than with the laws governing it and cinema’s eschewal of mimesis.

Summary There have been films about gods, and divine intervention in everyday life has been provided for copiously in popular cinema, but there is nonetheless little corresponding to ‘faith’ in it. In the first place there is portrayal of faith working miracles as in Sant Tukaram, but there is no attempt to persuade the audience as in, for instance, a Biblical film like Ben-Hur, when the protagonist’s mother and sister are cured of leprosy, where the audience is invited to follow the protagonist’s trajectory from unbelief to belief. Religion in the popular film whether Hinduism or Islam (as in the Muslim social) is treated as a set of social practices rather than a faith, and in a film about the encounter between an agnostic and a holy woman (Jogan), the agnostic does not see ‘light’ to become a believer. This can be attributed to Hinduism being less a faith than a way of life and not providing for proselytization. But there is another factor here that merits attention, which has to do with a dogma being a proposition focused on the mystery around creation and the order governing the world; it is the varied interpretations given to the dogma that produces heresies. There is no dogma in Hinduism and instead of offering a proposition on creation and the divine order governing the world, it only lays down a way of life (dharma). Where acknowledging the mystery about the natural order might have promoted mimesis, the focus on the person’s life means that instead of exploring a divine order (leading to faith being invoked) popular cinema promotes truisms about how life should be lived, with devotion occasionally as a component. Devotion can lead to divine intervention in a narrative, but such interventions are in the nature of a narrative ploy and ‘faith’ is not invoked. In some films like Amar Akbar Anthony (1977)10 they even seem like parody.

Notes 1 Joel W. Martin, ‘Introduction: Seeing the Sacred on the Screen,’ in Joel E. Martin, Conrad E. Ostwalt Jr. (eds.), Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth and Ideology in Popular American Film, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995, pp. 1–11. 2 M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Nation and Transgression: Ideology and the Horror Film in India and Pakistan,’ in Locating World Cinema: Interpretations of Film as Culture, New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2020, pp. 147–164.

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3 See M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Pier Paolo Passolini: “Counter-Realism”,’ in M.K. Raghavendra (ed.), Director’s Cut: 50 Major Directors of the Modern Era, Noida: Collins, 2013, p. 194. 4 Indonesia is a country with an Islamic cinema in which aspects of the religion are dealt with. Religious belief is an agent of modernity in films like Perjuangan dan Doa (1977), a tendency discussed in Alicia Izharuddin, Gender and Islam in Indonesian Cinema, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 11–15. Many of the films problematize issues within the religion like its proscription of music. In the aforementioned film music is shown as not incompatible with faith. Aspects of Islam implicating faith are not problematized in the Indian films. An example would be Nikaah (1982), in which the man divorces his wife but cannot marry her again although he wants to since she must first marry someone else before this and also divorce him. The practice is not questioned in the film but taken as a given. But in this it may be following the implicit portrayal of Hinduism as a set of practices with no attendant beliefs. 5 M. Madhava Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 74–75. This is contested by Philip Lutgendorf, who notes that mediation by a priest is not a prerequisite and neither is muteness on the part of the devotee. Popular cinema goes along with this latter view. Philip Lutgendorf, ‘Is There an Indian Way of Filmmaking?,’ International Journal of Hindu Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3, Dec., 2006, p. 234. 6 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 225. Another film would be Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981). 7 Ibid., p. 64. 8 Philip Lutgendorf, ‘Is There an Indian Way of Filmmaking?,’ International Journal of Hindu Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3, Dec., 2006, pp. 232–233. 9 The ‘truth’ is very difficult to reach and needs years of penance by a few capable of it, according to belief, and this means there is no mimetic exploration of religious issues possible since religious truths are, by definition, elusive. Although there is/are no overarching religious figure(s) of authority in Hinduism, mystics and ‘godmen’ thrive in India, and these are people who have convinced a following that they have had access to an elusive mystical truth. It is the non-social nature of the mystic’s realizations which make it difficult for mimetic arts to access them. Richard Lannoy, The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society, London: Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 210–211. 10 The particular segment I have in mind is the one in which the villains (associates of a smuggler) are attempting to enter a space in which the mother of the protagonists is taking shelter among devout people, but they are thwarted by a cobra, which appears out of nowhere. The villains wring their hands in frustration and try to find another way in but are indifferent to the miracle.

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8 FANTASY

Popular cinema in India long went under the term ‘fantasy’, applied to it by film critics since it did not conform to the realist aesthetic, but if one goes by the rigorous definition of ‘fantasy’ proposed by Tsvetan Todorov1 (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre), this use of the term is problematic. It is too totalizing to tell us anything about the body and is related to the dismissive term ‘escapist’, also employed by the same critics; a more rigorous scrutiny is evidently needed. In defining ‘fantasy’, Todorov concentrates on the response generated by the ‘fantastic’ events in the story. In this light, fantasy must be considered not just one mode but three. ‘Fantasy’ creates a situation in which the reader/ audience experiences feelings of hesitation and awe provoked by strange, improbable events. If the implausibility of the events can be explained rationally or psychologically (e.g., as a dream or a hallucination), then the term ‘uncanny’ is applied. In stories like The Lord of the Rings, in which an alternative world or reality is created, the term ‘marvellous’ is considered most appropriate to describe the work. By these definitions, The Exorcist would be fantasy while the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles (in which the supernatural is suggested) is uncanny. All three categories noted only exist in relation to ‘this’ world and our acknowledgment of its underlying reality. The strategy of fantasy is to exploit the reader or spectator’s wavering commitment to rational discourse about the world by introducing a ‘contaminant’ into the narrative. To illustrate, the ghost is the element which briefly makes us forget/doubt the rationality of the world, which we have been taking for granted. In the ‘uncanny’ the rational world triumphs when the ‘fantastic’ element is proven false, and ‘contamination’ by it is negated. The ‘marvellous’ exists as an alternate reality in relation to the one we inhabit. It essentially celebrates the capacity of the human imagination which can create its own world to rival the one bequeathed by nature. It must be noted in relation to the ‘marvellous’ that each recreation of an alternate world often defines a ‘context’ for that world – in relation to the real one. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll the girl Alice is woken 53

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up from a dream at the conclusion by her older sister implying the subordination of the imagined world to ‘this’ one. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) begins with the protagonist telling us about his life before his voyages. When no context in ‘this’ world is laid out, the story needs to erect a fictional context of its own, as JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) does with the history of Middle-Earth, which has no references to the real world, or to issues like Christianity, which the Arthurian legends invoke through the Holy Grail. Fairy tales would also come under the ambit of the marvellous since their world is not ours. The aforementioned categorization is neither the only possible one of the fantastic, nor does it include all examples of the supernatural in fiction. Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis would be difficult to classify under the three categories, although one could propose that Kafka treats the event of a man waking up as a beetle as a quotidian occurrence from our world rather than consign it to another one.2 In any case, the categorization is useful because it helps us locate popular cinema in India. Beginning with the earliest genre in Indian cinema, we are tempted to describe the mythological film as an example of the marvellous in cinema until we recollect that DG Phalke saw its value precisely in it being ‘real’ in its ultimate sense, and not something fanciful. Mythological films even today attract audiences because their portrayals correspond to belief (predisposition, not tantamount to faith), and this is also true of Baahubali (2015), in which the film-maker gives the names of known kingdoms to the spaces his story is set in. This is not to say that audiences are unaware that the star NT Rama Rao is not the god Krishna but that they are reasonably convinced the way Krishna is represented corresponds to the god in his essence. How this conviction came about is uncertain, but it was evidently constructed over a century (at least), with the oil paintings of Raja Ravi Varma playing a part. Our mythological films are perhaps closer to the reconstructions of Arthurian legend than to The Lord of the Rings. Arthurian legend, although with a basis in actual history, incorporates marvellous elements. Moving on to ‘fantasy’ and the ‘uncanny’, one of the most widely seen examples of the ghost/horror genre in the mainstream, which otherwise seems confined to ‘B’ films like those of the Ramsays, was Bees Saal Baad in 1962. This is an adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles with a ghost replacing the dog, and it may also be taken to belong to the category of the ‘uncanny’ since the ghost is a trick. Still, there are elements in this film that do not fit into the expected pattern. In the first place, while the ‘ghost’ is explained at the conclusion there are residual supernatural elements not accounted for – like the door inside the mansion opening on its own at dramatic moments. The also film begins with a pre-title sequence involving the ‘ghost’, revealed to be a trick. When an old man sees the apparition and his heart fails, human feet walk up to him; the dead man is lifted up and placed in a cart – something not expected of a ghost. This can be interpreted as the 54

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first event which represents the ‘seed’ in the story. The meaning relayed is that there are no ghosts in this world and that most things are products of rational intent. Bees Saal Baad was made in the final years of the Nehru era, and the message may be understood as pertinent to Nehruvian modernity. The message is so important that its nullification of the entirely ghostly ambience of the film is of little account.3 The more we study Indian cinema the more we are convinced of the absence of fantasy (all of Todorov’s three categories) in it. The basic issues, once again, are whether there is any visible motif corresponding to the ‘occult’ which defeats human explanation in narratives and if there is the acknowledgement of a ‘real’ beyond complete human comprehension. It is not as though there were no magic and rituals associated with the paranormal in films, but the ‘magic’ is akin to technology or science in that its effects are predictable. It does not embody unknown aspects of reality. In the Kannada film Apthamitra (2004), for instance, ghostly entities and spirits from a hoary past submit to manipulation by a psychiatrist. There are elements of The Exorcist in Apthamitra, but in Friedkin’s film psychiatrists fail to understand Regan’s condition. The demarcation of the fantastic is more palpable in films from outside India. Proceeding from what was said about Indian cinema’s non-mimetic nature, I propose that it is mimesis that helps make the distinction. If, as popular cinema from Phalke onwards has tended to do, narratives regard ordinary experience as ephemeral and purvey ‘transcendental truths’, the term ‘fantastic’ loses significance, since it is only in relation to the ordinary that the fantastic exists. Todorov’s definition of fantasy is useful, but the reader may ask if other kinds of imaginative works like science fiction (SF) and films for children should not be examined in the context of Indian cinema. Looking at science fiction first, we could define SF as imaginative literature produced by technological developments of today and the expectations from them. As humankind makes progress by exploring new spaces outside its immediate reach, it might imagine alien intelligence similarly exploring its space. The origins of science fiction have been traced to colonial expansion and the experiences of Europe. Science fiction was arguably initiated by the marvellous journeys to other worlds which precedes SF in literature.4 The Copernican shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric understanding of the solar system provides a crucial point where the marvellous journey starts evolving into science fiction. But developments in the physical sciences were not the only influences; the recognition that the course taken by one’s culture is only one among several possible courses was also crucial. Utopian and satirical representations of encounters between European travellers and non-Europeans – as in Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) – form a major part of the genre’s prehistory. Science fiction came into visibility first in those countries most heavily involved in imperialist projects – France and England – and then 55

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gained popularity in the United States, Germany and Russia as those countries also entered into more and more serious imperial competition.5 There are, consequently, two key responses to colonialism that take the guise of science fiction. The first is that science fiction becomes an extension of the Victorian adventure novel – having no place on Earth left for the exoticism of unexplored territories, the writers invent places elsewhere (e.g., H Rider Haggard). The second kind of novel is a radical reversal of hierarchies in which invaders treat earthlings the way the colonialists treated ‘savages’, a way in which HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) is read.6 If a cultural effect of contact with ‘savages’ was to regard them as models for what the ‘civilized’ had once been, it found itself reflected in science fiction that began regarding humanity as a passing phase, as in Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). Ideas about the nature of humankind are central to all literature, but scientific accounts of humanity’s origins and its probable futures are especially basic to science fiction. The historical past is also important to science fiction in as much as our experience of the past influences our imagining of the future. It was the socialist HG Wells’s revulsion at the conditions after the industrial revolution that helped him imagine the Eloi and the Morlocks in The Time Machine. This basic preoccupation with humankind’s future is central to SF, and as frontiers open up in science and technology in the era of cinema, new possibilities open for the SF film. The alien invasion film is not anymore attached to exploration inside this world but owes more to advances in astrophysics and space travel. The horror SF film Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) invokes biological weaponry. Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) and its sequels use cloning as scientific basis. The Terminator (1984) and the series constructed around it proposes a futuristic dystopia in which the artificial intelligence created by humankind has conquered the planet. All these films are actively imagining utopias or (more often) dystopias constructed around the future of humankind. The other great country actively engaged in the production of SF films apart from the US is Russia, and Russian SF cinema takes a different trajectory from that of the US. Speculative science fiction cinema had virtually died out under Stalin (the 1930s to the early 1950s) because of the Stalinist insistence on Socialist Realism as the only aesthetic creed. Cinema under Stalin was more preoccupied with the past and history and tried to reconstruct events from the past as prototypes for the present,7 but it was revived after Stalin. Russian SF is not constructed around scientific advances as around the by-products of science and technology under Stalin. Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) imagines what the after-effects of an alien landing might be like to locals. Alexandr Zeldovich’s Target (2011) deals with an abandoned astrophysics site creating conditions for inducing immortality in visitors, and Ilya Khzhanovskiy’s 4 (2004) is about the vast quantities of human 56

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‘waste’ created by secret cloning experiments. The visions are dystopian and (unlike Hollywood films) their purport casts doubt on humanity knowing where it is going in its feverish urge to break technological barriers. It should be evident that all fiction films with elements found in SF cannot be legitimately termed imaginative SF. As technology advances, what is scientifically/technologically plausible (or already achieved) is clouded in doubt to the public, and the limits of the ‘contemporary’ become nebulous. Aliens as an explanatory device features frequently in daily newspapers. This has meant that ‘SF’ motifs increasingly crowd popular film plots. Once the phenomenon is understood, one recognizes Spielberg’s ET the ExtraTerrestrial (1982) as family drama and Predator (1987) as an action film, Schwarzenegger fighting an enemy with superior capabilities. A superhero film is also not made SF by the protagonist being from another planet. For something to be SF it must test the imagination over what is scientifically possible. Indian cinema has not produced SF with only one or two apparent exceptions like Rakesh Roshan’s Koi . . . Mil Gaya (2003). SF depends on the imaginative possibilities offered by the exploration of the actual world through experimentation, while, as already elaborated upon, Indian popular cinema has sought more durable truths than those yielded by experience. Koi . . . Mil Gaya is a reworking of motifs from ET the Extra-Terrestrial, the message of the film pertaining to Indian science being belittled in the West; the first event is the protagonist’s father (a scientist working abroad) trying to make contact with aliens but being mocked by colleagues. One could interpret Koi . . . Mil Gaya as an affirmation of Indian scientists and technocrats – when ‘technology’ was the buzz word in the Indian business space and Indian IT was making waves. Rather than being SF Koi . . . Mil Gaya is a paean to the Indian technocrat-scientist with the haloed figure being the protagonist’s dedicated father who did not get the recognition he deserved, and he could equally have been a soldier or a sportsman. The reader may be reminded that this is genealogy becoming relevant, as brought out earlier. It is evidently not possible to discuss every kind of fiction that strains the imagination under ‘fantasy’, but an examination of children’s films in India would be helpful. A genre long meant for children was ‘nonsense’ (the model work being Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), and the rationale was that since a child’s imagination had not yet been fettered through learning about the limits of the possible, writers of children’s literature could exercise their own imaginations by writing for children. In other words, children’s literature is not literature deemed unfit for adults but something that actively tests their imaginations. Earlier, at least, there were fewer restrictions placed on what children could read – if one went by the stories of Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm, which can be disturbing. But later on, there was stricter control over what was recommended. Only the first part of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) (dealing with Lilliput) is for children today. 57

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In the modern age children’s fantasy in cinema has gradually focused on stories featuring children, the logic being that children will be able to project themselves more easily into those of their own age groups. Some elements found in children’s films include animals and their relationship with humans, with violence generally excluded. Supernatural beings allowed into children’s films are usually benign – like fairies, pixies and elves. When monsters are allowed into children’s films, they are domesticated (as in Shrek, 2001). Children’s films also include an element of instruction, and in The Wizard of Oz (1939), the three beings Dorothy meets on the Yellow Brick Road (the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion) are afflicted by deemed personality disorders, which their adventures help overcome. Mary Poppins (1964) lampoons parental aspiration for their children. Children’s films can be didactic but their messages are still meant only for children; the best of them understand that childhood is sacred and the qualities often associated with it – irreverence towards the adult world, an unfettered imagination and spiritual freedom from the shackles of adult responsibilities – should be cherished. When one examines popular film lists (like IMDB) one finds that the most celebrated children’s films internationally are fantasies, a majority of them animated. Even when animated films are excluded, the ‘best’ children’s films are still fantasy like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Never Ending Story (1984) and Back to the Future (1985). But when one moves on to the best regarded children’s films from India one finds a noticeable shift in thematic content. Children still feature as protagonists but the shift is towards adult content, romance or conflict, with adult villains becoming a key ingredient. Films appear to be centred on the adult world and its tendencies with regard to children. Taare Zamin Par (2007) is about the insensitivity of the adult world to differently enabled children;8 Stanley Ka Dabba (2011) describes the travails of an orphan boy in school; Chillar Party (2011) shows children fighting politicians preparing to exterminate stray dogs; Rockford (1999) is a school romance with alleged child molestation as a subplot. On studying the same lists carefully, one even finds uncertainty about what constitutes children’s cinema, since Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), about a child facilitating her father’s second romance subsequent to his widowhood, and Chak De India (2007), an inspirational film about a women’s hockey team, find places on them. If we consider the thrust of the best-known children’s films, whatever is affirmed, by and large, is contextual to childhood. It is the autonomy of the child’s world that is upheld, and articulating adult values through children is frowned upon. This is not true of most of the Indian films cited above. Taare Zamin Par appears intended for a constituency dominated by the parenting impulse. This supports the earlier observation about the nebulousness in the distinctions between what is for children and what is not. It can be argued that this happens because the message relayed by a film cannot be valid 58

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only for children but must be a universal ‘truth’. Children’s films in India therefore find themselves addressing an audience composed randomly of both adults and children. Childhood is not especially valued and the feelings associated with it not deemed particularly worthy of nurturing and protecting. It is significant that among the more popular animated films for the young are those dealing with the gods/heroes as children (Bal Ganesh, Veer Abhimanyu, Ghatothkach), and they make the children’s film seem directly descended from DG Phalke. If Indian cinema never entirely disavowed the mythological film, popular animation offers their same ‘truths’ but with the exemplars as children. An unquestionable success as a children’s film from India by the criterion applied would be Satyajit Ray’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969), which deals with adult protagonists but tries to offer something for a child’s imagination when it conjures up an alternate reality out of a fairy tale and uses marvellous elements. While it has good and bad characters, they are both out of a children’s world. But that is because Ray pursues mimesis and it is his faith in experienced reality that allows his creation of the marvellous to be convincing. Lastly, it is recorded in an important work on Islam-based genres that in the silent era there was a category of fantasies with The Arabian Nights as the inspiration,9 films like Alibaba and the Forty Thieves (1927), Hatim Tai (1929) and Kamer-el-Zaman (1931), but when Islamicate genres are examined in the same study, ‘fantasy’ does not find description as a genre. This is a gap difficult to fill because of the non-availability of silent films, but a question would be how these fantasies should be categorized today. The way could be to look at a remake, and Hatim Tai (Babubhai Mistry, 1990) fits the purpose. This film can be clubbed with the Hindi horror film (Purana Mandir, 1984) and termed ‘B’ cinema catering largely to a subaltern audience. But, where the Hindi horror film or the Telugu folklore film (Pathala Bhairavi, 1951) invokes Hindu deities and practices, Hatim Tai addresses a Muslim audience; the characters are all Muslim, speak Urdu and wear Arab headgear, but the community is non-religious. Hatim Tai features underwater nymphs and fairies but it replicates the regional language mythological film, replete with such creatures. Only the Islamic costumes, the Urdu and the occasional invocation of Allah make it ‘Muslim’ in any sense. Babubhai Mistry has also directed Hindu mythological films (Sampoorna Ramayana, Telugu, 1961), and this confirms it. The kind of ‘B’ cinema represented by Hatim Tai can be termed marvellous, except that there is no sense of a real world within which the marvellous part is bracketed, as found in mimetic cinema like The Wizard of Oz. In all, there is little difference between the regional language mythological film (Babruvahana, Kannada, 1977), drawing from the epics, the Islamic fantasy and the Telugu folklore film; they all rely on marvellous elements and special effects, and none is religious in the sense of faith playing a key role in the stories. The mythological film differs in that the characters are usually from 59

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the epics but there is similarity in the moral sentiments expressed. Hatim Tai upholds notions like feminine chastity and honour, and all categories feature seductresses attempting to mislead the protagonists through their magical powers. An issue here would also be whether The Arabian Nights is ‘Islamic’ in today’s context since the Islamic countries do not promote the kind of fantasy films derived from it that one might expect. It has been an orientalist artefact for over 300 years, and that is its primary value today rather than any connection with Islam. It has also been noted by scholars that most of the themes prevalent in the stories are alien to formal Islam,10 which suggests that fantasies like Hatim Tai are basically catering to an ethnic identity in India in which Islam as a religion plays no genuine part.

Summary Popular cinema in India was subsumed under the category ‘fantasy’ for a long while and some scholars continue to do so. If one considers Todorov’s three subcategories under fantasy one finds that popular cinema does not answer to any of the descriptions. Todorov concentrates on the response generated by the ‘fantastic’ events in the story. ‘Fantasy’ creates a situation in which the reader/audience experiences feelings of hesitation and awe provoked by strange, improbable events. If the implausibility of the events can be explained rationally or psychologically (e.g., as a dream or hallucination), then the term ‘uncanny’ is applied. In stories like The Lord of the Rings, in which an alternative world or reality is created, the term ‘marvellous’ is considered most appropriate to describe the work. By these definitions, The Exorcist would be fantasy while the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles (in which the supernatural is suggested but a rational explanation triumphs) is uncanny. All three of Todorov’s categories, it can be argued, presume the pursuit of mimesis. Both the uncanny and fantasy depend on our being temporarily persuaded that the actual world – of which the text tries to provide a convincing imitation– is contaminated by irrationality; if the imitation was not convincing our succumbing temporarily to an irrational explanation would not happen. As regards the third category, the ‘marvellous’, which tries to create an alternate world, one could argue that this world would also need to be infused with a convincing logic (as in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) or an elaborate history (as in The Lord of the Rings) to make us temporarily abandon our commitment to the world we inhabit to enter another one. The Hindi film Bees Saal Baad, an adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, suggests that what primarily concerns the film is the delivery of a message of rationality (pertinent to the Nehru era) and not any desire to make us believe in a ghost, even temporarily. The film, for instance, introduces residual ‘supernatural’ elements to create a ghostly ambience at 60

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odds with its rational message – for example, doors opening on their own – that we put aside as irrelevant when the solution is given. Where mimesis would strive to make these effects plausible, the film does no such thing. In films dealing with possession by demons or ghosts there is no contradiction between rational and irrational explanations when ghosts or demons are dealt with routinely by a psychiatrist – in contrast to The Exorcist in which psychiatrists are shown to be ineffective with Regan and the symptoms she is exhibiting. But Todorov’s three categories are not the only possible ones, and the chapter considers SF and children’s films as well. If one defines SF strictly as dealing with scientific possibilities and not simply as introducing elements like aliens into other genres like the action genre (Predator), Indian popular cinema has produced no SF at all in my discernment. Koi . . . Mil Gaya, on scrutiny, is a film eulogizing the strides taken by Indian scientists and appeared when India was believed to be making enormous advances in technology. In the film an Indian scientist working abroad is mocked by his Western colleagues, but he persists and makes contact with aliens, and his son is then given supernatural powers by them. As already argued, it is familiar/traditional knowledge, here carried by the father, that is eulogized, and this prevents popular cinema from dealing with future possibilities that by definition deal with the unfamiliar. The same issues find manifestation in the children’s film where messages equally suitable for adults and children are relayed – with little attention to nurturing a child’s imagination as children’s films do. Films appear, in fact, to be centred on the adult world and its tendencies with regard to children. For example, Taare Zamin Par (2007) is about the insensitivity of the adult world to differently enabled children; Stanley Ka Dabba (2011) describes the travails of an orphan boy in school; Chillar Party (2011) shows children fighting politicians who are intent on exterminating stray dogs; Rockford (1999) is a school romance with child molestation as a subplot. On studying the lists carefully, one even finds uncertainty about what constitutes children’s cinema – since Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), about a child facilitating her father’s second romance subsequent to his widowhood, and Chak De India (2007), about a women’s hockey team, find places on them. A great children’s fairy tale film came from Satyajit Ray (Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, 1969) which can be fruitfully described as a successful excursion into the marvellous by Indian cinema, an unqualified example of a children’s fiction film. The Islamic fantasy film of the silent era has been invoked by theorists, but while no print exists today, a remake (Hatim Tai, 1990) suggests that the Islamic fantasy is akin to the regional language mythological film and the Telugu folklore film and can be termed marvellous, but without it pursuing mimesis. The marvellous as a category posits an imagined world as an alternative to the real one as in The Wizard of Oz, where the story is a dream. In 61

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The Lord of the Rings, ‘Middle-Earth’ is recreated with an effort to make it seem mimetic. The Islamic fantasy is not religious, and its Islamic elements are Urdu being spoken, the characters dressed in Arab headgear and Allah being invoked, without faith as a key constituent element.

Notes 1 Tsvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (Trans. Richard Howard), Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975, pp. 24–40. 2 It might be useful to separate metaphor and deliberate allegory from the three categories proposed by Todorov. Then, Metamorphosis could be treated as a metaphor for human isolation, suffering and illness rather than a category under fantasy. John Bunyan’s allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) is also evidently not fantasy. 3 Referred to here are the residual ghostly elements incompatible with the rationalist discourse. In an ‘uncanny’ narrative such unexplainable elements could not exist. But that would only be applicable to a mimetic approach when appearances are important, since what is imitated are appearances, which need to be made plausible. In Bees Saal Baad mimesis is not pursued and the plausibility of the appearances are of little consequence. 4 Cyrano de Bergerac’s The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon and the Sun (translated into English in 1656) is the one that science fiction scholars have expressed the greatest admiration for. Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979, pp. 103–106. 5 John Rieder, Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008, pp. 4–5. 6 Ibid., pp. 4–5. 7 Evgeny Dobrenko, Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008, p. 4. 8 M.K. Raghavendra, The Politics of Hindi Cinema in the New Millennium: Bollywood and the Anglophone Indian Nation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 130–132. 9 Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema, New Delhi: Tulika, 2009, p. 4. 10 Hasan El-Shamy, ‘Mythological Constituents of Alf laylah wa laylah,’ in Yuriko Yamanaka and Tetsua Nishio (eds.), The Arabian Nights and Orientalism: Perspectives from East and West, London: IB Tauris, 2006, p. 33.

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9 STATION AND HIERARCHY

Hierarchy and station are not key issues in film narrative except in a few national cinemas – like those from Japan, Iran and India. In most films from around the world people interact with each other as individuals or citizens without station and hierarchy mediating conspicuously in relationships. This is not to say that relationships as portrayed in cinema are all equal but that in most films the inequality in relationships is implicated in the story as part of the fiction. In gangster films, for instance, there is never any question as to who the bosses are and who the underlings. But the underlying presumption is that hierarchical positions within the narrative are contingent and subject to renegotiation at any moment – as when an underling replaces a boss. In Iranian and Japanese films, on the other hand, the woman’s position being below that of the man is shown as part of the natural order even when both are endowed with agency. Even when the woman exhibits greater strength/character, her station is below that of the man. As an example, Lady Asaji’s position in Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957) is not the same as Lady Macbeth’s in Shakespeare’s play, though Kurosawa’s film derives from Macbeth. Tahereh in Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees (1994) is nominally of a higher class than Hossain and therefore rejects his suit initially as beneath her, but his persistence (and his own sense of male privilege) pays off and the film concludes with a suggestion of her consent. Indian society is also patriarchal like that of Japan or Iran, but station and hierarchy play a more extensive role here.The caste system, as everyone knows, is a hierarchical arrangement of social groups defined by birth and bloodlines, but hierarchy stretches to most other matters like relationships between parents and children, men and women, teachers and students, educated and uneducated, white-collar and blue-collar workers, servants of the state and private citizens, employers and employees, etc. The conflict between rich and poor is itself not economic but hierarchical. It is impossible to list out all the areas in which station and hierarchy are defining notions, and even dharmic principles implicate them. Their role in film narrative cannot be underestimated but film scholars have, by and large, avoided examining it. As a possible explanation, much of their scholarship relies on socio-cultural theories developed in 63

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Western universities, while station and hierarchy as understood in India are without parallel.1 This chapter cannot hope to do justice to the subject but will only try to give some indication of how pervasively the notions of station and hierarchy are implicit in the construction of film narrative. The most helpful way is to seek them out in a few staple plot devices. It may be noted here that station usually operates in different manifestations within a single narrative: Men and women: Virtually all films have male and female protagonists with heterosexual bonding between them. Films can either be female-centric, male-centric (a majority of films), or evenly balanced. Female-centric films are those where more information is given about the heroine’s antecedents (family circumstances, etc.). By this reckoning Andaz (1949), Dhool Ka Phool (1959), Aradhana (1969) and Queen (2013) are female-centred. All of these films are about women negotiating their way in a patriarchal world, and the woman’s station is shown to be lower than that of the man, which lends itself to a portrayal of her victimization in society. This focus on women as victims means that woman-centric films lend themselves to acute melodrama. In male-centric films (Deewar, 1975) in which, by and large, action or spectacle is the major attraction, the woman usually has a decorative presence, as an appurtenance of male desire. The difference between such films and a typical Hollywood macho exercise like a James Bond film is that the woman is not the quarry of a man in the Indian film but more like an accessory in his total existence. Romances where male and female stars get equal billing (Hum Aapke Hain Koun . . . ! 1994, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, 1996) are more like Hollywood romance, the woman in love not expressing herself but having to wait for the man’s gesture/declaration. In most romances the woman presents herself to the man, who then falls in love. But here it is not only the social convention that the man has to propose marriage, but also that the woman has to wait for a decision. In films outside the mainstream, a woman struggling against odds might win, as in Pink (2016), but there is a special pleading for the woman as though disadvantage is natural to her. In mainstream action-comedies like Ramesh Sippy’s Seetha Aur Geetha (1972), in which a strong woman protagonist is shown to triumph, her principal adversary is often a woman. Sai Paranjape’s Sparsh (1980) is about the relationship between a blind man and a widow, with a suggestion that both find each other because of their comparable ‘impairments’. The ‘woman’s honour’ is an added concept in Indian cinema and ‘women with honour’ are higher placed. Rape in Indian cinema (Insaaf Ka Tarazu, 1994) is not physical violation of the person but dishonour, that is, loss of station.2 The ‘character’ of a woman being doubted is essentially a lowering of her station. Indian popular films accord the woman a lower station, but this is not as conspicuous as in Iranian or Japanese cinema because of the reform 64

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movements of the 19th century3 that tried to give the woman position of greater importance. Many of the reformist films of the 1930s and 1940s like V Shantaram’s Duniya Na Mane (1937) and Damle and Fatehlal’s Sant Tukaram (1936) portray strong women in their dealings with weaker men, though the man’s ‘weakness’ in the latter film is essentially other-worldliness. But even in ‘emancipatory’ films like Duniya Na Mane the woman makes a heroic effort to rise because lower station for her is the natural order. A point needs to be added here about Japanese or Iranian cinema. Since directors like Kenji Mizoguchi pursue mimesis, one does not find in films like The Life of Oharu (1952) such an emancipatory urge although there is no missing where the director’s sympathies lie. Gender discrimination is a characteristic of his society rather than Mizoguchi’s viewpoint. In Indian cinema, which delivers messages/truths, it is the message of emancipation that points to the lower station accorded to women rather than any observation about an actual state of affairs. One could conclude that the eulogized heroism of the woman in Duniya Na Mane implies that it is exceptional, namely, it is the film’s viewpoint that gender discrimination is natural. One is reminded of Bertolt Brecht’s lines in The Life of Galileo: ‘Unhappy is the land that needs a hero’. ‘Tragedy’: The term ‘tragedy’ is used in India to describe melodramas in which people are put to great suffering, although the term also implies that the film cannot end happily for the protagonist. It may be useful here to examine some key melodramas in which suffering is inflicted on the male/female protagonist. In Devdas (1935), the ‘tragedy’ lies in the aristocratic protagonist descending into vagrancy since his inability to confront his authoritarian father keeps him from his loved one; he loses station when he consorts with a courtesan. The woman in Andaz suffers on account of her easy behaviour towards her employee being misunderstood as love,4 that is, tragedy results from a misplaced sense of station by the man. In Awaara (1951) the protagonist is denied his rightful station by his father, who unjustly doubts his paternity. Deewar (1975) is about a boy growing up with the emotional scars of his noble father dubbed a thief. In Trishul (1978), a boy grows up to adulthood resenting his rich father because of his illegitimacy but regains station by helping his father and his legitimate family after he first ruins his father financially. Station plays a key role in each of these melodramatic situations. If the ‘downfall of a noble character’ is a key element in a certain kind of tragedy, Indian melodrama associates ‘fall’ with loss of station.5 The rich-poor divide: Unless a film problematizes immense wealth (The Great Gatsby, 2013) or abject poverty (City Lights, 1931), the relationship between rich and poor people is not a ‘divide’ in most film stories. In City Lights, in fact, the divide is artificial since the millionaire and 65

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the tramp get on amiably when the former is drunk and socially uninhibited. The relationship between Peter Parker and Harry Osborne in Spider-Man (2002) is between social equals. It is only when power or an economic aspect enters that the relationship transforms; an example is Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight (1965), based on Shakespeare’s histories. In this film Falstaff and Prince Hal are companions until the latter becomes sovereign. Indian popular cinema does not often specify social difference unless that is of importance to the story, though one might deduce it indirectly from the kind of detail provided. In Hum Aapke Hain Koun . . . ! (1994) the two families – one of a businessman and one of a scholar – are not differentiated in terms of station, and the businessman being wealthier is merely attendant detail to his being a businessman. At the same time there is no mistaking the difference in station between members of the businessman’s family and its servants. While in actuality there is a clear power/economic relationship between a family and its servants, the film treats it as patronage. When social difference between persons or families informs the narrative there are apparently only a handful of ways in which this can happen. The most common strategy is for lovers to belong to different classes (Bobby, 1973) when there is opposition from one of the families to the marriage of the lovers. It is not economic means but station that is offered as the reason for their opposition in Bobby. In most cases it is the rich boy who loves the poor girl and not a poor boy who loves the rich girl, but this alternate scenario is occasionally also allowed as in Yaadon Ki Baraat (1973). In this film the boy is actually well born but brought up by a poor foster father. Another scenario (Betaab, 1983) has the poor boy taming the conceited (and Westernized) rich girl. Here their fathers were once of equal (wealthy) station and best friends, until the boy’s father was beset by misfortune and his friend deserted him in his hour of need. A version of this with the girl being the daughter of the rich-man-fallen-uponbad-times was made as Maine Pyar Kiya (1989). By and large, the union of lovers of different stations (by birth) as in Bobby is an anomaly inviting extra-textual reading. Bobby, for instance, arrived when the government was supporting small businesses against the monopoly houses, and that is how the two families are represented in the film. One might conclude that unions between people of equal station are the socially correct thing. This is also true of the homosocial relationship (friendship/dosti) in which commerce is usually between people of comparable station (Sangam, 1964); if they are unequal (Batwara, 1989), it is best seen as an anomaly and interpreted.6 Another ploy to accommodate differences in station between individuals or families brought into contact is for children of the rich to be lost (or cast out as in Awaara) to be raised in humble circumstances – until their blood is acknowledged and the grown children are embraced by their real families. 66

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For the ending to be happy, it cannot be for the son of a poor family to be lost and later reunited with his poor kin, since the rich boy will now need to come to terms with poverty. One also does not find the lost child to be a daughter instead of a son, and the reason could be that the return of the child also coincides with the culmination of a romance. It is only the son who (traditionally) remains in the family on marriage; a girl belongs with her in-laws. This being the case the returning girl ‘leaving’ once again to join another family is inconvenient. Station and the egalitarian impulse: I have restricted the above examples to the Hindi popular film but art/middle cinema in the various regional languages gives the same importance to station and hierarchy in narrative construction. Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar (1958) is about an aristocrat desperately holding on to station when reduced to penury. At the climax of Pattabhirama Reddy’s Kannada art film Samskara (1970) the Brahmin protagonist confesses his transgressions to his lower-caste companion and finds himself swiftly deserted. Mrinal Sen’s Ek Din Pratidin (1979) is about a woman who returns late from work one day to find that her character is doubted, that is, she has lost station. The Tamil film Kaaka Muttai (2014) revolves around two children from a slum being denied admission into a pizzeria because of their lowly station. All these films deal with the issue of station and social hierarchy, but where they differ from the popular film is in their being conscious of station as prejudice or incompatible with egalitarianism.7 Popular films do not see it as a social ‘problem’ but employ it in narrative as a universal. This goes for the regional language cinemas as well, although Tamil and Malayalam cinema resist it – given the social movements in their respective states which disturbed traditional hierarchy.8 But that would take a separate inquiry that cannot be undertaken here. A final question to engage us at this point is why acknowledgement of station as an issue is less in evidence in the new millennium. In films like Rang De Basanti (2006) and 3 Idiots (2009), rich and poor friends hobnob as though hierarchy had never been an issue. In Raajneeti (2010) there are higher and lower but that is not ‘station’ as much as owing to an explicit political hierarchy in which the power exercised by someone determines his/ her position. The most obvious explanation is that with the globalization of the urban milieu there has been a democratization of sorts – with equal opportunity being recognized as the natural order. But a more plausible argument is that popular cinema split between audiences in the new millennium on account of the multiplex revolution and the specific targeting of Anglophone Indians (and new economy employees) by the category of films to which the aforementioned examples belong.9 This cinema, since 67

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it thrives in a social ‘monoculture’ of the metropolis, tends to imagine its subjects as of one uniform higher category. Just as it de-emphasizes religious difference (Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, 2011) which has far from declined, it also plays down station. At the same time those of lower station are portrayed as though they were actually higher placed; an example would be the gardener’s boy Phunsukh Wangdu in 3 Idiots (passing off as the rich Rancho) mocking the quality of the food in a poor classmate’s house. In other words, many of these films de-emphasizing station find it difficult to imagine plausible characters belonging to the less privileged classes (just as they cannot imagine the minorities attentive to their faiths when they play down the religious divide). The other kind of cinema – where the star Salman Khan reigns – has a greater presence in the single-screen theatres and may be taken to address a more traditional audience. It is in Salman Khan’s films like Dabangg (2010) and Bodyguard (2011) that station continues as a dominant issue. In Dabangg station is denoted by both Brahman caste and being in police service, which confer informal power.

