Bollywood cinema encompasses a variety of genres. It’s superior ability to create a connection between all strata’s of viewers gives us a reason to explore the hidden representations in Bollywood cinema. Not long after India regained its independence, a new era of Indian Cinema began. This era put forth heart wrenching movies, filled with patriotic messages and a very clean concept of national progress. The main concept of the nation-state was integrated in almost every Hindi cinema that was created ever since. Nationalism meant protecting the accrual of wealth within the nation, countries like India were going through a phase of protectionism. However, a significant problem arose, within India, the nation consisted of diverse culture and many languages, so creating the homogeneity that was needed to drive this concept of nation-state, would just fall through the cracks, unless some kinds of unification methods weren’t evolved.
Indian cinema, mainly talking about Hindi Cinema well-known today as Bollywood cinema, created this imagery of a nation. Bollywood cinema adapted the conservative and “ancient” tradition, as a modern idea of “nation”. There by creating a separate category of melodrama which was termed as “feudal family romance” by Madhava Prasad. This melodrama encompassed a film making technique where the nation would be depicted as a family on screen. And all the troubles faced by the family were a small representation of the bigger national problems. The realism used in these depictions was also modified to fit this “national” interest. It was just snippets of reality that was borrowed and made to look like the problems faced by the entire Indian nation. So in actual reality these were the problems mainly faced by the b...
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...hown in QSQT, this still conflicts with what happens in reality. Which brings me to my last point, epic melodrama in Hindi cinema, creates a imaginary realism, which can only be potrayed through movies, this realism is contrasting to what the nation and people go through in a day to day life. These maybe representations of the feelings that people have been going through all along. However, though epic melodrama successfully weaves together the contradictory ideologies but when it is shown through a realistic point of view, these ideologies will fail.
Epic melodrama, is a cinematic technique that attracts and creates all the emotions that are rendered by the characters to be felt by the cinema audience, but it ends the moment the reel finishes, as real life implementations of all the messages, are not only hard, but according to me till a great degree impossible.
The epic genre will continue to appeal to people because of the grand scale of the movie. Epic films have extravagant and spectacular settings, lavish costumes, sweeping musical scores and an all-star cast. Therefore they are often exorbitant and are among the most expensive movies to create. Epics are often based on royalty, heroes, superheroes and military leaders etc. They focus on broad events that affect the lives of many i.e. catastrophic events, natural tragedies, war or political turmoil.
fragmented by the interruptions of song and dance, lending a sense of unreality. I believe Mira Nair successfully achieved her aim to make a Bollywood film on her own terms. As a director, she effectively combined the techniques of sound, editing, costume, colour and location to produce a fairly unique Bollywood film. Her message of the continuing modernisation of India, and her criticisms of both the societies she illustrates in the film comes across clearly, as do the more controversial points she brings up that Bollywood, as a film industry, does not typically address. Its appeal and effectiveness can be measured by the huge range of global audiences it has attracted, both Western and Eastern, which indicates that she accomplished her goal of making a realistic movie, breaking the traditional Bollywood mould.
The Star Wars Trilogy seems to embody within the form of cinema many of the classic elements of epic. In tracing the English epic from the Homeric odes to Tom Jones on the large screen and observing the various forms of epic development in response to changing cultural needs, it shows how the Star Wars Trilogy shares the purposes and cultural functions as well as the devices of traditional epic. And by connecting these films to epic, I hope to illuminate how the evolving genre of epic may assume the cinematic form.
In the post-independence era of Indian cinema, nothing was discussed and/or debated about more than the prohibition of kissing in films. Although there was no formal ban of kissing that existed, it was based mostly on an “unwritten rule” that since kissing was seen as a sign of westerness (i.e. Hollywood films) to allow it in Bollywood films would dissolve Indian culture. However, author Madhava Prasad argues that kissing was banned not because of a presumed censorship of western codes, but instead because of a need to shore up the ideologies of the extended family and/or clan. In other words, Prasad believes that the ban on kissing is about securing the extended family and that the “preserve Indian culture” reasoning was just invented to justify the ban. I personally argue that Prasad’s argument is correct and plan to elaborate on it through the use of the Bollywood film Waqt.
