Spectres of Sentimentality: the Bollywood Film
2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 23; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09502360902868399
ISSN1470-1308
Autores Tópico(s)South Asian Studies and Diaspora
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size This essay is for my mother, Lila W. Mishra, to whom I failed to say a final goodbye. And so I continue to mourn her death. Notes Ashish Rajadhyaksha, ‘The “Bollywoodization” of the Indian Cinema: Cultural Nationalism in the Global Arena’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 4 (2003), pp. 25–39. Reprinted in Anandam P. Kavoori and Aswin Punathambekar eds. Global Bollywood (New York: New York University Press, 2008), pp. 17–40. An interesting internalization of the Bollywood system takes place in Baz Luhrmann's epic Australia (2008) where language charged with sentiment and the drover-character coded as a ‘man of feeling’ shift the usual ideological subtext of the epic towards romance. Interestingly Luhrmann goes to Xavier Herbert's sentimental historical romances Capricornia (1937) and Poor Fellow My Country (1975) and not to Patrick White's epics The Tree of Man (1955) and Voss (1957) for inspiration. The Indian actor Anupam Kher (best known in the West for his role in Bend It Like Beckham) has opened an acting school in London ‘that will tutor aspiring actors who hope to break into Indian film’. The Weekend Australian (September 13–14, 2008), p. 17. In Egypt, as Walter Armbrust writes, ‘Film (i) Hindi means “an Indian film”, but also is synonymous with “a silly thing”’. Similarly ‘fakirni Hindi?’ is a derogatory expression meaning ‘You think I am from India or something?’. See Walter Armbrust, ‘The Ubiquitous Nonpresence of India: Peripheral Visions from Egyptian Popular Culture’ in Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti eds. Global Bollywood (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), p. 201. Armbrust's essay is a rare instance of research which corrects some of the more enthusiastic claims made about the global reach of Bollywood cinema. Edward K. Chan, ‘Food and Cassettes: Encounters with Indian Filmsong’ in Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti eds. Global Bollywood, p. 279. In Woh Lamhe (2006 Woh Lamhe. 2006. Prod.: Mahesh Bhatt. Dir.: Mohit Suri. Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Shiney Ahuja, Shaad Randhawa. [Google Scholar]), an otherwise realist Bollywood film, the haunting spectres of sentimentality surfaces in the song tum jo nahīm ho to kuch bhī nahīm hai (‘If you are not with me, then there is nothing else’). Rajadhyaksha, ‘The “Bollywoodization” of the Indian Cinema’. The demise of the mythologicals coincides with the new reading of Bollywood. The last major mythological was in fact Jai Santoshi Maa (1975 Jai Santoshi Maa. 1975. Prod.: Satram Rohara. Dir.: Vijay Sharma. Cast: Kanan Kaushal, Ashish Kumar, Bharat Bhushan, Trilok Kapoor. [Google Scholar]). I borrow the use of the ‘Model Reader’ from Umberto Eco. See Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), p.9: ‘An open text outlines a “closed” project of its Model Reader as a component of its structural strategy’. See The ‘Dhvanyaloka’ of Ānandavardhana with the ‘Locana’ of Abhinavagupta, eds. and trans. Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, and M. V. Patwardhan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). The Vālmīki Rāmāyana I. 2. 17: śokārtasya pravrtto me śloko bhavatu nānyathā (‘in this moment of grief, śoka, I have uttered poetry composed in ślokas and nothing else’). For a concise introduction to the rasa of karuna see Edwin Gerow, A Glossary of Indian Figures of Speech (The Hague: Mouton, 1971). When cinema came to India Indar Sabhā [Indra Sabha ] was one of the first narratives made into film (M. Joshi, 1925, silent; J. J. Madan, 1932 Indra Sabha. 1932. Prod.: Madan Theatres. Dir.: J. J. Madan. Cast: Nissar, Kajjan, Mukhtar Begum. [Google Scholar], sound). Kathryn Hansen, ‘The Indar Sabhā Phenomenon: Public Theatre and Consumption in Greater India (1853–1956)’ in Rachel Dwyer and Christopher Pinney eds. Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), p.76. This was certainly true of the elaborate Grant Theatre (opened in 1846) where, in the early years, productions of Shakespeare were popular. Vijay Mishra, ‘Re-mapping Bollywood Cinema: A Postcolonial Case-Study’ in James Donald and Michael Renov eds. The Sage Handbook of Film Studies (London: Sage Publications, 2008), p. 479. Hindi drops the built-in ‘a’ after some consonants. Hence the film's title as Eklavya and not, if Sanskrit were followed, Ekalavya. The Mahābhārata, ed. Vishnu S. Sukhantar (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1942), vol. 1, ādiparvan, pp. 549–53 (1. 