Summary All stories have hierarchical arrangements among the characters but this is part of the fiction, simply paying attention to hierarchy and the importance of station in everyday life. This chapter pertains to the notion of station unconsciously permeating Indian cinema and taken as ‘natural’ without it consciously informing the fiction. Indian society, as is well known, is a hierarchical one, and there are all kinds of hierarchies operating – far too numerous to bear listing out. But there are numerous aspects to it implying the acceptance of station as underlying all social relationships. A ubiquitous part of popular cinema is the romance, and there are indications that men are placed above women. In the film Queen, for instance, the woman protagonist is dumped by her fiancé on the eve of her wedding after she has planned their honeymoon to Europe in great detail. Rather than abandon her travel plans, she goes off on her own. What is singular, however, is that when the man decides he wants to marry her after all and follows her to Europe (where she has made chaste friendships), she cannot treat him similarly but has to make a case for why she will not marry him. The 1930s and 1940s are generally taken to represent a period of reform for Indian cinema and women’s emancipation is a key notion. Still, one gets the sense that the strong women in the films are struggling against odds and that the natural order is a male-dominated one. The chapter also examines various plot devices in popular cinema including ‘tragedy’ that in the popular films is equated with loss of station, the rich-poor divide, which is not an economic divide as much as one of station. A friendship between people of different economic categories – like Peter Parker and Harry Osborne in Spider-Man – cannot be friends in popular 68

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Indian cinema, or, to phrase it more accurately, their friendship would be an anomaly meriting extra-textual interpretation. Art cinema is different here and differences in station are a staple of plot construction. The difference rests in art cinema being conscious that the sense of station among Indians is a matter needing correction, and a majority of them take up issues relating to it. A point of importance here is that since popular films are idealized portraits of the world as it should be – the conflict, eventually resolved, merely connoting the deviation from idealness needing rectification – hierarchy may itself be taken to be a key constituent of the message being relayed. In other words, since mimesis is not pursued, hierarchy and station are not observed conditions of the actual world but constituted as part of the ideal imagined by any film. In Dabangg, a police officer using his rank and caste to give himself informal power is, for instance, an idealized message pertaining to a worthy hero and not the portrayal of an unhappy condition.

Notes 1 Louis Dumont suggests that hierarchy, while not being specific to India, is differently conceived in as much as it does not coincide with that created by the exercise of power; for example, the uppermost caste was not the one which exercised the highest degree of power. The Brahmanas were placed higher than the king (often a Kshatriya) in terms of caste hierarchy although the king exercised political power. For the relationship between hierarchy and power see Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Trans. Mark Sainsbury, Louis Dumont and Basia Gulati), New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 75–79. 2 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 208–211. 3 See Ashis Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 2–46. 4 See M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 115–116. 5 There could be other kinds of falls, like moral falls as in Macbeth or Oedipus Rex. 6 Social scientists see the 1980s as a period in which the Indian nation was under threat from divisive forces subscribing to narrower identities, largely on account of Mrs Indira Gandhi’s political strategies in the 1970s. See Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India, New Delhi: Penguin, 1997, pp. 51–52. It was hence a period in which caste identity became a key issue in popular cinema. Batwara uses the notion to comment upon friends who are driven apart by caste hierarchy, which did not matter earlier. The film is making a point that caste has suddenly come into reckoning. See M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 224–227. 7 But the films often treat victimhood as a permanent condition from which there is no escape. See M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Beyond Anger and Empathy: The Failings of Social Realism in Indian Cinema,’ Cinema in India, Vol. 4, No. 2, April–Jun, 1990, pp. 6–12. This may be traced to the stability of hierarchical notions in India and their rigidity. 8 These two states corresponding to the two regional cinemas – Tamil Nadu and Kerala – are also those with the best development indictors, although they are not

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the most prosperous states. It can be accounted for on the basis of grassroots social movements which had their origins there and which led to social upheaval. See Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, pp. 75–77. 9 M.K. Raghavendra, The Politics of Hindi Cinema in the New Millennium: Bollywood and the Anglophone Indian Nation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. xxvi–xxviii.

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10 HUMOUR OR COMEDY

Although comedy and humour appear to be of universal value among all human beings, different cultures seem to find humour in dissimilar things. It would be difficult to identify the single aspect uniting film comedy, but if an element is omnipresent it is mockery or debunking in some form or another, whether gently or ferociously.1 As acknowledged instances of humour, satirical pieces deride social mores, while parody mocks other texts. It is natural that what is debunked should be held in some regard but not so highly as for mockery to seem blasphemous. Humour as comedy is not mocking a social category but a fictional character or situation. Chaplin’s films are not satire, but the protagonist is still the butt of laughter. Since different cultures value dissimilar things, differences in what is accepted as comedy depends more on what is valued in the respective cultures. ‘Mocking’ should not be taken to necessarily mean deriding, and what usually happens is that circumstances are created in which something that occupies cultural high ground is placed in a new context in which its sanctity is threatened, though innocuously. A place of worship threatened with destruction is hardly comic, but a frightened person relieving himself there under desperate circumstances might be so.2 A typical instance of comedy would be Mr Bean inadvertently ruining the American artist Whistler’s famous painting of his mother (Bean, 1997) while trying to remove stains on it. But the fact that comedy is related to something locally esteemed should not mean that the humour/comedy of one culture will be inaccessible to another since there is some agreement between cultures over what is esteemed. As an example, Chaplin’s comedy, though his films are American, is essentially British because what he mocks is gentility and breeding, valued particularly in Britain. At the same time, it is not as though these qualities were not appreciated elsewhere; this means that instances of comedy in one milieu are at least recognizable as comic across cultures. Before we go on to examine Indian cinema it would be useful to test the aforementioned hypothesis, and one could begin by examining a comedy star – since so much depends on his/her persona. Woody Allen is perhaps the most celebrated American comedy star of the past few decades, though 71

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he has attempted to enlarge his oeuvre by taking on more serious subjects in films in which he does not always appear. If one were to wonder where Allen’s comic appeal lies, it is usually in his using references from high culture incongruously to debunk intellectual snobbery, as it were. Most comedies are easy to explain since they are either parody (Monty Python, Mel Brooks) or satire (Borat, 2006). The ‘mockumentary’ Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, taken to be poking fun at Kazakhstan, lampoons attitudes in the US when its director-protagonist in the role of a Kazakh journalist talks to numerous Americans to record their ludicrous actual responses on key issues. More difficult to explain in these terms may be comedy partnerships like that between Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Apart from the comic thrust of individual films, their partnership lampoons male bonding3 (as in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969) since the two are always squabbling, creating the sense that they are together because others will have no truck with either. It should be noted that while something needs to be made the butt of comedy, that something must also be strong enough to offer resistance; it must hold its own and not descend into pathos.4 It is because the object of comedy owes to local culture that has developed in specific historical circumstances that films remade in a different culture need to be tailored to suit the changed situation. An example is the hit French comedy Le Dîner de Cons (1998) about a group of affluent young men who invite an ‘idiot’ to dinner once a month to laugh at his expense. The invitee in question is required have an eccentric hobby and the one chosen this time is a man who constructs models of monuments (like the Eiffel Tower) out of matchsticks. This is a particularly mean idea for a comedy but it works wonderfully well – but because it is French. France has been deeply influenced by the political philosophy of JeanJacques Rousseau and the Revolution itself – especially the radical Jacobin phase of 1793–94. It conceived of liberty as the democratic ‘self-rule’ both of the individual citizen and of civil society as a whole. The philosophy proposed, in other words, to substitute the ‘general will of the people’ for the particular will of a monarch, and thereby redeployed the authority of the state to secure ‘autonomous selfhood’ for each member of civil society. Rousseauian liberty comprises in the participation of all members of society in a ‘public power’ which is entitled to interfere with every aspect of the citizen’s life.5 The French Revolution itself, especially in its Jacobin phase, represented ‘an eruption of the desire for the positive freedom of collective self-assertion’. If ‘collective selfassertion’ is concerned with the political side, how would this show itself in the way interpersonal relationships are explored in a cultural product like cinema? Where American cinema valorizes ‘individuality’, French cinema is drawn to dealing with the ‘citizen’. Since the ‘citizen’ exists only as part of a political collective, French cinema has been led to defining the ‘person’ only through his/her relationships with other citizens and not as an entity in himself/ 72

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herself. That may be why, where American cinema invites the spectator to project himself/herself into the ‘individuality’, French cinema declines to do so. Le Dîner de Cons, I propose, succeeds as comedy because what is being mocked is not the ‘idiot’ targeted by the group but relationships between ‘citizens’ in the ‘political collective’ that is French democracy. When the film was remade in Hollywood (Dinner for Schmucks, 2010) it used a modified scenario. American cinema is informed by a notion of individuality owing to the intellectual tradition of John Locke, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. This tradition defines ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ largely in negative terms. Defining freedom as ‘the absence of external obstacles’, it proposes a legal sphere in which individuals remain unobstructed by the external authorities of church and state.6 The ‘individuality’ is a key notion here, and it is evidently taboo for individuals to be mocked in their pursuits; recompense is necessary. Dinner for Schmucks, about some executives on Wall Street, concludes with their company being ruined and the ‘idiot’ emerging triumphant, also making off with the protagonist’s girlfriend. Indian comedies can also be understood in terms of socio-political precepts. Two romantic comedies, Munna Bhai MBBS (2003) and Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006), captured the public imagination in the new millennium. They share a plot device common to a significantly large proportion of comedies in India. This comic device involves an innocuous violation of hierarchy/station: usually a lowly placed person pretends to belong to a higher station or a distinguished person is mistaken for someone lower. In Mehboob Khan’s Andaz (1949), the comic relief is provided by a clown, named Professor Devdas Dharamdas Trivedi (also known as D.D.T.), who is pretending to be a scholar. In Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s celebrated Chupke Chupke (1975), a newly wedded professor of botany plays a joke on his wife’s family by pretending to be a chauffeur. The humour comes out of the scandal in the in-law’s family that the respectably married daughter of the house is witnessed carrying on a romance with a person of such low station. Two of Hollywood’s biggest comedy hits in India worked by the same formula: Come September (1961) and Irma La Douce (1963). In the latter film, remade in Hindi as Manoranjan (1974), a Paris police constable impersonates an English aristocrat because of his love of a prostitute. In the two Munnabhai comedies from the new millennium a hoodlum impersonates a learned man or a professional for the sake of winning a loved one.7 It is significant that a poor man pretending to be rich or vice versa is not often the stuff of Hindi comedy, and what counts is station – whether it is denoted by learning or by pedigree. While the violations of hierarchy in Hindi comedy are inevitably innocuous, more serious violations get the opposite effect and are (as already explained) the material of high drama or tragedy. The popularity of hierarchical violations as the first cause in any drama, whether comic or dramatic, may be attributed to Indian society being traditionally constituted with hierarchy as the guiding notion (Louis Dumont: 73

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Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications).8 As distinct from other systems, hierarchical status is separate from the status imposed by the exercise of power; the politico-economic aspects are secondary in relation to the ideology of caste. Hierarchy in society is, hence, not something that has arisen through practice but a constituting ideological principle. This means that hierarchical stability within the social structure finds itself enshrined; mocking it through a brief inversion of hierarchy is a reliable way of producing laughter. Hence, the stories in most of the aforementioned films are set in motion when hierarchical stability is disturbed and resolved when this stability is restored. If one studies the comic persona produced by popular cinema in India one finds that most comic roles mirror that of the vidhushaka in Sanskrit theatre. He is usually a lower-placed friend and confidant of the hero and carries on a parallel romance with a woman of a ‘lower order’, perhaps a confidante of the heroine.9 The vidhushaka had the liberty to comment satirically on religious institutions, political authorities or social customs.10 Even in a mythological or historical play, he made connections with contemporary realities constantly, substantiating what I said earlier about comedy’s function essentially being to mock what is held in regard. The comedian in popular cinema mimicking the protagonist is a kind of mockery by imitation by the lower of the higher, and this can be found in the traditional court jester’s role as well. The difference is that in popular cinema there is a moral affirmation only at the higher level that does not implicate the comic story parallel to the central plot. In the Kannada film classic Puttanna Kanagal’s Bellimoda (1967) there are two stories that never intersect: the romance between upper-class protagonists that eventually goes bad and the working-class romance in the family of their employees that ends happily without it reflecting upon the happenings in the main plot. In the more recent cinema, many stars have comic appeal and the most successful of these in Hindi cinema may be Govinda. Govinda’s comic appeal lies in his imitation of major Bollywood situations in his roles alongside the abandonment of the high seriousness of the original. In his role in Hero No. 1 (1997), he travesties Rajesh Khanna’s role in Bawarchi (1972) where the latter star plays a cook who comes into a dysfunctional household to change its ways. It is important that while the cook played by Rajesh Khanna claims to have worked for great people and statesmen (like Dr BC Roy), the cook played by Govinda (who is actually in disguise and courting a girl from the household) claims to have worked with film stars, holding an open job offer from the leading female star of the time, Madhuri Dixit.11 Comedy entirely as debunking can evidently have only limited appeal in India, and one finds it difficult to identify films – regardless of their reputation as comedies – that do not conclude on a sententious note because of the message they need to relay. Lage Raho Munna Bhai is a typical example here, taken to be upholding Gandhian values and widely celebrated as a return to public morality. 74

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Summary Full-fledged comedies are difficult to find in popular cinema because of the need for each film to relay a message of importance. Comedy proceeds by debunking, which would mean that something socially observed in the actual world should be satirized or mocked or a fictional character or situation made fun of. Indian popular cinema, as already elaborated upon, makes few observations about the ways of the actual world, but a scrutiny of the most successful examples of comedy in India reveals the preponderance of a particular plot device. Station and hierarchy are important factors, and as already elaborated upon, ‘tragedy’ is usually linked to someone losing station. The most popular comic device also implicates station, but it is an innocuous (and temporary) reversal of hierarchy that constitutes this kind of comedy. In two films featuring a gangster Munnabhai, the protagonist pretends to belong to a higher station – a doctor in the first film and a Gandhian scholar in the next one – to win a young woman’s heart. Parody is another method of producing comedy and what is parodied are usually Bollywood plots. The comic star Govinda made his career parodying Bollywood as in Hero No. 1. Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) is also a film that verges on its own parody since it repeats all the clichés of Hindi cinema to excess. The comedian in the earlier Hindi films right up to Johnny Lever (Baazigar, 1993) was a development of the vidhushaka or the clown in Sanskrit theatre, a hierarchically lower placed friend or confidant of the protagonist. His story (often a romance) ran parallel to the main plot without becoming a commentary on its thrust.

Notes 1 An exploration of the relationship between laughter and mockery can be found in Michael Billig, Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour, London: Sage, 2005. 2 This is a trick used in the Hindi film Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1996). 3 The ploy is frequently used in other ‘partnerships’ like that between Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour series. 4 Charles Chaplin’s protagonist in every film is careful to retain his dignity. Without that dignity his films would not be comedy. 5 Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969, p. 162. 6 Ibid., pp. 123–130. 7 Explored in M.K. Raghavendra, The Politics of Hindi Cinema in the New Millennium: Bollywood and the Anglophone Indian Nation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 54–67. 8 Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Trans. Mark Sainsbury, Louis Dumont and Basia Gulati), New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. 9 The vidushaka (clown) is a noble, good-hearted, blundering fool, the trusted friend of the hero. A bald-headed glutton, comic in speech and manners, he is the darling of the spectators. He has a parallel in the comedians Mehmood and

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Rajendranath in Hindi films of the 1960s and 1970s – films like An Evening in Paris (1967) and Humjoli (1970). 10 This is not a freedom the comedian is allowed in popular cinema, perhaps because of it being disconnected from the contemporary in its stories. 11 Explained elsewhere as postmodern pastiche since it depends on ‘inter-textuality’, that is, the invoking of other film texts. See M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 262–266.

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11 CHARACTER AND INDIVIDUALITY

Characters and characterization are elements that fiction cannot do without, since all fiction is about people as themselves or in various guises (such as animals in animated films). Making sense of the characters is a central part of most filmgoers’ experience. Generally speaking, characterization is a matter of describing, depicting or representing someone. That someone is an agent of ‘intentional action’, which can be understood as behaviour produced by the agent’s intention.1 To reiterate what has already been said, American films use individual motivation as the driving causal agent. They have therefore tried to create individuals or ‘individualities’ as types. The factor bestowing a type with ‘individuality’ is his/her striking separateness from other people – his/her ability to make us believe that he/she is as ‘we’ are behind our disguises, someone capable of ‘defeating our self-defeats’. What this means is that there is identification with the star-as-protagonist because he/she represents us as we might have been, if we had had the strength to act how we should be acting. We therefore project ourselves into the ‘individuality as type’, something we do not do with ‘character-types’. Hollywood films often rely profoundly on the ‘individuality’ but there cannot be room for more than one or two of these in any film.2 Films therefore also include character-types, without which the ‘individuality’ loses significance. It is perhaps only because of the presence of people indistinguishable from their social roles/positions that the ‘individuality’ retains its appeal. In Spider-Man (2001), for instance, Peter Parker / Tobey Maguire is the ‘individuality’ while his uncle and aunt are character-types. The ‘individuality’ is valued because he/she stands out above his/her given social role to which the character-type submits. A key distinction to be made between the individuality and the charactertype lies largely in the former being endowed with interiority. What ‘interiority’ is can be debated about, but one might propose that where the type acts transparently in response to the demands of a stimulus based on how he/she is defined, the response of the individuality is not as transparent and the reasons for his/her action often remains unarticulated. It could be argued that major roles/stars in American cinema are distinguished by the presence of 77

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this ‘unarticulated’ or ‘reflecting’ self, including characters played by action stars like Sylvester Stallone and Tom Cruise. Schwarzenegger’s roles are not customarily associated with interiority, but on comparing the character played by him, for instance, in Predator (1987) to the types, it is only the protagonist who is allowed reflection in the face of adversity.3 The others merely act – boldly, rashly or otherwise. A strategy employed is to substitute the protagonist’s gaze with the camera’s – to enable the spectator to project himself/herself into him or her. In Spider-Man, while we thus see things from Peter Parker’s point of view, we rarely do so from his uncle or aunt’s. In order to create individualities through actors, the American system has devised a kind of acting (the ‘method’) in which actors are encouraged to dig into their own experiences to feel what the character is feeling. The ‘method’, which owes to Lee Strasberg, claims to be derived from Konstantin Stanislavski’s psychological realism of the Moscow Art Theatre in the early 20th century, but Stanislavski found faults with such experienced-based approaches, noticing that users of such techniques were prone to hysterics. For this reason, he shifted the focus of his system to rely upon imagination, which the actors can use to portray things they have not experienced. One can see in the ‘method’ the overriding American belief in individual choice as the basis for action – rather than social stimuli – and one finds in American screen performances situations in which the protagonists are poised in the act of making choices – usually moral ones, like Peter Parker’s to fight crime when he finds he indirectly caused his uncle’s death. To contrast with another kind of cinema also from the West, where psychology is the key to Hollywood’s exercises in character construction, social behaviour is much more important for French cinema in which one rarely ‘penetrates’ the individual in the way of Hollywood. In films by the newwave directors like Francois Truffaut (Jules and Jim, 1962) or Eric Rohmer (My Night at Maud’s, 1969) the characters’ conduct is open to interpretation, but the films do not attempt to get into ‘interiors’, restricting themselves to social behaviour even while allowing us to conjecture upon why someone behaves in a certain way. French acting (Michel Piccoli, Catherine Deneuve) has also developed in a different way, though Hollywood’s influence is in evidence in younger actors like Juliette Binoche (Certified Copy, 2010) who try increasingly to identify with characters. In French films, one does not usually see people alone but still exhibiting intense private emotion (as in the famous Travis Bickle monologue in Taxi Driver, 1976), and the display of emotion needs a social context; needless to add, some of this is changing in the newer films. In both French and American films – as in much of world cinema – the key is the transformation of someone through a set of experiences to a new state of being. As may have been gathered, the notion of character/individuality can be associated with the earlier discussion on causality since ‘individuality’ and ‘citizen’ are apparently the notions on the basis of which characters are constructed in American and French cinema. 78

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Coming to Indian popular cinema, I have elaborated on how narratives are constructed in the passive voice, as it were. I also made an association between the strategy and the notion of karma in which causes are not determined by immediate events but owe to acts in past lives. The issue, then, is how this influences ‘character’ in Indian cinema. By all evidence, film narratives often include analogues of ‘karmic causality’ in the shape of a gap between a first cause and the subsequent events; a useful example is 3 Idiots in which a genius, Rancho, is discovered to be, in actuality, a gardener’s boy with a deep love of learning. It may be noted about Rancho that his character is not shown to be determined by his being the son of working-class parents. But rather than this lack of credibility being an ‘error’, it mimics ‘karmic causality’, which has no discernible effect on individual character, since karma’s workings are invisible. What is carried forward into the next birth is not psychology or personal experience.4 On comparing the relationship between protagonist and audience in Hollywood and Indian popular cinema one perceives differences, although it is not easy to characterize them. The relationship engendered by Hollywood is a relatively easy one to explain; one could say that audiences of Hollywood films, by and large, identify with the individualities represented by the protagonists in the sense of trying to see themselves acting in the same way under similar circumstances – or perceiving their mistakes (as in the cases of ‘anti-heroes’). Indian films, since they are in the passive voice, may not allow for identification with the protagonists in the Hollywood way. As in films from Hollywood, the protagonists in Indian popular cinema stand apart from the other characters in the narrative although they are not ‘individualities’ but also types, not transforming over the narrative. But we still could argue that karmic causality applies only to the protagonists, that is, it is only through their fates that its workings are implied. The other characters exist only to assist in the fulfilment of their destinies. In Deewar, for instance, three people are at the centre of the narrative – Vijay, his brother and his mother – and what happens between them has the implications of karma’s workings. If there is identification with them it is not in the way that Hollywood makes us identify. Since they are so larger than life, we do not place ourselves in their position as much as luxuriate in their ‘being’. The characters in popular cinema do not transform but remain the same in ‘essence’, the circumstances around them rearranging themselves sometimes almost miraculously. In 3 Idiots we are never led through the process by which Rancho became a famous inventor. ‘Being’ rather than ‘doing’ is the key and it is therefore easy to confuse the star with his/her role – which might also explain the phenomenal success of some film stars as political leaders. Stars rise into prominence when their physiognomies and screen presences answer to the requirements of the time, and it is uncommon for film stars to play against the types they are habituated to playing. This 79

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proposition will be contested possibly through the examples of regional film stars – since some like Rajkumar played every kind of role from divinities and epic heroes to secret agents5 – and needs elaboration. A point about the popular cinemas is that they narrativize the social experiences of the communities corresponding to their constituencies, and there is usually more than one narrative to be dealt with. Immediately after independence, for instance, there was the notion of existential freedom and of modernity with its good and bad sides, as well as the hope of egalitarianism. These were some major narratives, but there were many other smaller ones as well. For my purpose it is enough to say that Dilip Kumar introduced the notion of existential freedom through his naturalistic performances in films like Andaz (1949), Jogan (1950) and Babul (1950), in which he moved close to ‘method’ acting. The notion of modernity with its temptations was most famously essayed by Dev Anand as in Baazi (1951), while egalitarian hopes, by and large, rode on Guru Dutt (Aar Paar, 1954) and Raj Kapoor (Shri 420, 1955).6 In bodies of cinema that are smaller (like Kannada cinema) it is possible for a single actor to play key parts in all narratives pertinent at any given moment. Rajkumar thus addressed the ‘composite Kannada narrative’ in the 1960s through a variety of roles.7 India’s art cinema, which has portrayed more down-to-earth characters than the popular film, began as a movement of state intervention in the 1970s during Mrs Indira Gandhi’s first period as prime minister; its brief was explicitly the portrayal of ‘ordinary people’ since character portrayals in mainstream cinema had been / are largely epic or ‘Puranic’. Needless to say, this led the way to a cinema for educated people accustomed to novelistic characters. But there are not so many memorable characters in the art cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, perhaps the best decades for the movement. Art cinema, having arisen out of the state’s efforts at social intervention, chose to ‘commit’ itself politically: since its aim then became political persuasion, it adopted an instructive/didactic tone. A strategy that was followed was to place a key social happening at the centre of the narrative and use it to relay a ‘political truth’ to then be learned by a chosen protagonist/character. The character being subjected to the happening was also consistent with Indian cinema’s passive voice. Some instances of the strategy as used in art cinema across India include Pattabhirama Reddy’s Samskara (Kannada, 1970), about a religious scholar who is led into questioning the tenets he has absorbed after sex with a Dalit woman on the day of his own wife’s death, and Girish Kasaravalli’s Ghatashraddha (Kannada, 1977), which shows a little boy witnessing traditional society’s brutal ostracizing of a young widow caught in an extramarital relationship. In Mrinal Sen’s Ek Din Pratidin (Bengali, 1979) the breadwinner-daughter of a middle-class household is led into questioning her position when her late return from 80

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work creates a family crisis. In Govind Nihalani’s Aakrosh (Hindi, 1980) a young lawyer is made to understand the callous exploitation of tribals by the town elite when enlisted to defend a young Adivasi (tribal) in court on the charge of killing his own wife. In Jabbar Patel’s Umbartha (Marathi, 1982) the superintendent of a woman’s reformatory discovers that the workings of patriarchy lead back to her own family. The strategy of a person being transformed by what he/she experiences or witnesses socially has been employed successfully by realist cinema, notably that from Italy (Bicycle Thieves, 1948), but where Indian art films differ is that the witnessing of the happening touches off an ‘awakening’ to the denoted social concerns – for example, the plight of the marginalized sections of society or gender issues. In Bicycle Thieves, one recalls, the boy does not awaken to an identifiable ‘social issue’ when he witnesses his father’s humiliation at the hands of the crowd. Pather Panchali, which follows the neo-realists, also does not show Apu ‘awakening’ to anything in particular, but the boy in Ghatashraddha awakens to the cruelty of traditional patriarchy. The consequence of art cinema’s strategy is that the characters experiencing something personally or being witness to a happening become empty receptacles for instruction, the audiences invited to identify with them. They are without individuality or character and are meant only to be impressed upon in the course of the story. If there is still a semblance of ‘character’ in the films, it owes to the actors – those like Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah, whose physiognomies and charisma come into play and cause us to identify the actor with the character. Strongly delineated characters are not frequently found in Indian art films, not even in those of Satyajit Ray, but this is by and large true of much cinema in Asia, where private life has not developed as it has in the West.8 It is private life that often makes one see another as an individual with autonomy. But people in Indian art films, by and large, tend to respond to each other only as representatives of social categories – like landowner, priest or landless peasant. Kerala appears an exception since the characters in Malayalam art films also exhibit personal trajectories independent of their social roles. Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s protagonist in Mukhamukham (1986) is a Marxist trade union leader accused in a political murder, going into hiding and emerging a decade later as a slothful alcoholic spending his days in slumber. Adoor does not attribute the man’s decline to socio-political factors (like political disillusionment), and it is as though the man’s personal attributes had simply overwhelmed his socio-political role-playing side. G Aravindan, the other leading Malayalam film-maker, is not as interested in characterization, but there are a host of lesser-known Malayalam films which demonstrate a deep interest in people, not merely as representatives of social categories, but with personal traits going beyond role-fulfilment (like P. Padmarajan’s Peruvazhiyambalam, 1979). 81

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Malayalam art cinema of the 1970s/1980s is perhaps the only regional art cinema of the period which tries to attend to its own milieu and document its transformation without focusing on national issues affiliated to the radical rhetoric then heard in the public space. The reason may be that given Kerala’s high level of literacy, Malayalam audiences had already become familiar with novelistic characters and creations – not least of all the Malayalam translations of world classics – and this placed them at odds with audiences in the rest of India. This high level of literacy also saw the gap between the art film and popular cinema in Malayalam narrowing. Film stars like Mohanlal (Drishyam, 2015) and Mammooty (Adoor’s Mathilukal, 1990), not to mention other actors like Bharatan Gopi (Adoor’s Kodiyettam, 1977) and KPAC Lalitha (Peruvazhiyambalam, 1979), developed in this milieu, portraying characters with more nuance than customary in the rest of Indian cinema. The nuance arose, arguably, also out of the film-makers’ sensitivity to societal changes, where the pan-Indian art film was more committed to rhetoric about the need for change. If the more didactic art films of the period – especially from Bengal – aimed to persuade those politically unattached, cinema from Kerala tried to observe more acutely; this perhaps brought it closer to mimetic art.

Summary As has already been brought out Indian film narrative is related in the passive voice (because of the ‘karmic causality’ operating) in that people are placed in situations in which they act according to their ‘innate natures’ – usually defined in the Manichaean terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. This means that character as ‘intentional action’ is absent in most popular films. Art cinema has operated differently in a sense, but it is, by and large, issue based, which means that it relays social instruction (rather than Puranic truths). The tested method of art cinema is to place a character is a situation where he/she experiences something or is witness to a happening that becomes the reason for an awakening. The audience is invited to identify with the protagonist, and it is evidently intended to imbibe the same truths. The effect this has on film narrative is that the characters then become empty receptacles for instruction. The success of actors from art cinema (Shabana Azmi, Smitha Patil, Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah) therefore owes to the charisma/physiognomy of the actors rather than the characterization inherent in the narrative; the actors usually give more than is demanded of them. It is in this context that Kerala deserves special attention and even its popular cinema provides more foundation for character. Instead of people being identified with roles – land-owner, factory worker, political activist – the personalities of these characters are often at loggerheads with their roles. In Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Mukhamukham, for instance, a communist trade union leader accused in a murder disappears and returns a decade later as someone lost in slumber even at midday, with no causal explanation 82

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offered (e.g., political disillusionment) as to how he became that way. The reason Kerala seems different is perhaps that it is a highly literate society in which novels have been voraciously consumed – even world classics in translation.

Notes 1 Paisley Livingston, ‘Characterization and Fictional Truth,’ in David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (eds.), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996, pp. 149–150. 2 Stanley Cavell, ‘Types; Cycles as Genres,’ selection from Stanley Cavell, ‘The World Viewed,’ in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (5th Edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 337–341. 3 As an example, he responds to experience intelligently – like understanding quickly that the alien senses body heat visually because of its infrared vision. His colleagues, on the other hand, respond instinctively without much thought. 4 A question that follows is this: What does Devdas carry forward into his adult life – is it not the memory of an experience that contributed to his psychology? My argument here is that the recollected experience invoked by the film – his father’s beatings in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas (2002) – is not character memory but a reminder of Devdas’s state of being. ‘Psychology’ would imply residual emotions vis-à-vis the source of the trauma; Devdas harbours no ill-feelings towards his father. If it had been ‘memory’, the resolution of the film would need to include reconciliation to the original stimulus, as in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (1980) in which ghosts of the past are put to rest; that is, Devdas would have to be shown reconciling himself to his dead father and accepting him. 5 Rajkumar came from Kannada cinema, and Kannada language regional cinema had to deal with both the national and regional narratives. See M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Rajkumar and the Kannada Language Film,’ in Michael Lawrence (ed.), Indian Film Stars: New Critical Perspectives, London: BFI/Bloomsbury, 2019, pp. 87–97. 6 The meaning of the male star has been explored separately in this book. Also see M.K. Raghavendra, ‘After Aamir, SRK, Salman, Why Bollywood’s Next Superstar will need a Decade to Rise, Entertainment,’ Firstpost, 16th October, 2016, www. firstpost.com/entertainment/after-aamir-srk-salman-why-bollywoods-next-malesuperstar-may-need-a-decade-to-rise-3049864.html Accessed 10th May, 2017. 7 M.K. Raghavendra, Bipolar Identity: Region, Nation and the Kannada Language Film, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 35–39. 8 This assertion evidently bears some relationship to Frederic Jameson’s famous formulation comparing first- and Third-World texts, cited here: ‘Let me try to state this distinction in a grossly oversimplified way: one of the determinants of capitalist culture, that is, the culture of the western realist and modernist novel, is a radical split between the private and the public, between the poetic and the political, between what we have come to think of as the domain of sexuality and the unconscious and that of the public world of classes, of the economic, and of secular political power: in other words, Freud versus Marx. Our numerous theoretical attempts to overcome this great split only reconfirm its existence and its shaping power over our individual and collective lives. We have been trained in a deep cultural conviction that the lived experience of our private existences is somehow incommensurable with the abstractions of economic science and political dynamics. Politics in our novels therefore is, according to Stendhal’s canonical

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formulation, a “pistol shot in the middle of a concert”. I will argue that, although we may retain for convenience and for analysis such categories as the subjective and the public or political, the relations between them are wholly different in third-world culture. Third-world texts, even those which are seemingly private and invested with a properly libidinal dynamic necessarily project a political dimension in the form of national allegory: the story of the private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society. Need I add that it is precisely this very different ratio of the political to the personal which makes such texts alien to us at first approach, and consequently, resistant to our conventional western habits of reading?’ Frederic Jameson, ‘Third World Literature in the Age of Multinational Capitalism,’ Social Text, No. 15 (Autumn, 1986), p. 69.

