Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema

260 Pages·2012·2.003 MB·English

by  Sangita Gopal

Conjugations
SOUTH ASIA ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
A series edited by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Sheldon Pollock, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and jointly published by the
University of California Press, the University of Chicago Press, and Columbia University Press.
The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place
by Carla Bellamy (California)
Extreme Poetry: The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration
by Yigal Bronner (Columbia)
Secularizing Islamists? Jama‘at-e-Islami and Jama‘at-ud Da‘wa Pakistan
by Humeira Iqtidar (Chicago)
The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab
by Farina Mir (California)
Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History
by Andrew J. Nicholson (Columbia)
Islam Translated: Literature, Conversion, and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia
by Ronit Ricci (Chicago)
South Asia Across the Disciplines is a series devoted to publishing first books across a wide range
of South Asian studies, including art, history, philology or textual studies, philosophy, religion,
and the interpretive social sciences. Series authors all share the goal of opening up new archives
and suggesting new methods and approaches, while demonstrating that South Asian scholarship
can be at once deep in expertise and broad in appeal.
Conjugations
Marriage and Form in
New Bollywood Cinema
Sangita gopal
The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London
SANGITA GOPAL is associate professor of English at the University
of Oregon. She is coeditor of Global Bollywood: Transnational Travels of
Hindi Film Music.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2011 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2011.
Printed in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-30425-0 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-30426-7 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-30425-6 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-226-30426-4 (paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gopal, Sangita.
Conjugations : marriage and form in new Bollywood cinema /
Sangita Gopal.
p. cm. — (South Asia across the disciplines)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-30425-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-30426-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-30425-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-30426-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Married
people in motion pictures. 2. Couples in motion pictures.
3. Motion pictures—Social aspects—India. 4. Motion picture
industry—India—Bombay. I. Title. II. Series: South Asia
across the disciplines.
PN1993.5.I8G568 2011
791.430954—dc22 2011013546
a This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992
(Permanence of Paper).
To my parents,
Ganesh Gopal Iyer and Shyamosri Iyer

Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Conjugating New Bollywood 1
1 When the Music’s Over: A History
of the Romantic Duet 23
2 Family Matters: Affect, Authority,
and the Codification of Hindi Cinema 60
3 Fearful Habitations: Upward
Mobility and the Horror Genre 91
4 Conjugal Assembly: Mulitplex,
Multiplot, and the Reconfigured Social Film 124
5 Bollywood Local: Conjugal
Rearrangement in Regional Cinema 155
Conclusion: New Bollywood and Its Others 186
Notes 193 Index 229
vii

Figures
1 Song sequence “Main Ban Ke Chidiya,” from Achhyut
Kanya (1936) 36
2 Song sequence “Premi Prem Nagar Mein Jaaye,” from
Admi (1939) 38
3 Kesar and Moti, from Admi (1939) 38
4 Song sequence “Kajra Re,” from Dor (2006) 58
5 Zeenat, Meera, and the bahuroopiya, from Dor (2006) 58
6 Rahul and Yash as Desire and Law, from Kabhi Khushie
Kabhi Gham (2001) 84
7 Rahul and Yash as father and son, from Kabhi Khushie
Kabhi Gham (2001) 85
8 The child Rahul, from Kabhi Khushie Kabhi Gham (2001) 85
9 Rahul and Yash, from Kabhi Khushie Kabhi Gham (2001) 86
10 Dev and Maya in the garden, from Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna
(2006) 88
11 Dev and Maya at the train station, from Kabhi Alvida Na
Kehna (2006) 88
12 Saamri, from Purana Mandir (1984) 98
13 Scene of construction from 13B: Fear Has a New Address
(2008) 110
14 The “high-rise of horror,” from Bhoot (2002) 110
15 Lisa and Arjun, from 1920 (2008) 111
ix