Cinematic Transcendence: Religious Women and Global Migration in the Historical Epic
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CINEMATIC TRANSCENDENCE: RELIGIOUS WOMEN AND GLOBAL MIGRATION IN THE HISTORICAL EPIC By HEATHER BIGLEY A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2010 1 © 2010 Heather Bigley 2 For Kwang, who joined me on this adventure 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to the English Department at the University of Florida for the time and resources to further study film. Many thanks for the generous four-year Teaching and Research Assistantship that allowed me to teach film courses during my doctoral research. Facing students every semester allowed me to interrogate my own approaches to film; my evolving thinking about film analysis, theory, and interpretation are manifested in this dissertation. I’m especially grateful for the opportunity I had to teach a senior-level Film Studies course on Bollywood Cinema; this course culminated the research I completed for my chapter here on popular Indian cinema. I am greatly indebted to the many religious women in my life, whose curiosity, determination, and work offer me the sisterhood I have always needed: Jennifer Boehm, Sharon Swenson, Lara Walker, Tamara Taysom, Jennifer Thomas, Lucia Fernandez Hansen, Michelle Ross, Rebecca Zimmer, and Malika Kemiche Kehli. Lastly, I thank Barbara Mennel, Mark Reid, Amy Ongiri, and Eric Kligerman for reading and commenting on my dissertation. Their comments, questions, and support have helped guide my thinking and research in productive ways. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 10 Religious Cinema .................................................................................................... 14 Religious Community .............................................................................................. 17 Religious Women .................................................................................................... 21 The Case Studies ................................................................................................... 22 Mormon Cinema ............................................................................................... 23 Post-Beur Cinema ............................................................................................ 24 Bollywood ......................................................................................................... 25 2 REFASHIONING FEMALE SPIRITUALITY IN MORMON HISTORICAL FILMS: THE CONVERT BRIDE AND THE DOMESTIC GODDESS ................................... 26 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 26 Mormon Film History ............................................................................................... 27 Global Expansion and Correlation .......................................................................... 30 Filmic Responses to Global Expansion ................................................................... 34 Convert Brides in the Male Religious Economy of The Work and the Glory ........... 37 Reading Sequences in Emma Smith: My Story ...................................................... 43 Female Healing and Male Martyrdom in American Zion ......................................... 50 Gender Critique in Fourth Witness: The Mary Whitmer Story ................................. 54 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 59 3 WOMEN CAUGHT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SECULARITY IN A POST- BEUR FILM CULTURE: MUSLIM MOTHERS AND FRENCH DAUGHTERS ........ 60 Political and Historical Background ......................................................................... 61 Beur Film ................................................................................................................ 69 Post-Beur Film Culture ............................................................................................ 72 Modern Spiritual Possibilities in La Petite Jerusalem .............................................. 74 The Religious Patriarchal Order in Chaos ............................................................... 83 The Mother-Daughter Dyad in Contemporary French Films ................................... 85 Sexual Modernity in 17 Rue Bleue .......................................................................... 89 Patriarchal Excess of the Witch in Inch’Allah Dimanche ......................................... 91 Maternal Modernity in Samia .................................................................................. 94 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 99 5 4 BOLLYWOOD HEROINES IN THE HISTORICAL EPIC: WIDOW-WARRIORS AND WARRIOR-PRINCESSES ............................................................................ 101 Bollywood and Indian Diasporas ........................................................................... 103 Religion and Nationalism ...................................................................................... 107 Historical Epics ..................................................................................................... 113 The Royal Fierce Woman in Asoka ...................................................................... 117 Concealed Feminine Power in Rang de Basanti ................................................... 122 Ritual Cleansing in The Rising: The Ballad of Mangal Pandey ............................. 127 Shakti and Bhakti in Jodha Akbar ......................................................................... 132 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 138 5 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 140 Narrative Trajectory .............................................................................................. 140 Film Style .............................................................................................................. 142 Relation to Hollywood ........................................................................................... 143 Historical Epics as Postcolonial Strategy .............................................................. 146 Restrained Transcendence ................................................................................... 148 Women in Religious Film ...................................................................................... 149 APPENDIX A GLOSSARY OF TERMS FOR CHAPTER FOUR ................................................. 151 B LIST OF FILMS ..................................................................................................... 153 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 154 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 158 6 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy CINEMATIC TRANSCENDENCE: RELIGIOUS WOMEN AND GLOBAL MIGRATION IN THE HISTORICAL EPIC By Heather Bigley December 2010 Chair: Barbara Mennel Major: English As Hollywood positioned itself as a global cinema over the last generation, minor and alternative cinemas evolved to speak specifically to and for underrepresented groups who hold little to no buying power in Hollywood’s expansive markets. Some of these groups characterize themselves via religious communities. This dissertation examines how globalization impacts contemporary minor and alternative cinemas through a discussion of the representation of religious women in historical epics. If cultural production serves to imagine the nation, then religious cinemas imagine the religious community, in relation to the national, transnational, and global, by producing historiographies that place women at the nexus of both religious and national modernities. The historical films discussed in this dissertation embody the anxieties of their religious communities produced by the shifting configuration and responsibilities of nation-states. My work analyzes how these films use female subjectivity to further claims of autonomy and identity for particular religious communities. My research uses globalization theories about transnational religious growth in the last half of the twentieth century to revise a current academic discourse of female religious victimhood in Hinduism, Islam, and Mormonism with feminist ideas about 7 agency and autonomy. My project argues that fundamentalism is not a default position for religious communities facing globalization; instead, religious communities may utilize differing strategies, made manifest in their cultural production, to cope with changing power relations between religion and nation, under the influence of globalization. Though some communities may revert to fundamentalism, others may advocate a progressive reinvention of female roles, while others may reject