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12 GENRES

There has always been resistance from aesthetes to the notion of genres and this is true in film as well. ‘Genre films offend our most common definition of artistic excellence: the uniqueness of the art object, whose value can in part be defined by its desire to be uncaused and unfamiliar, as much as possible unindebted to any tradition, popular or otherwise’.1 Genres may be broadly defined as categories of fictional narrative which in the field of cinema include westerns, gangster films, sports films, courtroom dramas, films noir, musicals, war films, spy films, prison films, horror films and whodunits – in fact any kind of fiction that fits an existing recognizable pattern. The issue of whether these categories simply answer to marketing needs arises here, but it would seem that genres are more deeply embedded in social processes, actually assisting in the creation of myths around moments in history. Roland Barthes notes that myth is a kind of language and a set of conventions by which the exigencies of a historical moment are given eternal justification2 and this has some bearing upon genres. The western is associated with the origins of the American nation state and shows the Westerner as the civilizing influence in a savage land.3 Post-war Germany (in the 1950s) produced the genre of the Heimatfilme. ‘Heimat’ is the feminine word for ‘homeland’, as contrasted with ‘Vaterland’ (fatherland), which is a masculine term with martial connotations. The Heimatfilme was a response to the war and Germany’s defeat, but war was the subject it neglected to invoke except as a natural calamity without an author.4 These are recognizable genres which are well documented, but any major historical occurrence in a country is likely to find some kind of generic reflection (in its national cinema), although the resultant genres may not be stable over longer periods. The serial killer film (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) is an American subgenre with conventions of its own. As in this case, it may not be easy to trace every genre to its historical origins, and some – like the horror film – may even owe to psychological tendencies rather than societal urges and historical mythmaking. Among the explanations offered for the place of the monster in the horror film (like Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984), for instance, a tenable one is that it is not its appearance that 85

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the audience finds attractive but the narrative around it, that is, the curiosity aroused by the ‘impossible’ and its fulfilment in the monster.5 Where a disaster film arouses curiosity about an unknown experience – an asteroid crashing into earth, a volcano under New York – the horror film arouses curiosity about the impossible, possession by the devil or a man-eating alien. The revulsion is simply attendant to our being made to believe in the impossibility of the occurrence; the bitterness of the pill induces belief in an impossible ailment. Genres are largely responses to social history and it may be anticipated that since the myths around historical moments are themselves constantly re-examined and revised, there should be revision of generic narratives as well. Each film from a particular genre therefore locates itself consciously in relation to that genre, and it sometimes becomes opportune for it to oppose or rework the conventions. History is as much about the past as the present and the same principle would apply to genres. If one takes the western as an example, the revisionist westerns of the counterculture period (around 1970 and created by popular opposition to the Vietnam War) show the Indians as noble rather than as savages (Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man, 1970), which is how John Ford portrayed them (The Searchers, 1956). A country’s public may also become involved in another country’s history as evidenced by the spaghetti western (Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1966), an Italian genre of the 1960s with narratives set in the US – owing to the mass-migration of Italians between 1870 and 1914 to the US. The Italian public began to participate in a bigger way in American history and the mythmaking around it after World War II when there were stronger interactions between Italians and Americans of Italian descent. An issue of importance here is whether film genres are distinct categories and if there cannot be films which owe to more than one genre. My own understanding is that since each genre is involved in a process of mythmaking and specifically attends to one element, a film is generally hard-pressed to belong to two or more genres simultaneously. For example, aliens usually land in the contemporary world, although it is equally possible that an actual being from another planet might have landed in 19th-century rural America. The alien film is science fiction in which the discourse is around technology and its achievements, while 19th-century rural America would be in the domain of the western or the Civil War genre (Gone with the Wind, 1939) with its own mythology. This is not to assert that mixing certain genres is inherently impossible. Science fiction, for instance, could either swing in the direction of the disaster film6 (Independence Day, 1996) or horror (Alien, 1979). Pennies from Heaven (1981) is a musical that veers into noir (which usually involves brutal crime), the justification being that the Hollywood musical (42nd Street, 1933) and the noir novel (The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1934) both had associations/origins in the Great Depression of 1930,7 when Pennies from Heaven is set. 86

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The notion of the art object as being unique may be a valid one in some sense, but even celebrated art film movements have developed along generic lines. Italian neo-realism, for instance, frequently uses children as protagonists and their state of innocence becomes the organizing consciousness through which the world is viewed (Rosselini’s Rome, Open City, 1945).8 Another reason for film narratives falling into recognizable categories lies in film being a popular medium and films answering audience needs. It is because films were not made to answer to popular needs (i.e., they did not take the audience’s psychology into account) that a country like the Soviet Union has a cinema not sharply differentiated according to genres.9 Indian popular cinema has always been highly formulaic, but it is still difficult to categorize films under stable genres because of the variety of categories that appear in the segments of a single film. A film like Sholay (1975) may be broadly categorized as a dacoit film (a ‘curry western’), but it also has elements of slapstick comedy and romance, which might not have happened if its structure had not been in the nature of an aggregation allowing ‘attractions’ outside a central plot.10 Classical Indian theatre, it has been said, is nothing less than all the aspects of life with its sorrows and joys presented through acting11 and the same notion reflects in film. When one speaks of a genre in popular cinema, therefore, one usually refers to the conventions that dominate, and we therefore have the horror genre (Purana Mandir, 1984), the Muslim Courtesan film (Pakeezah, 1971), the action genre (Dharam Veer, 1977), the war film (Border, 1998) and the youth genre (Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak/QSQT, 1988) as nominally separate categories, although all of them include elements of the domestic melodrama. The aggregation of genres became pronounced in the 1950s and after, and it can be argued that it became a way of defining national diversity. The story of three brothers separated in childhood (Amar Akbar Anthony, 1977) not only brought stars and attractions together but also allowed for multiple trajectories and destinies within the same narrative, brought under a single resolution. One could even propose that the aggregation mimicked the single destiny of the imagined nation (unity in diversity). Another important reason for the absence of distinct genres in Indian popular cinema lies in mimesis being disavowed on the grounds that what cinema seeks are ‘universals’ rather than contextual truths. Many of the more stable / long-surviving genres (like the western) in world cinema are aware of their own historical preoccupations and the mythology associated with their origins, and it is this awareness which makes revisionist discourse possible in later periods. Although Indian popular film narratives are created by contexts, their preoccupation with ‘transcendental truths’ means that the contexts need to be interpreted and/or inferred since they are only present in allegorical form. To illustrate, the division of the family land/property between brothers in Upkaar (1968) and Do Raaste (1969) allegorize Partition12 – which came into sudden relevance after the war of 1965 – but 87

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the films treat the message as ‘universal’, only decrying acrimony between siblings. I suggested, while dealing with the family/genealogy, that the family past is what popular cinema offers in lieu of historical context, and this implies that allegory of historical processes/happenings often uses familial motifs as metaphor. It is hence not inappropriate that elements from the domestic melodrama should find a place in every genre. A war film like Border (1997) or The Ghazi Attack (2017) includes elements of the domestic melodrama since they are not historical films about battles as much as patriotic films invoking a nation at war.13 Since the sentiment aroused by the gallantry of soldiers in war is ‘universal’, it cannot be restricted to a professional army but must be allowed to disperse into the public space. In The Ghazi Attack, filmed on a submarine, a mother and her child (‘refugees’) watch the action inside a submarine. In India, it may be proposed, ‘genres’ are created on the basis of audience segmentation or targeting. If we look only at the Hindi language film (and exclude Urdu), we can see the ‘B’ film (largely horror and interspersed with magic) as intended for an audience with its roots in the small towns of the ‘cow belt’ in northern India. The earlier action films with Dara Singh were meant for an urban working class. Both these categories can be subsumed as ‘regional’ Hindi cinema – if the mainstream cinema is admittedly ‘national’. Youth films like Bobby and Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak were largely for urban youth but were nonetheless within mainstream cinema since their popularity was widespread. It has been argued that the domestic melodrama of the 1950s subsumed the other categories of Hindi cinema, and this traced to the emergence of the nation-state after colonial rule.14 But it is more conveniently seen as Nehruvian nationalism creating a national audience with common concerns,15 which became divided once again in the 1960s after the debacle of the Sino-Indian War of 1962 that saw a fall in optimism over the state of the nation.16 Today, mainstream Hindi film audiences can be tentatively divided into a metropolitan/urban (largely Anglophone) segment and another segment represented by Salman Khan’s following. Salman Khan’s Sultan (2016) borrows motifs from Dara Singh’s films, and the star deliberately speaks Hindi with a strong local flavour, mispronouncing English words in his films. Because of large-scale migration to the cities in the past two decades it is no longer possible to divide audiences clearly into urban and rural categories, but Salman Khan’s films could represent resistance to Anglophone India, an audience with much more spending power and which the other big films (e.g., 3 Idiots) target.

Summary Critics speak of ‘genres’ in Indian cinema but this is inaccurate. Most ‘genres’ are defined by the elements that dominate them, since any film is actually an amalgam of categories that include the domestic melodrama, the action film 88

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and the youth film. Since audiences have to be brought in and romance is an essential component, the last two elements (action and youthful romances) are even found in the horror genre, which is replete with romance, songs and dances, though they interrupt the action, unimaginable in cinema outside India. The reason for the absence of distinctive genres in the popular film can be argued about, but the principal reason is evidently the fact of genres being engendered around myths relating to historical moments and Indian popular cinema being preoccupied with timeless truths without a basis in history. Roland Barthes notes that myth is a kind of language and a set of conventions by which the exigencies of a historical moment are given eternal justification and this has some bearing on genres. As an example, the western relates to the origins of the American state, the bringing of civilization to the Wild West, and the films of John Ford provide instances of the mythmaking around it. Since history is as much about the present as the past there are frequent revisions of generic conventions in the light of the present, and the counterculture westerns of the 1970s (Little Big Man, 1970) are instances of such revisions. Indian popular cinema purveys truths believed to be eternal, which implies that genres cannot mythologize moments from history. There is, for instance, little myth-making around independence despite the efforts of the state to build a durable mythology around the freedom struggle. When films draw upon history – as for instance in war films (Border, 1998) or films set in colonial times (1942: A Love Story, 1994) – they are still purveying ‘eternal’ sentiments (a soldier’s duty17 in Border). Even these ‘historical’ films are amalgams of disparate elements; family as well as romance are brought in. One could say that whatever generic differentiation is present depends on the dominant groups that might watch the films or to which the films are marketed. Action films like those of Dara Singh catered to young male audiences, youth films cater to students and young people, and mythological films (Jai Santhoshi Ma, 1975) cater to family audiences.

Notes 1 Leo Braudy, ‘Genre: The Conventions of Connections,’ in Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (3rd Edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 412. 2 Roland Barthes, ‘Myth Today,’ in Mythologies, London: Paladin, 1973, p. 143. 3 Thomas Schatz, ‘Film Genre and the Genre Film,’ in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory readings (5th Edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 647. 4 Heide Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995, p. 150. 5 Noël Carroll, ‘Why Horror?,’ in Mark Jancovich (ed.), Horror: The Film Reader, London and New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 37. 6 Susan Sontag, ‘The Imagination of Disaster,’ in Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (3rd Edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 451–465.

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7 Hollywood was entrusted with the task of cheering up America, and Hollywood had its golden age when it tried to divert people from the misery of the times, but another kind of gritty cinema also emerged on its own. For instance, see ‘How the Great Depression Inspired Hollywood’s Golden Age,’ The Independent, 4th October, 2008. www.independent.ie/entertainment/movies/how-the-greatdepression-inspired-hollywoods-golden-age-26481978.html Accessed 26th April, 2020. 8 Satyajit Ray used the same strategy later in Pather Panchali (1954). 9 Mikhail Yampolsky, ‘Cinema without Cinema,’ in Michael Brashinsky and Andrew Horton (eds.), Russian Critics on the Cinema of Glasnost, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 12–13. 10 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 59–61. 11 M. Christopher Byrski, ‘Sanskrit Drama as an Aggregate of Model Situations,’ in Rachel Van M. Baumer and James M. Brandon (eds.), Sanskrit Drama in Performance, New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas, 1993, p. 143. 12 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 170–171. 13 They are not genre films like The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan but use war as an occasion for a message. They continue in the tradition of films like Upkaar (1967) in being aggregates of various categories, although The Ghazi Attack is less so. The issue of patriotism in recent cinema has a separate chapter devoted to it. 14 Madhava Prasad sees it as resulting from the transition of India from a colonial to a post-colonial society and calls the 1950s domestic melodrama the ‘feudal family romance’ which is a cultural manifestation of a compromise between the emergent modern nation-state and pre-capitalist dominant classes: ‘[The feudal family romance] represents a conflict between two ideologies of modernity, one corresponding to the conditions of capitalist development in the periphery, and the other aspiring to reproduce the “ideal” features of the primary capitalist states’. M. Madhava Prasad, ‘The Absolutist Gaze: Political Structure and Cultural Form,’ in M. Madhava Prasad (ed.), Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 52–87. 15 Where action films cater to a male audience the domestic melodrama catered to a much more undifferentiated public. Audiences across the board, it can be argued, had been drawn into the collective life of the nation. 16 There was a boom in cheap action films (like those with Dara Singh) in the 1960s and other genres not targeting family audiences. Other examples would be Jewel Thief (1967) and Farz (1967), which were ‘suspense’ films. 17 ‘A Kshatriya’s duty’ in traditional parlance. Before Border, the director JP Dutta made several films about the Kshatriya caste in the 1980s.

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Not much of what has been said about Indian cinema hitherto pertains to colonialism and India as a post-colonial society, but this chapter has necessarily to take note of that. Indian cinema is studied under the rubric of ‘Third-World’ cinema, which usually denotes cinema from the former colonies; the creation of a ‘national cinema’ was a key project of these independent nations. In most of the former colonies a Western-educated elite emerged as the prime mover in cultural production, and this makes the task of defining a ‘nation’ or an authentic ‘national culture’ from the evidence of cultural products rather difficult. Cinema causes additional problems because it is intrinsically a product of Western capitalism and the film distribution system is itself dominated internationally by the United States. The kind of national cinema to first receive the most widespread critical attention originally arose out of the deliberate efforts of early film-makers to create cinemas on the Hollywood model. Individual ‘authors’ emerged within these industries in the 1950s, and what could be described as ‘realist’ styles were employed to explore social and domestic life in the Third World. The film-makers of this group (who often acknowledged the influence of Italian neorealism) included Fernando Birri from Brazil, Leopoldo Torre Nillson from Argentina, Tomas Alea and Humberto Solas from Cuba, Antonio Eugenio from Bolivia, Satyajit Ray from India, Youssef Chahine from Egypt and Lester Peries from Ceylon (later Sri Lanka).1 The cinema represented by this group has, by and large, been the most respected partly because it strongly opposed the ‘mindless escapism’ of the Third World commercial cinema contemporary to it and could be judged by aesthetics familiar to the West. A second category – one that did not make a significant appearance in India – was the radical cinema including documentaries that arose initially in the late 1960s and included Ousmane Sembene from Senegal (Mandabi, 1968), Glauber Rocha from Brazil (Antonio Das Mortes, 1969) and Yilmaz Guney from Turkey (Yol, 1982).2 Their advocating radical change, however, eventually proved costly, and many film-makers of the group suffered censorship, imprisonment and exile. Although film-makers like Fernando Solanas changed course later to go into mainstream fiction film-making, they were unable to get the wide acceptance gained by members of the earlier 91

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group; the ‘satisfyingly rounded careers achieved by the 1950s generation was no longer available to them’.3 Avant-garde experimentation and political radicalism in Indian cinema will be looked at separately, but the last of the three categories in Third World cinema had actually emerged earliest and the ‘commercial’ films of the former colonies represent it. Cinema began at an artisanal level in the colonies and pioneering local producers made their appearance in places as distant as India and Brazil. Many of these pioneering producers had business interests in other areas. Albert Samama, for example, not only introduced cinematography into Tunisia, but also the bicycle, the radio and still photography. Ardeshir Irani, (who also made the first Indian talkie Alam Ara, 1931), who set up one of the first movie theatres in Iran, also imported phonographs and bicycles.4 Many of the pioneers saw the possibilities of cinema before the West could introduce the facility into their respective countries. In many cases, the earliest local film-making preceded the organization, and the setting up of foreigndominated exhibition circuits and was initially more successful. The earliest Brazilian films (made between 1908 and 1911), for instance, may have been technically inferior to the imported films, but they were more attractive to local audiences still unaccustomed to the superior finishing of foreign products, though foreign cinemas gradually gained ground in the silent era. The arrival of sound, however, offered the beleaguered local cinema new possibilities because local languages and local music could now be used as added attractions. The phenomenal success of Indian cinema in the domestic market can be traced to sound because the first Indian talkie, Alam Ara, released in 1931 in Bombay, had more than a dozen songs and proved to be a runaway hit, eventually showing the way to rest of the industry. The number of feature films made in India increased from 171 in 1940 to 241 in 1950.5 The commercial cinema of the developing countries was once – although no longer – treated derisively by international scholars, but Indian cinema gives us some indication of other key functions film may be performing. In the first place the creation of a country does not produce a nation, which has to be imagined by a sizeable public. Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism) sees the newspaper and the novel as key factors which enabled the collective imaging of the modern nation partly through developing a sense of homogeneous ‘national time’.6 Two readers of newspapers studying stock market quotations in two different cities at a moment might catch a sense of the nation. In India, since the level of literacy has been low, audiovisual media played a much larger role, and this is where mainstream Hindi cinema became particularly useful, although the other categories of cinema (e.g., in regional languages) were not also without nationalist content. Just as ‘India’ was first imagined in the cities (like Calcutta) because that was where the printing presses were, national cinema also began there because that was where film technology first made its appearance and where film shooting first took place. 92

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India’s film pioneer DG Phalke was vastly influenced by the painter Ravi Varma when he made his mythological films. As already indicated, an association has been made between Ravi Varma’s depiction of Puranic scenes and the swadeshi movement that originated around 1895, which wanted entrepreneurship in India to pass entirely into Indian hands. Ravi Varma’s pictures became a symbol of swadeshi to both the nobility and the local entrepreneurs who attempted to appropriate them in different ways, and the images made their way into homes as oleographs. Phalke was an indigenous entrepreneur but if the film-maker was given over to the concept of swadeshi, ‘Indianness’ had two different implications for him. Apart from his struggle to nurture an Indian film industry, he was also bringing ‘Indian’ images to the screen. These were not just any ‘Indian images’; Phalke sought to actually introduce the traditionally sacred into the space of the modern,7 and the Ravi Varma visual aesthetic seemed to him appropriate. Thus, we see that from its very beginnings in India, cinema emerged as a tool of nationalism. Mainstream Hindi cinema is tailored to be understood by Indians across the length and breadth of the country, even those who speak little Hindi, since it keeps its spoken language basic.8 It is also bland and designed not to cause offense, and this will be recognized by those familiar with some regional cinema – with its often extreme levels of titillation and sadistic violence. Making films is an expensive business and films need to reach out in order to be viable. Just as a story told to a small group will need to connect by invoking the concerns/experience the group has in common,9 stories of films intending to address a large audience must attempt to make similar contact. In the case of mainstream Hindi cinema, it may be proposed that the element a pannational audience has in common is Indian social history, in its palpable sense. Conversely, it may be anticipated that mainstream Hindi cinema, on interpretation, will yield detail on public responses to social history including expectations from the nation. As repeatedly emphasized, popular cinema has tried to seek out truths that it regards as ‘universals’. This being the case the question is how popular Hindi cinema will, even as it is attentive only to non-contextual truths, address the contextual in the shape of social history and the public expectations of it. A way, I propose, is for popular cinema to allegorize its historical concerns in the language of the epics and the Puranas and to present the contextual as ‘universal’, as it were, and the historical only as an instance of myth with a meaning derived from tradition.10 Frederic Jameson, to reiterate something already said, argued that Third World narratives should be read as national allegories, and his justification was that private life had not developed there as it had in the West; private stories therefore had public connotations.11 The argument is legitimate since auteurs from European cinema (Ingmar Bergman, some films of the French New Wave like those of Rohmer and Michael Haneke’s Amour) deal with private life in exclusive terms – with few social references contextualizing them. Indian art cinema, because it is explicitly political in most instances, is 93

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not usually allegorical but deliberately addresses the contemporary in India. Yet, one still senses allegory in Ray’s Pather Panchali (1954), which could not have been made before 1947 despite the novel being from 1929. The film can be seen as being about Apu awakening to modernity, aspects of technology (train, telegraph) especially attracting his gaze. If this interpretation is allowed, the film can be understood as an allegory of a young nation awakening to modernity with its reality being exhibited to the camera, itself a mechanical/technological device, as if for the first time.12 Hindi popular cinema’s allegorical side is enabled when it treats characters and situations as emblems. Characters and communities being ‘typical’ means they must correspond to an available archetype recognizable to audiences. The nation is hence frequently allegorized as a community – for example, a village in Mother India (1956), secular gatherings around a prosperous family in HAHK (1994) and a cricket team in Lagaan (2001).13 The sacred mother can be an allegory of the nation (Deewar, 1975) or an affiliated notion like the land, as in Anmol Ghadi (1946) and Awaara (1951). State authority is usually represented by the police or the judiciary; the trajectory of the portrayals from the righteous policeman to whom one can make an admission of guilt in the 1950s (Footpath, 1953) to the corrupt, self-serving policemen of Kaminey (2009) and Masaan (2015) suggests the changing relationship between the state and the citizen. It is important to note that the courtroom scene appeared only in 1947 as a sacred site, since a colonial court could hardly have moral authority, and it has now disappeared from popular cinema. The judiciary – unlike the police – is officially sacred, and this means that it cannot be lampooned by cinema. When such is the intent in art cinema (Court, 2015) a film has to be careful in the portrayal of courtroom procedure, being realistic but without becoming satirical. The politician is another emblem to fall in public esteem since he/she was portrayed as statesperson in Mother India but is now seen entirely as an entrepreneur with even murderous leanings (Rajneeti, 2010). Correspondingly, one finds a rise in the stature of the businessman, from crooked merchant under Nehruvian socialism (Upkaar) to the epitome of inventiveness and worth (Guru, 2007). But this last aspect does not entirely imply that the public view of businessmen has transformed because of their doings in liberalized India. It is that more of the public are implicated in the private sector than in the Nehruvian era, when most people sought employment in government bodies and public sector enterprises. Also, it is because the business sector has grown in political strength and has a determining hand in its own media portrayals. It is difficult to be certain of which classes patronized Hindi cinema in its earlier years. It may not have been the very poor, but there was a sense that cinema was inclusive in its address and that it catered to all Indians. If its audience never was the poor but the relatively well-off, it is worth noting that the epics were not only about kings and princes but also the public for whom they were meant. But with the coming of the global age and the rise of the multiplex, 94

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something happened – the admission cost in cinema halls became widely differentiated. Also, Bollywood began to cater in a bigger way to the diaspora – especially in the West. At the same time the rise of the English language as a gateway to higher earnings because of the new economy led to Hindi films targeting English speakers. The fact is that in the India of today, many of the upwardly mobile in the metropolises are closer to those in the diaspora than to those in the small towns of the cow belt, once the principal subjects of Hindi cinema. Hindi cinema does not address an inclusive nation any longer, and if many films in the new millennium address English speakers – suggested by the titles and legends often being in English – there is another category represented by Salman Khan, who (as already noted) speaks a deliberately localized Hindi and exaggerates his distance from the English language, as though to signal to a key part of his constituency his disconnect from Anglophone India. This brings us to the question of how ‘national’ Hindi popular cinema is. It would seem that gradually it is catering to a much higher economic average among Indians than it once did, although its ideological traits – being for the establishment in times of agrarian unrest as in Mother India and Ganga Jumna (1961)14 – imply that it was hardly ever for the marginalized or gave voice to their concerns. It has acted like what it is and was – a product of capitalism. Still, where mainstream Hindi cinema had once represented the poor through leading stars and epic narratives, the rise of the Anglophone Indian as the principal consumer of Hindi cinema has seen categories like poor farmers essayed comically by bit players (Peepli Live, 2010), indicating a blatant asymmetry creeping into the nation addressed by it, not conspicuous earlier. Where once audiences could project themselves into farmers-as-heroes, farmers are now in the position of marginalized curiosities. The new patriotic cinema (war films like The Ghazi Attack, 2017) using English titles and chunks of English language dialogue suggests that if nationalism (though originating in the cities) was once pan-Indian in its address, new patriotism is localized in the cities and addresses Anglophones. English was once the language of the elite, but in the global era there are much larger proportions of English speakers and users. It is ironic that the language of the colonizers should become the ‘power language’ in India today, to the extent that its national cinema should use the language so conspicuously.

Summary India was perhaps first imagined collectively as a nation in the mid-19th century after the newspaper and the novel enabled people to do so, and Indian nationalism grew out of it. Indian cinema also began as a nationalist endeavour when Phalke tried to make mythological films with the painter Ravi Varma as his model, trying to bring sacred Indian subjects into the space of the modern. Hindi cinema was therefore ideally placed (in a country where literacy was low) to assist in nurturing national sentiment after independence, and it did this by allegorizing history using mythology. Since 95

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it was already pursuing timeless truths its method was to treat historical expectations and social anxieties (e.g., from Nehruvian modernity in the 1950s) in mythical terms and provide solutions to assuage these anxieties. The anxieties/expectations with regard to modernity saw ‘good modernity’ represented through the doctor (Baazi) and dam construction (Insan Jaag Utha, 1959), and ‘bad modernity’ through the gambler (Shree 420, 1955) and the urban gangster (Howrah Bridge, 1958). In Baazi the male protagonist has to choose between the love of the lady doctor and that of the club dancer (also representing ‘bad modernity’). The nation was represented as a community, with representation given to constituents like the minorities and the marginalized – a village in Mother India, an extended family in Hum Aapke Hain Koun . . .! and the cricket team in Lagaan – with the due incorporation of various segments. Nationalism thrived at chosen moments when actual history was also invoked. Upkaar deals with the actual Indo-Pakistan War of 1965, even as it allegorizes Partition in terms of the younger brother demanding division of the ancestral land. Other key cinematic developments after 1947 include the state being represented as a moral presence through the courtroom scene and the police, the mother representing the land (Awaara) or the nation (Deewar) and the police/ judiciary representing the state authority. The ‘oedipal conflict’ detected in Awaara by scholars is actually allegorized criticism of the state since the father is a cold-hearted judge living in luxury when his wife and son exist in penury, conduct that naturally provokes the son’s animosity. Although being a product of capitalism the Hindi film was conservative in its discourse – siding with the establishment – its address was nonetheless inclusive. Even after 1990, with the rich becoming the staple of plot construction, one cannot say that it was consumed only by the rich – just as the epics are not consumed only by the aristocracy because its subjects are kings and princes. It would perhaps be more accurate to propose that the rich subjects of Hindi cinema represented a kind of ‘national self-image’ to Hindi film audiences. In the new millennium, however, this changed with the arrival of Anglophone cinema catering specifically to audiences in the urban multiplexes with more spending power because of the new economy boom. The star Salman Khan (Dabangg) may, in this context, represent nonAnglophone India’s resistance to the urban Anglophone, since the films are set in small-town milieus where caste feelings run high and he deliberately mispronounces English words (‘confuj’ for ‘confuse’).

Notes 1 Roy Armes, Third World Filmmaking and the West, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, pp. 7, 85. 2 The term ‘Imperfect Cinema’ was coined by the Cuban film-maker and theorist Julio Garcia Espinoza and the term ‘Third Cinema’ by Argentine film-makers

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3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10

11

12

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Ottavio Gettino and Fernando Solanas, who also made the radical documentary The Hour of the Furnaces in 1968. Roy Armes, Third World Filmmaking and the West, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, p. 92. Ibid., p. 56. Ibid., p. 63. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1983, p. 24. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, ‘The Phalke Era: Conflict of Traditional Form and Modern Technology,’ Journal of Arts and Ideas, Nos. 14–15, 1987, p. 67. Lothar Lutze, ‘Interview with Raj Khosla,’ in Lothar Lutze and Beatrix Pfleider (ed.), The Hindi Film: Agent and Re-Agent of Cultural Change, New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1985, p. 39. One might propose that popular films are ‘co-authored’ by those consuming them, as is believed of popular media texts. A useful summary of the proposition can be found in Michael R. Real, Exploring Media Culture: A Guide, Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1996, pp. 268–270. A study of audience reactions to Hindi cinema testing several independent hypotheses on popular cinema’s social role concluded that it was largely an instrument of ‘cultural continuity’. Beatrix Pfleiderer, ‘An Empirical Study of Urban and Semi-Urban Audience Reactions to Hindi Films,’ in B. Pfleiderer and L. Lutze (eds.), The Hindi Film: Agent and Re-Agent of Cultural Change, Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1985, p.  89. Hindi films stabilize the social system by representing new needs and mythologizing ‘tradition’. New needs are historically created and an ‘instrument of cultural continuity’ perhaps needs to bridge the gap between the expectations created by traditional belief and the actual dispensations of history. What popular film narrative may be doing is to ‘problematize’ the experience of history in a language familiar to tradition and provide acceptable fictional resolutions. This implies, one might argue, that the expectations of the immediate present are the key to what is problematized. Frederic Jameson, ‘Third World Literature in the Age of Multinational Capitalism,’ in C. Kolb and V. Lokke (eds.), The Current in Criticism: Essays on The Present and Future of Literary Theory, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1987, pp. 131–163. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency, New Delhi: Tulika, pp. 161–162. Geeta Kapur also notes that it can be read as a ‘narrativization of the self via the nation’. Geeta Kapur, ‘Sovereign Subject: Ray’s Apu,’ in Geeta Kapur (ed.), When Was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India, New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distibutors, 2003, p. 205. The ‘community’ is constructed to be an entity to which loyalty can be extended. M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Melodrama, Loyalty and the Nation: The Trajectory of Hindi Cinema,’ Phalanx: A Quarterly Review for Continuing Debate, No. 7, July 2011, www.phalanx.in/pages/article_i007_melodrama.html Accessed 10th May, 2017. The focus of these films is the rebel who attacks the landowning class but is punished by his own family: the mother in Mother India and the brother, who is a policeman, in the latter film. The mother is the nation and the policeman brother is evidently the state. The ‘rebel’ may be understood as representing, allegorically, the peasants who rose up against the state in the 1950s in the Telengana region, a movement that was spent by the early 1960s.