In attempting to define the history and modern identity of postcolonial nations, Partha Chatterjee calls to attention the many paradoxes inherent in the cultural fabric of India. It is a country, he notes, with a modern culture based on native tradition that has been influenced by its colonial period. This modern culture contains conflicts and contradictions that create the ambiguity in India’s national identity. U. R. Anantha Murthy’s understands Indian culture as a mosaic pattern of tradition and modernity. He writes of a heterodox reality where the intellectual self is in conflict with the emotional, the rational individual experiences the sad nostalgia of the exile from his traditional roots and in fluctuating between belief and non-belief he works out his dilemmas. This paper attempts a reading of the transgression of “Love Laws” in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things as not only the representation of this heterodox modernity in the personal domain as a reflection of the larger national conflict but also a postcolonial writer’s dilemmas in search for an identity and their troubles in expressing it.
Bollywood films portray unequal power relations between the female and male characters. Male are allotted to have sexual desires and are portrayed to be active lookers, while females on the contrary are represented passively and seen as the objects of the male gaze (Mulvey, 11). Spectators watching the film unconsciously identify with the male characters due to the narration of the film and the way the camera caters to the male gaze (Smelik, 494). Women are not shown to have sexual desires throughout the course of the film because of the ...
Classical Hollywood Cinema Classical Hollywood cinema is a character-centered cinema. Its characters are more or less stable, knowable, and psychologically coherent individuals who possess clearly defined, specific goals. Although this cinema is also a plot driven or action cinema, characters stand in the center and interact with them. Over the course of the narrative characters struggle to achieve their goals or solve their problems.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
What is pictured when someone thinks of India? Perhaps the manufactured goods, or diverse people. The truth is, however, that until India gained its independence in 1947, it was ruled entirely by British government. The British then proceeded to “improve” India, driving it into a deeper hole. Although British Imperialism in India had some positive effects, the overall political, economic, and social impacts were negative.
Marked by a plot to attract the highlighted emotions of the audience, melodramatic films are derived from drama films. As we can see, “Melodrama” consists of “drama” and “melos” (music), literally meaning “plays combined with music.” The themes of dramas were exaggerated within melodramas, and the liberal use of music enhances their emotional conspiracies to a large extent.
Since the creation of films, their main goal was to appeal to mass audiences. However, once, the viewer looks past the appearance of films, the viewer realizes that the all-important purpose of films is to serve as a bridge connecting countries, cultures, and languages. This is because if you compare any two films that are from a foreign country or spoken in another language, there is the possibility of a connection between the two because of the fact that they have a universally understanding or interpretation. This is true for the French New Wave films; Contempt and Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and contemporary Indian films; Earth and Water directed by Deepa Mehta. All four films portray an individual’s role in society using sound and editing.
The above fact again highlights one of the many factors of what is wrong with the Indian film industry. Still our thinking is that only, as to who watches movies whose director, producer or a writer is a woman. The thinking straight goes as to “ arre ek ladki ne film banai hai, kon jayega”. People still say these words which shows how backward we are. Today only male-dominated movies cross the 100cr.club. Commercialization has killed the essence of Indian cinema.
The movie reflects lots of culture shocks between West and East countries. These culture shocks all because people have diverse norms, attitudes and behaviors. Indian do not eat beef as cow is sacred in India. In Indian, the slaughter of cows is illegal. For example, Tod can not be brought Cheese burger with money. Cow is threated sacred and thus beef is not eaten. Meanwhile, we can see that America and India have different attitude in marriage. In America, people has freedom to choose their way to live and love is basis of marriage. In India, get marriage without love is usual. For
... and the values held by the characters in the movies, whom we see as heroes and villains that help us to question our own motives and actions. All films try to influence our thinking and behaviour in some way by presenting us with views or alternatives to certain ways of behaving. It is up to us to recognise, reflect and act upon those views rather than be influenced mindlessly. At the same time we need to be aware that film may reflect or shape values and that values change over time.
Indian cinema has contributed a lot to the media and the entertainment industry over the years now and moulded the image of cinema in India in the eyes of the world. In the Generation we live in today, India has arrived at a stage where woman and men are treated equally; well almost equally. But there are still people, still industries and certain areas that do look down upon woman till date. And have we ever wondered why? There are many industries and reasons why woman are still looked down upon on. One of the industries being Cinema, The cinema over the years has only portrayed the image of woman as being in the house doing the chores or being dominated by