Philosophical Issues in Indian Cinema: Approximate Terms and Concepts

191 Pages·2020·1.132 MB·English

by  MK Raghavendra

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.
T he 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.
T his 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.
M K 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 T he 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, B eyond Bollywood: The Cinemas of South India, published
in 2017. His book T he 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
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and by Routledge
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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
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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
F OR PHILIP LUTGENDORF, WHO ORIGINALLY
ASKED IF THERE WAS AN INDIAN WAY OF FILM-
MAKING, 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 171
Film Index 176
Subject Index 180
viii
INTRODUCTION
‘The meaning of a word is its use in the language.’
Ludwig Wittgenstein, from P hilosophical Investigations 1
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 sys-
tems. 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 remov-
ing 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 what-
ever 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 Brooks 2 – 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.
F ilm 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’ usu-
ally 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