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With the exception of the former Soviet Union, India is perhaps the only country to house cinema that addresses local identities within the nation. Soviet cinema included films from the various nationalities – like Georgian, Ukrainian and Armenian – and India has its regional language cinema. But unlike countries like Russia and China that had empires – meaning that nationhood has been an old issue – ‘India’ was represented by a multiplicity of independent kingdoms annexed by the British through war and other ploys and knit together to become colonial India. While a degree of cultural homogeneity across ‘India’ can be posited largely because of common social/ religious practices, the ‘Indian’ identity could not perhaps have preceded independence by more than a few decades.1 Moreover, the ‘Indian identity’ arguably arose out of the nationalist movement which implies a construct authored by the urban educated classes. It is therefore not unlikely that local identities – constructed around regions, jatis2 and spoken languages – were more important among a large section even after 1947. How the ‘Indian’ identity was created across British India is difficult to say, but English language writing – pan-Indian although confined to a small class – may have assisted, the novel playing a role.3 This is conjectural, but the inclusivity of cinema (which does not demand literacy) may have, with the arrival of the talkie, meant wider currency for the local identity than the ‘national’ one. Local identities therefore remain strong in India and the different concerns exhibited by the regional language cinemas after 1947 provide evidence. Judging from some of them, the ‘nation’ took time to culturally ‘penetrate all of geographical India’ even after 1947.4 There are so many regional cinemas in India that it is difficult to be certain about one’s facts, but the largest regional cinemas are those of South India (in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada), alongside Marathi and Bengali cinema. These cinemas all developed mainly around the presidency towns of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, with the South Indian cinemas coming, predictably, from Madras and Marathi and Bengali cinema being produced largely in Bombay and Calcutta, respectively. Hindi cinema itself was made in all three cities but the bulk of it came from Bombay. Considering that 98

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films of different languages sometimes had the same producers or even directors, the distinctive characteristics exhibited by each language cinema merits enquiry. The explanation that offers itself is that films in each language catered to a different constituency with historical concerns of a different order. Bengali cinema came from a territory in which culture had been the impacted by proximity to the British. Tamil cinema addressed a public which had been politically mobilized by the Dravidian mass movement, while Kannada cinema catered to the citizens of a monarchy under indirect British rule, namely, the princely state of Mysore. Telugu and Tamil cinema both had as their constituency the public in the Madras Presidency, which suggests that they have had more in common with each other than Kannada cinema. Tamil and Telugu films get remade more successfully in Hindi (Ghajini, 2008) than Kannada films, suggesting a commonality between British presidencies that is perhaps greater than that between a presidency and a princely state, even when they are neighbours geographically. When mainstream Hindi cinema developed into a national cinema addressing a public across the length and breadth of the country (even before 1947), it needed to take cognizance of the nation as it ‘should be’ – which meant that it rid itself of the mythological and magical elements that had flourished – in accordance with the reformist aims of the nationalist movement. These elements therefore left mainstream Hindi cinema in the early 1940s, although they continue in the regional cinemas – including Hindi ‘B’ cinema, which can be described as ‘regional Hindi cinema’ and includes devotionals like Jai Santoshi Maa (1975). As brought out in the chapter entitled ‘Fantasy’ there is also an Arabian Nights–inspired (Urdu language) fantasy catering to urban Muslims here. Mythological films themselves were not alike in the various cinemas, and while they took the form of the saint film in Marathi and Hindi cinema in the 1930s (as in Damle and Fatehlal’s Sant Tukaram, 1936), in Telugu and Kannada cinema, which drew from the Puranas and epics, it was quite different. The Telugu star NT Rama Rao attained fame playing epic heroes (Karna, Arjuna) and gods (Krishna), while the Kannada star Rajkumar played the devotee of a god (usually Shiva), who was played by a supporting actor. Also, Kannada mythological films were usually Shaivite (worshiping Shiva), while Hindi film gods, when worshiped, tended to be associated with Vishnu (like Rama and Krishna). It is difficult to explain the differences, but the demographic constitution of the territory covered by each language cinema as well as its history could have contributed. There are other aspects that differ, and this is on account of mainstream Hindi cinema acting as a kind of ‘lowest common denominator’ across India, meaning that it tends to average out tendencies, while the regional cinemas, because they exist in pockets of influence, take extreme kinds of discourse upon themselves. Telugu films are among the most grotesquely violent of Indian films today, while Hindi cinema meant for multiplex 99

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audiences celebrates consumption and spending power. An archetypal plot from a superhit Kannada film (Duniya, 2007) in the last decade involves a migrant who comes to Bangalore (now renamed Bengaluru), is homeless and eats in roadside eateries until circumstances force him to become a dreaded hoodlum, though still living a makeshift existence until he is liquidated in an encounter by a low-ranking police officer.5 The impetuses driving regional cinema (such as in Telugu) may be seen from films in which Biharis are the villains (Andhrudu, 2005, Chatrapati, 2005). The purpose is to hold up Andhra as ‘modern’ in contrast to Bihar, around which there has been a widespread mythology emphasizing its backwardness/lawlessness.6 This is hardly something Hindi cinema might have done since Biharis constitute a sizeable audience. Romance and love are also differently treated in the different cinemas. Kannada films addressed a smaller territory in which marriages were contracted within the jati; endogamous unions usually prevail in earlier films.7 Caste identity was also more important in Kannada cinema.8 It may be pertinent at this point to speculate broadly about the differences between the regional cinemas and the Hindi mainstream film. It is virtually impossible for any scholar-critic to be familiar with all the regional cinemas and that should be admitted before commencing to speculate. We could next propose that since virtually all the films are made in territories dominated by Hindu tradition, whatever characteristics are ‘Hindu’ in the broadest sense will be shared by the cinemas individually, that is, that whatever Hindi cinema shares with traditional aesthetics and dramaturgy is likely to be detected in the other (popular) cinemas. As a beginning, since the ‘relay of meaning’ is a primary characteristic owing to a belief in a ‘transcendental reality’ truer than that revealed by experience, we may suppose that it will be shared by a large part of the regional cinemas as well; they are all likely to eschew mimesis. The truths propagated by the regional popular cinemas may hence also be non-contextual. Since songs assist in this project through lyrics which are related to context in the most abstract/general way, we may expect songs to be employed similarly in all regional popular films. The omniscience of the camera eye (the absence of point of view) could be also a characteristic since that has been associated with the notion of the ‘transcendental truth’ that is independent of context and consequently disallows subjectivity and the subjective viewpoint. Other expectations would include the same kind of causal logic as in Hindi cinema, with a first cause determining the subsequent course of the narrative, which would itself be episodic. Historical time may also be expected to be generally ignored in view of the cinema’s emphasis on non-contextual truths. Another characteristic commonly found across the popular cinemas pertains to situations needing to be typical/stereotypical. The characters being types may be expected from films made in the epic/Puranic mould but not from middle cinema where they are more ‘ordinary’. Recent Hindi 100

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films (like The Lunchbox, 2013) targeting middle-class audiences hence have down-to-earth characters and ordinary situations. Many Hindi films have typical situations involving large/heroic emotions like nationalism but down-to-earth characters (Dangal, 2017). This combination of characters from the everyday world and archetypal situations can also be found in the Malayalam film Drishyam, in which Mohanlal plays a cable TV operator who acts heroically to protect his family, although this is manifested in guile9 rather than physical prowess. Malayalam film stars like Mohanlal, it may be noted, have different screen presences from Salman Khan or NT Rama Rao. Middle cinema and films like The Lunchbox cater to an educated public, and this may be true of much of Malayalam cinema since Kerala has the highest literacy among the states. Another factor of importance in mainstream Hindi cinema is the motif of the family, which has been transforming in the past decade. Many recent films targeting the educated urban classes eschew genealogy since the sense of people carrying on with ancestral vocations has left urban India.10 The possibility of this shift must be allowed to some of the regional cinemas like Malayalam, since migration to other spaces is often the norm in the region. At the same time, the non-contextual nature of the messages relayed makes closure essential, and we may expect films to still culminate in closure at the family level – usually in the successful conclusion of a romance or a family reunion. While there are evidently overlaps in the conventions of the various popular cinemas, a more interesting question from today’s perspective is whether the cinemas have moved closer. This is a question that naturally arises when the Malayalam film Drishyam is successfully remade in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Kannada. One doubts that such routine remaking would have been possible a few decades ago, when there was less evidence of a common ‘urban culture’ across India, apparently influenced by the new economy and its association with English. A factor with a deciding influence on the changing shape of the numerous popular cinemas would be the sharp urbanization of India in the new millennium, with large scale migration to major cities and the growth of villages and small towns.11 The multiplex boom has also meant the targeting by cinema of audiences with greater spending power, and the success of a film today is less dependent on reaching wide audiences over a long period of time. A regional language success like the Tamil film Kaaka Muttai (2014) or the Kannada film Lucia (2013), which raised money entirely through crowdfunding, freeing it from the obligation of meeting audience expectations, might have been unimaginable a decade ago. At the same time there is evidence of every language cinema being split between addressing audiences in the metropolises and those in semi-urban centres. Glaring differences, as between 3 Idiots and Dabangg, are perhaps to be found in most regional cinemas today, although this will need investigation. It could be expected that the films meant for the small towns, being 101

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more local, will be difficult to remake in another language. But at the same time, because of migration, small-town sensibilities are to be found in the metropolis as well, perhaps in pockets. A further aspect of importance to the regional cinemas is the presence of diasporas. By all accounts, Tamil films are consumed by non-Indians of Tamil origin in Malaysia. If the contribution of the Tamil diaspora to Tamil film receipts is large enough, one might expect Tamil cinema to address ‘Tamil concerns’ without pursuing the sense that these concerns would also need to be Indian. In Malaysia, while Tamil speakers consume Tamil cinema and those of Chinese origin consume Hong Kong, Taiwanese or mainland Chinese cinema, Malays are apparently partial to both Hollywood and Bollywood. This complicates the picture further if one is convinced of the proposition that popular cinema addresses the concerns of constituencies.

Summary India, apart from Russia and the former Soviet Union, is perhaps the only country to have regional cinemas addressing local identities within the nation. But unlike Russia and China, which had empires of which people of different ethnic identities became subjects and nationhood as a force encompassing them arose long ago, ‘India’ was only a cultural notion surviving in a variety of kingdoms until the British colonized the space. Local identity perhaps even preceded national identity, which could only have come about some decades before independence, primarily among the educated classes through the printing press, the novel and the newspaper. Cinema, however, being a product of modern technology, found a place as both regional and national artefact around the same time, since one can assume some degree of homogeneity between the Presidency towns (Bombay, Madras and Calcutta) where it appeared. Regional films in India are also national in their tendencies, but there are nonetheless also aspects to it that are exclusive. A DMK film like Parasakhti (1952) treats the courtroom as a sacred site – as Hindi films of the period also do – but it is also highly critical of the Congress Party. One could say that regional films addressing audiences in the former British presidencies have more in common between them than, say, Kannada cinema, which addressed audiences in former Princely Mysore, which was under indirect British rule. All these characteristics, however, pertain only to popular cinema, and regional language art cinema is a different proposition since it was engendered by the intervention of the central state around 1970, when the art film movement took shape. Art films are not ‘local’ in the same way; even if they are made in local languages, they do not usually attract large local audiences and get noticed mainly though exhibition at national-level film festivals. As regards the formal characteristics of the regional cinemas, we may suppose that they exhibit most of the characteristics of Hindi cinema noted hitherto since they also come from Hindu majority areas with the same beliefs. 102

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This is supported by films increasingly being remade in other languages, although there are also small deviations made to accommodate the cultural differences. But the presence of cultural differences is also substantiated by the fact that regional cinemas from the former British presidencies are more easily remade – for example, Telugu and Tamil have more in common with Hindi and each other than Kannada cinema, which comes from a territory formerly under indirect British rule. But as the urban pockets in India get larger in terms of their populations, we may also expect more homogeneity between the various regional cinemas. Another issue is the contribution of audiences from the diaspora to the way a regional language cinema evolves. This could become a key factor since Tamil films are consumed in Malaysia. If the proportion of receipts from Malaysia is large enough, one might expect Tamil films to start addressing the language identity to a greater extent, at some moment even eclipsing the national one – although the fact of larger Tamil-speaking audiences in India still keeps it predominantly a national cinema in terms of its concerns.

Notes 1 Applying Benedict Anderson’s proposition about imagined communities created by the rise of the newspaper and the novel enabling people to imagine the nation together, the ‘nation’ could have been created by the development of the print medium. A way this can be charted is through an examination of the newspaper and the novel in India and the colonial city where the nation had its origins. Benedict Anderson, ‘The Origins of National Consciousness,’ in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1983, pp. 37–46. 2 Jati is one side of caste structure in India and varna is the other. Jati is a group of clans, tribes, communities and sub-communities, and religions in India. Each jati typically has an association with a traditional job function or tribe. Varna represents their hierarchical classification according to four categories Brahmin (priest), Kshatriya (warrior), Vaishya (merchant) and Shudra (farmer). 3 The novel in English, being pan-national, played an important role here, and it was made possible by the teaching of English literature to Indians by the British in the 19th century. The best available account is by Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. 4 Treating Kannada language cinema both as evidence and illustration, Indian independence in 1947 had hardly any impact on it, which was very different from the way it transformed the pan-national Hindi film. M.K. Raghavendra, Bipolar Identity: Region, Nation and the Kannada Language Film, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. xxxvii–lx. 5 It is significant that in a comparable Hindi film like Satya (1999), the hoodlum protagonist plots the murder of as high a ranking officer as the police commissioner. M.K. Raghavendra, ‘Meanings of the City,’ The Caravan, 1st October, 2011. www.caravanmagazine.in/reviews-and-essays/meanings-city Accessed 15th May, 2017. 6 E. Sathya Prakash, ‘Bihar in the Telugu Cinematic Imagination,’ Phalanx: A Quarterly Review for Continuing Debate, No. 3, February 2009. www.phalanx. in/pages/archive_03.html Accessed 10th May, 2017.

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7 M.K. Raghavendra, Bipolar Identity: Region, Nation and the Kannada Language Film, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. xxix–xxxi. 8 Ibid., pp. xxxi–xxxii. 9 Guile is a quality associated with Lord Krishna from the Mahabharata and can be taken to be a familiar one to the general public, although there are not many popular films which use it to define its characters. 10 M.K. Raghavendra, The Politics of Hindi Cinema in the New Millennium: Bollywood and the Anglophone Indian Nation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. xxix–xxxii. Even when genealogy is in evidence, the parental presence has lost its centrality in directing the action. Consequently, it is becoming less morally legible, as in Peepli Live (2010) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011). 11 It has grown from a steady 20% which persisted till the 1980s to about 33% in 2015. The nation’s phenomenal growth, which has been seen much more in the urban areas, began in the 1990s with the new economy boom.

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At first glance orality and literacy appear to have little bearing on cinema, which is a visual medium. But orality and literacy produce different mindsets, as has been sharply proposed by Walter Ong (Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word).1 Here are two translations of the same passage provided by Ong from the Old Testament (Genesis 1:1–5), the first being closer to the original in Hebrew and the second meant for a contemporary reader: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said: Be light made. And light was made. And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and there was evening and morning one day.2 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness he called ‘night’. Thus evening came, and morning followed – the first day.3 On studying the two we find certain linkages between happenings in the second as denoted by the words ‘when’, ‘then’ and ‘thus’ that replace the corresponding ‘and’ in the first version. This replacement can be broadly said to provide a framework of reason absent in the original, providing an example of how a literate public sees things differently from one accustomed only to orality. By using the word ‘then’ the passage also subjects God to reason – His separating light from darkness is now given a reason. The Indian epics, similarly, do not furnish reasons for the exceptional conduct of the characters, an example being Queen Gandhari wearing a blindfold when she finds that the man she has married (King Dhritarashtra) is blind. When Irawati Karve retells stories 105

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from the Mahabharata (in her book Yuganta),4 she gives Gandhari’s conduct a reason – that it was her resentment at being thus married which makes her give up vision. The ‘reason’ often translates into psychology, and this is especially true of cinema. Where the mainstream film does not provide reasons for conduct, middle/art cinema does. Since popular cinema also addressed an unlettered public while middle and art cinema addressed a literate one, we may propose that the two categories produced different mindsets corresponding to orality and literacy. Consider, for instance, the issue of the failed marriage. In Mehboob’s mainstream film Aurat (1940), the pregnant Radha is abandoned by her husband and no reason is advanced. Middle/art cinema, on the other hand, takes care to lay the foundation; an example of this in the realm of marital discord is the husband in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Abhimaan (1973) being jealous of his wife’s success. In Shyam Benegal’s Ankur (1973) the landlord’s son (Anant Nag) is drawn into a sexual relationship with his servant (Shabana Azmi) since his own marriage is under strain; her being childless is the reason given for her unfaithfulness. A second aspect of importance about orality is of qualities being ‘welded’ to objects to make narration more memorable – ‘brave soldier’ and ‘sturdy oak’ rather than simply ‘soldier’ and ‘oak’. It is as if the qualities of the object must be visible at first glance like the saintly widowed mother or the greedy moneylender in mainstream Hindi cinema. Art/middle cinema, like the literary novel, allows the qualities to be revealed gradually, and actors who emerged out of it – from Om Puri (Govind Nihalani’s Aakrosh, 1980) to Irrfan Khan (Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Haasil, 2003) – have developed their acting styles to fulfil this requirement. A contemporary actor of importance here is Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who tries to preserve the mystery of his characters (Kahani, 2012). Another aspect is repetition, which is necessitated by attention not being allowed to go back to a past line or expression, which is possible in reading. This means narration must proceed more slowly and must take longer, which is usually true of mainstream cinema, in which nuance tends to be absent. Art films are notably shorter than popular films. In a primarily oral culture, conceptualized knowledge not repeated aloud soon vanishes, and great energy needs to be invested in saying over and over again what has been learned painstakingly over the ages. This need establishes a highly traditionalist or conservative mindset that with adequate reason inhibits intellectual experimentation and values the familiar.5 Knowledge is precious, and society regards highly those wise old men and women who specialize in conserving it, who know and can tell the stories of the days of old. I have already dealt with the parental figure in the earlier cinema and the issue of how they have disappeared in the global era partly on account of cinema targeting the educated classes in the multiplexes. While it may be supposed that all societies begin in orality, India is different in as much as orality had a sacred place that continued long after writing came into practice, even among the literate. The oral tradition of the Vedas consists of several ‘recitations’ or ways of chanting the Vedic mantras, 106

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and these chants are often considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence, dating to roughly the time of Homer (early Iron Age / 1500–1000 BCE). The four Vedas (Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva) are not ‘books’ in the usual sense, though within the past hundred years each Veda has appeared in printed editions. They are comprised rather of tonally accented verses whose proper realizations demand oral instead of visual transmission. They are robbed of their essence when transferred to paper; without the human element, innumerable nuances and subtle intonations – inseparable and necessary components of all four compilations – are lost. The ultimate authority in Vedic matters is not the printed page but rather the few members who are today keeping the ancient traditions alive. Trouble was taken to keep the pronunciations accurate, with pauses being introduced to ensure that accidental combination of words was suppressed. The supreme importance of sound may be gleaned from the information that complex recitation styles involve reversing of the word order. The backward chanting of words does not alter the meanings in the Vedic language. But the factor of greatest relevance to us is that orality was not simply the lack of literacy but something deeply cherished, since even access to the most profound truths was associated with intonation and sound. Even as late as the 20th century members of the highest caste in Kerala – the Namboothiris – frowned upon literacy and instead highly prized recitation skills in Sanskrit among the male progeny.6 The importance of sound over image continues in modern Indian literature with many of India’s poets (like Tagore) writing poetry which can be sung and which, it is said, usually loses much in translation.7 As regards the movement away from orality and towards literacy in Indian cinema, I have already tried to show how the art film and middle cinema, because they are targeting a literate public, move away from the ‘orality-inscribed’ mainstream cinema. They use much less music that the mainstream film in terms of songs, but they usually have fewer silences than art-house cinema (e.g., the films of Robert Bresson) from around the world. In the new millennium there has been a gradual blurring of the dividing line between mainstream films in Hindi (3 Idiots, 2009) and those which can be called ‘middle films’ (Taare Zamin Par, 2007). This can be attributed to the multiplex boom in which many Hindi films (especially those with smaller budgets) target literate audiences with much greater spending power than those frequenting single-screen theatres. A body of regional films which has been closer to art/middle cinema is that from Kerala, which uses actors not accustomed to the declamatory styles of mainstream Indian actors elsewhere (e.g., Shivaji Ganesan) and contains characters who might be from novels rather than from the Puranas. The novel, as already indicated, is a form which is associated with the print medium. Kerala is the state which has had the highest degree of literacy, and this may be responsible, largely, for the shape of Malayalam cinema. In Malayalam art cinema one finds silences featuring more copiously, as in the films of Adoor Gopalakrishnan (Elipathayam, 1982) and G Aravindan (Thampu, 1978). 107

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Bollywood has changed considerably in recent decades and categories like ‘New Bollywood’ and ‘Hatke cinema’ have been posited by theorists. But the nomenclature would be akin to a newly discovered animal species being given the name ‘new animal’ by zoologists. All fresh names must relate in some way to existing classifications, and my proposition is that ‘New Bollywood’ is simply a continuation of middle cinema, that is, meant for literate audiences but differing from art cinema in the kind of issues dealt with. If art cinema is preoccupied with social issues considered important by the state, like the lot of marginalized categories like farmers and Dalits, these films deal with educated middle-class concerns like feminine sexuality (Lipstick under my Burqa, 2016); they could also take up socio-political issues dealt with by art cinema, but more dramatically and often as a thriller (Article 15, 2019). They are like middle cinema brought up to date with matters of contemporary urban interest and positioned as entertainment. They have arisen since the multiplex revolution made it possible for films to target educated people, specifically the younger sections, also more receptive to marketing.

Summary Orality has a special place in India since intonation was valorized by the priestly caste and the sacred texts were committed to writing only much later, having existed in oral form for centuries. Orality and literacy produce their own mindsets that influence what cinema is. Popular cinema across India was, for a long while, ‘orality inscribed’. While films in India (barring a handful of exceptions) have characteristics in common stemming from their eschewal of mimesis, it is possible to segregate them based on whether they cater to a literate public or not. The mainstream Hindi film and most of the other popular cinemas were dominated by epic portrayals owing to the oral tradition. Art cinema and the various kinds of ‘middle’ cinema, including those serving a multiplex clientele today – films like Queen and The Lunchbox – by and large address educated audiences accustomed to the novel and include psychology as a component. Rather than have epic characters with no interiority, they have novelistic ones exhibiting ordinary emotions (nervousness instead of fear, affection instead of passion, etc.). Malayalam popular cinema, coming from a highly literate region, has produced stars like Mohanlal who work within this register of literacy, even as stars from popular Tamil and Kannada cinema (Shivaji Ganesan, Rajnikanth, Rajkumar) play in a different, ‘orality inscribed’ register.

Notes 1 Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London: Methuen, 1982, pp. 31, 37–49. 2 The Douay Version (1610), which was produced in a culture with a still massive oral residue, keeps close in many ways to the additive Hebrew original.

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3 Adjusted to sensibilities shaped more by writing and print by the New American Bible (1970). 4 Irawati Karve, Yuganta: The End of an Epoch, Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2006. 5 ‘Hindi film aesthetics, as has now been sufficiently demonstrated, is based not on cognition but on recognition. . . . The fan knows what to expect. . . . Thus, the Hindi film is a particular product of “the aesthetics of identity”, which J.M. Lotman (Die Struktur literarischer Texte, München, 1972) opposes to the “aesthetics of opposition”. A typical also trivial product of the latter is the detective story, which functions, as a rule, on the basis of the reader’s ignorance of “whodunit”’. Lothar Lutze, ‘From Bharata to Bombay: Change and Continuity in Hindi Film Aesthetics,’ in Beatrix Pfleiderer and Lothar Lutze (eds.), The Hindi Film: Agent and Re-Agent of Cultural Change, New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1985, p. 5. I also noted, while dealing with station and hierarchy, that popular films were oblivious to the hierarchical notions they were promoting, while these were critiqued by art films, suggesting the essential conservativeness of popular films. 6 As a consequence, a British census of 1901 noted that they were right at the bottom in English education which generally favored the upper strata. www.namboothiri. com/articles/1901-census.htm Accessed 11th May, 2017. 7 For instance, Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity, New Delhi: Penguin, 2005, p. 95.

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16 FILM MUSIC

In much of world cinema a film score (or background score, movie soundtrack, film music or incidental music) is original music written specifically to accompany a film and is, largely, not diegetic (i.e., it is not part of the fiction but an overlay from outside to impose a mood on the action). The score forms part of the film’s soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects, timed to begin and end at specific points in order to enhance the emotional impact of any scene. Scores are written by one or more composers, according to the needs of the film’s director or producer, and are then usually performed by an ensemble of musicians – most often comprising an orchestra or band, instrumental soloists, and choir or vocalists – and recorded by a sound engineer. Film scores encompass an enormous variety of styles of music, depending on the characteristics of the films they accompany. The majority of scores are orchestral works rooted in classical music (most evidently in Stanley Kubrick’s films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968, which uses Straus’s ‘The Blue Danube Waltz’), but many scores are also influenced by jazz, rock, pop, blues, etc. and a range of ethnic music styles like folk music. A growing number of scores have also included electronic elements, and many scores today feature a hybrid of orchestral and electronic instruments. The generic content of the film influences the kind of music used. Electronic music, for instance, might be eminently suitable for futuristic fiction but perhaps not for a historical film set in the Middle Ages. Songs are usually not considered part of the film’s score, although songs do also form part of the film’s soundtrack. Although some songs, especially in musicals, are based on thematic ideas from the score (or vice versa), scores usually do not have lyrics, except when sung by choirs or soloists as part of a cue as for instance the song ‘Suicide Is Painless’ used as a theme in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970). The composing of a score is related to the theme of the film and the underlying struggle it portrays. The theme in The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003), for instance, revolves around the struggle of the protagonists to get rid of the ring, which exudes immense power but also has the propensity to enslave 110

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those who have custody of it. This is the theme and there must be theme music which goes along with this struggle, but within the film there are also other elements – like, for instance, those associated with Sauron, who seeks to gain hold of the ring, and his army of Orcs. Some of these elements (viz., leitmotifs) are strong and they need separate themes of their own; the score of The Lord of the Rings provides instances where this is done. At very intense moments the instrumental tracks can include choral effects since the human voice is felt to provide a level of emotional intensity that instrumental music cannot. Songs in musicals are different in their import but they still freeze the narrative at culminating moments (emotional highs or lows). In order for a story to be suitable to be treated as a musical, these ups and downs are prerequisites in order to situate each song. Examples are the songs in My Fair Lady (1964): ‘Why Can’t the English’ is a highpoint of pique on the irritable Professor Higgins’s part at the poor language capabilities of the English in relation to so many others. ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly’ is Eliza Doolittle hopeful of a better life, if a modest one. ‘The Rain in Spain’ marks Eliza’s first triumph with the English language, and ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ marks the pinnacle of Eliza’s success as Higgins’s pupil. The words uttered in a song must necessarily be sincere/innocent – even if they are uttered by the (comic) villain as in Carol Reed’s Oliver! (1968). ‘Pick a Pocket or Two’, for instance, constitutes the sincere instructions of a teacher of juvenile thieves to his pupils! The song is taken to represent the true feelings of the singer, and falsehoods cannot be uttered in song – regardless of how despicable the character of the singer might be. The words of each song therefore reflect inner truths pertinent to the character1 and are not generalities; this proposition will naturally exclude songs rendered as performance as in Vincente Minnelli’s The Bandwagon (1953). Songs in the musical, while seemingly ‘unreal’, do not undermine mimesis but amount to stylization of a certain sort that allows inner/emotional truths to be revealed at key narrative moments. Since the camera only catches appearances, films that seek to represent inner states need strategies other than ‘realism’, and the songs in musicals go some distance in this direction – although singing disallows the portrayal of the more complex emotional states. But sometimes, as in Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), in which all dialogue is in song, there is a sense created that while song communicates truthfully it does not fully describe the emotions in play, and something is being held back for want of words. But where singing implies faith in the power of words to communicate emotions and inner states truthfully, the other extreme in cinema eschews all music since music amounts to an authorial imposition of sorts. Music contributes a handy ‘expressionist’ element to cinema but can become manipulative – against the mimetic impulse. Film-makers like Robert Bresson, who eschew music (and favour the use of natural sounds), are fundamentally concerned 111

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with exploration of reality (outer and inner), and music introduces an artificial element they try to exclude. To substantiate this proposition, the expectant moments in most art-house films tend to employ silences; mood music enters after the climactic moment has passed. The use of music in cinema is not simply to create a mood and can be complex in the possibilities it offers. Bernard Hermann’s compositions for Hitchcock, as in Psycho (1960), are hardly standard suspense music intended only to heighten the drama and the anticipation.2 In the famous shower sequence the music mimics a set of screams followed by groans. One could say that this works towards stylizing or aestheticizing the violence.3 Where actual screams might have made the sequence unpalatable, Hermann’s music turns it into artistry. Stanley Kubrick often uses music satirically, as in A Clockwork Orange (1971) when Rossini’s ‘The Thieving Magpie’ features in a rape sequence. The Russian film-maker Aleksei Balabanov (Cargo 200, 2007) also uses music in opposition to the visuals when he places cheap pop hits in horrific segments, as if to point out the immunity of popular culture to socio-political reality. The cultural associations of recognizable music (for instance JS Bach in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, 1972) could also impregnate a sequence. In Solaris Bach’s ‘Chorale Prelude F Minor’ becomes a way to recall the past on Earth in a space station in another galaxy. If cinema is mimesis, film music (its use or non-use) becomes a way to restructure or reorder reality according to an authorial vision, and the underlying premise is that the reality to be apprehended is essentially independent of the artist attempting to configure it. As argued in the course of this book, Indian cinema owes to a world view which, even if it acknowledges an external reality, does not admit an inhuman order governing it. The world is knowable (although through a mystical encounter or traditional wisdom) and is not merely to be approached through the senses and reason. In terms of the music, the silent moments in a film can be roughly equated with the ‘real’, and the segments in which music is obtrusive are those in which expression is given a greater part. Since there little corresponding to the ‘unmediated real’ in Indian popular films, silence is scarce and soundtrack music is used to impose an emotional order on the happenings on the screen. In the film Queen (2013), about a naive Delhi girl travelling alone in Europe, we are not given a newly arrived traveller’s perspective on a strange place. Instead of catching unfamiliar noises which might have alarmed or excited the protagonist, the music in the soundtrack obliterates natural sounds as if to make Paris or Amsterdam unthreatening. But this goes along with the omniscience of the camera eye, which never gives us a first-person perspective, that is, a strange world as perceived by the girl who has not been outside India. Another feature of the music on the soundtrack of any Indian film is the absence of what can be identified as ‘theme music’. The successful instances of theme music in Indian cinema are from art cinema – that is, mimetic 112

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works like those of Satyajit Ray (e.g., Ravi Shankar’s music for Pather Panchali [1954] or Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! [1988], with music by L Subramaniam). In films such as these, the ‘content’ emerges from the totality of the work rather than a through a pre-existent ‘meaning’ or truism being relayed. Theme music assists in making connections between miscellaneous motifs so that a unified ‘content’ can emerge – since mimesis must necessarily honour the ‘real’ by accommodating diversity in its motifs. But, as may have been surmised, ‘unity’ is not a concern for Indian films since a pre-existent message drives narration. A film like Pink (2016), for instance, which deals with working women in patriarchal society, is so dedicated to putting forth an incontestable viewpoint that it does not need the assistance of theme music to unify its elements – as mimesis would demand. Music simply fulfils the emotional requirement of each scene separately without a unifying function. That leaves us with the film song, arguably the Indian film’s most unique contribution to world cinema. The film song, as already indicated, has lyrics that are not specifically related to the subject matter or thrust of any film. ‘Yeh dosti . . .’ in Sholay (1975), for instance, only extols friendship and might do equal justice in another film in which a male friendship is portrayed. It is because the lyrics of a song reflect broad sentiments not specific to the character of the singer that films can do with playback singing without an insistence that the voice match the actor’s. Egyptian film musicals have often been compared to the mainstream Hindi film, but Egyptian musicals are/were vehicles for singing and dancing stars,4 while Indian film songs are playback supported and the narration hardly foregrounds a character’s singing/dancing abilities as part of the fiction.5 Showcased in a scene is not ‘performance’ but only the music – embodied onscreen through a star and for an audience attentive to the accompanying lyrics. The lyrics are themselves consistent with the notion of universal truths – independent of context – relayed by each film; this strategy makes possible the continuation of each song in public memory after the film is forgotten. This is quite the opposite of the song in the Hollywood musical in as much as it connotes not personal freedom but impersonality, even in love songs. The song has a following and an afterlife independent of cinephilia, and there are those who even hold that the films are pretexts for songs, with less enduring value of their own. This is not an unjustified claim since the best film songs have the appeal of poetry and give voice to emotions and sentiments which are often more sophisticated than the films themselves; the songs in many popular films have more tenable claims upon art. Songs are not directly related to the total meaning relayed by the narrative but they carry meanings pertinent to the moment/situation. We could perhaps make an association between songs sung onscreen and their role in carrying forward meaning (rather than narration as in the Hollywood musical) in many of popular cinema’s key sequences. I have mentioned songs in Hollywood musicals being sung by villains (Fagin in Oliver! 1968), but such 113

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a strategy is not possible in Indian films in which the song-message is not contextual but universal. Even a circus clown (as in Mera Naam Joker, 1970) sings a song resonant with grave universal meaning (‘Jeena yahan marna yahan . . .’) about life and death. It is important that no attempt is made to match the voice of the actual singer with the person singing it onscreen, suggesting the importance of sound/music as an end in itself rather than as something carrying forward narration, its contribution to a universal message delivered onscreen only by someone appropriate.

Summary The use of music in Indian cinema is very different from what its general use is outside. In the first place, since there is little corresponding to the ‘theme’ explored and a story is merely the vehicle for a pre-existent message, background scores are in bits and pieces with no need to bring them together. Rarely is silence felt on the screen in a popular film which means that the soundtrack needs to impose a mood on the narrative at virtually every moment. Silence has correspondence with unmediated reality, which the popular film does not acknowledge. Only rarely – as in Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali or in Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay – is there need for theme music when it has no messages to deliver but pursues mimesis. The songs in a popular film are not like those in the Hollywood musical in that they are not ‘authored’ by the person rendering it on-screen and do not therefore point to an inner state; their sentiments are also non-contextual, like extoling true friendship as in the popular song ‘Yeh dosti . . .’ in Sholay. They are timeless reflections that can be taken to be autonomous, so much so that the songs often have a life of their own that exceeds that of the film. This is why even a circus clown (as in Mera Naam Joker) must sing grave songs. The autonomy of film songs and lyrics from the narrative is what makes playback singing the preferred choice in songs for films – instead of actors singing them onscreen. In the Egyptian musical, to which the popular Hindi film has been compared, songs are vehicles for singing stars.

Notes 1 An aspect of the musical which has received much critical attention is the discrepancy in content, tone and treatment between a film’s narrative material and its musical numbers. Many critics agree that the gap separating them constitutes part of the genre’s definition. However, we may evaluate the disparity between narrative and number; the opposition between these two modes constitutes a fundamental characteristic of the musical genre. Although there is disagreement, the plot material, it has been proposed, constitutes the text’s ‘superego’ – its allegiance to an ethic of socially defined reason – while the numbers, the film’s ‘id’, provides the character and the spectator an exercise in imagination and personal freedom. Martin Sutton, ‘Patterns of Meaning in the Musical,’ in Rick Altman (ed.), Genre: The Musical: A Reader, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981, p. 190.

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2 ‘A parallel with Greek tragedy is suggested in Hitchcock’s use of music. “Its excitement is enhanced by the tension between the strange, savage myth and the classical severity of the presentation – by the contrast of a more than usual state of emotion, as Coleridge put it, with more than usual order”’. Michael Grant, Myths of the Greeks and Romans, New York: World Publishing Co., 1962, pp. 222–223, quoted by Royal S. Brown, ‘Hermann, Hitchcock and the Music of the Irrational,’ in Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (3rd Edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 619. 3 ‘As Hitchcock discovered, the existential distance and the emotional gap between a movie audience and what is transpiring is so great that even the sight of a knife repeatedly entering a nude woman, and even the sounds of her screams and gasps, did not create sufficient visceral involvement in the scene’. Royal S. Brown, ‘Hermann, Hitchcock and the Music of the Irrational,’ in Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (3rd Edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 620. 4 A singing star on stage like Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Kulthum became a film star, and the film became the star’s film vehicle. Dance films are about women dancers and dances take place in night clubs. Hasan al-Imam presents dancers as women with high morals. Ali Abu Shadi, ‘Genres in Egyptian Cinema,’ in Alia Arasoughly (Ed.), Screens of Life: Critical Film Writing from the Arab World, Quebec: World Heritage Press, 1996, pp. 120–125. 5 It is virtually a given in every popular film that the protagonists are the best singers and dancers in the story. This means that it has become imperative for stars to know how to dance, although not sing since singing is playback supported.

