Department of Communication
Permanent link for this collection
Browse
Browsing Department of Communication by Subject "Bollywood"
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Colonial rebels in Indian cinema: narratives, ideology and popular culture(2014) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Sreekumar, RohiniHistorical films are a widely discussed genre of visual narration as it poses the challenge of a reliable balance between history, myth and truth. Indian history and independence have been one of those themes that have been adapted into filmic narration, not only as a national oration, but from an international lens. Unlike any other historical moment, Indian Independence is the most celebrated and recurring themes of historical movies and still continuous to be a vibrant subject for Indian film makers. Dealing with the narration of a nation, often these films are looked at with a skeptical attitude, mostly because of its colonizer’s view of the colonized. This article addresses Bhabha’s (1994) interstitial perspective and mimicry of ambivalence positing that these films neither dominate nor propagate certain colonial ideologies, nor does it make the colonizer as a virtuous subject, but rather create an ambivalent identity, which is neither colonizer nor colonized, but a hybrid of it. Apart from some English productions on Indian colonial rule and independence, some Indian films are also taken as a case study to elucidate the concept of hybridity in cultural meaning. When the ‘object’ of history or the colonized reacts with their perception, it creates an ambivalence that is far different from the colonizer’s perception.Item Surgical strikes on screen: narrations of terrorism and military cross-border violence in Bollywood cinema(2022) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.Violence, as a concept can take many forms, especially with a touch of human imagination, it exceeds the legal, moral, and geographical demarcations to achieve a state of aesthetic artistry when employed as a source of inspiration. The quality of violence is discursive and the way it attracts spectators to its depiction in fictional modes cannot be adequately explained using a single context (Zillmann 1998). When cinema uses violence as an important theme to visualize a world, it creates an effect that highlights the complex social, cultural, and political functioning of societies. The popular cinema of India the Bollywood film industry that produces films in the Hindi language is a perfect niche for the study of such societies once we discover the fundamental attitude of its cinematic narratives has been notorious for generating a mass cultural appeal. One of the salient features of the Bollywood ideology includes box-office-oriented productions with exaggerated storylines and action-packed melodramas. The high dramatic action is associated with the larger-than-life superstardom of actors, which is usually embellished through choreographed fight sequences, dialogue deliveries, and the aesthetics of character construction and portrayal.Item Transgressive bodies in dark worlds: female gangsters and film noir in Indian popular cinema(2024) Raj, Sony Jalarajan; Suresh, Adith K.The influence of film noir is reflected in Indian popular cinema through narratives that portray the aesthetics of crime-infested, morally deranged and extremely violent urban cityscapes where characters deal with the anxieties of a modern world. The representation of women in such narratives presents a context that challenges the way female characters are imagined and stereotyped in traditional Indian film narratives. This paper examines the social, cultural and historical construction of female identity in Indian cinema through the lens of female gangsters and film noir. The noir space in Bollywood cinematic narratives is dominated by hypermasculine, morally elusive, and existentially indifferent villains/anti-hero personas. However, by portraying the role of gangsters and criminals, women also occupy the underworlds of crime and action. They violate the norms of culturally assigned gender performance by fundamentally disrupting the entertainment value associated with the traditional picturization of the female identity. This article argues that the noir female portrayals that disrupt the symbiotic relationships between conventional gender politics and cultural norms emerge as a new category of transgressive figures that walk the thin line of moral dichotomies. They subvert their existing identities to create a state of gendered unpredictability by replacing male subjective positions.