The Melodramatic Public

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by Ravi Vasudevan

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About the Book

The melodramatic public draws on melodrama as a key conceptual apparatus to understand how entertainment cinema in India drew audiences into complex passages of historical change. As the seeming consensus of the 1950s about nation-building unraveled in the 1970s, and globalization introduced new economic and territorial compulsions, Indian cinema offered compelling testimony to debates about economic advancement, social justice, inter-community conflict, and urban lifestyles.

Melodrama provided a narrative architecture and an expressive form which connected the public and the private, as well as the personal and the political, in ways which engaged audiences emotionally. In continuous dialogue with cinematic 'others'-within American cinema, in Indian popular cinema, and in a realist art cinema-mainstream melodrama also underwent significant mutations. This book explores the dynamics of form and narrative strategy across a wide repertoire of film practices. These include the pioneer D.G. Phalke, popular 'auteur' Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt, industry moguls Aditya and Yash Chopra, mainstream innovators Mani Rarhnam, Kamalahasan, and Ram Gopal Verma, and art and documentary cinema icons Satyajit Ray and Anand Patwardhan.

The book concludes with the contemporary global moment associated with 'Hollywood'. It considers changes in state policy and industrial organization, and the impact of digital technologies, new economies of consumption, and wider export markets on Indian film culture.

About the Author

RAVI VASUDEVAN works at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, and is co-initiator of Sarai, the Centre's programme on media and urban research. He has taught Film Studies at universities in India and the USA, and held fellowships at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, the School of Oriental and African Studies, and Princeton. His articles have been widely published, anthologized, and translated. He is editorial advisor to Screen, founding editor of Bio Scope (a journal of South Asian screen studies), and has edited making Meaning in Indian Cinema (2000).

