The Slumdog Phenomenon: A Critical Anthology

243 Pages·2013·1.69 MB·English

by  Ajay Gehlawat

The Slumdog Phenomenon
New Perspectives on World Cinema
The New Perspectives on World Cinema series publishes
engagingly written, highly accessible, and extremely useful books for the
educated reader and the student as well as the scholar. Volumes in this series
will fall under one of the following categories: monographs on neglected
films and filmmakers; classic as well as contemporary film scripts; collections
of the best previously published criticism (including substantial reviews and
interviews) on single films or filmmakers; translations into English of the best
classic and contemporary film theory; reference works on relatively neglected
areas in film studies, such as production design (including sets, costumes, and
make-up), music, editing, and cinematography; and reference works on the
relationship between film and the other performing arts (including theater,
dance, opera, etc.). Many of our titles will be suitable for use as primary or
supplementary course texts at undergraduate and graduate levels.
The goal of the series is thus not only to address subject areas in
which adequate classroom texts are lacking, but also to open
up additional avenues for film research, theoretical
speculation, and practical criticism.
Series Editors
Wheeler Winston Dixon – University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster – University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA
Editorial Board
David Sterritt – Columbia University, USA
Valérie K. Orlando – University of Maryland, USA
Thomas Cripps – Morgan State University, USA
Robert Shail – University of Wales Lampeter, UK
Catherine Fowler – University of Otago, New Zealand
Andrew Horton – University of Oklahoma, USA
Frank P. Tomasulo – City College of New York, USA
The Slumdog Phenomenon
A Critical Anthology
Edited by
Ajay Gehlawat
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2013
by ANTHEM PRESS
75-76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave. #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
© 2013 Ajay Gehlawat editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters © individual contributors
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
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-13: 978 0 85728 001 5 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 0 85728 001 5 (Hbk)
Cover image © 2009 amexicanartist
This title is also available as an eBook.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Notes on Contributors vii
List of Figures xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction The Slumdog Phenomenon xv
Ajay Gehlawat
SLUMDOG AND THE NATION
Chapter 1 National Allegory 3
Brian Larkin
Chapter 2 Slumdog Millionaire and the Emerging Centrality of India 9
Sharmila Mukherjee
Chapter 3 Slumlord Aesthetics and the Question
of Indian Poverty 29
Nandini Chandra
Chapter 4 Watching Time: Slumdog Millionaire and
National Ontology 39
Lakshmi Padmanabhan
SLUMDOG AND THE SLUM
Chapter 5 Slumdog Millionaire and Epistemologies of the City 53
Ulka Anjaria and Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria
Chapter 6 A Million Dollar Exit from the Slum-World:
Slumdog Millionaire’s Troubling Formula for
Social Justice 69
Mitu Sengupta
vi THE SLUMDOG PHENOMENON
Chapter 7 Slumdogs and Millionaires: Facts and Fictions
of Indian (Under)development 91
Snehal Shingavi
SLUMDOG AND BOLLYWOOD
Chapter 8 Slumdogs, Coolies and Gangsters: Amitabh
Bachchan and the Legacy of 1970s Bollywood
in Slumdog Millionaire 109
Claus Tieber
Chapter 9 “It is Written” (in Invisible Ink): Slumdog Millionaire’s
SFX and the Realist Overwriting of Bollywood
Spectacle 121
Samhita Sunya
SLUMDOG’S RECEPTIONS
Chapter 10 Why the Sun Shines on Slumdog 143
Anandam Kavoori
Chapter 11 Slumdog Celebrities 149
Priya Jaikumar
Chapter 12 Slumdog Millionaire and the New Middlebrow 155
Robert Koehler
Chapter 13 Slumdog Comprador: Coming to Terms with
the Slumdog Phenomenon 163
Ajay Gehlawat
Chapter 14 The Life-Cycle of Slumdog Millionaire on the Web
Thomas Elsaesser and Warren Buckland 179
Conclusion Jai Who? 201
Ajay Gehlawat
Select Bibliography 205
Films Cited 211
Index 213
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Ulka Anjaria is assistant professor of English at Brandeis University, with
research interests in Indian literature and popular film, postcolonial studies
and narrative theory. She is the author of Realism in the Twentieth-Century Indian
Novel: Colonial Difference and Literary Form, published by Cambridge University
Press in 2012. She is currently working on a second book on social realism in
contemporary India.
Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria is assistant professor of anthropology at
Brandeis University. He has published in American Ethnologist, City and
Community and Economic and Political Weekly, among others. His co-edited volume
(with Colin McFarlane), Urban Navigations: Politics, Space and the City in South Asia,
was published by Routledge in 2011.
Warren Buckland is reader in film studies at Oxford Brookes University,
UK. His research interests include film theory, narratology and contemporary
American cinema. He has several books to his name, including: Film Theory:
Rational Reconstructions (2012); Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies (ed.,
2009); Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema (ed., 2009); Directed
by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster (2006); Studying
Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis (2002) (with Thomas