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17 FILM ART AND THE AVANT-GARDE

The ‘true function’ of art can only be debated about, but what has generally been agreed upon is that each of the arts – once classified (in ancient Greece) into seven separate activities: history, poetry, comedy, tragedy, music, dance and astronomy – are united by a common purpose, which is to describe the universe and our place in it. The arts have, since the time of the ancient Greeks, been redrawn into other categories, and we now have the physical and social sciences, treated as distinct. Astronomy is a physical science while history belongs in the realm of the social sciences. The social sciences often overlap with literature in the form of prose narrative, which itself also has discernible links with the physical (and biological) sciences. As each of the territories once accommodated under the ‘arts’ has seceded into a separate discipline, the definition of the arts has narrowed considerably, but as it stands, the arts perhaps exist as two different ‘spectra’ – one stretching from activities that happen in real time (the performing arts) moving through those that depend on common conventions (the representational arts) to those arts which proceed by recreating phenomena (the recording arts). Photography and cinema fall into the last category, though not necessarily so. Certain kinds of animated film (in which all the images are hand-drawn) may be closer to the representational arts.1 A second spectrum stretches from the utilitarian side and gradually moves towards higher degrees of abstraction; design might occupy the practical side while music would be at the other end. The different categories within this spectrum – as we move from the practical/utilitarian to the abstract – would include the arts which transform or affect the environment (architecture, sculpture), then would move into the pictorial and the dramatic, then into narrative and finally into musical abstraction. Different kinds of film would fall into different categories: an instruction manual as a film (as on airlines) occupies the practical side and certain kinds of abstract or avant-garde work, the musical side (Norman McLaren’s short Lines: Horizontal, 1962). A third way in which the arts could be categorized might be in relation to two different axes, the x axis (representing degrees of artistic effort) stretching from the record (i.e., low artistic intervention) to the 116

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representation (i.e., high artistic intervention), while the y axis (registering its experience) stretches from the artefact (the painting/sculpture/novel) to the performance (music/theatre), only the latter existing/developing in time.2 This chapter is about film as art, and we may draw some conclusions from the aforementioned categorization. Art is widely explained as having begun in ritual practice in order to gain control over the milieu and cope with its threats. The earliest cave paintings depicting animals arose out of such an impetus. It is often suggested that the animal images were related to some sort of hunting magic. Hunting was critical to early humans’ survival, and animal art in caves has been interpreted as an attempt to influence the success of the hunt, exert power over animals simultaneously dangerous to early humans and vital to their existence, or to increase the fertility of herds in the wild. With regards to music it would seem that the earliest music was indistinguishable from prayer. There is, hence, some justification in proposing that varieties of art cannot restrict themselves to a utilitarian/practical purpose but must include a ‘metaphysical/occult’ aspect, possess an element of ‘mystery’ and/or make some admission of the unknown/unknowable; they should retain at least a vestige of art’s original function. Secondly, it is cinema’s inherent nature to record, but for it to become art it must ‘represent’, that is, organize reality through language to imply elusive matters like social forces, perceptions of temporality and psychology. Social/psychological causes attached to happenings are not ‘truths’ as much as speculation, and this is where subjectivity enters, because what is only speculative cannot be presented as ‘fact’ or ‘truth’. A factor to be also considered is that ‘truths’ depend on whose point of view is being taken, and this suggests the arrival of character subjectivity into film narrative – an event not as perceived and/or judged by the creator/film-maker but by his/her own creations within the fiction. Then there is the ‘musical’ side to any art, the locating of possible symmetries that have less bearing on truths about the world than the possibility of finding beauty/harmony in it. Lastly, as collective memory is retained, founded on whatever is already noted about the world, there will be a component to artistic texts that recalls other texts. While an overlap between the various aspects should be allowed for, one could propose that cinematic form is roughly constituted by the following elements and the interplay between them: a) A record of reality b) Organization of the record through language to admit authorial subjectivity on the part of the film-maker c) Character subjectivity partly as a means of admitting contrary viewpoints and to acknowledge uncertainties in the pursuit of the ‘truth’ d) Symmetries and harmonies e) Recalling other texts to acknowledge past/common human perceptions and their history in terms of existing models 117

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It may be inferred that the ‘metaphysical/occult’ aspect of any film is not a ‘constituent element’ but rather something that emerges through the interplay between the actual elements constituting the narrative. What is termed ‘avant-garde’ in the arts (meaning ‘advance-guard’) are usually groups of self-conscious artists who set out to ‘make art new’ by breaking with the past. This is facilitated by discontentment with what the arts have achieved and might not have been possible if the purpose/function of art was selfevident. The definition of ‘film art’ is always tantalizingly uncertain, and only this uncertainty makes the extending/breaking of the norm possible. If what is art is uncertain, it can be argued that there is no uniform ‘aesthetic experience’ through which ‘art’ can be apprehended. It is for the general public, even if it is deliberately esoteric, with the expectation that it will be ‘understood’ by those who respond to the view of the world it implies. The exceptional (and avant-garde) in art is not arbitrary and needs to be validated by theorizing/criticism, post facto. Theorizing about art usually follows practice rather than vice versa, although movements usually have ideologues/theorists, setting out to define a common purpose. Since Indian cinema began as a record of dramatic performance it can be argued that it once fulfilled the same role and should answer to the same aesthetic theory that informs classical Indian theatre. The salient points of the traditional theory of drama adopted by Sanskrit theatre hence need to be examined. The cornerstone of the theory underlying a traditional dramatic performance is the theory of rasa. The following are some aspects of this theory. The Sanskrit terms are not used since it would be difficult to reconcile them with contemporary terminology.3 a) Rasa is roughly translatable as ‘flavour’ but it is not a flavour that resides in the art object (i.e., performance/film) to be perceived/caught by the spectator. b) The ‘perception of rasa’, which is at the centre of the aesthetic experience, is itself a loose coinage because rasa resides in the perception itself. c) The aesthetic experience resides neither in the object nor in the experiencer, but in the experience. d) The art object controls the perception but the experiencer must be a connoisseur with a highly developed sensitivity to the aesthetic experience. e) The perception corresponding to the experience of rasa does not feed the ego of the experiencer but leads him/her to a state in which the ego is dissolved. The performance therefore promotes an intense impersonality, undermining the sense of authorship. f) Rather than experience the emotion as we would in life, it is to be presented in a way that makes us relish it. As an example, we all experience tragedy regretfully but we relish a tragedy performed on the stage. g) The emotional states corresponding to the experience of rasa have been subdivided into eight primary categories that are related to universal situations. 118

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h) The realization of rasa makes demands not only on the artist but also on the spectator. i) Art is mimesis but of a special kind, something which imitates things not in their particularity but in their universality. j) There are obstacles to the realization of rasa. The first is the spectator being insistent upon verisimilitude – the grounding of the imitation in the particularity of the happening imitated. This will prevent him/ her from immersing himself/herself in the experience. The second is the spectator’s attachments to the emotions at the personal level, that is, the spectator does not recognize their universality. k) At the culmination of the aesthetic experience the spectator is forced into a silence pregnant with understanding of the unity of the world and his/ her own part in it. This silence obliterates individual desires and thoughts. There are many aspects that suggest that popular cinema develops from the same principles, and the chief of these is in film narratives being ‘mimetic in a special way’ – imitating the ideal rather than the actuality and eschewing observation that might render it unacceptably personal. Another factor is the recognizing of human emotions as belonging to primary categories and addressing them. But a factor that needs to be considered is that while traditional theatrical performance insists on a connoisseur as spectator, cinema addresses a mass audience. Without an especially sensitized spectator, can the experience of rasa happen? The only way out of the problem is to say that popular cinema provides a basic aesthetic experience available to a large public and not only to the connoisseur. The connoisseurs of popular cinema do not usually depend on analysis but opt either for an enthusiastic study of detail or take the hedonistic approach – concentrate on the pleasure deriving from it.4 An aspect of importance here is the prescriptive side of the aesthetic theory, that is, its hostility to the ‘particularity’ of everyday experience and its insistence that art should necessarily reaffirm the ‘unity of the world’. This is perhaps derived from a sense that ‘truths’ about the world are apprehended primarily through mystical experiences and its corollary that art should provide the same kind of understanding, though perhaps only in a fleeting way. It is this sense of a mystical truth beyond everyday experience that makes popular cinema downplay the recording characteristics of the film medium and also relay truisms as messages. Mystical experiences are not quotidian occurrences but open only to seers and sages; the utterances of these souls are therefore seen as wisdom worthy of being relayed. Finally, it is arguably its insistence on impersonality that turns film away from both authorial and character subjectivity and manifests itself in the omniscient narration, ubiquitous in the Indian popular film. An element of the personal is not disallowed in world cinema, and evidence is found in the way characters are sometimes portrayed in highly regarded art house films, for instance Ingmar Bergman’s characterizations in Fanny 119

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and Alexander (1982) or Cries and Whispers (1972), as being remorselessly cruel.5 Often, film-makers draw upon personal experiences for their fiction and that may account for the portrayals, but such subjectivity would be out of place in Indian popular cinema, which insists (like classical drama) on impersonality. If both its role as a record of reality and its capacity to promote subjectivity are renounced, one is left with only two elements that still contribute to a deliberate film aesthetic – formal symmetries and the recalling of other texts. The reliance of popular film on the epics and Puranas was arguably directed towards such an ‘aesthetic’: the narrativization of collective experience using existing narrative models. Coming to ‘art cinema’ the phrase is only nomenclature used in India to denote a category of films addressing the educated classes and is not synonymous with ‘artistic value’, which might be equally found in a popular film.‘Art cinema’ is, largely, socially conscious cinema; one of the first examples, KA Abbas’s Dharti Ke Lal (1946), emerged from the communist-inspired Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) and dealt with the plight of peasants during the Bengal famine of 1943. While this film mixes traditional storytelling with realism, a more famous example, Ray’s Pather Panchali (1954), follows many strategies of the Italian neorealists and is deliberately mimetic in its approach. Another film-maker – a doyen of art cinema and Ray’s contemporary – of importance here is Ritwik Ghatak (Meghe Dhaka Tara, 1960), who deliberately reworked mythological archetypes into flesh-and-blood characters in a post-Partition Bengali milieu – situations pertinent to the socio-political life of his times. His films are mimetic in the way a reworking of the Odyssey for today’s world, not realistically but as myth,6 would be. But art cinema as a movement in India only emerged around 1970 on account of state intervention under Mrs Indira Gandhi. Its aim was (among other things) to encourage a smaller cinema attentive to the lives of ordinary people, to move away from the ‘escapism’ of the popular film towards social responsiveness. Although it was not presented in this way by the socially conscious state, which initiated the movement, it may be gathered that art cinema in India should have rightly taken the path of mimesis in the manner of Satyajit Ray’s films. But while art film-makers deliberately filmed on location rather than on lavishly mounted sets and used a new set of actors (like Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Shabana Azmi, Sadhu Meher, Anant Nag and Smita Patil) with a gestural vocabulary different from that of the stars of popular cinema, they still abjured subjectivity; the films of art cinema still employ the omniscient camera eye. The stories told in art cinema are also founded on social generalities (drawn sometimes from social doctrine) instead of the epics; rather than the dutiful sons and the loyal brothers of the popular film, art cinema gives us noble victims and cruel/unsympathetic masters. They also relay messages as popular films do, although the emphasis now is on social pertinence. The sense of ‘social truths’ being immutable that resides in much of art cinema has (like the truths of popular cinema) the implication that discourse 120

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informing the filmic text can only pertain to the familiar, and it has a parallel in the oft-repeated wisdom across India that ‘knowledge is within oneself’. When one wonders at the knowledge to be found ‘within’, the answer that suggests itself is that this can only be mystical/Brahminical knowledge, since other kinds of knowledge (e.g., farming practices) can only be arrived at through experience. The sense that the truth (whether social or Puranic) precedes observation and experience will arguably inhibit experimentation in cinema – which depends on uncertainties around ‘knowledge’ – and that may account for the lack of a credible avant-garde in Indian art cinema. To phrase it differently, there can be no ‘breaking with the past’ since all knowledge rests only there. Art cinema in India, in many ways, can be taken to represent the incursion of a West-mediated modernity into a traditional society and, for this reason, is largely preoccupied with critiquing traditional society, its orthodoxy, its divisions, its hierarchical structures and its oppression. That may also explain why the workings of capitalism in art cinema are critiqued less frequently. The exception to art cinema’s innate tendencies may be from Kerala, which has proceeded very differently. Adoor Gopalakrishnan (Anantaram, 1987), G Aravindan (Esthappan, 1980) and John Abraham (Amma Ariyan, 1980) eschew the ‘critique of society’ model in Indian art cinema and reintroduce (authorial/character) subjectivity as strategies. But this is arguably facilitated by Kerala being markedly different from the rest of India. Kerala is the most urbanized among India’s states and, although this would take elaborate substantiation, it appears to have arrived at its own kind of modernity without the mediation of the West.

Summary Mimesis includes an occult element, and the earliest cave paintings of animals may have been an attempt at gaining magical control over nature. The purpose of art is uncertain but it cannot have only a utilitarian function; it must suggest some mystery about the world – manifested in this ‘occult’ element. The theory of rasa in Indian literature/dramatics/aesthetics is more prescriptive about what art should do; among the various requirements include a privileging of the artistic experience and the spectator as afficionado. It also proposes mimesis of a ‘special kind’ whereby what is imitated is something in its ‘universality’; verisimilitude to the particularity of a happening is not encouraged. It was also important that art/performance should be impersonal, which would naturally inhibit subjectivity. Where traditional performance demanded a connoisseur, cinema is for a large public. To claim to be art it depends on five constituents used effectively: recorded reality, authorial subjectivity and character subjectivity within the domains of the fiction, formal symmetries and, lastly, references to texts and existing models. If recorded reality and the two kinds of subjectivities are discouraged, film is left with formal symmetries and faithfulness 121

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to recognizable models. Popular cinema achieves its greatest artistic successes entirely through these two. Art cinema, for its part, tried to be mimetic but soon began to propound upon social generalities. The sense that the truth (whether social or Puranic) precedes observation and experience will arguably inhibit experimentation in cinema – which depends on uncertainties around ‘knowledge’ – and that may account for the lack of a credible avant-garde in Indian art cinema. To phrase it differently, there can be no ‘breaking with the past’ since all knowledge rests only there. Coming to art cinema’s most singular achievements in India, apart from film school graduates Kumar Shahani and Mani Kaul, who took inspiration from European cinema (Bresson is a direct influence), the most notable successes are Satyajit Ray, who embraces mimesis in his best films; Ritwik Ghatak, who deals with archetypes from myth and places them in a historical world (like Miklos Jancso); and also some film-makers from Kerala, the most urbanized of the Indian states. Adoor Gopalakrishnan (Anantaram, 1987), G Aravindan (Esthappan, 1980) and John Abraham (Amma Ariyan, 1980) eschew the ‘critique of society’ model in Indian art cinema and introduce (authorial/character) subjectivity as a strategy.

Notes 1 James Monaco, How to Read a Film: The Art, Technology, Language, History, and Theory of Film and Media, New York: Oxford University Press, 1981, p. 7. 2 Ibid., pp. 9–11. 3 Eliot Deutsch, Reflections on Some Aspects of the Theory of Rasa, from Rachel Van M. Baumer and James R. Brandon, Sanskrit Drama in Performance, New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas, 1993, pp. 214–225. 4 The following, it has been suggested, are the ways in which one might approach popular culture: The first strategy attempts to find the terms of high culture where you least expect them. The second approach places its emphasis on the aspects of social reality that are unavailable to high art. The third refuses to analyze and opts instead for an enthusiastic study of detail as the foundation for evaluation. In the fourth, the hedonistic approach, the problems with the popular are evaded by concentrating exclusively on the pleasure deriving from it. The fifth method – usually employed by the academic partial to psychoanalysis or methods deriving from structuralism – chooses to deal with the division between high and popular culture by dissolving it and declining to differentiate among the objects of study on the basis of such a division. Colin MacCabe, ‘Preface,’ in High Theory/Low Culture: Analysing Popular Television and Film, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986. 5 Ingmar Bergman based Fanny and Alexander on his own childhood and Cries and Whispers on a recurring dream he apparently had had. 6 Miklos Jansco’s films like The Round-Up (1966) and The Red and the White (1967) may be comparable although they look very different from Ghatak’s work. Another comparison might be with Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963).

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Stardom in any cinema cannot be separate from the notion of character or individuality promoted within the culture to which the cinema belongs, and that aspect has already been dealt with. As elaborated upon, Hollywood stars play ‘motivated individuals’ strikingly separate from other people because of their ability to get beyond social role-playing to make us believe that they are people capable of ‘defeating our self-defeats’. There is identification with the star-as-protagonist because he/she represents us as we might have been, if we had had the strength to act the way we should be acting in circumstances. There is hence a clear difference between the star and the actor playing character types, the latter category not being allowed to develop in the course of the narrative. Good character actors are generally more versatile than great stars, whose personas have to be put to specific use. The most reliable use of a star’s (whether male or female) persona is in generic exercises. John Wayne, for instance, was best suited to the western while Gene Kelly’s sunny disposition suited the musical. Sometimes an element of ambiguity in a star persona can be used in more complex portrayals (for instance, James Stewart in Hitchcock’s Vertigo). Film genres in a national cinema are, essentially, perpetuations of mythologies around the nation. If the western perpetuates a mythology around the origins of the American state, American noir invokes, arguably, the moral conditions of 1930, namely, the Depression. The mythology associated with each genre is deliberate and long-lasting; it is a means by which a ‘national memory’ is retained. (Given this proposition, the rise of fantasy in Hollywood at the expense of the other genres could be indicative of the erasure of historical memory.) Each star fits into a specific genre depending on the kind of narratives associated with it, the kind of action that permeates it and what the star’s persona suggests he/she is capable of doing within the narrative. Actors like Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and Julia Roberts are different from John Wayne, Gene Kelly or Humphrey Bogart (who excelled in noir) in that they are usually picked for a more indeterminate category called ‘drama’ but their personas are nonetheless distinctly identifiable. De Niro’s is thoughtful, mysterious and carries a hint of danger, while Walken’s 123

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characters hold back their emotions. Julia Roberts usually plays the independent woman of integrity not willing to be manipulated. French stars are different from the Americans and do not stand apart as characters. They have been traditionally closer to character actors in Hollywood, but there has been a quiet Americanization of French acting in the past two decades; Juliet Binoche’s persona is becoming as transparent as Julia Robert’s, although she still tries to keep her emotions contained much more. Acting is distinct from impersonation in that an actor needs to inhabit a character while the impersonator primarily mimics gestures. Julia Roberts ‘impersonates’ the evil queen in Mirror Mirror (2012), which tells the story of Snow White. The male star has a special place in Bollywood, and the reason women stars have generally taken as back seat, as it were, is because the onus of the action in film narrative rests overwhelmingly on the male, the mandatory female presence being largely decorative (as in Deewar, 1975). There have been (exceptional) woman-centred films and one might cite examples like Andaz (1949), Dhool Ka Phool (1959), Aradhana (1969) and Damini (1992), but these films problematize the women’s place in a patriarchal world. What a woman especially suffers is the subject matter they work on. In every other film, the man dominates the narrative as the focus of attention. Since the man’s role is socially more significant, the male presence (i.e., where his potential is directed) is also more implicated in the message. In Deewar (1975), for instance, it is the meaning of the angry young man that is most significant. Male stars in Bollywood have often modelled themselves after Hollywood superstars – down to pursuing method-acting – but there is a basic difference between the two cinemas. Indian popular cinema has not differentiated itself generically, and its thrust is not to preserve historical memory. The non-contextual nature of its truths may be said to contribute to this. All films therefore include elements judged incompatible by any Hollywood standard, and the elements that dominate usually give each film its generic identity. Male stars in Hindi cinema are not, therefore, associated with genres, but they are still used to address the concerns of the moment. When the moment passes the stars need to reinvent themselves – as first demonstrated by Dilip Kumar, who moved from a naturalistic acting style in Andaz (1949) to playing the ebullient rustic in Naya Daur (1957). Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachhan and Salman Khan therefore transformed as John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart did not need to, since they inhabited stable genres. Indian popular film narrative, to reiterate what has been said earlier, is in the ‘passive voice’ in that motivated action is not its defining attribute, and its characters are usually at the receiving end of dispensations. Stars are therefore not marked out by how the characters they play choose to act or how they are capable of acting in circumstances. ‘Being’ rather than ‘doing’ is the key to their natures and, to illustrate, the Angry Young Man’s ‘anger’ in Deewar (1975) does not manifest itself in directed action. He is content 124

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to respond to the situations he is placed in – and he rises because he comes to the notice of other people with power. There were male stars before 1947 (like Ashok Kumar), but the first male film star of independent India was Dilip Kumar. In films like Andaz and Jogan (1950) Dilip Kumar adopted an acting style that implied a man caught up in the multiplicity of choices offered by ‘freedom’, and one associates this with the uncertainties confronting a new nation.1 The other two big stars of the 1950s were Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, but the former is better regarded as a director. His star presence needs a major foil (Premnath, Nargis, Rajendra Kumar), which is not true of Dilip Kumar or Dev Anand. The latter built his character around the morally devious individual from the shifting city milieu. He is often seen in disguises, pretending to belong to another class (Munimji, 1955, Paying Guest, 1957), as though the social milieu demanded subterfuge.2 The Dev Anand of Johny Mera Naam (1970) is very different. In contrast to the mainstream Hindi film that has addressed national issues, India has also had a regional language popular cinema which can be seen as addressing local identities within India. Unlike Hindi cinema, in which a single star has not dominated because of the variety of issues needing to be narrativized – usually allegorically – each regional language popular cinema has tended to be dominated by a single male star.3 The regional language popular cinemas, by and large, serve much smaller territories,4 and this suggests that there is a concentration of issues worthy of being addressed at any moment into one or two major ones, and a single star has been the vehicle. The fact that their ‘constituencies’ are concentrated in smaller territories has also enabled regional film stars to succeed in politics – something that the Hindi film, which is more widely dispersed, does not allow. If regional film stars have sometimes appeared in more than one language cinema, their biggest successes have been confined to one territory demarcated by language. From these examples – and several more could be provided – it can be hypothesized that the film hero in Indian popular cinema has the characteristics of an ‘avatar’, someone appropriate to and who manifests the age, not someone who acts in ways that we wish we could act but whose being embodies the times. This allows for the anti-hero, who is not an exemplar in his actions, and Dev Anand of the 1950s (Jaal, 1952) would be an illustration. But if that is the case, how is it to be reconciled with the non-contextual nature of popular film? Should not the hero be the bearer of an eternal message? A clue is perhaps to be found in two avatars of Vishnu, Rama and Krishna, being unlike each other because of the different epochs into which they are born, but being relevant concurrently. Krishna’s wisdom does not relegate Rama’s qualities to irrelevance, which might have been the case with ‘contextual virtues’. Both Rama and Krishna propagate ‘universal values’ but arguably in accordance with their respective dharmas, which are pertinent to their circumstances. The different avatars of the film protagonist 125

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therefore still illustrate ‘universals’, and if different/contrary qualities are appropriate to different times/situations, it is allowed by the nebulousness of dharma as an ethical notion. The notion of the darsanic gaze has also been brought to bear on the film hero. It has been noted that the object of the darsanic gaze is a superior, divine figure or a king who presents himself as a spectacle of dazzling splendour to his subjects. Unlike the hero of the democratic narrative, who is, by common understanding, ‘any individual subject’ with whom one might identify (as in the Hollywood film), the hero is not chosen randomly by the camera but belongs to the class of ‘the chosen’ in the extra-filmic hierarchic community,5 which situates him differently. The adulation that stars enjoy has tended to be seen as a variant of devotional activity of the religious kind, a view buttressed by the instances reported in the press of the worship of stars, including the construction of temples in their names,6 which suggests a difference between the fictional role enacted and the star in question, and one is tempted to see film roles in terms of avatars of the star. Hindu gods, we know, have an enormous number of names corresponding to their various attributes. Could not the film star and his roles be related like that? Attention has not been given to the woman star hitherto for reasons already advanced, but Jayalalithaa, the star who became a formidable political leader in Tamil Nadu, needs explaining. My own sense here is that she made her entry into politics as the ‘consort’ of the towering male star MG Ramachandran. Ramachandran’s wife Janaki (a former actress), who tried to enter politics after his death, could not convince the public of her legitimacy since it was Jayalalithaa who had been paired off and shared screen space with him. Her rise thereafter owed to her own political acumen, which was perhaps greater than Ramachandran’s. Indian goddesses also have powers of their own, but their primary importance is as consorts.

Summary Indian cinema is dominated by male stars, and female stars get the biggest roles in films where the woman’s place in patriarchal society is problematized. Unlike the male Hollywood star with whom there is audience identification in the sense that their action in roles represent what people might do if they had the strength, the male Indian star is more important for his presence – since film narrative is in the passive voice. Hollywood stars tend to find outlets in genre cinema, which is a way to preserve historical memory (the roles of the western and the musical have been discussed earlier) but the non-contextual nature of Indian film narrative makes historical memory irrelevant. Still, stars need to address the historical concerns of the moment, and since these moments pass, they need to reinvent themselves as Hollywood stars need not. It would appear that the film hero in Indian popular cinema has the characteristics of an ‘avatar’, someone who manifests the age, 126

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whose being embodies the times. But if this is the case how is it to be reconciled with the non-contextual nature of popular film? A clue is perhaps to be found in two avatars of Vishnu, Rama and Krishna, being unlike each other because of the different epochs into which they are born. Krishna’s wisdom does not relegate Rama’s qualities to irrelevance, which might have been the case with ‘contextual virtues’.

Notes 1 The uncertainties faced by the young nation were transformed into open-endedness within the narrative not in evidence earlier. ‘The visceral quality of the experience of nationhood, quite apart from the abstract notion of it, is signalled in the films by changes in the narrative structure. The conventional “happy ending” of the typical Bombay film, for instance, is replaced by an open-endedness that is unusual in that particular context of production’. Sumita S. Chakravarty, National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema 1947–1987, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 99. 2 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 137–138. 3 Female stars have never dominated any language cinema in India in the same way. This may be attributed to the action in each film narrative revolving largely around the male protagonist and the female lead dominating only in exceptional cases, as in films like the Hindi Andaz (Style, Mehboob Khan, 1949), which had Nargis in the most important role, or the Kannada film Belli Moda (Puttanna Kanagal, 1967), which had Kalpana. For a star to dominate a cinema he/she needs to be constantly fed key roles over a significant period, and this has not happened with female stars. 4 They also serve their respective diasporas as, for instance, Tamil cinema, which is consumed by Tamils in Malaysia. 5 M. Madhava Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 76–77. 6 M. Madhava Prasad, ‘Cine-Politics: On the Political Significance of Cinema in South India,’ Journal of the Moving Image, No. 1, 1999, p. 40.

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19 PLACE AND TIME

Location and moment are indispensable while defining an event, and mimesis treats each as unique in narrative construction since individual experience is calibrated according to place and time. Even fantasies which proceed by creating an alternate world (i.e., the ‘marvellous’) focus on demarcated spaces and defined moments; the Star Wars series and The Lord of the Rings trilogy are both examples. In our understanding of films as well, place and time are key issues. San Francisco of a certain period is a key participant in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The situational ethics associated with mimesis specify time and place and, as per an example already offered, marked antiGerman sentiment in a contemporary World War II film (e.g., Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, 1998) would be acceptable while a World War I film (e.g., Spielberg’s War Horse, 2011) is morally bound to treat the Germans and the Allies as equally human. The mimetic urge makes it necessary for cinema to preserve the verisimilitude of space through various devices within any scene. For example, shot/ reverse-shot editing helps make narration covert by creating the sense that no important scenographic space remains unaccounted for. The effects of the cut and the close-up then become exclusively dramatic or psychological and only provide emphasis.1 Within the scene, eyeline-match cutting uses character glance as a clue to link shots. It can be argued that the verisimilitude of space within a scene is necessitated by the need for a consistently unified space to precisely locate each event contextually in the narrative. An event that happens ‘elsewhere’ instead of ‘here’ might carry a different import. Indian popular cinema’s pitch for universality and non-contextual truths and its immunity to the notion of subjectivity sees it overlooking the unities of time and space. Until it moved to identifiable city locales in the new millennium, the tendency was to locate the action in archetypal spaces corresponding to rural or semi-urban India, like the ‘Rampur’ of Sholay (1975), and use sets. It was necessary for each space to be without a history to make it suitable for relaying timeless truths. Sets were used for cities as well and Satya (1999) may have been one of the earliest to use Bombay’s actual ambience extensively. Even when actual places are named, the films do not 128

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remain faithful to their particularities; a film set in ‘Ooty’ in Tamil Nadu, for instance, could be shot in Switzerland since the actual Ooty is not as pristine as the script might require it to be. Relaying a pre-existent message implies finding a location that corresponds as much to an archetype as possible. Just as a person in a white coat bending over someone being administered drips would signify ‘hospital’, a ‘city’ might be summoned by a gaudy dance in an enclosed space (Teesri Manzil, 1966) or a slum as in Barsaat (1949), film sets in both cases are used to denote each place through its ‘qualities’.2 The important thing here is that a space is represented as an emblem, other such emblems being ‘courtroom’, ‘police station’ and ‘rich man’s house’ (with a winding staircase so that one recognizes it as one). Even art cinema uses spaces as emblems – like the poor man’s hovel, its roof leaking in the monsoons. A ‘street’ in Devdas is not something that links different spaces but the final home of a destitute. The unfortunate wife in Awaara is evicted by her husband into the ‘street’.3 A word of caution must be inserted here since a site could change meaning over time, or it may connote different things in different films, although it would still be understood in terms of its qualities in each film rather than as part of continuous space. The meaning of the street itself has changed over time since dances routinely take place there in today’s films. Ranjani Mazumdar describes what it has become in Bombay cinema: ‘a site of community and crime, dance and violence, madness and freedom, death and renewal. The “street”, which could be the “footpath” in Bombay cinema, is part village community, part cosmopolitan city street – a symbolic organizer of a set of contradictory impulses that generates intense performances’.4 But the visceral use of locales in more recent films like those of Anurag Kashyap (Gangs of Wasseypur, 2012) requires examination. My own understanding is that around the time of Slumdog Millionaire (2009) there was recognition of many of the county’s locales offering sights no other country had to offer – because of the grime and the teeming populace. Gangs of Wasseypur sets its story in Dhanbad (and follows a chronology linked to Indian history), but this attachment to a clearly denoted space appears only nominal. Ideally, where we should even be able to map everything out, we do not get a sense of how the people even within a single sequence are positioned in relation to each other, and casual conversations are interrupted by visual illustrations of even unimportant details. If someone says, ‘In those days we lived in a house in Dhanbad’, the film cuts to the house with the conversation continuing as a voiceover, which suggests that regardless of the film being shot on the grimiest of actual locales, the action is not particularly attentive to where it is happening because its meaning is universal; that is, real spaces are filmed as if they might be sets and defined by their archetypal qualities. If time is a key factor in denoting the context, it stands to reason that narratives must be attentive to each key moment and the chronology of 129

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events. Indian cinema has, by and large, not been particularly careful about the ordering of events – at least to the extent that one can reorder certain events within each film narrative without altering the purport of the total film significantly. The traditional understanding of time in India is a difficult one to relate to today,5 but the matter of pertinence from which one might proceed is that it is held to be ‘cyclical’. If time were cyclical in a literal sense, one would expect each event to be repeated in exactly the same way again and again, one time in each cycle, but there is little to suggest that this was believed. ‘Cyclical time’ seems more a rough metaphor for birth, decay and rebirth without insistence on the exact repetition of each moment across cycles. Since each cycle of cosmic time is so large, time might even have been linear in practice – just as part of the arc of an enormous circle would be nearly a straight line – if the notion of cyclical cosmic time were taken literally. But if ‘cycle’ is only a metaphor in relation to time, what is suggested is not that there is a single enormous cosmic cycle – an unverifiable proposition – but that all processes imitate a cycle just as day and night and the seasons do. To propose that everything goes through its own cycle is also to reject the universality of time and deny a single timeline composed of individual moments experienced simultaneously, if differently, by every subject. The denial of the uniqueness of each moment implies that there would also be an inclination to look for archetypes and models in situations, and this is what popular cinema has consistently done. Historical films (Mughale-Azam, 1960) as well as biopics (Dangal, 2016), which should sustain themselves by faithfulness to fact, try to correspond to models based on the exigencies of the socio-political moment. Gangs of Wasseypur, with its great attention to surface detail in the actual world, still follows the same model, involuntarily. One of the characters, Shahid Khan, who is in his thirties, is killed by an arms dealer in Varanasi at the insistence of his adversary. His grandson Faisal Khan (also in his thirties) meets the same arms dealer under identical circumstances about fifty years later in the same seedy hotel in the same city, the arms dealer simply greying at the temples as a concession to his age. Cities are being transformed even over days, and experience tells us that fifty years is too long a period to justify this narration. Chronology and duration are the cornerstones of classical Hollywood narration’s temporal scheme. As regards ‘duration’ (the interval between the first and last event in the narrative),6 the notion becomes important because of the need to compare parallel action. Moreover, action is notionally continuous; how long it lasts is of great importance since it is happening alongside time-marked socio-political developments implied by the narrative – like the course of a war. Since universal time and parallel action are denied by popular cinema, duration is also not in evidence. The international acceptance of Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan (2001) may owe largely to its having a definite duration – the three-month deadline given to the Indians to get their cricket team together and prepare for the game against 130

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the English team. Other consequences of the denial of universal time include the flashback not having any special significance as action recollected. Rearranging the past and present events in chronological order does not impact upon a Hindi film containing a flashback. Devdas’s childhood in the film versions of Saratchandra’s novel, for instance, can either be placed at the beginning of the film or as flashback. To describe the narrative construction aptly, one could say that episodes follow each other as tableaux with a model trajectory.7 If we look at how nebulously time and place are defined in each narrative we come to the same conclusion that we have often reached in the course of this book, which is that action is made deliberately non-contextual so that the meaning it is relaying can take the shape of a ‘universal’. This accounts for the dearth of sequels as well; The Godfather II (1974) develops from The Godfather (1972), but that is rendered possible by an altered context in the later film, in terms not only of what Michael Corleone has become but also the transformed circumstances. Sequels usually involve the same characters finding new contexts for their drives and actions. But in Indian cinema Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006) does not follow Munabhai MBBS (2003) in the sense of carrying its memory.

Summary Location and moment are two aspects of which popular cinema is not mindful. As regards location, rather than follow neo-Aristotelian prescriptions regarding unity of space, it designates space in terms of its qualities; some familiar spaces thus connoted are rich man’s house, hospital, police station and courtroom. The rich man’s house had a winding staircase till two or three decades ago. In Andaz (1948), the male and female protagonists are both phenomenally wealthy and live in Bombay in houses with staircases. The way their respective houses are differentiated is that while the woman (this is emphasized) is an orphan with no mother, the man has one living with him. Our first visit to the man’s house is therefore shown with his mother standing by the door; it is a ‘home with a mother’. The real locales in recent cinema like that of Anuraag Kashyap appear to belie this, but even while using actual, grimy locales, it is inattentive to their specificities. In art films, ‘poor man’s house’ is similarly denoted in terms of its qualities, as in Mrinal Sen’s Calcutta ’71 in which it is connoted by the leaking roof in the monsoons. As regards time, duration (the interval between the first and last event in the story) and chronology central to Hollywood are not usually specified in Indian films. The wide acceptance of Lagaan in the West may have been partly due to it specifying duration of three months – the time given to the two teams to prepare for their game. Chronology is imprinted in one’s mind when there is linear causality operating, but its absence (i.e., the episodic plot 131

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construction) makes it difficult to recollect events in chronological order; for example, the parallel stories in Sholay make the chronology uncertain. This temporal scheme and the non-unified space can be traced to cinema eschewing mimesis to expound on universal or non-contextual truths, that is, those not restricted by time and place, since there are the elements that make it contextual.

Notes 1 David Bordwell, ‘The Classical Hollywood Style,’ in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson (eds.), The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, pp. 59–62. 2 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 30. 3 I recall a cut in this film after her eviction: the husband/judge looking out from a balcony of his mansion and his wife departing on the street. The implication is the abrupt hierarchical difference that has emerged, as connoted by the two spaces. 4 Ranjani Mazumdar, Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, p. xx. 5 This universe is said to exist for a lifetime of Brahma, the creator. His one day is 1,000 maha-yugas (great ages). Each maha-yuga consists of four yugas (ages), each progressively shorter and more degraded. They may correspond to separate golden, silver, copper and iron ages. According to tradition, we have had just over 5,000 years of Kali Yuga, and 427,000 years remain. At the end, the final incarnation of Vishnu, Kalki, is scheduled to appear as destroyer, heralding the dawn of yet another golden age. Satya Yuga – 1,728,000 years, Dvarapa Yuga – 1,296,000 years, Treta Yuga – 864, 000 years, Kali Yuga – 432,000 years; Total cycle (maha-yuga) – 4,320,000 years. 6 A strategy employed to denote the passage of time between two scenes is to use appointments and deadlines as a way of linking scenes. The moment of the next appointment or the time of a deadline being specified in a scene informs about the passage of time. David Bordwell, ‘The Classical Hollywood Style,’ in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson (eds.), The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, pp. 43–45. 7 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 30–31.