Contents

	Acknowledgements	xiii
	Introduction	1
1	Indian Cinema Today	1
	And yesterday	4
2	The Thematics of Melodrama	8
3	The shifting Agenda of Film Studies in India	10
1	The melodramatic public	16
I:	DEBATES IN MELODRAMA STUDIEIS	17
1	The Archaeology of Melodrama in Euro-American Theatre and Cinema	17
2	Melodrama as Generalized mode of Cinematic Narration	20
3	Melodrama vs Classical Narrative Cinema	26
4	The post-Colonial Question: Melodrama vs Realism	28
5	Deconstructing the Universal and the National	31
II:	THINKING ABOUT MELODRAMA IN INDIAN CINEMA	34
6	Pre-Cinema Histories	34
7	Film form: The Heterogeneous Popular Format	38
8	Melodramatic Interventions	42
9	'Horizontal' and 'Vertical' Articulations	46
10	Revisiting Melodrama in Hollywood	56
	PART I
	Melodramatic and other Publics	65
	Introduction	67
	Narrative Forms and Modes of Address in Indian Cinema	67
2	Shifting Codes, Dissolving Identities: Realist Art Cinema Criticism and Popular Film Form	74
1	Critical Discourses in the 1950s	75
2	Popular Narrative Form	81
	Visual Figures	82
	Appropriations and Transformations of 'Modern' Codes	86
	The Street and the Dissolution of social Identity	88
	Iconic Transactions	89
3	Redefining the Popular: Melodrama and Realism	94
4	The Popular Cultural Politics of the Social Film	95
3	The Cultural Politics of Address in a 'Transitional' Cinema	98
1	Indian Popular Cinema Genres and Discourses of Transformation	102
2	Dominant Currents in Contemporary Criticism	105
3	The Politics of Indian melodrama	108
4	Iconicity, Frontality, and the Tableau Frame	110
	The Reconstruction of the Icon	112
	Darshan	114
	Tableau, Time, and Subjectivity	118
5	The political Terms of Spectatorial Subjectivity	125
4	Neither State Nor Faith: Mediating Sectarian Conflict in popular Cinema	130
1	Community Typology and public Form in popular Cinema	131
2	Phalke and the Typological Discourse of Early Cinema	137
3	The Social Film: Community Typage/ Modernity/Psychology	141
4	The Historical Film: Differentiating Historical and Contemporary Publics	145
5	The Transcendental Location of Stellar Bodies	150
	Raj Kapoor	151
	Nana Patekar	157
5	A Modernist Public: The Double-Take of Modernism in the Work of Satyajit Ray	163
1	Ray's Films: Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, and a History of the Present	166
	The Modernism of the Trilogy	168
2	The Unfinished Agenda of History	181
	Charulata (1964)	183
3	The Contemporary	191
	Aranyer Din Ratri (1969)	192
	Jana Aranya (1975)	192
	PART II CINEMA AND TERRITORIAL IMAGINATION IN THE SUBCONTINENT: TAMILNADU AND INDIA	199
	INTRODUCTION	201
1	The Formation of a pan-Indian Market: Inter-Regional Translatability in the Cinema of Social Reform	202
2	Differentiated Territories of a Sub continental Cinema Before and After Nation-State Formation	205
6	VOICE, SPACE, FORM: The symbolic and Territorial Itinerary of Mani Rathnam's Roja (1992)	213
1	Kashmir and Tamilnadu	213
2	The politics of Identity	219
3	Tamilness as Intractable Edifice	221
4	The Connotations of place	223
5	The Recalibration of Popular	224
7	Bombay (Mani Rathnam, 1995) and Its Publics	229
1	Plot Synopsis	229
2	Towards a Modern Identity: The Basic Narrative Structure	231
3	The Representation of Inter-Community Differences	233
4	Journalistic Effects and Truth Claims: The pattern of Public Events	234
5	The navigation of Sectarian Difference: Community and Sexuality	245
6	Self-Alienation in the Constitution of Decommunalized Space	251
7	Melodramatic Identification: The Claims of self-Sacrifice	253
8	Another History Rises to the Surface: Melodrama in the Age of Digital simulation: Hey Ram! (Kamalahasan, 1999)	259
1	Plot synopsis	259
2	A New History?	262
3	Publicizing an Unofficial History	266
4	Narrative Form: Dropping the Quotation	268
5	Reading Hindutva Masculinity	269
6	'Lifting the Mogul Pardha'	271
7	Melodrama: performativity and Expressivity	272
8	Melodrama in the Age of Digital Simulation	277
	PART III
	MELODRAMA MUTATED AND DIFFERENTIATED: NARRATIVE FORM, URBAN VISTAS, AND NEW PUBLICS IN A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT	291
	INTRODUCTION	293
1	The Urban Imagination	293
2	Differentiated Film Publics	296
3	Public: Bollywood, Globalization, and Genre Diversification	299
9	Selves Made Strange: Violent and performative Bodies in the Cities of Indian Cinema 1974-2003	303
1	In Retrospect: The Breaching of Vistas Zanjeer, Deewar, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Kabhi Kbhie; Tarang, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Alberto Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai	306
2	Our Violent Times: the Morphology of Bodies in Space	312
	Ankur, Tezaab, Parinda, Nayakan
3	Diagnnosing the Sources of violence	318
	Naseem Zakhm, Maachis, Baazigar Darr; Bombay Hamara Shehar, Ram Ke Naam, War and peace, I Live in Behrampada
4	Intimations of Dispersal: The poetry and Anxiety of a Decentred World	322
	Dahan, Egyarah Mile, A Season Outside, When Four Friends Meet, Jari Mari: Of cloth and other stories
5	Social Transvestism and the Open-Ended Seductions of Performance: The work of Aamir Khan	325
6	Satya: The Politics of Cinematic and Cinephiliac performativity	329
10	The Contemporary Film Industry-I: The Meanings of 'Bollywood'	334
1	Bollywood, Mark 1: The Transformation of the Bombay Film Economy	339
2	Bollywood, Mark 2: Multi-Sited Histories of Indian Cinema	346
11	The Contemporary Film Industry-II: Textual Form, Genre Diversity, and Industrial Strategies	362
1	Narrative Form in the Contemporary Epoch-I: Father India and Emergence of the Global Nation	362
	Mothers, Communities, Nations	363
	Fathers, Social Order, State Form	366
	The Symbolic Functions of the Father: Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (Aditya Chopra, 1995)	367
	The Multicultural Father Deceased and Reincarnated: Kal Ho Na Ho (Nikhil Advani, 2004)	375
2	Narrative Form in the Contemporary Epoch-II: The Emergence of Genre Cinema	383
	Rangeela (Ram Gopal Varma, 1995)	384
	Bhoot (Ran Gopal Varma, 2003)	387
	Ek Hasina Thi (Sriram Raghavan, 2003)	389
	Beyond or Within Bollywood?	392
	Conclusion and Afterword	398
1	The Cinematic public - I: Melodrama	398
2	The Cinematic public -II: Cinema and Film After the Proliferation of Copy Culture	406
	Bibliography	415
	Index	437

