Inter-Asia Cultural Studies ISSN: 1464-9373 (Print) 1469-8447 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/riac20 Mela: festival scenes in South Asian cinema John Hutnyk To cite this article: John Hutnyk (2018) Mela: festival scenes in South Asian cinema, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 19:1, 129-147, DOI: 10.1080/14649373.2018.1422349 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2018.1422349 Published online: 01 Mar 2018. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=riac20 INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES, 2018 VOL. 19, NO. 1, 129–147 https://doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2018.1422349 Mela: festival scenes in South Asian cinema John HUTNYK Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This article examines a recurrent film motif across a number of South Asian Festival; South Asia; film; films, mostly called Mela. It also offers some observations on melas, actual violence; partition; and allegorical, as represented in films but often seeming to exceed their colonialism; neoliberalism; containment in context so as to say more about the conviviality of life, where mela this is at issue, where life is at a juncture in need of resolution within the cycle of becoming. The issues of violence, loss, national identity, politics of interpretation and repetition in ideology are canvassed. While the essay is focused upon Mela films themselves, and South Asian film more broadly, it has of course been important to note work by scholars such as M. Madhava Prasad, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Anjali Gera Roy, Tejaswini Niranjana, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and the help of my students, some of whom are named below. Dialectic of terrors and festivals programmes targeting the poor. Independence What is it to settle down in front of the screen was grasped enthusiastically but in due course: and think of how such a simple yet now univer- elite betrayal, neo-colonial reassertion, compli- sal experience still might have anything to city, complacency, renewed aggression, interna- teach? lised, externalised, patronising aid, development Often, perhaps too often, the film festival is hypocrisy, geopolitical machinations and proxy also a festival of violence – but the conviviality wars – the violence takes many forms, but more of the festival may also be an antidote. Film often than not is continually projected over and has long experience dealing with celebrations against South Asia. Violence is news, revolt is of violence, and the double vision entailed offers cinematic, and theorists writing about film a first moment of learning. Violence and rebel- address such concerns because there is violence lion in a history written “in letters of blood and on their screens, and mechanisms of denial are fire” (Marx [1867] 1967, 502). In the subconti- more or less inoperative. nent, this is history itself: colonial violence This story is also one of resistance through and resistance, leading to independence; par- projection – the necessary containment and tition violence as a needless tragic consequence; occlusion of alternatives, and a long struggle; the hangover of casteism and the postures of annals, blood, fire – inversely documented in nationalism that impact brutally on lives bifur- the ways the Global South as revolutionary cated by policy; social cleansing of Naxalites and anti-colonial movement is both screened and Maoists; endless prejudices and eradication not. The interpreting reader should not fall for CONTACT John Hutnyk [email protected] Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ton Duc Thang University, 19 Nguyen Huu Tho, Quan 7, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam © 2018 John Hutnyk. All rights reserved. 130 J. HUTNYK a sensationalist focus, as if all that is newsworthy beloved from death. The oscillation at the is scandal. Of course, cultural festivals have their scene of violence is pronounced. non-violent sides, but scratch the surface hard enough and the hierarchical jealousies of any Ferris wheels community emerge in anxious concert. The work of Mahasweta Devi, made globally popular A feature of the films to be discussed in this by Spivak (1993), could offer a lesson where the essay is that of the most popular of pleasure term “encounter” in media reporting is registered park joy rides. Everyone remembers the Ferris as a euphemism for police execution. Films about wheel as fun, especially as I suspect the revisions the affective consequences of the Naxalite perse- of the experience have changed the interpret- cution are devoured in international film festivals ations so much that it is difficult to remember when they do appear – Mother of 1084 / Hazaar the wheel as anything other than a good ride. Chaurasi Ki Maa (Nihalani 1999) was lauded, Visitors to London since the millennium have but