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20 ETHICS AND MORALITY

Ethics and morality are the issues most often implicated in narrative cinema, engineering the climax and causing the resolution to be effected. Although this might not seem apparent, different cinemas of the world emphasize different aspects of life as areas where morality should reign, and the emphasis usually depends on historical causes – how local culture has developed and why certain values gain ascendance. As already elaborated upon earlier the nuclear family and the motivated individual are cornerstones of mythmaking in American cinema, while citizenship is a key issue in France, making the relationships between citizens a cherished one. If one examines the noir genre – in which both Hollywood and French cinema have been productive – one sees how these central concerns play out respectively and quite differently. Regular people being driven against their better judgement into ignoble and even criminal acts and then made to face retribution is a recurring theme in noir. In the Hollywood film The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) an employee at a diner connives with the wife of his employer to murder her husband, a self-made entrepreneur, for his business. One can see in their conduct both an assault on the family and on the spirit of enterprise, and it evidently merits retribution. Greed is common motive in both American and French noir, but in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos (1963), betrayal of a friend is the ignoble act that invites retribution. Loyalty to a friend is the cherished value upheld in French noir films by Jacques Becker (Touchez Pas au Grisbi, 1954) as well as Melville, both well-known for the genre, attributable, perhaps, to the notion of the citizen already elaborated upon while dealing with comedy in France. It may be expected that religion is a key component in the kind of ethics dominating any culture. The US and Latin America are both the New World and developed along similar lines in that settlers began by decimating the local populace, but there are enormous cultural differences between them that may partly be traced to the influence of the Puritan ethic and Catholicism, respectively.1 India is a space that has seen numerous religions, but (as argued in the chapter on devotion and faith) Hinduism seems to hold sway 133

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in most of its popular cinemas; faith, a key notion in Islam, does not play a significant role even in the Islamicate genres.2 Since the ethical notion implicated in the narrative becomes manifested most visibly in the climax of any film, I will proceed to identify key moral concerns by examining films from various periods for their climaxes/resolutions. As demonstrated elsewhere3 the motif of the strong woman / weak man was a key one in films before 1942, as instantiated in Devdas (1935) and Sant Tukaram (1936). Devdas’s weakness in PC Barua’s film comes out of his inability to do the right thing by the woman he loves, and the woman’s strength in Sant Tukaram comes out of her shouldering the household burden that should have rightly been the man’s. Shantaram’s Admi (1939) and Mehboob Khan’s Aurat (1940) may be taken to follow Devdas and Sant Tukaram, respectively. The key aspect in these films is that the women are not deemed strong because they come into conflict with patriarchal society (as in Thelma and Louise, 1991) but because they follow – and even exceed – social dictate; their men do not fulfil their responsibilities. The sense of strength demonstrated in fulfilling rather than questioning one’s given responsibilities suggests that following dharma is a key requirement in being strong. The word dharma – which has often featured in the course of this book – can generally be taken to mean ‘righteousness’ but includes being in ‘harmony with the cosmic law’. Its precise meaning is difficult to clarify, but if one discounts sanathana-dharma or ‘harmony pervading the entire universe’, which is difficult to understand today, one is left with the relativistic ethics (varnashramadharma) based on station and personal moral conduct or svadharma4 closest to ‘conscience’. The term ‘station’ is being used for ‘varnashrama’ rather than ‘caste’ since constituents of a household would have different dharmas. Dharma has no legal basis in modern India, which makes it difficult to be certain about its truth, but this classification suggests that it is primarily a means of keeping social structure intact, the constituents performing their given tasks, overseen by svadharma. Regardless of what dharma may have actually meant, cinema understands it in a certain way and that concerns us, primarily. In the years following independence Indian cinema contrived to implicate the nation and the state in morality by making the court and the police moral agents, but the underlying moral notion remains dharma or contextual ethics. Nehruvian modernity became a key issue after 1947, and in Andaz (1949) an orphan girl brought up by her widowed millionaire father to be ‘modern’ conducts herself improperly with a man and gives him cause to wrongly believe she loves him. In Raj Kapoor’s Awaara (1951) a judge casts out his innocent wife and unborn child, those he should protect, on the false suspicion that the child is someone else’s. In both these key films we find householder dharma violated and a crisis resulting. Householder ethics are not always overriding, and in Mother India (1956) we see the mother killing her son for a social transgression – dishonouring a woman when he kidnaps a girl from the village.5 The contradictions in what is defined as ‘righteous’ 134

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finds correspondence in the intricacies of the epics, where seemingly unbecoming conduct from role models (Rama killing Vali in the Ramayana or Arjuna killing Karna in the Mahabharata) is justified morally. If anything, dharma is a complex notion and it needs a god (Krishna) to elucidate upon it in the Mahabharata. The state or nation is made a moral agent in films of the 1950s although dharma is the moral code when the courtroom or police become aligned with righteousness – and not by the law overriding dharma. The judge who casts his pregnant wife out (an ‘adharmic’ act) is made to face the court in the climax when his son, who has turned a criminal, holds him squarely responsible. Accusing a servant of the state in the position of a judge of ‘adharma’ and making him face trial can even be considered a radical political subversion of the period, which happens again at other times. Popular cinema shows itself at other times also taking up similar positions against the state – or enlisting the audience against it – and a key provocation was Mrs Gandhi’s authoritarian rule during the Emergency. In Deewar (1975), the screenplay writers Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar came up with an antihero known as the ‘Angry Young Man’. In this film a young man grows up in poverty with the intense desire of undoing the wrong done to his father/ family. He becomes a smuggler and acquires immense wealth but comes into conflict with his own younger brother, a police officer, loved more by their mother. The observation here is that Vijay (Amitabh Bachhan) breaks the law but commits no ‘adharma’ since he is only getting back the position of respect of which his father was dispossessed. He is, for instance, never shown to engage in an explicitly immoral act. The sympathies of the audience are therefore with him even when his brother guns him down – with the blessings of their mother.6 The brother has himself been shown earlier to shoot at a boy who has stolen bread, and I take Deewar’s discourse (like that of Awaara) to be interrogating the state. This aligning of dharma against the state seems a useful way to question authority in a popular film text. As may have become evident ‘evil’ is not a concept at home in Indian cinema. The notion may be specific to Judeo-Christian religions where it was necessary to find places for pagan gods, and they were thus accommodated as ‘devils’, responsible for the evil in the world. This being the case, a question is how to explain Gabbar Singh of Sholay (1975). Ajit played a series of villains in films like Yaadon Ki Baraat (1973) but they were explained earlier as causal devices replacing natural disasters. Yaadon Ki Baraat is like Waqt (1965) remade, the villain Shakhaal’s acts replacing the earthquake in the earlier film. These villains do not contribute a moral dimension to the film and on scrutiny Sholay seems roughly comparable; Gabbar, like the villain played by Ajit, provides a linking objective to unite disparate threads. There are two major strands in Sholay – Thakur Baldev Singh seeking vengeance7 and the trajectory of Viru and Jai’s friendship. Both find dharmic resolutions and Gabbar is the obstacle they must overcome together; he might have equally been replaced 135

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by a natural one. Where Hollywood might use a rogue asteroid (Deep Impact, 1998) to bring stars together, Sholay uses Gabbar. Gabbar is not motivated by any kind of desire or ambition, and this substantiates the argument. The colourful villains in films up to economic liberalization in the early 1990s do not contribute an ethical dimension to any film but are merely obstacles in the path of dharma being fulfilled. In Damini (1993), one of the last films to be still made under the ‘socialist’ influence, the moral dilemma focuses on the rape of a maid in a rich household, the daughter-in-law coming out against the family abetting in its concealment. The righteousness exhibited by the daughter-in-law exposing the crime goes along with dharma as denoted in the Manusmriti, where strict punishment is advocated for rape.8 The villain in the film is the advocate for the family who tries every ruse to get his clients exonerated. The obstacles are necessitated by the sense of an underlying social conflict that needs to be manifested in each narrative, essentially the implication that state authority is not with the righteous but the powerful. In the 1950s the state is a moral agent, but by the 1970s it is already faltering. Dharma, however, still rules as an eternal value, simply less aligned with state action than was once the case. The first film to officially commemorate the liberal regime was HAHK (1994), and, the free market becoming an immediate moral guide in the life of the citizen, signification of social conflict became obsolete. A violent film of the 1990s, Satya (1998) is significant here, and despite the enormous amount of bloodshed – the policemen and gangsters killing each other – a scrutiny of the film reveals that the central ethics pertain to dosti, a compact between two men, familiar from Naya Daur (1957), Sangam (1964), Sholay and HAHK. The presence of the police ensures poetic justice; only the police escape retribution, but not because their conduct is dharmic. In the global age when self-fulfilment is a cherished notion (3 Idiots, 2009), there are films (Bunty Aur Babli, 2005) where crime is justified since legality is not an issue of moral significance. Thieves have been protagonists of popular cinema9 (Kismet, 1943) without being judged harshly. Success in business (quasi-criminal or otherwise) is equated with self-fulfilment, about which the Manusmriti has much to say.10 Success in business may not have been instantiated as ‘self-fulfilment’ there, but sacred texts are reinterpreted for each age and acquire new meanings. The Manusmriti is not ‘sacred’ in the sense that it lays down dogma. Since what it propagates is recognized as largely ludicrous today, it would not be difficult to reverse its prescriptions. It is best described as a point of reference for ethical conduct that can also be contradicted without inviting charges of ‘blasphemy’. For example, this is what it says about the status of women (IX: 3): ‘Her father protects [her] in childhood, her husband protects [her] in youth, and her sons protect [her] in old age; a woman is never fit for independence’. But one can easily imagine a popular film in which a woman’s independence is asserted (Queen, 2013). 136

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Dharma as laid down in the Manusmriti is social law but takes the form of personal injunctions, of which a vast majority are outmoded. Still, it may be presumed that some of them still correspond to public belief in India, which may be why popular cinema relies on them. Their recognition is simple since they pertain to interpersonal relationships where right conduct is defined – rather than political notions like ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom of choice’.11 As may be anticipated many newer films – especially in art cinema – go outside dharma to place an emphasis on these political values. The Tamil film Kaaka Muttai (2015), for instance, upholds the right of the consumer to purchase a product regardless of class distinctions. Most of art cinema creates moral conflicts based on these political notions when they decry caste prejudice or the exploitation of the working class. Gender issues are another area in which the traditional concept of dharma needs reconsideration. Still, dharma is a more influential notion than one might give it credit for, with even Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak often relying on it implicitly.

Summary While ethical notions in different cultures may overlap, the cherished notions of any society as regards ethics and morality are historically determined, and religion has a role to play. India is a space where several religions are practiced, but Hinduism seems to contribute most to ethical notions in cinema, dharma being the central issue, though the term is not clearly defined. Dharma is basically contextual ethics and is dependent on one’s station, that is, social position as in vocations or even within the household; namely, father, mother and children have different dharmas. The notion of dharma finds a place in the epics, and the Mahabharata may be an illustrative effort to define it comprehensively. The Manusmriti is a legal text – no longer valid – that goes about defining dharma, although a major portion of what it says would be unacceptable. Still, not being dogma, its missives are not incontrovertible. There is evidence that a fair portion of the moral issues raised in popular cinema owe indirectly to beliefs stemming from the Manusmriti, or at least use them as a reference point. Dharma finds itself expressed in cinema in interpersonal relationships and cannot have a bearing on modern notions like ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom of choice’. When films wish to invoke these notions in order to offer commentary on contemporary happenings, they need to step out of the domain of dharma.

Notes 1 Michel Corleone indulging in fratricide in The Godfather Part II (1974) is a mortal sin, especially because he is Catholic and recalls the Catechism of the Catholic Church – its moral theology. Cain killed his brother in the Old Testament and the ‘blood of Abel’ is constantly invoked.

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2 The Islamicate genres identified are the historical, the courtesan film and the social. The historical usually deals with Mughal rulers and the duties associated with rulership, like the administration of justice (Pukar, 1939). Courtesan films deal with courtesans longing for social acceptance (Pakeezah, 1971), while socials are romances in which the face behind the veil can be a key motif (Mere Mehboob, 1962). The Urdu language is a key element in all three genres. Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema, New Delhi: Tulika, 2009. 3 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 84–96. 4 Richard Lannoy, The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society, London: Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 217. 5 There is a likelihood that many of the moral rules by which popular cinema constructs its dilemmas owe actually to the Manusmriti. In Mother India Radha acts on behalf of the community – to protect its ‘daughters’ –by killing her son. The Manusmriti pronouncing on the woman’s honor (3.56) holds that the society that provides respect and dignity to women flourishes and sees prosperity while one that does not honour women has to face miseries and failures regardless of the noble deeds they perform otherwise. www.sacred-texts.com/hin/manu/ manu03.htm Accessed 19th March, 2019. 6 This has been interpreted as the nation punishing its errant sons. Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, The Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 394. But that does not imply that the public are not with the ‘errant son’. 7 The Thakur is prevented from doing it and Gabbar faces punishment. Punishment is upheld in the Manusmriti (7.19):  ‘If [punishment] is properly inflicted after [due] consideration, it makes all people happy; but inflicted without consideration, it destroys everything’. 8 Abducting is the term used. “For stealing men of noble family and especially women and the most precious gems, (the offender) deserves corporal (or capital) punishment.” Manusmriti, 8.323. 9 The loveable thieves from Hollywood films (The Italian Job, 2003) either rob public money – when insurance is offered as moral justification – or rob people who are themselves crooks. In Bunty Aur Babli, the duo cheats individuals of all sorts without moral qualms overcoming them. A ploy is to treat the victims as comical or clownish. 10 www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/manusmriti-with-the-commentary-ofmedhatithi/d/doc202272.html Accessed 27th April, 2020. Verse 12.93 of Manusmriti, translation by Ganganath Jha. 11 There could be an overlap between interpersonal morality in Western cinema and dharma. Betrayal of friendship in French noir could be a sin under dharma as well. Without an overlap between cultures a film from one culture would not be understood by another.

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21 GENDER

The relative treatment of men and women in popular cinema has been commented upon while dealing with romance as well as hierarchy, but it needs a separate chapter nonetheless. ‘Gender’ is a term used politically today and this owes much to feminism and feminist theory. The term refers to either of the two sexes but with the emphasis on the social construction of sexual identity rather than that given biologically. Popular cinema in India, as already elaborated upon, draws from a largely antiquated sense of the world, which would imply a large gap between its portrayal of women and gender issues and what might be ‘politically correct’. Pre-independence cinema prior to 1943 (generally called ‘reformist’ cinema) was preoccupied with women’s emancipation,1 drawing from the reform movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the notion of the weak man on account of a crisis of masculinity2 under colonialism, of which Devdas is an illustration. An important film of the 1930s, V Shantaram’s Duniya Na Mane (1937), is worth examining here to understand the woman’s position in a period upheld as a golden age for gender representations. Before going on to examine early cinema there is an issue that has to be addressed: regardless of laudable gender representations in the reformist era, the conditions for women in the film industry were hardly worthy of praise. Cinema borrowed heavily from theatre, and on the 19th-century theatre stage, female roles were played by young men. It was only with the rise of reformist movements, which promoted the theatre as a means to ‘reform’ prostitutes through ‘lawful employment’, that we see theatre actresses gaining a measure of social acceptance. When Phalke made his first Raja Harishchandra with non-professional actors, he cast men in the female roles, in spite of his initial intentions to the contrary, because no woman came forward. But even in the 1930s working as a ‘film artiste’ carried, for women, definite sexual connotations, as if the accessibility of the cinema to the masses rubbed off on the women who worked in it. A strategy that Indian film-makers used to circumvent and simultaneously capitalize on the taboo was to cast women perceived as ‘foreign’. Many of the film stars of the 1920s and 1930s, like Sulochana, were what used be referred to at 139

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the time as ‘Anglo-Indians’. Thought to be outside caste and other types of hierarchical categories, their perceived foreignness enabled these actresses to act out roles that broke morally sanctioned norms of ‘decency’ while remaining acceptable.3 Whatever was portrayed in reformist Indian cinema was therefore a token of how things ‘should be’ rather than the way they were, and they were guided in this by the reform movements initiated in the 19th century. As regards the portrayals in cinema, Shantaram’s Duniya Na Mane is indicative of what reform meant. In Duniya Na Mane a young woman, an orphan, is tricked into marrying an elderly widower (a progressive lawyer) by her aunt and uncle, and she goes with him to live in his house. Declaring that she is prepared to bear suffering but will not tolerate injustice, she refuses to have conjugal relations with her husband, though she is willing to bear her household responsibilities and manage the servants. She has two stepchildren, a facetious young man and a serious young woman, who is also an activist involved in women’s issues and who delivers the gender-related message of the narrative in the course of its unfolding. While she establishes an immediate bond with her stepdaughter, she teaches her stepson a lesson when he misbehaves, making him show respect to his father. The protagonist Nirmala (Shanta Apte) is not presented to us as a woman with desires/ needs of her own but as the ideal woman demanding justice because she has been tricked into matrimony. At the conclusion, the husband, recognizing her goodness and the injustice done to her, kills himself so she can remarry happily. The exemplary heroine of Shantaram’s film bears comparison with the familiar characters of popular cinema in that she is not an individual but rather represents an ethical ideal suitable for the times4 and bears a message. But what is particularly interesting is that after 1943 the rebellious feminine ideal represented by Nirmala disappears from cinema. As late as 1994, we have HAHK portraying a situation in which young people are willing to follow family dictate in who they marry5 (though circumstances arrange for the final ‘triumph of love’). One might have expected that when certain freedoms are earned for portrayals, they will accumulate, but this did not happen. As a contrast, Hollywood holds on steadfastly to its ethics; the valorization of the nuclear family with fidelity in marriage is a moral convention that never weakens. An issue that should engage us here is why a culture that propagates ‘eternal values’ should be fickle in its ethical portrayals while one that believes in situational ethics (Hollywood) should be steadfast. The argument offered is that there is little sanctity about ‘eternal values’ chiefly because dharma is an elusive concept and dependent on the viewpoint taken by the narrative.6 The Brahminical Manusmriti is itself highly contradictory on what should be law. But Nirmala’s scrupulousness in conforming to the wifely ideal – even while evading conjugality – is a strategy to uphold certain values (made 140

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pertinent by reformism) as eternal. As the social context varies popular cinema relays amended messages, but they all purport to be of eternal value since they have their basis in texts/beliefs, apparently made contradictory by contextual ethics. The way women are portrayed in popular cinema is hence not constant (even from the same director) but dependent on the contextual ethics invoked, on who is the focus of the narrative.7 The way one determines who is the focus of the narrative is to examine the character about whom the most information is given, usually pertaining to that person’s family past. By this token Andaz, Dhool Ka Phool (1959), Gumrah (1963), Aradhana (1969) and Damini (1993) are women-centric films, and they show women struggling against ‘patriarchy’, the notion defined as a world dominated by male values. To demonstrate how portraying a woman’s ‘struggle’ is not equivalent to interrogating patriarchy, one should go back to Duniya Na Mane in which the woman must be an ideal wife, not completing her rebellion but being liberated by her husband’s suicide. These women-centric films are praised for portraying feminine struggle, but the women triumph because of male support. This finds correspondence in the praise of women in the Manusmriti being essentially male praise from traditional/patriarchal society. If the camera eye is omniscient (as reiterated several times), its gaze is still masculine. Amartya Sen cites ancient texts for evidence of gender equality – like the woman scholar Gargi interrogating the philosopher Yajnavalkya in the Briharadaranyaka Upanishad and Draupadi’s derisive utterances to Yudhishthira when he is reluctant to engage in battle –8 but it is significant that their arguments do not win the day. It is an accepted strategy for discursive monologue to be structured formally as dialogue so that discourse becomes persuasive. The stronger overcoming the arguments of the weaker could also be a way in which hierarchy is affirmed, by creating the sense that the lower placed have been duly persuaded through reason rather than through brute power. In films that are male-centric the woman’s position is often decorative; some classics like those of Raj Kapoor (Awaara, Sangam)9 are seemingly even sexist in their gender discourse. The stronger the male presence the weaker the woman’s, apparently. A popular film is dominated by the primary message it is relaying, and if that is male-centric, then the film is patriarchal by default. In romances where the male is the focus, the woman’s presence is primarily fulfilling the closure imperative. A vast majority of films with leading male stars like Amitabh Bachhan, Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan have only a nominal place for the heroine. Indian society may be patriarchal, but that is equally true of several other societies, including Japan. That being the case, a question is how Kenji Mizoguchi’s films10 about geisha women avoid patriarchal discourse. My argument here depends on Mizoguchi’s films being mimetic, where the gaze is gender-neutral; in Indian popular films there is directed discourse that 141

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cannot avoid being patriarchal since the text(s) from where the messages are drawn are also products of patriarchy. Indian films that pursue mimesis – like the best films of Satyajit Ray and Ghatak – maintain a gender-neutral gaze and are therefore not culpable for patriarchal discourse. But when Ray starts dealing with ‘ideal women’ and role models as in Nayak (1966) and Seemabaddha (1971),11 we detect a male perspective since, as I argued earlier, ‘ideal women’ are patriarchal constructions. In the more polemical kind of art cinema the messages are taken not from patriarchal tradition but social texts made immune to patriarchy. Mrinal Sen’s Ekdin Pratidin (1979) deals with a working woman who does not return from work one evening and the scandal it causes in the building in which her family resides. As in Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara she is the breadwinner and everyone in the family stands to lose without her. Sen includes segments in which their neighbours gossip about her absence, evidence of curiosity aroused, and we are made to feel that an explanation might be in order, although perhaps this need for an explanation cannot be associated easily with the ‘patriarchal mindset’ – an absent male might have elicited the same response. The new urban cinema (e.g., The Lunchbox, Pink) can be a different phenomenon, only sometimes politically comparable to the art film. The Lunchbox is about a young mother who gets into an epistolary relationship with a stranger because of the accidental exchange of lunchboxes by the ‘dabbawalah’. She is married to an uncaring husband, and that might have justified her newly found excitement at a ‘relationship’ with another man – if it were talking about personal fulfilment. As it happens, the film brings in the suggestion that her husband is unfaithful. This need for justifying an epistolary relation with a man outside marriage could be termed ‘patriarchal’.12 Pink is a film that voices the feeling that a woman’s ‘no’ to sex means ‘no’, which draws upon the notion of individual choice, clearly not the product of patriarchy. To conclude, it seems impossible for cinema in India to relay traditional messages and still not be a product of patriarchy since patriarchy is deeply implicated in tradition. This is true of both male-centric and woman-centric films, although the latter try to acknowledge and praise women – as traditional texts like the epics and the Manusmriti have done. Films mimetic in their approach or engaging in radical polemics are different in that their gaze is either gender-neutral or their polemics are informed by democratic or liberal principles with no basis in tradition. LGBTQ+ issues have only recently been acknowledged and gained importance; this would make it impossible for films to deal with them through traditional discourse.

Summary ‘Gender’ is a term that refers to either of the two sexes but with the emphasis on the social construction of sexual identity rather than that given 142

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biologically. Gender has become a social issue, with the role of women gaining importance in public debates, a corollary to feminism. Indian popular cinema has been relaying familiar messages drawn from tradition – chiefly the epics and the Manusmriti – which is unquestionably patriarchal. This means that popular films have been intrinsically patriarchal in their outlook, although praise is also found for certain qualities in women, acknowledged by traditional texts. Where male-centric films can even be sexist, womencentric films show sympathy for women struggling against patriarchy within the limits permitted by traditional discourse. It is largely art cinema, which is either mimetic (in which case a gender-neutral gaze might be ensured) or engages in liberal/radical polemics and draws from social texts immune to patriarchal discourse, which is not culpable for furthering patriarchal ideology. LGBTQ+ issues, which also come under ‘gender’, can be treated only in the realm of art/radical cinema since tradition does not acknowledge them.

Notes 1 Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 40–41. 2 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 84–96. 3 Valentina Vitali, Hindi Action Cinema: Industries, Narratives, Bodies, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 56–57. 4 It evidently contradicts what scripture (Manusmriti) might prescribe, but this may be attributed to the reformist imperative. ‘Scripture’ is hardly in the form of dogma but vastly flexible and variously interpretable, judging from film narrative. 5 Interestingly, the heroine is also required to marry a widower with a child, her own brother-in-law. 6 What is right for the Brahmin will not be right for the Kshatriya, and what is right for the man (husband) will not be right for the woman (wife). 7 Or whose viewpoint corresponds to the story’s viewpoint. This is not to be confused with character subjectivity. 8 Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity, New Delhi: Penguin, 2005, pp. 7–10. 9 M. Madhava Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 84–86. 10 For instance, The Life of Oharu (1952). 11 Devapriya Sanyal, ‘Teen Kanya: The Mature Sharmila Persona in Satyajit Ray’s Films,’ Phalanx: A Quarterly Review for Continuing Debate, No. 14, May 2019, www.phalanx.in/pages/content.html Accessed 22nd May, 2019. 12 The husband would be adulterous, for which the Manusmriti imposes severe punishment.

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22 RADICALISM OR ACTIVISM

‘Radicalism’ is a term that can mean several things in film, including formal ingenuity, but since the notion of the avant-garde has already been dealt with, this chapter will restrict itself to political radicalism, or films that engage in radical polemics. I have so far not dealt with the documentary film, but that will become relevant here since radical political statements in the fiction film were in evidence only till the 1980s, but the activist documentary – not dependent on a paying audience – remains strong. Left-wing polemics in Indian film may have begun with KA Abbas’s Dharti Ke Lal (1946), an offshoot of the left-wing theatre movement led by the IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association). Ritwik Ghatak was also associated with the IPTA in the early part of his career,1 but while the films inspired by the movement bear evidence of radicalism, it is their humanist content – as in Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin (1953) or BV Karanth’s Chomana Dudi (1975) – that is most visible. They use peasants as protagonists and landowners as villains, but their primary concern is the plight of the victims. A sharper illustration of radical polemics in the Indian fiction film would be the agitprop films of Mrinal Sen, who drew inspiration from Sergei Eisenstein and Bertolt Brecht – rather than De Sica and Rosselini. His film Interview (1971) is most representative of his approach. In the film Ranjit Mallick (played by Ranjit Mallick) is a personable young man. A friend of the family, who works in a foreign firm, has assured him of a lucrative job. All Ranjit needs to do is to appear in an interview dressed in a Western-style suit. It seems easy, but a strike by laundry workers means he cannot reclaim his suit from the dry cleaner. His father’s old suit will not fit him; he borrows a suit but loses it in a scuffle involving a pickpocket. Ultimately he attends the interview dressed in the traditional Bengali dhoti and kurta, which will not do; he vents his ire on a suited mannequin in a tailor’s window that he strips naked. The film concludes as it begins – with a British era statue of a personage on horseback dismantled and carted away. The story is not related in such a linear fashion, and Sen repeatedly cuts to film posters and advertisements that promise a fantasy world, in contrast to other (documentary) cuts to teeming crowds and poor people making a 144

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living anyhow. The film also has a ‘Brechtian’ interlude in which the protagonist on a tram sees his own picture in a film magazine, and the girl reading it recognizes him as the actor ‘Ranjit Mallick’. The making of Interview by Sen is also invoked. Mrinal Sen cited Eisenstein’s October (1927) as inspiration for his own film, and David Bordwell has a significant observation about October. Bordwell classifies it as ‘modernist cinema’2 in which narrative structure and cinematic style are radically split. This kind of cinema, rather than being content with straightforward narration, places its emphasis on form. The ‘radicalism’ of October is clearly different from, say, Gilo Pontecorvo’s in The Battle of Algiers (1966). Where Pontecorvo’s film was primarily persuading and winning over a following by involving the audience in a humanist narrative, Eisenstein was inventing a film form suitable for a postrevolutionary society where people were already persuaded. October may have had its architectural counterpart in Tatlin’s Tower,3 a constructivist model for a radio station never built that strives for a new aesthetic appropriate for a post-revolutionary society. Mrinal Sen’s film is like October in that it does not strive to persuade, but it is also too casual to pass for formal experimentation. Avant-garde works are particular about the effects they seek, and Sen is deliberately slipshod – as if to avoid the appellation of ‘aesthete’. The result is that Sen’s film, although it does not come from a post-revolutionary society, only draws the kinds of audiences already on his side – large student crowds with leftist sympathies in 1971, but very few today. It is the sense that Mrinal Sen is targeting his own groupie following rather a general public that imparts doubtful political value to Interview. If anything, the film can only be understood as the claiming of a political identity – of the director and his followers. It does not attempt, for instance, to persuade those who are still unpersuaded. But there is perhaps a more important difference between Eisenstein and Sen: they both have a tendency to caricature, but the targets they choose have different implications. Eisenstein’s target is the pre-revolutionary bourgeoisie, a class no longer in existence after the revolution. Mrinal Sen’s subject is the colonial legacy, but his target is an existing elite class he taunts for its colonial ways. But there is an unwritten convention about political caricature in a democracy, which is that the target can be a former class or group (like colonial authority in The Battle of Algiers), contemporary groupings or state machinery acting in contravention of justice. However, a whole class in contemporary democratic society is usually spared that, although satire might poke fun at illustrative members of a class by placing them in fictional situations (e.g., Ousmane Sembene’s Xala,4 1975). The unspoken reason is (perhaps) that being legitimate constituents of democratic society, entire classes subjected to scorn would be culpable of undemocratic prejudice. As an example, Hollywood is liberal but its films, while they might lampoon Donald Trump, are unlikely to ridicule Trump’s conservative following. A 145

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question is, on what basis is a class held up for scorn since its sin is merely ‘being’? When investigated, it becomes apparent that what the class is culpable for is only ‘unawareness’ – that is, of egalitarian concerns – since members of the bourgeoise are not directly accused of any misdemeanour. Mrinal Sen’s radical films frequently show disdain towards a whole social category and not only representative characters as in satirical fiction since he creates no fictional circumstances justifying the vitriol. Calcutta ’71 (1971) includes an extended sub-narrative pertaining to the social behaviour of upper-class people in a luxury hotel, presented as ‘bourgeois conduct’. What Sen does while identifying himself with an ideology (Marxism) is to target classes of people regarded a priori as antagonistic to it. His radicalism is the assertion of an exclusive political viewpoint that identifies itself with some classes and against others, within the democratic system.5 Political radicalism is now not in evidence in the fiction film since the approach does not draw audiences, but it still thrives in the activist documentary, where the best-known film-maker, Anand Patwardhan, takes political positions on a variety of issues, usually aligned against the state. He has been working since the 1970s but the more recent Jung Aur Aman (War and Peace, 2002) shows us how his approach is comparable to Mrinal Sen’s, though he does not work in fiction. The starting point in Jung Aur Aman is India’s nuclear blasts of 1998 conducted in Pokhran, Rajasthan, when the BJP was in power under AB Vajpayee. There are several strands to the narrative, the key ones being (a)  the jingoistic nationalism touched off by the nuclear tests, the Hindu nationalists reacting to it as a great scientific advance and holding the neighbour Pakistan as the provocation; (b) the contrary mood across the border in Pakistan where the people are friendly and peace-loving; (c) the dominance of the upper castes in Hindu nationalism and the aversion of the Dalits to it; (d) the nuclear establishment’s untenable claims on the level of success achieved by Indian science; (e) the terrible ground reality in villages close to where the tests were conducted; (f) a brief history of the atomic weaponry as seen from the Japanese and the liberal American viewpoint; (g) the mysterious ailments and health hazards in the tribal areas adjoining the Uranium mines / enrichment plant in Jharkhand; and (h) the Gandhian non-violence that the nationalist chest-thumping is repudiating. Anand Patwardhan uses an interview-based method in which his intervention – apart from a voiceover usually introducing the personal element – relies heavily on an editing strategy of singling out villains and exposing them, the visual counterpoints made heavily ironic. For instance, he cuts from Dr Raja Ramanna, father of the bomb – elated about the tests and playing on his piano – to woeful villagers in the vicinity of Pokhran. Dr Ramanna was a lover of Western music but here he is intentionally placed to recall Adenoid Hynkel6 (from Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, 1940). Whatever Dr Ramanna says is not indefensible since he is not looking at the humanitarian side 146

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emphasized by Patwardhan, but he is made to seem shallow and unaware in the context within which he is placed – the film’s arguments against the bomb, of which Dr Ramanna cannot be aware since they only emerge through the editing strategy employed by the director. Patwardhan makes ‘activist documentaries’, but ‘activism’ is intended to influence state policy/action. There needs to be a demonstration of why something is wrong through evidence and argument to achieve a clearly defined activist objective. If the film had only exposed the condition of the tribal population in the vicinity of the Uranium plant it might have drawn attention to their need for resettlement, which could have been attended to. Shutting down the government-owned Uranium mine is evidently not a feasible option since scarce natural resources need to be exploited. But the subject chosen – nuclear armaments and war – is too totalizing for the film to have any effect upon official policy (whether defence, scientific, nuclear or tribal resettlement). The plight of the tribal populace is lost among a litany of evils, mostly irrevocable, and all that comes through is the director’s 360-degree awareness of the issues. Patwardhan’s anti-bomb viewpoint is not unassailable even from a liberal perspective, and nuclear weapons could indemnify sovereign nations against threats by superpowers, considering the brutal fate met by Saddam for not having weapons of mass destruction and the care with which Kim Jong-un is treated by the United States. But he takes the easier way out by making his primary villains betray abysmal ignorance on most issues concerning nuclear technology and spew preposterous untruths (usually in bad English). One concludes that Patwardhan is thoughtfully choosing the worst kind of advocacy for what he is against in order to further his own viewpoint, without acknowledging that there might be other reasons justifying the bomb. He is essentially demarcating himself as ‘aware’ and ‘knowledgeable’ in relation to those who are not, rather than argue out his case taking all relevant aspects into consideration. He begins with a predisposition, tantamount to showing ‘belief’ in a political viewpoint. The documentary strategy of singling out ‘villains’ and making them look ridiculous through their pronouncements is constantly used by activist filmmakers in India. An example would be India Untouched: Stories of a People Apart (K Stalin, 2007), where the director interviews numerous people including the head priest of a temple in Varanasi, whose blatant caste prejudices are revealed in the course of the interview. Films like these are shown to gatherings of people with liberal views, and their slant goes down well with audiences, who are likewise struck by the ignorance of the villains of egalitarian principles. These films are not usually constructed to argue out a case that might initiate ameliorative measures. India Untouched, like Patwardhan, takes on a huge issue (the entirety of the caste system), which means that, despite being ‘activist’, the film only demonstrates its own awareness of something. The jeering in Jung Aur Aman is not as apparent as Mrinal Sen’s, but its effect is still to deride something too vast to influence policy at any level. 147

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When dealing with the scientific pretensions of the nationalist elites – that is, comparing India to the US on account of the bomb – the film focuses deliberately on a Monsanto Seeds banner, and one wonders why, since biotechnology is irrelevant to the nuclear issue. An explanation is that it helps Patwardhan define his own political identity in terms of his responsiveness to issues, just as Mrinal Sen’s lampooning of the bourgeoisie defines him. I described Sen’s approach as ‘undemocratic’, and Patwardhan is also vulnerable to the charge since, rather than use evidence and argument, he belabours categories with scorn as though that itself were sufficient. In Jai Bhim Comrade (2011), about violence in 1997 in which Dalits were killed by police, he interviews an upper-class, English-speaking man out for a walk about the Dalit icon Dr BR Ambedkar, revealing that the man is ignorant of Ambedkar’s role in drawing up the Constitution of India, hostile to Dalits as a category and repelled by their presence. Anand Patwardhan is uppercaste and privileged (as he admits in Jung Aur Aman), and the interviewee is perhaps only being candid to a member of his own class, but Patwardhan singles him out for contempt through his characteristic editing. The strategy of scorn can be used successfully on any adversary and Patwardhan is marking himself out through it. Radical documentaries (an illustration would be Emile de Antonio’s film on Vietnam In the Year of the Pig, 1968) arrive at ‘positions’ through analysis, but derision as a way of marking out one’s own credentials is not used, since it evades argument as a way of persuasion, when only argument is a test of something’s validity. In the films discussed, the strategy of the interview in which questions are asked but ineptly answered privileges the interviewer without substantiating his/her viewpoint. If the man’s ignorance of Ambedkar singles him out as ‘unaware’, the converse is the sense conveyed of the director’s own greater awareness. This broad sentiment that the ‘bourgeoisie’ as a class in contemporary democratic society is contemptible for its unawareness is, to my mind, expressed only in Indian cinema.7 Mrinal Sen and Anand Patwardhan did not set the trend, and there are two precedents in films scripted by KA Abbas – Dharti Ke Lal and Shree 420 (1955). One does not find this in the films of Ritwik Ghatak or Bimal Roy (Do Bigha Zamin). The former films are scornful of the well-to-do as a category without identifying reasons. It should, however, be noted that these film-makers are all privileged; an underprivileged category angry with a privileged class8 would carry a different connotation. As already observed, ‘ignorance’ is something Patwardhan scorns Hindu nationalists for, and this leads to a possible explanation. Radical sentiments are being equated with knowledge since they are backed by refined argument – as Hindutva is not – although the films themselves do not rely on argument but on predisposition. One detects a recurring note in left-wing activism that its practitioners are ‘more aware’, and this is also conspicuous in the edifying tone of Arundhati Roy,9 though absent in the political writing 148

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of someone like Noam Chomsky, who simply provides information and argues. This pride in superior ‘knowledge’ may be felt justified in relation to some pre-modern aspects of Hindutva, but it has no equivalent in the West, since right-wing thought is not qualitatively inferior, though it has a different emphasis.10 There has been, at least since the 1970s, an unequivocal belief among the Indian left wing of its own intellectual authority, arguably based on its ‘possession’ of Marxist social theory since what it was opposed to was largely pre-modern belief. ‘Theory-based knowledge’ is prized because of its caste associations in India – the uppermost caste was custodian of ‘theory’. Left-wing activism may similarly believe itself the guardian of social theory, making it inherently superior – essentially the ‘priestly caste’ in the field defined by societal issues. It may be helpful at this point to make a connection between these tendencies in left-wing discourse and the sentiments promoted by the popular film. Traditional ‘wisdom’ as embodied in the messages relayed by popular film, it can be argued, is essentially ‘Brahminical’ since praise of physical work is rare in them. When it is portrayed, physical work is usually presented as ‘hardship’. Mother India, for instance, shows Radha working in her field, but that is equated with ‘misery’ since her husband loses his arms doing this work. In Upkaar a farmer’s plough is made sinister as an instrument of murder. If ‘wisdom’ does not relate to physical work it may be useful to compare it with ‘counsel’ – the element Walter Benjamin detects in the story when reflecting on Nikolai Leskov’s writings. ‘Counsel’ in traditional stories, Benjamin notes, includes practical advice11 such as that pertaining to agriculture. Left-wing discourse in Indian film, rather than celebrating physical work or seeing the experience derived from it as leading to ‘expertise’, has consistently seen the working class as given to ‘toil’. The argument offered here is that activist or radical film-making in India of the kind described adopts an attitude of greater awareness since it is political ‘ignorance’ that it largely decries. At the same time the films show little interest in the reform of rectification of something through reasoned inquiry into it. My own inference is that left-wing activism is a form of political Brahminism that takes a privileged position in the field on the basis of its ‘superior beliefs’. This could explain why its practitioners do not seek remedies as much as demarcate their own political principles, also addressing a chosen public that feels good about its own awareness of these principles.