The Melodramatic Public

by Ravi Vasudevan

Item Code:

NAG209

Cover:

Hardcover

Edition:

2010

Publisher:

Permanent Black

ISBN:

9788178242620

Language:

English

Size:

8.5 inch X 5.5 inch

Pages:

482

Other Details:

Weight of the book: 710 gms

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Contents

	Acknowledgements	xiii
	Introduction	1
1	Indian Cinema Today	1
	And yesterday	4
2	The Thematics of Melodrama	8
3	The shifting Agenda of Film Studies in India	10
1	The melodramatic public	16
I:	DEBATES IN MELODRAMA STUDIEIS	17
1	The Archaeology of Melodrama in Euro-American Theatre and Cinema	17
2	Melodrama as Generalized mode of Cinematic Narration	20
3	Melodrama vs Classical Narrative Cinema	26
4	The post-Colonial Question: Melodrama vs Realism	28
5	Deconstructing the Universal and the National	31
II:	THINKING ABOUT MELODRAMA IN INDIAN CINEMA	34
6	Pre-Cinema Histories	34
7	Film form: The Heterogeneous Popular Format	38
8	Melodramatic Interventions	42
9	'Horizontal' and 'Vertical' Articulations	46
10	Revisiting Melodrama in Hollywood	56
	PART I
	Melodramatic and other Publics	65
	Introduction	67
	Narrative Forms and Modes of Address in Indian Cinema	67
2	Shifting Codes, Dissolving Identities: Realist Art Cinema Criticism and Popular Film Form	74
1	Critical Discourses in the 1950s	75
2	Popular Narrative Form	81
	Visual Figures	82
	Appropriations and Transformations of 'Modern' Codes	86
	The Street and the Dissolution of social Identity	88
	Iconic Transactions	89
3	Redefining the Popular: Melodrama and Realism	94
4	The Popular Cultural Politics of the Social Film	95
3	The Cultural Politics of Address in a 'Transitional' Cinema	98
1	Indian Popular Cinema Genres and Discourses of Transformation	102
2	Dominant Currents in Contemporary Criticism	105
3	The Politics of Indian melodrama	108
4	Iconicity, Frontality, and the Tableau Frame	110
	The Reconstruction of the Icon	112
	Darshan	114
	Tableau, Time, and Subjectivity	118
5	The political Terms of Spectatorial Subjectivity	125
4	Neither State Nor Faith: Mediating Sectarian Conflict in popular Cinema	130
1	Community Typology and public Form in popular Cinema	131
2	Phalke and the Typological Discourse of Early Cinema	137
3	The Social Film: Community Typage/ Modernity/Psychology	141
4	The Historical Film: Differentiating Historical and Contemporary Publics	145
5	The Transcendental Location of Stellar Bodies	150
	Raj Kapoor	151
	Nana Patekar	157
5	A Modernist Public: The Double-Take of Modernism in the Work of Satyajit Ray	163
1	Ray's Films: Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, and a History of the Present	166
	The Modernism of the Trilogy	168
2	The Unfinished Agenda of History	181
	Charulata (1964)	183
3	The Contemporary	191
	Aranyer Din Ratri (1969)	192
	Jana Aranya (1975)	192
	PART II CINEMA AND TERRITORIAL IMAGINATION IN THE SUBCONTINENT: TAMILNADU AND INDIA	199
	INTRODUCTION	201
1	The Formation of a pan-Indian Market: Inter-Regional Translatability in the Cinema of Social Reform	202
2	Differentiated Territories of a Sub continental Cinema Before and After Nation-State Formation	205
6	VOICE, SPACE, FORM: The symbolic and Territorial Itinerary of Mani Rathnam's Roja (1992)	213
1	Kashmir and Tamilnadu	213
2	The politics of Identity	219
3	Tamilness as Intractable Edifice	221
