Imaging the Nation: Sexual Economies in Contemporary Bombay Cinema 1970-2000

Melodrama And The Nation: Sexual Economies of Bombay Cinema 1970-2000
By Karen Gabriel
Women Unlimited Publications
Pages: 392, Price: 595.

Bollywood , despite its numerically stunning 245 annual film releases, has been peripheral to academic concerns. The song-dance sequences, the macho super hero, the melodramatic content and comic relief of mainstream cinema did not appeal to a majority of film scholars as subject matter for cinematic discourses. Karen Gabriel in her book ‘Melodrama And The Nation’ rectifies this disjunction between scholars of cinema and the popular cinema of Bollywood.

Gabriel in her inter-disciplinary treatise focuses on the emergence of gender relations and sexuality as a cinematic response to the socio-political ethos. In doing so, she moves away from the traditional ‘film-as-text’ approach to the more contemporary ‘film-as-a-cultural-product’ affiliation. So the political crisis of 1970’s becomes the stimulus for the rise of the ‘vigilante’ figure as crafted by Bachchan in ‘Zanjeer’ with its reclusive but ‘decidedly modernist and stylized type of heroism’. This champion of social rebellion, however, was steeped in ‘fundamental orthodoxy of sexual economies’ which negated the articulation of strong femininity. The relative political stability of the 1980’s and 1990’s saw a fragmentation of the messianic icon and emergence of alternate heroism espoused in ‘Parinda’, ‘Prahar’ or even ‘Khalnayak’. There was also the emergence of the deviant anti-hero articulated by Sharukh Khan in ‘Baazigar’ and ‘Darr’ or Nana Patekar in ‘Agnisakshi’. Feminine articulation, which was initially restricted to arm-candy characters showed some signs of revival in ‘Damini’, ‘Zakhm’ and ‘Hey Ram’. But here as Gabriel argues convincingly, we see a representation of ‘wounded’ femininity that is vulnerable and succumbs to violence both communal and social. Rape becomes a cinematic metaphor for representing perpetration of such violence.

Gabriel also acknowledges the ‘cultural, social and religious plurality’ of Indian society and analyzes the consequent shaping of the cinematic discourses on Indian identity. So, ‘Border’ ‘displaces war as the central concern of the film’ and becomes instead the backdrop for the articulation of ‘specific ideologies of masculinity and the nation’. ‘Prahar’ also talks about the ‘preservation of preferred modes of masculinity’ and ‘a notional nation’. The treatise goes on to explore the ‘ideal Indian subject’ with its ‘mythical homogeneous purity’ and its modulation in the presence of the Hindu Right. As a consequence, the dichotomy between communities that disrupts the ideology of secularism and the concept of the ideal nation is also touched upon. The narrative of melodramatic cinema is examined as it shifts from crisis to resolution that typically pivots around ‘affirmation of patriarchal values’, diminution of women and ‘marginalization’ of the issue of reorientation of sexual politics. Gabriel’s book is a well-researched and scholarly rendition of the analysis of cinematic discourses and sexual economies in mainstream cinema. A great read for research scholars of commercial cinema.

Documenting documentary

From Raj to Swaraj: The Non-fiction Film in India
By B.D. Garga.
Penguin Books.
Pages 214. Rs 695.

AS a child I remember sitting glued to my chair in a darkened hall, watching a black and white newsreel before the start of a film. Those were the days when it was the norm in all cinema halls to show a documentary film before the start of a movie. The newsreel invariably ended with the entire hall rising for the National Anthem and then settling down to enjoy a fiction film. The turf war between the fiction and non-fiction film has been raging for years and today, the documentary film has well and truly lost out to the big guns of Bollywood.

B. D. Garga’s book From Raj to Swaraj gives an insight into the growth and decline in the popularity of the documentary film. Garga in an interesting study traces the antecedents of the non-fictional film. The first attempt to record life vividly and with great intimacy of detail started in 1896 with a short film aptly called The Arrival of a Train at a Station. These Lumiere screenings were followed by more ambitious undertakings that recorded historic events like The Great Delhi Durbar of 1903 and 1911. These films gave way to propaganda films of "the empire needs you" variety.

The idea of using cinema for publicity was first raised in 1918 with war-related recruitment effort of the British Empire. This was the initial phase that eventually led to the making of the newsreel. Always quick to learn, the Indian film-makers also began to experiment with this new genre and the Indian public saw a slew of films on the Indian struggle for independence with the focus being on Mahatma Gandhi. B. D. Garga, with great panache, weaves together two separate skeins of history—the history of India’s struggle for freedom and the history of the rise of non-fiction film.

Garga takes us through the holocaust of Partition and also describes the manner in which the film The British Empire in Colour recorded the Partition-related carnage and stunned audiences all over the world with its realistic depictions. But, the genre of the documentary film saw a sudden decline in the post-Independence era. Official restraints contributed to the decline in the 1960s. The 1970s saw the documentary film touch the nadir with the government insisting that new films be telecast on Doordarshan prior to their theatrical release. It was this or MISA. Then the Censor Board stepped in paring the wings of the film-makers and attempting to make documentaries a government-controlled media.

Garga has, with complete honestly, laid the blame for decline of the documentary film on a government that attempts to feed the audience "make-believe and half-truths" and discourages the inbuilt ability of this genre to "unmask the ugly realities around us". An honest book that is a call to arms to the film fraternity to take up the cause of freedom of the documentary genre.


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The making of a legend

The Bolivian Diary
By Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.
HarperCollins.
Pages: 303. Rs 295.


Victoria & Albert Museum, London, held an exhibition on Che Guevara in 2006. Director Steven Soderbergh made a film on Guevara succinctly called Che which opened in January, 2009. A search on the Net yields a Che store that sells knick-knacks on Guevara. Time magazine rated Guevara as one of the 150 most influential people of the 20th century. This ‘Che’ cult began in the 1960s with Alberto Kordo’s photograph of Guevara, aptly titled ‘Guerrillero’. Since his death in 1967, the stylised visage of Ernesto Guevara has become an icon of radical chic within popular culture. But more importantly, he is revered even today as a symbol of freedom.

In 1966, Guevara left to challenge the military dictatorship in Bolivia and begin "a revolutionary movement that would extend throughout the continent of Latin America". The Bolivian Diary is an account of Guevara’s struggle to put together a band of guerrillas and overthrow an America-backed dictatorship. The narrative of this account is short and pithy and in the nature of short dated notes made by Che. Initially, the struggle made good progress but it ended on a tragic note with the arrest and execution of Guevara.

The books is a compelling and vivid account of the revolution in Cuba and Bolivia. But it is the revolutionary fervour underlying the narratives that makes the account truly moving. The figure of Che with an army beret and a Cuban cigar becomes synonymous with iconic heroism.

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