then forgotten – even as it was widely recog- hugely enjoyed the big wheel of the London nised, and denounced, that any “miscreant” Eye, despite British Airways sponsorship and could be murdered, labelled and tagged by the not exactly inexpensive ticket prices. The attrac- police, and were too often found to have been tion stands out from afar. Only “the great wheel “countered” and in subsequent investigations at the Empire of India Exhibition, Earl’s Court” found to have already been handcuffed when in 1895 (Times, 21 July 1895) rivalled the first killed. Another film festival success when large Ferris wheel, made for the World’s released, Mrinal Sen’s Calcutta 71 is also this Columbian Exposition in Chicago just two kind of known, but subsequently not so often years before. Replication of big wheels world- screened, story (Sen 1971). In this case, a youth wide is a competitive sport, and plans for wheels is chased and brought down in the street, killed in Kolkata, Mumbai and Bengaluru have been in the prime of life, in the centre of the city. floated with enthusiasm. As an unanticipated Sen was restating and emphasising the grotesque popular architectural structure, competitive regularity of this violent encounter as a politic of urban posturing manifests in curious ways. fear, and was aware that media exposure of Here it comes as bread and circuses, festivals extra-juridical killing did not necessarily undo and giving the public what the press says it the real or the ideological threat. What was a wants. national controversy in the 1960s and 1970s What if it were plausible to propose an inver- soon escalated to global proportions and ‘coun- sion of the usual perspective experiment and tered now also refers to those subjected to play out a scenario where an analyst would counter-terrorism measures, drone strikes and take the main tropes of South Asian film extra-judicial assassinations, endless “Afghan studies, and indeed its wider context in Marxist, wars” (Prashad 2002) – but even this awaits diasporic, postcolonial and subaltern theorising better film treatment. in general, and look – as if anew – at the cultural There are a number of films that counter vio- function of mela on screen? The multiple ver- lence with affection, the intimate and domestic sions of the mela motif each deserves extended alternative to policy and war. This is not just a treatment. subcontinental thing, but it was evident in the early partition films, it is there in the resolution The mela films of those films where warring brothers in the end reconcile, and it is the undercurrent of every The unavoidable key references of what I will scene of violent action that has a heroine call Global South Asian film and television capable of dancing on broken glass to save her studies must be those of Madhava Prasad INTER-ASIA CULTURAL STUDIES 131 (1998), Rajadhyaksha (2009), Rajagopal (2001) 1975) has its mela sequence. A not quite com- and Niranjana (2006). Among the subsequent prehensive search found only two instances academic commentators that need to be added where scholars mentioned Mela: Rosemary are a range of studies released by their work – Marangoly George (discussed below) and Istiaq a reading list I have tried to include in a new Ahmed in the introduction to Gera Roy’s edited book (Hutnyk forthcoming), but by no means collection The Magic of Bollywood: At Home can I tag them all here. The sheer exuberance and Abroad (Gera Roy 2012, xiv). If only for of the screen apparatus imposes itself all the this reason I will risk a discussion of Mela but more when the plethora of magazines, newspa- it cannot be neutral towards film scholarship. per filmi sections, star appearances, radio My readings in this are impacted by both the shows, talk back and social media are taken extension of film studies in South Asia “beyond” into account. Furthermore, a few minutes lis- Bollywood to regions and diasporas (Das tening to talk back radio will confirm all experts Sharma 2001; Desai 2004; Kaur and Sinha to be relatively ill-informed compared with film 2005; Madhava Prasad 2014), and to objects fans. Alongside watching the necessary films, and contexts that are more culture industry or reading the available “Bollyliterature” is a con- political movement focused (Dudrah 2012; siderable commitment, and a secret pleasure Mankekar 1999; Rai 2009). (Nandy 1998), even if that carries with it ideo- It is necessary to remark that there are differ- logical dynamics that also need to be sorted. ent contexts for the same patterns in the films I That said, I have searched far and not found will discuss here. We can find in these films, much in the way of significant commentary on fairly rapidly, narrative material that indicates the mela films, at least as concerns any com- allegorical – even heavy-handed obvious alle- parative study of multiple versions of the film gory-making – for various projects.