123: 10–39). Hereafter cited in the text. Simon Brodbeck, ‘Ekalavya and Mahābhārata 1.121–28’, Hindu Studies, 10 (2006), pp. 1–34. I wish to thank Dr Greg Bailey of La Trobe University for drawing my attention to this brilliant essay. Ibid., p. 7. Or in Alf Hiltebeitel's words, ‘[this is a text with] multiple and deepening causalities, overdeterminations, and intriguing contradictions’ (quoted by Brodbeck, p. 7). Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p.14. David Shulman, The King and the Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 380–400. D. D. Kosambi, Combined Methods in Indology and Other Writings, ed. Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 365. Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (London: Merlin, 1971). Sigmund Freud, ‘Dostoevsky and Parricide’ in Sigmund Freud, Art and Literature [Pelican Freud Library, Vol. 14] (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 441. Ibid., p. 455. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems in Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 7. Fyodor Dostoevsky, ‘White Nights’, in David Magarshack trans. Great Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1968), pp. 145–201. Hereafter cited in the text. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), p. 32. See also Luchino Visconti, Three Screenplays: White Nights, Rocco and His Brothers, The Job, trans. Judith Green (New York: The Orion Press, 1970). Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Visconti (New York: Viking Press, 1973), pp. 123–24. Dan Schneider, ‘White Nights by Luchino Visconti’. [Alternative Film Guide] http://www.altfg.com/blog/film-reviews/white-nights-luchino-visconti/ Vijay Mishra, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 6–7. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Visconti, p. 122. Ibid., p. 128. In real life Ranbir Kapoor is the auteur Raj Kapoor's grandson. His father Rishi Kapoor is Raj Kapoor's second son. Recall the jānam dekh lo mit gayī dūriyām (‘Beloved, see our separation has gone’) song in the film Veer Zaara (2004 Veer Zaara. 2004. Prod.: Yash Chopra and Aditya Chopra. Dir.: Yash Chopra. Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta, Rani Mukherjee, Amitabh Bachchan. [Google Scholar]). This song, which constructs a fantasy around an impossible love, also ends in the rain. I thank Jasmine Dean for drawing my attention to this film at Wollongong University in May 2008. In the screenplay of Visconti's Le Notti Bianche, the second scene shows us Mario in a café at closing time requesting coffee (for which the machine has been switched off) and then a beer. In the film this scene is omitted. Visconti, however, makes very Spartan use of music and non-diegetic sound effects. The sound of steps, church bells, the clock signalling the hour, the off screen singing in the opera The Barber of Seville, the rock number (‘Thirteen Woman and only one Man in Town’ by Bill Haley and the Comets) in the café and the orchestral music at the end of the film are all that we hear. Visconti's Mario goes to the aging prostitute, but desists from having sex with her. He is also roughened up by a passer by when she screams astonished by Mario's lack of sexual excitement. The dialogue echoes Visconti: ‘Try to forgive me. I'll always be grateful to you’ (Natalia). ‘Go to him. You mustn't feel remorse. God bless you for the little bit of happiness you gave me. It was not a mere detail in the course of my life’ (Mario). In Visconti Mario gathers his dishevelled coat, shakes it, puts it on his shoulder and walks slowly. A stray dog (seen earlier in the film) comes to him. Mario continues walking, followed by the dog. For the first time non-diegetic orchestral music is heard. The original Aah had a tragic ending along the lines of Devdas. Some weeks after its release, quite uncharacteristically, Raj Kapoor gave it a happy ending. See Mishra, Bollywood Cinema, pp. 104–5. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ [1975] in Constance Penley ed. Feminism and Film Theory (New York: Routledge; London: BFI Publishing, 1988), pp. 57–68. Laura. Mulvey, ‘Afterthoughts on “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” inspired by Duel in the Sun’ [1981] in Constance Penley ed. Feminism and Film Theory, pp. 69–79.
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