Summary Indian cinema has had a history of left-wing concern but most of it has been humanistic. Mrinal Sen was perhaps the first to adopt a more radical stance under inspiration from artists like Bertolt Brecht and Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein (October, 1927) and Sen (Interview, 1971) bear comparison in that both deride social classes, but the difference is that Eisenstein mocked a 149

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pre-revolutionary class – no longer in existence after the revolution – while Sen mocks his own bourgeoisie, not fictional representatives but the class itself, an undemocratic practice since all constituent classes in a democracy have equal legitimacy. Selecting out a fictional representative of a class and using him/her as the butt of satire (Ousmane Sembene’s Xala) is a different matter, but in both Interview and Calcutta ’71, Sen satirizes what is presented as standard ‘bourgeois conduct’ – that is, the fictional circumstances required to make the representatives only examples are not created. What Mrinal Sen succeeds in doing is to define his own political identity and address groupies instead of a general public with the aim of persuading them. The radical fiction film lost ground after the 1980s, but the same attitudes persist in the activist documentary, the foremost practitioner of which is Anand Patwardhan. Examined in the chapter is his film Jung Aur Aman (2002) about the nuclear tests in Pokhran, Rajasthan, under AB Vajpayee’s government. The film is primarily taken up with the vulgar celebrations engaged in by the Hindutva right, which represents only the upper castes; the falsehoods of the nuclear establishment claiming complete safety; the false threat of a militarized Pakistan; the ground-level suffering caused by the nuclear programme; and the lessons to be learned from Hiroshima. Activism is generally intended as a way to question state policy or action with the aim of amending it, but the approach of the film is too totalizing. Whatever remedies can be found (like shifting of afflicted villagers from the vicinity of the Uranium mines) are lost among a litany of evils that include nuclear technology itself. Also brought in is a reference to Monsanto Seeds, suggesting that the director’s primary purpose is to define his own political identity comprehensively rather than suggest ameliorative measures for whatever can be remedied. In another film, Jai Bhim Comrade, about the plight of Dalits, Patwardhan interviews an upper-class man to demonstrate both his ignorance of and his indifference to the whole Dalit experience. Here again, the director is defining his own political identity, where he stands and what he is against. Scorn is used as a response towards a whole class since that is all the man is shown to be, the member of a class. Anand Patwardhan and Mrinal Sen are both ‘undemocratic’ in that they scorn legitimate classes within the polity in order to demarcate their own positions. Both rebuke the ‘bourgeoisie’ for their ignorance of social issues that they themselves hold dear, implying that they are ‘aware’ in a way their targets are not. Being privileged, their hostility to the upper classes is different from the hostility the marginalized might feel, since the assumption is based on the presumption of superior awareness. Arundhati Roy writing on social issues often displays the same features. There has been, at least since the 1970s, an unequivocal belief among the Indian left of its own intellectual authority, arguably based on its ‘possession’ of Marxist social theory. ‘Theory-based knowledge’ is prized because of its caste associations in India – the upper-most caste was custodian of 150

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‘theory’. Left-wing activism may similarly believe itself guardian of social theory, making it inherently superior, like the ‘priestly caste’ in the field defined by societal issues.

Notes 1 Debjani Halder, ‘The IPTA and the Political Trajectory of Ritwik Ghatak,’ Phalanx: A Quarterly Review for Continuing Debate, No. 13, April 2018, www. phalanx.in/pages/article_i0013_The_IPTA_and_the_Political_Trajectory_Ritwik Ghatak.html Accessed 23rd May, 2019. 2 David Bordwell, ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice,’ in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (5th Edition), New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 722–723. 3 A model was exhibited in 1920 by artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin; it was an avant-garde project meant for a post-revolutionary society as a ‘Monument to the Third International’. 4 About a member of Senegal’s post-colonial elite who suffers from temporary impotency on the occasion of his third marriage and goes about consulting an array of witch doctors. 5 Indian Marxists of the Soviet era often expressed deep distrust of ‘bourgeois democracy’, even while fully utilizing the freedom it afforded them. They displayed confidence in having been ‘naturally selected’ by history, their places in democracy a passing phase. 6 I have in mind here the sequence where the dictator Hynkel plays the piano perfunctorily to demonstrate his great love of culture. 7 Tomas Gutierrez Alea from post-revolutionary Cuba has dealt with the bourgeoisie both realistically and with sympathy (Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968) and as mordant satire (The Survivors, 1979), but in the latter case he creates fiction around a particular family and it is not general disdain exhibited towards the whole class. 8 As examples, Malcolm X’s antipathy towards white Americans or BR Ambedkar’s towards caste Hindus. 9 Here is her writing on the bomb, as though those she is talking to and trying to persuade need to be preached to: ‘If there is a nuclear war our foes will not be China or America or even each other. Our foe will be the earth herself. The very elements – the sky, the air, the land, the wind and water – will all turn against us. Their wrath will be terrible’. Arundhati Roy, ‘The End of Imagination,’ in The Algebra of Infinite Justice, New Delhi: Penguin (Viking), 2001, p. 5. 10 Left-wing thought being humanistic is more accessible, which is why it is popular with the intelligentsia in India. Right-wing thought is mainly economic and technical. The left-wing intelligentsia in India comes mainly from the humanities and liberal arts and not economics. The extreme right wing in the West (like the Ku Klux Klan) is not engaged with intellectually by the liberal/leftist at all, and it is only its doings that would matter as a law and order problem (Mississippi Burning, 1988). 11 ‘If peasants and seamen were past masters of storytelling, the artisan class was its university’. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Storyteller: Reflection on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,’ in Walter Benjamin (ed.), Illuminations, London: Jonathan Cape, 1970, pp. 85–87.

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23 MARGINALIZATION, OPPRESSION AND DISADVANTAGE

All societies have their categories representing the ‘oppressed’ or ‘marginalized’, and these are portrayed in their respective cinemas. ‘Women’ is one universal category elaborated upon in the chapter on gender. Other categories are usually dependent on hierarchical polarities: capitalist and worker, racial majority and minority, landowner and peasant, powerful and powerless, and so on. It is not always current conflicts represented in films and even historical films deal with them. The logic is that a past conflict – say, that between the American state and Native Americans in the 19th century – has much to tell us about today, since similar conflicts recur, perhaps in an altered form. The aforementioned conflict, for instance, became suddenly relevant during the Vietnam War, and the counterculture movement and revisionist westerns like Soldier Blue (1970) and Little Big Man (1970) appeared. War films (The Pianist, 2002) or films about colonialism (Burn, 1969) are other historical genres where oppression is portrayed. All portrayals of oppression are themselves ideologically loaded, and their scrutiny can tell us much about the biases in dominant culture, as for instance the observation that counterculture westerns adopt a white rather than a native viewpoint.1 The portrayal of social conflict with victims as protagonists is usually accompanied by a sense of the social life of the class, including their work and wherewithal. It would be especially applicable to films set in contemporary milieus dealing with the working class, as for instance Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar (1978) or Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989). This is also true of Bicycle Thieves (1948), where the Sunday search for the stolen bicycle is a key part of the film. The major strength of Hollywood, as Truffaut noted, was the attention films paid to how work was done.2 The catching of actual lives lived might be difficult if the films do not follow mimesis, leading us to ask how Indian film treats marginalization and disadvantage, notably art cinema. Some key social conflicts in Indian cinema are between the following groups: peasants and landowners (Do Bigha Zamin), capitalists and workers (Namak Haraam), upper-castes and Dalits or Adivasis 152

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(Fandry, Sadgati, Ankur, Aakrosh), landlords and tenants (Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho), state functionaries and helpless citizens (Tabarana Kathe, Halodhiya Choraye Baodan Khai), artisans and merchants (Kanchivaram), and rich people and their servants (Damini, Ankur, Kharij). I noted how one does not get a sense of farmers working in Mother India, and the same could be said of all of these films. Even Satyajit Ray’s Sadgati (1984) – about a Dalit dying from overwork doing odd jobs for a priest – is not different. Dalit portrayals are perhaps most representative of how oppression is treated since the Dalits are held to be the most disadvantaged. The tendency is to show the Dalit victims as belonging to a monolithic category transacting only with those outside, never among themselves. Where Hollywood films are populated by African-American generals, judges, scientists and policemen, one has yet to see a high-ranking Dalit in Indian cinema although there are plenty in real life. A familiar Dalit portrayal in Indian cinema features in the forbidden inter-caste romance. There are a range of films that work by this formula that, when analyzed, yields the sense that ‘Dalithood’ gains significance only in relation to caste society. One does not, for instance, find romances between two Dalits from different strata that might also have been opposed. To all appearances the portrayal of Dalits has been ‘theory down’, victimhood made the essence of their lives. The treatment of Dalit experience as essentialized in victimhood is evidently a view from above since a Dalit would be aware of more aspects of his/her experience, whereas someone from above would only take note of what his or her own class has inflicted upon them. Most films about Dalits have come from upper-caste film-makers, and one could cite films where Dalit/Adivasi portrayals are patently unconvincing: Devika Rani in Achhut Kanya, Shabana Azmi in Ankur, Smita Patil in Aakrosh, Nutan in Sujata; still, there is more to it than unconvincing character portrayals, which are not restricted to Dalits. Balraj Sahni as a peasant (Do Bigha Zamin) or Rajesh Khanna as a factory worker (Namak Haraam) are equally unconvincing. Nagraj Manjule’s Fandry (2013) may offer a more convincing portrayal of Dalit existence than Ray’s Sadgati since Manjule is himself a Dalit and he casts Dalits in the roles, but there is another aspect that merits specific comment. This has to do with the portrayal of the family’s vocation, which is pig catching or breeding, and the members are shown unable to go about it effectively. For instance, when their task is the securing of a pig, they throw stones at it, which only drives the animal out of reach. The argument offered is that when people are tied to a vocation, they would develop expertise in it, and the film is portraying the Dalits thus because of its disdain for the vocation. My proposition is that the gaze in Fandry is ‘Brahminical’ – since it would be a Brahminical view that Dalit vocations are ignoble. It seems therefore that Brahminical ideology is all-pervasive – ‘ideology’ used here in Engels’s sense of ‘false-consciousness’, that is, the motives in the representation once historically engendered now seem autonomous. 153

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Dalit communities (like all other communities) would have conflicts of their own and also be rich in interpersonal relationships within, but this is not given expression to in films. A comparison here would be the AfricanAmerican experience in Hollywood films, where people from within the community are shown to transact with each other. Where African-Americans are shown to wield some power (e.g., as gangsters in action films), Dalits are consistently shown as powerless. One might suppose that a Dalit activist performing in an urban centre, as in Court (2014), would find political patronage, which the film does not allow; its apparently Brahminical viewpoint is that unrelieved victimhood is the essential condition of the Dalit. It is difficult to recollect an Indian film in which diversity within Dalit communities is acknowledged, so monolithic are they seen to be because of the gaze being consistently from above. Such essentialization – although it may be the product of a ‘liberal’ outlook – is consistent with Brahminism itself, which proceeded by essentializing the jatis as varna categories and placing them within a hierarchy. The varna system was the result of classifying and hierarchizing various vocations, but it can be argued that any kind of vocation would be better placed than that of ‘victim’, since members of this category are not even allowed dignity in their work, the skills they have developed doing whatever they have been doing for eons. As already elaborated upon, many attributes of Indian cinema can be laid at the doorstep of it idealizing rather than pursuing mimesis. This evidently influences its portrayal of all kinds of oppression and not only that of Dalits. But an observation here is that where mimesis has the propensity to be neutral in its gaze and hence allows for radical subversions, ‘ideals’ must necessarily have authors, and what purpose the ideal fulfils leads one to the ideology that invented it. As an example, I argued earlier that ‘ideal womanhood’3 as a notion is a product of patriarchy. Similarly, the treatment of those engaged in physical work as victims is the ideological viewpoint of a class distant from physical work, a ‘Brahminical’ category, even if it is not Brahmin by blood. Indian cinema’s gaze, including that of art cinema, is usually also Brahminical.

Summary The portrayal of the oppressed/disadvantaged is based on the identification of conflict between hierarchical polarities: peasants and landowners, capitalists and workers, upper-castes and Dalits or Adivasis, landlords and tenants, state functionaries and helpless citizens, artisans and merchants, rich people and their servants. It was earlier noted that when working people – like peasants – are portrayed, their work is presented as ‘hardship’. Among the kinds of oppression in India, that of the Dalits in caste society is acknowledged as the most severe, and the portrayal of Dalits in cinema may therefore merit most attention. 154

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The portrayal of Dalits has generally been unconvincing, and a favourite ploy to portray their marginalization is to have a romance between a caste Hindu and a Dalit that is prevented or frowned upon. The reason such portrayals are unconvincing is usually that the actors cast in the respective roles are from the upper-castes. More importantly, however, the essence of Dalit life is generally portrayed as their victimization in caste society, and films do not look at internal relationships among castes, for instance a romance within the same caste. It is as though Dalit existence has meaning only in relation to caste society, that victimization is the essence of ‘Dalithood’. Even a film made by a Dalit, Fandry, shows implicit disdain towards the vocations Dalits practice; these aspects give one reason to identify the views as views from ‘above’. Indian cinema has been deeply impacted by its disinclination to pursue mimesis and its tendency to seek ideals. This tendency evidently influences its portrayal of all sorts of oppression, not only of Dalits. Given that physical work of all kinds is regarded as hardship – in portrayals of oppression – rather than labour, one is tempted to associate the ideology of the portrayals with the caste most distant from physical work – the Brahmin caste. If the ideology of Indian cinema is predominantly patriarchal, there is evidence that it is also largely Brahminical.

Notes 1 See for instance Roger Ebert’s review of Soldier Blue, 1st January, 1970. www. rogerebert.com/reviews/soldier-blue-1970 Accessed 2nd June, 2019. 2 James Monaco, American Film Now: The People, the Power, the Money, the Movies, New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 43. A classic example would be Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) and the attention it pays to the intricacies of shark hunting. 3 When a film posits a character as ‘feminine’, it is not depicting a character who is already feminine but producing the woman as ‘feminine’ by endowing her with the traits that are ideologically desirable for an ideal femininity in a specific historically created society. Mas’ud Zavarzade, Seeing Films Politically, Albany: Suny Press, 1991, p. 93.

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24 PATRIOTISM

There has been an earlier chapter on national cinema that invokes nationalist films like Upkaar, but patriotism is a different phenomenon, although with intersects. For our purpose we may define ‘patriotism’ as directed outside the nation, singling out a national enemy like Pakistan.1 By this definition Mother India (1956) is nationalistic, Upkaar (1967) is mainly nationalistic though also with patriotic overtones, while Border (1997) seems more strongly patriotic. With the rise anti-Pakistani sentiment, it is patriotism that has gained rather than nationalism, unity against and animosity towards an external adversary instead of common nationhood bringing Indians together. Patriotism, singling out an external enemy, usually associated with right-wing extremism and fascism, is a discredited sentiment among artists, which is why art cinema does not display it; mainstream cinema is therefore where patriotism is most comfortable. Looking at Upkaar, perhaps the first ‘patriotic’ Hindi film, its patriotism owes to the 1965 war in which India conducted itself creditably. On the one hand, it allegorizes the relationship between India and Pakistan as that between two brothers, the younger demanding division of the ancestral land. Secondly, it brings in the war with Pakistan, India also fighting a treacherous internal enemy – hoarding and profiteering. It names classes of heroes (farmers, soldiers, doctors) and villains (Pakistan, black-marketing) aligned with or against the nation where previous films had only conceived of individual heroes and villains. Haqeeqat (1964) is not patriotic since it deals with the Sino-Indian War and national defeat. The predominant emotion in Haqeeqat is regret – the sense of being betrayed by a hypocritical friend, who is actually an impenetrable adversary.2 Patriotic cinema thrives when the emotion is prolonged, and the War of 1971 ended too quickly for patriotic cinema to emerge from it; Prem Pujari (1970) was half-hearted. JP Dutta’s Border arrived when there was little anti-Pakistani sentiment about, explainable more as a result of economic liberalization – conflict within the nation not pertinent and hence directed outwards3 – against colonial Britain in 1942: A Love Story (1994) or against Pakistan in Border. Border begins with rivalry between different segments of the military (army 156

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and air force), and at the conclusion both reinforce each other to show that they all strive for the nation. The message in the film is inclusivity rather than exclusivity, regardless of Pakistan being the hated adversary. Sarfarosh (1999) is also nominally anti-Pakistan patriotism, unusually tentative after the nuclear tests of 1998. But the subject was usually divided nationhood in India. An observation needs to be made here about the appropriateness of patriotism as a message in popular cinema. As already reiterated, the messages in popular cinema come from the epics/Puranas, the utterances of wise men and texts like the Manusmriti, all pointing to ‘ancient wisdom’ while patriotism is a sentiment that cannot go back to before the nation came into existence. It could have gained ground only after the sense of nationhood became stable and a sizeable nationalist class emerged. I have indicated that the ‘first cause’ is a reliable way to get at the core sentiment in a film since it represents the ‘seed’ of the story; by this token Upkaar is only about brotherly relationships, a motif found again a year later by Raj Khosla’s Do Raaste (1969). Border is essentially about the ‘Kshatriya’ duty of a soldier4 and its fulfilment; Pakistan is only incidental. The current wave of patriotism in Hindi film can be traced back to the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and at first glance the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 seems a key moment. But this could not have happened without the momentum of right-wing politics building up in the polity. It is also reasonable, however, to make an association between the rise of the right-wing and the Kashmir conflict, which reached a new phase around 1984 with the rise of the Islamists on account of Chief Minister Gul Mohammed Shah’s machinations and his courting of them.5 This led to other developments, including rigging of the elections during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as prime minister and the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley in 1989–90. Although the arrival of a jingoistic phase in Hindi cinema was suggested in the early years of the new millennium by the blockbuster Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (Anil Sharma, 2001), set in Partition and virulently anti-Pakistani, the films that followed – LOC: Kargil (2003), Lakshya (2004), Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyo (2004) and Tango Charlie (2005) – did not do well. The BJP had also lost political ground in 2004, the Congress being voted in and retaining power for a whole decade. My own perception is that although Gadar was violently anti-Pakistani, it was essentially a love story between a Sikh and a Muslim girl whose family moves to Pakistan, closer to Maniratnam’s Bombay (1995). Another superhit, Veer-Zara (2004), played the India-Pakistan romance less virulently. In contrast to these films, Anil Sharma’s war film Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyo was virtually a disaster.6 The most jingoistic phase of Indian patriotic cinema may have thus begun only with the consolidation of the BJP under Narendra Modi; the key films, all big successes, were The Ghazi Attack (2017), Raazi (2018) and Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019). Marking out these films from Border, 157

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one sees that where Border was essentially about a soldier’s duty, the core messages of the other films are patriotic. Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi is not a war film and features a spy – a Kashmiri woman named Sehmat Khan who marries into an influential Pakistani military family and spies for her country just before the 1971 war. Having the woman protagonist of a popular film marry a virtuous man because he belongs to an enemy country that she wishes harm to, is a tricky moral position. If he is a good man, he cannot but also do his duty; so how does an upright woman who marries a blameless man from an enemy country reconcile what she must feel for him with the harm she intends to do to him? Even the first cause (the ‘seed’) in the story of Raazi implies patriotism: the cancer-stricken father wanting his daughter to carry on his work as a spy and marry into the family of his ‘friend’ across the border. In the process of spying she murders her brother-in-law and a loyal family servant. When Indian agents eventually kill her husband – the father of her unborn child – this is morally justified as the sacrifices one makes in wartime. The director takes every precaution to avoid the sense of conflict between personal loyalty and national interest. Sehmat is directly responsible for the death of her only ‘love’, and such a narrative ploy being glossed over might have been unimaginable in any prior scenario since it cannot have the approval of tradition. She is a Muslim, but there is nothing in traditional texts to say it is meant for those only of the Hindu persuasion.7 Sehmat is not shown to be eventually happy, but her son later joins the Indian navy, implying no discord and a continuation of the family’s patriotic tradition. Raazi was made after Hindutva gained considerable ground, but it demonstrates the depletion of Hindu values. I am not referring here to its tolerance and plurality but its accepted ethics, that of dharma. Dharma is essentially interpersonal, and the allies of the Pandavas or the Kauravas chose their respective sides based not on the correctness of ‘causes’ but on personal obligations, loyalties and old animosities. By this token the heroine of Raazi acts contrary to the code of dharma, with patriotism (a ‘cause’) as justification when the code provides no such option of overriding factors. But this has not attracted notice, suggesting its acceptability to the Indian public. When nations are constituted around religions, they are careful that the tenets of the religion be inculcated in the public since they constitute the moral bedrock of the nation-state. Here we see the contrary: the rise of a religious identity causing the religion’s beliefs to be misplaced. Uri: The Surgical Strike creates issues of another kind. The film, apparently the biggest grosser in Indian film history, is about a 2016 ‘surgical strike’ inside Pakistan authorized by the BJP government in retaliation for a terrorist attack in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, when nineteen Indian soldiers were killed. Less than two weeks afterwards commandos of the Indian army penetrated the LOC in the dead of night, attacked militant launch pads on the Pakistani side, and killed a number of terrorists, their trainers and handlers. The film 158

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professes to give a truthful version of the events, though dramatized, making a fictional soldier Major Vihaan Singh Shergill (Vicky Kaushal) the protagonist. In the first chapter Vihaan is with his team in Manipur in a successful reprisal attack against militants who attacked an army convoy and killed several soldiers. This is duly appreciated by the prime minister, who also favours him with a transfer to Delhi because his mother has an advanced case of Alzheimer’s. He is also provided a nurse to look after his mother. When the mother nevertheless slips out one day, Vihaan is upset at the nurse’s incompetence but discovers she is actually from the intelligence wing, placed there as protection from north-eastern militants. In the next chapter Vihaan and his team take on terrorists who have just attacked the military camp at Uri, but his comrade Major Karan Kashyap is killed. When the prime minister – on the advice of the national security advisor – decides on a surgical strike inside Pakistan, Vihaan asks to play a part and is chosen. The plan is to fly Vihaan’s team inside Pakistan, and the pilot is a woman he met near his home, the widow of a martyr to militants in Kashmir, who also wants to play a part. Technical problems with the mission arise, but they are solved by the national security advisor through a young intern making toy drones in the DRDO.8 When it is learned from informants – with less than an hour to spare – that Pakistan might shoot down their helicopter, Vihaan determines, with the concurrence of the national security advisor, to cross the border on foot, reiterating that he will not lose a single member of his team. The mission is personally monitored by the national security advisor with assistance from the DRDO intern. In Indian war films the family plays a part, as in Border, but only as invoked by soldiers during conversations or flashbacks; there remains the sense of the family being in another plane of existence, part only of a soldier’s recall or a personal visit while on leave. Soldiers are also shown to act on the basis of received orders, and there is a distance between any military decision and the resultant action. ‘Ours not to reason why’ is its essential logic, as in most war films. The narration in Uri: The Surgical Strike is more dramatic, and a scrutiny of the ‘dramatization’ yields something significant: the way the participants – including the prime minister – continually encounter each other in the narrative as members of a tightly knit circle might, with no suggestion of a depersonalized machinery of the state. Even the soldiers’ families seem perpetually within hand-shaking distance of the prime minister – and there is always the promise of meeting him if a husband/father is martyred. This is not a case of the nation allegorized as family as in HAHK but of the nation becoming/supplanting family and given a single trajectory. A key aspect of Uri is the absence of relationships separate from military ones, and there is no ‘private life’. Every soldier is implicated in national decisions, and his/her excitement is of people privy to the workings of the nation-state, directed entirely against its neighbour. Raazi and Uri evidently represent a new phase in Hindi film patriotism – both place the sentiment at the centre and virtually banish interpersonal 159

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relationships from the narrative. In Raazi even the heroine’s conjugal relationship is overladen with patriotism; in her passionate moments with her husband it is as though her emotions are still focused on the nation on the verge of war. The portmanteau nature of popular cinema, its acknowledged generic hybridity, is abandoned for this single sentiment. As was earlier explained through classical theatre the hybrid characteristic accommodating multiple trajectories can be traced to ‘all aspects of life, its joys and sorrows’ needing to be accommodated in the narrative, and it is now as though being ‘patriotic’ is the only aspect of pertinence. If the aggregation of genres reflected the richness of the milieu, its replacement by a single emotion points decidedly to its cultural deprivation. Hindi cinema has been a national cinema with the nation allegorized as a community; heterogeneous elements and even discord are included. In Border there is a soldier, Mathura Das, who goes on leave because his wife is ailing but returns, apologizes for deserting his comrades and later dies heroically. In Border the company represents the nation-as-community, just as it is the cricket team in Lagaan, where also there are people of different castes, religions and even a turncoat Lakha who later reforms. Such a sense is notably missing in Uri, which proceeds on the impulse that people of the nation should be culturally homogeneous. Raazi demonstrated that the rise of Hindu nationalism appeared to have actually weakened tradition in India, and Uri, its rhetoric notwithstanding, provides evidence of the depletion of nationhood. Both films take their sense of India from the Indian identity, defined entirely in relation to its neighbour. Instead of an ‘imagined India’ constituted by its multiple trajectories,9 it is expressed by each film as antagonism towards Pakistan.10 One might conclude from the above that the sense of collective nationhood and patriotism have become mutually exclusive territories. Patriotism is a political tool but one wonders if patriotic cinema can still be ‘national’.

Summary Nationalism and patriotism are defined in this chapter – nationalism as pertaining to internal nationhood and patriotism as directed against an external enemy. By this token the first patriotic film may have been Upkaar, which named Pakistan and a treacherous internal enemy – black-marketing – and aligned the protagonist against them. Border was another patriotic film, but there is a difficulty with making patriotism the message of any film since that must come from traditional wisdom, while patriotism could only have arisen after 1947. Border solved this by focusing on the soldier’s duty in war, Pakistan only being incidental. The current phase of patriotism in Hindi cinema arose with the gains made by Hindu nationalism. That can arguably be traced to the machinations in Kashmir in the 1980s, notably the rigging of elections in 1987 and 160

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the departure of the Kashmiri pandits. The BJP gained national strength continuously but patriotism reached its crescendo only under Narendra Modi after 2014. A key anti-Pakistani film, Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001), was followed by several unsuccessful patriotic films, suggesting that Gadar succeeded as a love story between a Sikh man and a Muslim woman, rather than as a patriotic film. Two films from the current patriotic cinema are examined to find out how they are different from the earlier films like Border. Raazi is a spy story about a Kashmiri woman who marries into a military family in Pakistan to carry on her work. Unlike in Border, the relayed message of the film pertains to patriotism. But there is a ‘conflict of interest’ inherent in this plot since the woman is expected to harm the good man she is married to in the process of spying against his country. She kills her brother-in-law and a loyal family servant before Indian agents kill her husband while getting her out. The film does not pose the question of whether she could do evil to her own husband for patriotic reasons, though tradition (from where Hindi film messages are drawn) would frown upon it. The Manusmriti says: ‘For disloyalty to her husband a wife is censured among men, and [in her next life] she is born in the womb of a jackal and tormented by diseases, the punishment of her sin’. That the attitude of the film has not been questioned by audiences points (paradoxically) to traditional ethics (viz., the notion of dharma) losing ground, with patriotism as replacement. Uri: The Surgical Strike is like Raazi in that its message pertains to patriotism against Pakistan. The film is constructed in such a way to make it appear that the participants, including the soldiers, their families, the national security advisor and the prime minister, are all part of a single ‘family’ focused on one task – military patriotism directed against terrorists, notably Pakistani – with even ‘distractions’ like interpersonal relationships and romance eliminated. This absence of generic hybridity – once characteristic of popular cinema – suggests a ‘polarization’ of the narrative. Since heterogeneous film narrative was used to bring richness and inclusivity to the idea of the nation – accommodating diversity and conflict – this is actually a way of redefining the nation in a limited way, entirely in relation to its adversary Pakistan. Nationhood depends on a variety of cultural elements finding accommodation in discourse, but the predominance of patriotism at the expense of other elements is interpretable as the depletion of nationhood alongside the depletion of the Hindu tradition implied by Raazi.

Notes 1 Different values are attached to ‘nationalism’ and ‘patriotism’ by different societies, apparently because of different connotations for the terms. In the US ‘patriotism’ is appreciated, but ‘nationalism’, which is associated with Nazi Germany, is not. 2 Significant in the film is the inability to imagine the Chinese as individuals. They are mainly seen in long shot, wave replaced by wave, virtually an inexhaustible

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3 4 5 6

7

8 9 10

supply of fighting soldiers. See M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 158–159. Ibid., pp. 267–269. The director JP Dutta had made several films earlier in the 1980s/1990s about the Kshatriya caste including Kshatriya (1993). Praveen Swami, India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad: The Covert War in Kashmir, 1947–2004, London: Routledge, 2007, pp. 157–158. The film was considered a flop. See Sunit Jangir, Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyo Box Office Collection | Day Wise | Worldwide, www.sacnik.comhttps:// www.sacnilk.com/articles/entertainment/box_office/Ab_Tumhare_Hawale_ Watan_Saathiyo_Box_Office_Collection_Day_Wise_Worldwide?hl=en Accessed 24th Sept, 2020. Like all religious law the Manusmriti targets all of humankind, and it is a different matter that it is of importance only to Hindus. Here it is on the disloyalty of the wife to the husband (IX: 30): ‘But for disloyalty to her husband a wife is censured among men, and [in her next life] she is born in the womb of a jackal and tormented by diseases, the punishment of her sin’. www.sacred-texts.com/ hin/manu/manu09.htm Accessed 29th May, 2019. The Defence Research and Development Organisation. Manifested in the subplots in any film – romance, comedy, action, emotional drama, sententiousness, etc. Both films were judged by Indian critics as showing individual Pakistanis in a good light; however, that is not the issue, but rather how being ‘Indian’ is defined.