Elsaesser); and The Cognitive Semiotics of Film (2000). He is also the editor of the
quarterly journal New Review of Film and Television Studies.
Nandini Chandra teaches in the Department of English at the University
of Delhi. Her book, The Classic Popular: Amar Chitra Katha (1967–2007), was
published by Yoda Press in 2008.
Thomas Elsaesser is professor emeritus of film and television studies at the
University of Amsterdam, and, from 2006 to 2012, was visiting professor at
Yale University. He has authored, edited and co-edited twenty volumes, many
of which have been translated, notably into German, French, Italian, Korean
viii THE SLUMDOG PHENOMENON
and Chinese. Among his books are: Studying Contemporary American Film (2002,
with Warren Buckland), European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (2005); Film
Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses (2010, with Malte Hagener) and The
Persistence of Hollywood (2012).
Ajay Gehlawat is assistant professor of theatre and film in the Hutchins
School of Liberal Studies at Sonoma State University. He is the author of
Reframing Bollywood: Theories of Popular Hindi Cinema (Sage, 2010). His essays
and articles have appeared in numerous journals and collections, including the
Journal of South Asian Popular Culture, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies,
Journal of African American Studies, CineAction, Quarterly Review of Film and Video,
and South Asian Review.
Priya Jaikumar is associate professor at the University of Southern
California’s School of Cinematic Arts, Department of Critical Studies. She
studies the colonial pasts of European cinema, and transformations in Indian
film policy and film form. Publications include the book Cinema at the End of
Empire (Duke, 2006) and articles most recently featured in Postcolonial Cinema
Studies, Wasafari and Film and Empire.
Anandam Kavoori is professor in the Grady College of Journalism and
Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. He works in the areas
of international communication, new media and media literacy. He is the
author or editor of eight books including Global Bollywood (2008, with Aswin
Punathambekar) and, most recently, Digital Media Criticism (2010).
Robert Koehler writes for Variety, Cinema Scope, The Christian Science Monitor
and blogs on filmjourney.org.
Brian Larkin is the author of Signal and Noise: Infrastructure, Media and
Urban Culture in Nigeria, and the co-editor of Media Worlds: Anthropology on New
Terrain. He teaches anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University.
Sharmila Mukherjee teaches English at the City University of New York’s
Bronx Community College and at New York University. She received her PhD
in English from New York University. Her areas of scholarly interest include
literature and globalization, and popular culture and globalization. Her debut
novella will be published by Penguin India in the fall of 2012.
Lakshmi Padmanabhan is a PhD student and Chancellor Thomas Tisch
Fellow in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix
She has a BA in sociology from Stella Maris College, University of Madras
and an MA in communication, culture and technology from Georgetown
University. Her interests include contemporary South Asian film, new media
philosophy, queer theory, race and globalization studies.
Mitu Sengupta is an associate professor in the Department of Politics at
Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada. Mitu has published widely on Indian
market liberalization and development, on labor and migration, and on the
politics of sporting and cultural events. These writings are united by a concern
for how knowledge about poverty, inequality, and “development” is produced,
disseminated, interpreted and understood. Her new research builds on these
critical inquiries to engage more directly with linking theory to practice, and
is concerned with the creation of legal frameworks and policy interventions
for poverty eradication in India and other developing countries, and for social
and global justice.
Snehal Shingavi is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the
University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of the forthcoming The Mahatma
Misunderstood: The Politics and Forms of Indian Literary Nationalism (Anthem Press,
2013), has translated Munshi Premchand’s Sevasadan (Oxford University Press,
2005) and has a forthcoming translation of Ajneya’s Shekhar: a Biography (Oxford
University Press, 2013).
Samhita Sunya is a PhD candidate at Rice University in Houston, Texas,
and has also been a graduate research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of
Culture and Society in Bangalore, Karnataka. Samhita is completing a pre-
history of “viral” media and cinephilia in the digital era, through an account
of Hindi film/songs. Her teaching and research interests include comparative
media studies, sound and genre studies and adaptation studies.
Claus Tieber is research assistant at the University of Salzburg. He studied
theatre, philosophy, political and communications studies at the University of
Vienna. After years as a commissioning editor for the Austrian Broadcasting
Corporation (ORF), he started an academic career in 2001, teaching film
history and theory at the Universities of Vienna, Kiel and Salamanca. Recent
publications include Passages to Bollywood: Einführung in den Hindi-Film (2006),
Schreiben für Hollywood: Das Drehbuch im Studiosystem (2008), Fokus Bollywood:
Das indische Kino in wissenschaftlichen Diskursen (2009) and Stummfilmdramaturgie.
Erzählweisen des amerikanischen Feature Films 1917–1927 (2011).