4	The Connotations of place	223
5	The Recalibration of Popular	224
7	Bombay (Mani Rathnam, 1995) and Its Publics	229
1	Plot Synopsis	229
2	Towards a Modern Identity: The Basic Narrative Structure	231
3	The Representation of Inter-Community Differences	233
4	Journalistic Effects and Truth Claims: The pattern of Public Events	234
5	The navigation of Sectarian Difference: Community and Sexuality	245
6	Self-Alienation in the Constitution of Decommunalized Space	251
7	Melodramatic Identification: The Claims of self-Sacrifice	253
8	Another History Rises to the Surface: Melodrama in the Age of Digital simulation: Hey Ram! (Kamalahasan, 1999)	259
1	Plot synopsis	259
2	A New History?	262
3	Publicizing an Unofficial History	266
4	Narrative Form: Dropping the Quotation	268
5	Reading Hindutva Masculinity	269
6	'Lifting the Mogul Pardha'	271
7	Melodrama: performativity and Expressivity	272
8	Melodrama in the Age of Digital Simulation	277
	PART III
	MELODRAMA MUTATED AND DIFFERENTIATED: NARRATIVE FORM, URBAN VISTAS, AND NEW PUBLICS IN A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT	291
	INTRODUCTION	293
1	The Urban Imagination	293
2	Differentiated Film Publics	296
3	Public: Bollywood, Globalization, and Genre Diversification	299
9	Selves Made Strange: Violent and performative Bodies in the Cities of Indian Cinema 1974-2003	303
1	In Retrospect: The Breaching of Vistas Zanjeer, Deewar, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Kabhi Kbhie; Tarang, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Alberto Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai	306
2	Our Violent Times: the Morphology of Bodies in Space	312
	Ankur, Tezaab, Parinda, Nayakan
3	Diagnnosing the Sources of violence	318
	Naseem Zakhm, Maachis, Baazigar Darr; Bombay Hamara Shehar, Ram Ke Naam, War and peace, I Live in Behrampada
4	Intimations of Dispersal: The poetry and Anxiety of a Decentred World	322
	Dahan, Egyarah Mile, A Season Outside, When Four Friends Meet, Jari Mari: Of cloth and other stories
5	Social Transvestism and the Open-Ended Seductions of Performance: The work of Aamir Khan	325
6	Satya: The Politics of Cinematic and Cinephiliac performativity	329
10	The Contemporary Film Industry-I: The Meanings of 'Bollywood'	334
1	Bollywood, Mark 1: The Transformation of the Bombay Film Economy	339
2	Bollywood, Mark 2: Multi-Sited Histories of Indian Cinema	346
11	The Contemporary Film Industry-II: Textual Form, Genre Diversity, and Industrial Strategies	362
1	Narrative Form in the Contemporary Epoch-I: Father India and Emergence of the Global Nation	362
	Mothers, Communities, Nations	363
	Fathers, Social Order, State Form	366
	The Symbolic Functions of the Father: Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (Aditya Chopra, 1995)	367
	The Multicultural Father Deceased and Reincarnated: Kal Ho Na Ho (Nikhil Advani, 2004)	375
2	Narrative Form in the Contemporary Epoch-II: The Emergence of Genre Cinema	383
	Rangeela (Ram Gopal Varma, 1995)	384
	Bhoot (Ran Gopal Varma, 2003)	387
	Ek Hasina Thi (Sriram Raghavan, 2003)	389
	Beyond or Within Bollywood?	392
	Conclusion and Afterword	398
1	The Cinematic public - I: Melodrama	398
2	The Cinematic public -II: Cinema and Film After the Proliferation of Copy Culture	406
	Bibliography	415
	Index	437

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