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A CONCLUSION

Absences There will be two absences that the reader will detect in the book, and while the first is a sense of what effect colonialism had on Indian cinema, the second has to do with the Islamic influence on it. The individual chapters have been loaded in favour of the Sanskritic tradition as an influence, and a question engaging the reader will be whether this is not distorted, although due justification has been offered. Taking the colonial influence first, the British tried not to interfere much in traditional life, and they acted primarily as revenue collectors, keeping hierarchies intact and giving custody of the English language to the upper classes that had held custody of the former elite languages, Sanskrit and Persian. Since the British respected traditional hierarchy and created an elite Anglophone post-colonial class that was urban as an intermediary between itself and the public, it can be argued that the cultural effect of colonialism on cinema, which catered to a less literate and widely dispersed class, was weaker. The 1950s were the period in which cinema reflected concerns that were post-colonial, especially with regard to the arrival of the modern in the Nehruvian era. In the cinema of the decades following independence, wealth and power are often placed in the hands of Anglicized figures, usually ambivalent (Sir Badriprasad in Andaz, 1949) but often mocked (Johnny Walker as Rakesh or ‘Rocky’ in Kaagaz Ke Phool, 1959). The portrayal of the powerful in early cinema draws on the perception of the post-colonial elite, with its social manner, and there is an effort to critique it by directors like Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt. One could actually see popular cinema of the 1950s as engaged in interrogating the post-colonial elite, and a conspicuous example would be Judge Raghunath in Raj Kapoor’s Awaara (1951).1 But as we go forward to the 1970s it becomes more difficult to identify an attitude as ‘post-colonial’ – if we are to segregate the influence of the contemporary West from those specifically inculcated by colonialism under Britain. As regards the Islamic influence, apparently much stronger earlier because of the Muslim involvement in the film industry but gradually waning, the

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silent era had a large number of entertainment films constructed around Islamic themes – romances like Laila Majnu (1922), Shirin Farhad (1926) and Anarkali (1928); Arabian Nights fantasies like Alibaba and the Forty Thieves (1927), Hatim Tai (1929) and Kamer-el-Zaman (1931); fairy tales and folk legends like Gul-e-Bakavali (1924), Bulbul-e-Paristan (1926), Gul Sanovar (1928) and Bulbul-e-Shiraz (1931)2 – and they are often cited as the Islamic influence, later disregarded in the process of positing a national cinema.3 The films are not available for viewing, but a remake of Hatim Tai (1990) suggests similarities with the regional language mythological film and the Telugu folklore film; its Islamic character is restricted to the speaking of Urdu and the presence of Muslim characters and Arab costumes. The director of Hatim Tai (1990) has directed a Telugu mythological film, and the film poster pertaining to the original Hatim Tai also fits the 1990 version. The later films with Islamic influences, like historical films (Mughal-e-Azam, 1960) or courtesan films (Pakeezah, 1971), are different, but their Islamic aspects are mainly cultural, pertaining to language, costume and sensibilities of the characters. Pakeezah gives us a baroque ambience unmatched in Indian cinema, but there is not enough evidence that its approach to narration stands apart; for example, it uses the strategy of the first cause. Faith does not feature and the central issue is hierarchy, much like what has been said about the mainstream Hindi film. The issue of what teleological notions the ‘typical’ Islamicate film subscribed to – for example, under causality, ethics and faith – hence remains unresolved. Hiralal Sen’s unreleased Alibaba and Forty Thieves (1903) and Ardesher Irani’s Alam Ara (1931), separated by nearly three decades, may testify to a prehistory of Indian cinema that has been erased in the construction of a unitary history of national cinema,4 but one is at a loss with regard to how to reconstruct it and whether it really represents defunct aspects of Indian cinema. The Islamic countries, where one might have found evidence of it, also yield little; there is, in the Egyptian popular film, which corresponds to a pan-Arab cinema, no genre that resembles this kind of fantasy.5 But it has been noted that the themes of the Arabian Nights are alien to formal Islam, and this could be the reason why the Arabian Nights is more orientalist than Islamic. The issue, to reiterate what should be self-evident, is not, as the late film critic Iqbal Masud asserted,6 whether ‘classical or high culture – a mix of Arabic-Perso-Turkish elements in historical work, fiction, music, and painting such as in the work of poets and novelists like Ghalib, artists like Abdur Rehman Chaudhtai, or ustads in the field of music had an influence upon Hindi cinema’, but whether such Islamic influence can be detected in notions like ‘realism’, ‘faith’, ‘melodrama’ and ‘causality’ in the construction of film narrative; and to my mind that has not been established. The use of an Urdu word like ‘kismet’7 (meaning fate) instead of ‘karma’ does not imply an Islamic influence in the causal relationships portrayed, and one would need to study the narration closely to establish the causal logic as different from the norm. 164

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But there is another possibility, which is that Urdu being the language used by Parsi theatre alongside romantic motifs from Persian stories should not be taken to mean that the principles laid out in Natyasastra had been jettisoned along the way. Partha Chatterjee notes that Sanskrit drama was used to create urban theatre in the 19th century,8 and film only borrowed from theatre. The earliest film format of alternatively spoken and sung performance with emphasis on musical and poetic expression of emotion was a characteristic of Sanskrit drama9 and still exists today in folk performance in the vernacular languages. Urdu motifs were perhaps only embedded within this format – the way Hollywood and other motifs are employed without compromising the narrative, as, for instance, in Sholay’s borrowings from the spaghetti western.

Finding unity I have hitherto examined various aspects of cinema in India but, although the reader would sense connections, what they add up to needs to be computed in order to find a desirable underlying unity. The purpose of this conclusion is simply to arrive at the fundamental premises from which the other aspects may also be emerging. The basic issue is apparently the tendency of Indian cinema to seek out ‘universal’ or ‘non-contextual’ truths, which take the shape of truisms relating to personal/social relationships – and the ideal in them. Rather than the narrative being the key and ‘meaning’ emerging through acts of interpretation, it is this truth/truism which is usually central, with elaborate narrative construction aimed at transmitting it. Since the relay of this truth/truism without distortion is most crucial, one-dimensional characters/situations are devised. Complexity/ambiguity, especially valued in film art, would obstruct the relay of the truth/truism, and Indian cinema, by and large, is transparent in its purport and does not invite interpretation. The interpretation that film scholars/academics mostly offer is ‘deep interpretation’ (psychoanalytical or ideological readings) that excavates entirely different kinds of meaning from those responded to by film audiences. Once the narrative needed to relay the intended meaning is constructed and broken up into scenes, songs conveying the import of the crucial scenes are composed with appropriate lyrics also containing universals / non-contextual truths consistent with the overall film. This entire process indicates that Indian cinema has tended to be a non-realistic cinema which eschews mimesis because its belief is in transcendental truths going beyond perceived/experienced reality, regarded as transient. How this ‘transcendental real’ is to be apprehended remains ill-defined but it is apparently reflected in the mystical experiences of India’s seers and their utterances. For ordinary people, the truths ultimately suitable for relay are those familiar from the epics, Puranas and sacred texts, the same tales retold in different avatars because their truths are the truest.10 When Indian cinema abandons 165

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the popular idiom, it still devotes itself to ‘universal’ and ‘non-contextual’ truths – truths not from the Puranas or epics but from socio-political theory – and it uses narratives that illustrate socio-political truisms. A fundamental sense in mimesis is that the world is essentially mysterious and unknowable, and its imitation is intended to create an art object as complex and ambiguous. The earliest examples of art, namely cave paintings of animals, were intended to gain control over the natural world through occult or magical means, and this element persists in cinema. The occult element in Indian cinema is much weaker than one might expect. Art cinema in India, apart from some work by directors like Satyajit Ray, has also not acknowledged the mystery/complexity of the world, only relaying social truisms acknowledged by the state and being duly rewarded. The urge to be instructive imposes conditions on each narrative, the first of which is to make melodrama the most appropriate vehicle.11 Since the tendered instruction seeks to be universal, timeless and context-free, it is essential for narrative to free itself from the dictates of place and time to become self-contained, and both genealogy and romance become pertinent here. Genealogy and romance culminating in marriage provide, in terms of chronology, the two extremities of any narrative: the location of the story and its closure. Film narrative can hence neither attach itself to universal time and the framework of a historical past, nor imply participation in a future shared with the humankind external to it. This aspect also helps explain the absence of generic differentiation in Indian popular films; genres are responses to history and embedded in context even when they are elevated to the level of timeless myth, while popular cinema propagates universals independent of history and context.

Message and instruction We have reached certain conclusions with regard to film narrative, the most important having to do with it not aiming for mimesis but being drawn to being instructive; still, any expectation from this that it is prescriptive with regard to one’s actions or conduct is belied. If it had been prescriptive with regard to individual/social conduct, one would have seen evidence of ‘errors’ from its protagonists and subsequent signs of remorse or regret, none of which is actually in evidence. Villains often have changes of heart, but this is not on account of seeing the consequences of their actions but rather being shamed into it; in each case the transforming villain is someone temporarily led astray. Narratives are constructed in the ‘passive voice’, as it were, and there is little evidence of the freedom to choose one’s actions, which is the staple of Hollywood. Popular cinema abounds in righteous action on the part of its protagonists, but it is as though being righteous were the most natural of things, as if there was never any doubt about what action could be termed ‘righteous’. This is seemingly paradoxical but it can be 166

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argued that the certainty – with regard to what is ‘righteous’ – exhibited by each protagonist lies in the relativistic ethics of dharma (svadharma), closely associated with birth and lineage. One cannot prescribe righteous action for another since only he/she can know the nature of his/her true dharma, and the notion of dharma is left to a person to ‘know’ (but not ‘choose’). This brings us to another important notion, which is faith. While there is a great deal of devotion exhibited in popular cinema, there is little evidence of religious faith, that is, faith as manifested by a compulsion to act in a certain way because of metaphysical demands made from outside oneself (as by a dogma); this is a feature even true of the Muslim social in Urdu in which the religion is treated as a set of social practices having little to do with the demands of faith. The assertion ‘God is within us’, often heard in society, implies that all answers are to be found only within oneself, and this, it can be argued, is not compatible with religious faith as we understand the term. If ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’ becomes the key, stardom in cinema could also mean something very different from having a public participate vicariously in one’s acts. Dharma and karma are related, if equally tenuous notions. Karma is roughly the moral capital a person accumulates over several lives/incarnations through his/her acts but is determined by his/her adherence to the code of dharma. Karma is imponderable, since one can only speculate on one’s store of good or bad karma based on what he/she is undergoing in the present. Cinema has, consequently, no means of incorporating karma as a causal agency within the narrative. What it traditionally did was to employ a preamble (or prehistory) which became a useful ‘first cause’ within the narrative to explain the happenings in the plot, and the relationship between this first cause and the rest of the narrative mimicked the workings of karma. It is significant that while the first cause is inextricably linked to each event in the rest of the story, the linkages between those events are themselves far from established and films are highly episodic. The newer films often dispense with the separate ‘prehistory’, but the first cause as a defining event in the narrative continues as strategy. Dharma and karma both have station and hierarchy implicated in them, and virtually every kind of motif – from loss of station in intense melodramas to its false gain in light comedies – demonstrates this.

The orality-literacy dichotomy The second issue, which at first seems unrelated to the notion of ‘noncontextual truth’, is the orality-literacy dichotomy, and it is this dichotomy which is at the heart of the differences within Indian cinema as a body. Orality and literacy-inscribed film narrative can be roughly said to correspond to the epic/Puranic vision that dominates most of the popular cinemas in India and the novelistic one that deals with the more everyday situations 167

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and characters with psychologies. It is the novelistic mode which informs art cinema in India, as well as ‘middle cinema’ and popular cinema from Kerala, the most literate of India’s linguistic states. ‘Hatke Cinema’ or ‘New Bollywood’ can also be understood as literacy-dependent popular cinema for the educated, brought up to date for young urban audiences with subject matter like gender and sexuality rather than the socio-political concerns of the art film, which relies more on state patronage. If at first glance orality appears to owe to the poor levels of education in India which has led to illiteracy, deeper scrutiny reveals something else. Brahminism valorized orality and placed great emphasis on the enunciation, which meant that literacy was not actively sought for a long while. Until the early part of the 20th century some sections of the highest caste even forbade literacy among their offspring (male and female) since knowledge was closely tied to the ability to recite Vedic hymns correctly and with the correct intonation. The implication is therefore that access to the highermost truths was associated with orality. One may propose that orality persists in large sections of India today because it was long held to be superior to literacy by the uppermost caste, although this was amplified by low access to universal education. When knowledge is transmitted orally, the transmitter chooses the receivers, and the exclusive custody of a certain kind of knowledge may have been conceived to allow the priestly caste to retain its influence. There are separate episodes in the Mahabharata (dealing with Ekalavya and Karna respectively) in which persons not authorized to receive knowledge are punished for receiving it, and this need for proper authorization may be taken to be a dharmic principle.

Ideology The third aspect of Indian cinema has to do with its ideology, much of which seems both patriarchal and Brahminical. Even when popular cinema was dealing with the strong woman, as in the 1930s, the strong woman was a male ideal, although a reformist one. As evidence of the Brahminical viewpoint there is the sense of physical work as ‘hardship’ rather than labour, suggesting distance from it. The art film – even Satyajit Ray’s Sadgati  – while dealing with marginalization and oppression has a viewpoint as if from above. Dalits, for instance, are not shown to have dealings with their own kind, and it is as though they gain significance only in relation to caste society. Political radicalism and activism also seem less the persuasion of a still-undecided public than the proud assertion of political identity – by those with ‘awareness’. ‘Superior awareness’ is arguably Brahminical in that it stems from knowledge/possession of (Marxist) social theory. Brahmins were also ‘aware’ because they were custodians of Vedic ‘theory’. Indians practice several religions but, as may have become evident, Indian cinema has been under the influence of Hinduism, though the other religions 168

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are acknowledged. The rise of the Hindu right-wing in politics has had a paradoxical effect upon it due to the privileging of patriotism as a sentiment. ‘Patriotism’ has little sanctity in traditional belief since the nation itself is young, and this would distinguish India from countries like China and Russia, which had empires and for which nationhood is not recent. Nationalism as a sentiment flourished in cinema after 1947, largely through cinema’s narrativization of social developments through messages of ‘eternal value’. But patriotism is a new sentiment, promoted entirely in relation to Pakistan. In the process of promoting it thus, traditional virtues are abruptly being abandoned and replaced. The aggregation of generic elements – songs, action, comedy etc. – in film can be traced to classical theatre proposing that drama should present all aspects of life, and cinema used the prescription to define the diverse nation. It is too early to be certain since its large English component suggests a city-based category rather than a pan-Indian one, but new patriotism seems not only a proposal to substitute all aspects of life with one emotion but also a way to impoverish the meaning of the nation by regarding it only in relation to its military adversary. This book has gone about defining Indian cinema and its several aspects under various parameters as represented by English terms or groups of terms which are familiar to theorists and scholars in the study of cinema and culture. In the process what has emerged forcefully is that India is a cultural singularity. The outward characteristics of Indian cinema – chiefly its discernible impregnability to the onslaught of Hollywood and the relatively small recognition of its achievements as film art due to its neglect of subjectivity (expression) and objectivity (mimesis/realism) as representing polarities – both characteristics emerge less as the products of recent political or technological history than the unique development of the subcontinent over millennia. The introduction had proposed that understanding the philosophical outlook implied by the cinema(s) of India might assist in the project of conceiving a film since most films seem put together as if by instinct, without an underlying sense of why certain choices (e.g., involving the construction of narrative or the use of music) have been made. This book, by looking at bodies of cinema in India and outside – as well as practices in the other arts – has tried to identify a fundamental logic, with mimesis as the fulcrum around which such choices can be exercised.

Notes 1 M.K. Raghavendra, Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 117–122. 2 Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema, New Delhi: Tulika, 2009, p. 4. 3 Rosie Thomas, Bombay Before Bollywood: Film City Fantasies, Delhi: OrientBlackswan, 2014, pp. 9–13.

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4 Anjali Gera Roy, ‘Bhakti and Ashiqi: The Syncretic Heritage of Hindi Cinema,’ Studies in South Asian Film and Media, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2010, p. 43. 5 Ali Abu Shadi, ‘Genres in Egyptian Cinema,’ in Alia Arasoughly (ed.), Screens of Life: Critical Film Writing from the Arab World, Vol. 1, Quebec: World Heritage Press, 1996, pp. 84–129. 6 Iqbal Masud, ‘Muslim Ethos in Indian Cinema,’ Screen Weekly, 4th March, 2005. 7 The film Kismet (1943) uses the same causal linkages as a ‘Hindu’ film like HAHK, with the strategy of the first cause separated from the main action. 8 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 6–8. 9 Phillip Lutgendorf, ‘Is there an Indian way of Filmmaking?,’ International Journal of Hindu Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3, Dec., 2006, p. 235. 10 Even the ancient Indian Charvakas, who were materialists, distrusted inference through enquiry. Most of their texts are lost, but their ‘materialism’ seemed to provide instruction for everyday life, perhaps not distant from hedonism. Here is an oft-cited aphorism from them: ‘While you live, live well, even if you have to borrow, for once cremated there is no return’. One can, in fact, imagine this becoming the message relayed by a popular film of today. The rider to this is that whatever is known about the Charvakas is primarily what was written about them by their adversaries. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Indian Philosophy: A Popular Introduction, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1964, p. 186. 11 Speech in the melodrama is ‘speech already interpreted’, which implies that it needs no further interpretation. M Madhava Prasad cites Roland Barthes on myth while dealing with the domestic melodrama. M. Madhava Prasad, ‘The Absolutist Gaze: Political Structure and Cultural Form,’ in M. Madhava Prasad (ed.), Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 71. In Indian film melodramas, not only the speech but even the action is already interpreted, as would not have been the case if they had pursued mimesis, with its mystery.

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Schatz, Thomas, Film Genre and the Genre Film, from Leo Braudy, Marshall Cohen (Eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 642–653. Sen, Amartya, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity, New Delhi: Penguin, 2005. Shadi, Ali Abu, Genres in Egyptian Cinema, from Alia Arasoughly (Ed.), Screens of Life: Critical Film Writing from the Arab World, Quebec: World Heritage Press, 1996, 84–129. Shekar, Indu, Sanskrit Drama, Its Origin and Decline, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1977. Sontag, Susan, Against Interpretation, from A Susan Sontag Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982. ———, The Imagination of Disaster, from Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen (Eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 3rd edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, 451–465. Sutton, Martin, Patterns of Meaning in the Musical, from Rick Altman (Ed.), Genre: The Musical: A Reader, London: Routledge, Kegan Paul/British Film Institute, 1981, 187–200. Suvin, Darko, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979. Thomas, Rosie, Indian Cinema: Pleasures and Popularity, Screen, Vol. 26, No. 3–4, 1985. Timofeevsky, Alexander, The Last Romantics, from Michael Brashinsky, Andrew Horton (Eds.), Russian Critics on the Cinema of Glasnost, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 24–29. Tocqueville, Alexis de, Origin of the Anglo-Americans, from Henry Reeve (Trans.), Democracy in America, Volume 1, Project Gutenberg Ebook, 2006. https://www. gutenberg.org/files/815/815-h/815-h.htm#link2HCH0003 Accessed 10th September, 2020. Todorov, Tsvetan, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, translated by the French Richard Howard, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975. Vasudevan, Ravi S., Shifting Codes Dissolving Identities: The Hindi Social Film of the 1950s as Popular Culture, from Ravi S. Vasudevan (Ed.), The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema, New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2011. ———, The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010. Viswanathan, Gauri, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998. Wood, Robin, Introduction, from A. Button, R. Lippe, T. Williams, R. Wood (Eds.), American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film, Toronto: Festival of Festivals, 1979, 7–28. Yampolsky, Mikhail, Cinema without Cinema, from Michael Brashinsky, Andrew Horton (Eds.), Russian Critics on the Cinema of Glasnost, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 11–17. Zizek, Slavoj, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016.

175

FILM INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes. 3 Idiots (2009) 9, 21, 24, 31n8, 67 4 (2004) 56 400 Blows (1959) 28 Aadmi (1939) 36 Abhimaan (1973) 106 Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyo (2004) 157 Adi Shankaracharya (1983) 48 Admi (1939) 134 Agneepath (1990) 21 Alam Ara (1931) 164 Alibaba and the Forty Thieves (1927) 59, 164 Alien (1979) 56 All that Heaven Allows (1955) 40 Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) 51 Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) 75 Anantaram (1987) 17 Anarkali (1928) 164 Andaz (1949) 36, 38n10, 40, 41, 64, 73, 80, 124, 131, 134 Ankur (1973) 106 Anmol Ghadi (1946) 94 Apthamitra (2004) 55, 56 Aradhana (1969) 64, 124, 141 Arbitrage (2012) 28 Aurat (1940) 106, 134 Aval Oru Thodar Kathai (1974) 16 Awaara (1951) 29, 32n12, 40, 41, 65, 94, 134, 163 Baahubali (2015) 29, 54 Baazi (1951) 80 Baazigar (1993) 29

Babul (1950) 80 Back to the Future (1985) 58 Bandwagon, The (1953) 111 Barsaat (1949) 129 Battle of Algiers, The (1966) 145 Battleship Potemkin (1925) 21 Bawarchi (1972) 74 Bedara Kannappa (1954) 49 Bellimoda (1967) 74 Bhakta Prahlad (1926) 7 Bicycle Thieves (1948) 35, 152 Blue Collar (1978) 152 Bobby (1973) 38n10 Bodyguard (2011) 68 Bombay (1995) 38n10, 157 Border (1997) 88, 156 Breathless (1960) 21 Bulbul-e-Paristan (1926) 164 Bulbul-e-Shiraz (1931) 164 Bunty Aur Babli (2005) 29 Calcutta ’71 (1971) 146 Casablanca (1942) 10 Chak De India (2007) 58, 61 Chillar Party (2011) 58, 61 Chimes at Midnight (1965) 66 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) 58 Chomana Dudi (1975) 144 Chupke Chupke (1975) 73 Clockwork Orange, A (1971) 112 Come September (1961) 73 Contempt (1963) 122n6 Court (2014) 153 Cries and Whispers (1972) 120 Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) 28

176

FILM INDEX

Dabangg (2010) 68 Dahej (1950) 29 Damini (1993) 29, 124, 135, 141 Da Vinci Code, The (2006) 46 Deewar (1975) 15, 21, 24, 36, 41, 42, 65, 124, 135 Devdas (1935) 24, 29, 65, 134 Devdas (1955) 29 Devdas (2002) 83n4 Dharti Ke Lal (1946) 120, 144, 148 Dhool Ka Phool (1959) 36, 64, 124, 141 Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1996) 29, 75n2 Do Bigha Zamin (1953) 144 Do Raaste (1969) 87, 157 Do the Right Thing (1989) 152 Drishyam (2013) 24 Duniya Na Mane (1937) 65, 139 Ekdin Pratidin (1979) 67, 142 Ek Duuje Ke Liye (1981) 52n6 Esthappan (1980) 17 ET. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) 57 An Evening in Paris (1967) 76n9 Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) 48 Exorcist, The (1976) 47 Eyes Wide Shut (1999) 14 Fandry (2013) 153 Fanny and Alexander (1982) 119–120 Farz (1967) 90n16 Fear Eats the Soul (1974) 14 Flowers of St Francis, The (1950) 48 For a Few Dollars More (1965) 23 Full Moon in Paris (1984) 21 Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001) 161 Ganga Jumna (1961) 95 Ghatashraddha (1977) 49 Ghazi Attack, The (2017) 88, 157 Godfather, The (1972) 42, 43–44, 131 Godfather Part II, The (1974) 131, 137n1 Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969) 59 Gul-e-Bakavali (1924) 164 Gul Sanovar (1928) 164 Gumrah (1963) 141 Guru (2007) 29 Haqeeqat (1964) 35, 156 Hatim Tai (1929) 59, 164 Hatim Tai (1990) 164

Hero No. 1 (1997) 74 Hum Aapke Hain Koun . . .! (1994) (HAHK) 9, 38n10, 66, 94, 136 Humayun (1945) 43 Humjoli (1970) 76n9 Interview (1971) 144 Irma La Douce (1963) 73 Jai Bhim Comrade (2011) 148 Jai Santoshi Maa (1975) 99 Jalsaghar (1958) 67 Janaranya (1976) 28 Jaws (1975) 155n2 Jewel Thief (1967) 90n16 Jogan (1950) 49, 80, 125 Johny Mera Naam (1970) 125 Jung Aur Aman (2002) 150 Junglee (1961) 34 Jurassic Park (1993) 56 Kaagaz ke Phool (1959) 33 Kaaka Muttai (2015) 22, 67, 101, 137 Kaante (2002) 35 Kaliya Mardan (1919) 7 Kamer-el-Zaman (1931) 59, 164 Kaminey (2009) 21, 94 Kismet (1943) 170n7 Koi . . . Mil Gaya (2003) 57 Kshatriya (1993) 162n4 Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) 58, 61 Lagaan (2001) 94, 130 Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006) 73, 131 Laila Majnu (1922) 164 Lakshya (2004) 157 Lanka Dahan (1917) 7 L’Avventura (1960) 13 Le Dîner le Cons (1998) 72 Le Doulos (1963) 133 Life of Christ, The (1910) 7 Life of Oharu, The (1952) 28, 65, 143n10 Little Big Man (1970) 152 LOC: Kargil (2003) 157 Lord of the Rings, The (2001–2003) 110 Lucia (2013) 101 Lunchbox, The (2013) 15, 22 Maine Pyar Kiya (1989) 23, 66 Manoranjan (1974) 73

177

FILM INDEX

Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The (1962) 28 Man with the India-Rubber Head, The (1902) 6 Mary Poppins (1964) 58 Masaan (2015) 94 M*A*S*H (1970) 110 Match Point (2005) 28 Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960) 16 Melomaniac, The (1903) 6 Mere Mehboob (1963) 38n10, 49 Mirror Mirror (2012) 124 Mother India (1957) 19n16, 29, 40, 41, 94, 95, 134, 156 Mughal-e-Azam (1960) 33, 43 Mukhamukham (1986) 81 Munnabhai MBBS (2003) 73, 131 Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978) 21 My Fair Lady (1964) 34, 111 Nanjundi Kalyana (1989) 34 Naya Daur (1957) 124, 136 Nayak (1966) 142 Nazarin (1959) 14 Never Ending Story (1984) 58 Nikaah (1982) 52n4 1942: A Love Story (1994) 156 October (1927) 145 Omen, The (1976) 47 Oliver! (1968) 111 Om Shanti Om (2007) 22 Ordinary People (1980) 83n4 Ostrov (2006) 47 Pakeezah (1972) 38n10, 49 Parasakhti (1952) 41, 42, 102 Passenger, The (1975) 21 Pather Panchali (1954) 90n8, 94, 120 Peepli Live (2010) 104n10 Pennies from Heaven (1981) 86 Perjuangan dan Doa (1977) 52n4 Pink (2016) 64, 113 Pithache Panje (1914) 7 Postman Always Rings Twice, The (1946) 133 Predator (1987) 57, 78 Prem Pujari (1970) 156 Pride and Prejudice 34, 37 Psycho (1960) 112 Pulp Fiction (1994) 13 Pyaasa (1957) 33

Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988) 38n10 Queen (2013) 36, 64, 112 Raajneeti (2010) 42, 67 Raazi (2018) 157 Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008) 36 Raja Harishchandra (1913) 7 Rang De Basanti (2006) 67 Rashomon (1950) 8 Red and the White, The (1967) 122n6 Rockford (1999) 58, 61 Round-Up, The (1966) 122n6 Sadgati (1984) 153 Samskara (1970) 15, 67 Sangam (1964) 9, 136 Sant Eknath (1926) 7 Sant Tukaram (1936) 65, 134 Sarfarosh (1999) 157 Satya (1998) 103n5, 128, 136, Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978) 50 Saudagar (1991) 34 Saving Private Ryan (1998) 12n12 Searchers, The (1956) 27 Seemabaddha (1971) 142 Seetha Aur Geetha (1972) 64 Shaapit (2010) 48 Shahjehan (1946) 43 Shakti (1982) 21 Shirin Farhad (1926) 164 Sholay (1975) 21, 23, 31n12, 36, 87, 113, 128, 135 Shree 420 (1955) 148 Shutter Island (2010) 13 Slumdog Millionaire (2009) 129 Soldier Blue (1970) 152 Sound of Music, The (1965) 34, 35 Sparsh (1980) 64 Spider-Man (2002) 15, 20, 66, 77 Sri Krishna Janma (1917) 7 Stalker (1979) 56 Stanley Ka Dabba (2011) 58, 61 Sultan (2016) 88 Taare Zamin Par (2007) 58, 61 Taken 2 (2012) 25n11 Talk to Her (2002) 41 Taming of the Shrew, The 34 Tango Charlie (2005) 157 Tarang (1984) 19n14

178

FILM INDEX

Target (2011) 56 Ten Commandments, The (1956) 48 Terminator, The (1984) 56 Thin Red Line, The (1998) 12n12 Throne of Blood (1957) 63 Through the Olive Trees (1994) 63 Trishul (1978) 21, 65 Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The (1964) 111 Upkaar (1967) 34, 87, 90n13, 156 Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) 157 Uski Roti (1970) 19n14

Veer-Zara (2004) 157 Vertigo (1958) 17 Waqt (1965) 25n10, 135 War Horse (2011) 12n12 When Harry Met Sally (1989) 34 Wizard of Oz, The (1939) 14, 58 Written on the Wind (1956) 40–42 Yaadon Ki Baraat (1973) 25n10, 66, 135 Zanjeer (1973) 21 Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) 104n10

179

SUBJECT INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes. action films 57, 88, 89, 154 ‘active voice’ (film grammar) 23, 24 adharma 135 Against Interpretation (Susan Sontag) 14 allegory 88, 94 Allen, Woody 27, 71 Almodovar, Pedro 41 Althusser, Louis 28 Anand, Dev 80, 125 Anderson, Benedict 92, 103 Anglophone Indians 67, 95 animated films 58, 77, 116 Aravindan, G. 17 art films 106 Arthurian legends 54 ashramas 36, 37 Austen, Jane 34 avant-garde 116–122; and experimentation 92 avatars 29, 125, 126, 165 Bahl, Vikas 36 Balachander, K. 16 Barjatya, Suraj 9 Barthes, Roland 85 Batra, Ritesh 15, 22 Benegal, Shyam 106 Bhatt, Vikram 48 Bordwell, David 13, 18n3 Brecht, Bertolt 65 Brooks, Peter 1 Carroll, Lewis 53 caste identity 100 caste society 153–155, 168 causality 10, 20–26, 78, 164

Chaplin, Charles 75n4 characters (in films) 77–84 Chatterjee, Partha 4 children’s cinema 58, 61 children’s literature 57 comedy (humour) 71–76 content of film 13–19 contextual ethics 30, 134, 137, 141 Curtiz, Michael 10 darsana 50 deep interpretation 14, 17 Demy, Jacques 111 De Sica, Vittorio 35 devotion 46–52, 133, 167 dharma 26n13, 30, 31n7, 43 diaspora 95, 102, 103 Dickens, Charles 43 divine intervention in Indian films 42, 50, 51 domestic melodrama 8, 40, 87, 88 Dosti 11n9 Dravidian mass movement 99 Dumont, Louis 69n1 Eisenstein, Sergei 21 epics 22, 59, 60, 93, 94, 96, 99, 120, 135, 137, 142, 143, 165, 166 escapism 120 European cinema 21, 93, 122 faith 46–52 family 21, 22, 27, 28, 30, 33, 35, 66, 67, 101, 135, 136, 142, 159, 161; genealogy and 27–32 fantasy 2, 34, 53–62, 123, 128

180

SUBJECT INDEX

feminist film criticism 34 feminization of mass culture 40 filmic narration 15 film music 110–115 Ford, John 27, 28, 86 French Revolution 72 Gandhi, Indira 80, 120 gangster films 63, 85 gender 139–143; discrimination 65 genealogy in Indian films 27–33, 57, 101, 166 genres 7, 57, 59, 61, 85–90, 123, 124, 164, 166 Ghatak, Ritwik 16, 120 Godard, Jean-Luc 21 Gopalakrishnan, Adoor 17, 82, 107 Hermann, Bernard 112 hierarchy, in film narrative 63–70 Hinduism 36, 43, 48, 49, 51, 133, 137, 168 Hirani, Rajkumar 9, 21 Hitchcock, Alfred 17 Hollywood 23–25, 28, 29, 33, 42, 43, 73, 78, 79, 113, 114, 124, 140 Hollywood films 9, 28, 34, 48, 57, 77, 79, 126, 133, 153, 154 horror films 85 humour (comedy) 71–76 ideological principle 74 ideological state apparatus (ISA) 30, 31n8 imagination 57, 58, 78 individuality 77–84 interpretation (making meaning) 13 IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association) 120, 144 Irani, Ardeshir 92 Islam 49, 51, 60, 134 Islamic fantasy 59, 61, 62 Italian neo-realism 87 Jameson, Frederic 93 jati (caste) 100, 103n2, 154 Joseph, Jeethu 24 Jung Aur Aman 146–148 Kafka, Franz 54 Kanagal, Puttanna 74 Kannada films 74, 99, 100

Kapoor, Raj 9, 50 karma 43, 45n14 karmic causality 79, 82 Karve, Irawati 105 Kaul, Mani 19n14 Kerala, films from 81, 82, 101, 107, 121, 122, 168 Khan, Farah 22 Khan, Salman 88 Khzhanovskiy, Ilya 56 Kiarostami, Abbas 63 Kumar, Dilip 80, 124, 125 Kurosawa, Akira 8 left-wing activism 148, 149, 151 literacy and film 105–109 literate audiences, the film preferences of 107, 108 local cinema 98–104 local identities 98, 102 Lord of the Rings, The (Tolkien) 54 love stories 33 Lumière, Louis 6 Malayalam art cinema 17, 67, 82, 101, 107 male-centric films 64, 143 Mallick, Terrence 12n12 Manusmriti 136, 137 Méliès, George 6 melodrama 1, 39–45, 65, 164, 166 Mill, John Stuart 73 mimesis 13, 121 Mizoguchi, Kenji 65 modernity 48, 80, 94, 96, 121 ‘moral occult’ (Peter Brooks) 39, 41, 43, 44 More, Thomas 55 Mukherjee, Hrishikesh 106 mythological films 47, 48 Nair, Mira 114 national cinema 91–97 nationalism 11, 92, 93, 95, 96, 101, 156, 160, 169 nationhood 98, 102, 157, 160, 161, 169 Natyasastra 9, 11n3 Nehruvian nationalism 88 Nihalani, Govind 81 non-contextual truths 93, 100, 128, 132, 165–167

181

SUBJECT INDEX

nuclear family 21, 28, 133, 140 Nussbaum, Martha 23 occult elements in films 41–43, 121, 166 oedipal conflict 96 Ong, Walter 105 orality 105–109 orality-literacy dichotomy 167 Paranjape, Sai 64 passive voice 23, 24 Patel, Jabbar 81 patriarchy 81, 141–143, 154 patriotism in film 156–162 Phalke, Dhundiraj Govind (Dada Saheb Phalke) 7 political identity 145, 148, 150, 168 Prasad, Madhava 90n14 psychological causation (in Hollywood) 20 radicalism in film 144–151 Raimi, Sam 20 Ray, Satyajit 17, 28, 59, 61, 81, 113 realism 6–12 reality 1, 2, 6–12, 53, 55, 59, 60, 112, 117, 120 Reddy, Pattabhirama 15 Reed, Carol 111 regional cinema 98–104 regional languages 29, 67, 92, 125 religious faith and Indian film 49, 167 Rohmer, Eric 21 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 72 Roy, Bimal 29 Santoshi, Rajkumar 29 science fiction (SF) 55–57, 61, 86 Scorsese, Martin 13 Scott, Ridley 48, 56 Sen, Mrinal 67 Shahani, Kumar 19n14 Shantaram, V. 65

Sharma, Kidar Nath 49 Singh, Dara 88 Sino-Indian War 88, 156 Sippy, Ramesh 21, 64 Sirk, Douglas 40, 44 situational ethics 9 social sciences 46, 116 Sontag, Susan 14 stardom 123–127 station, in film narrative 63–70 Strasberg, Lee 78 swadeshi movement 93 Swift, Jonathan 54, 55 Tarantino, Quentin 13 Tarkovsky, Andrei 56 Telugu language films 99 theme music in films 111–114 Third World, the 10, 91–93 Tocqueville, Alexis de 27 Todorov, Tsvetan 53, 60 transcendental reality, the notion of 100 Truffaut, Francois 28 truth/truism, as the message in films 7, 9–11, 59, 117, 119–122, 124, 165, 166 Varma, Ravi 7 Vedas 107 villains in films 23, 100, 111, 113, 135, 136, 144, 146, 147, 156, 166 vocations, representation in films 137, 153, 154 war films 9, 35, 85, 87–89, 95, 152, 158, 159 Welles, Orson 66 woman-centric films 64, 142 women 34, 40, 63–65, 68, 134, 136, 139, 141, 143 Youth films 88, 89 Zeldovich, Alexandr 56

182