Representation of Indians in Indian English Films and British Indian Films
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REPRESENTATION OF INDIANS IN INDIAN ENGLISH FILMS AND BRITISH INDIAN FILMS Thesis Submitted To SREE SANKARACHARYA UNIVERSITY OF SANSKRIT in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE By DIVYA U. DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE SREE SANKARACHARYA UNIVERSITY OF SANSKRIT KALADY 2017 Dr. Sudharma A K Associate Professor Telephone: 9447798039 Department of Hindi Email:[email protected] Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit CERTIFICATE Certified that the thesis entitled The Representation of Indians in Indian English films and British Indian films submitted by Divya U. for the award of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature is a bonafide record of independent research work done by the candidate under my supervision during the period 2013-2017 and that it has not previously formed the basis for the award of any other degree or diploma or associateship or fellowship or other similar academic titles. Kalady Dr. Sudharma A.K. 14.12.2017 DECLARATION I hereby declare that the thesis entitled The Representation of Indians in Indian English films and British Indian films submitted to Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady for the award of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature is the original record of the studies and research carried out by me in the university during 2013-2017 under the guidance of Dr. Sudharma A. K., and it has not formed the basis for the award of any degree, diploma, title or recognition. Kalady Divya U. 14.12.2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study would not have been possible without the support and co-operation of many wonderful persons. First of all, I remember with much gratitude and reverence the support and guidance provided by my supervisor Dr. Sudharma A.K. I express my sincere gratitude to my subject expert Dr. Ajayan C. for his guidance and support. I am also indebted to Dr. K. V. Ajith Kumar, Associate Professor and Coordinator, Centre for Comparative Literature for his seamless support. My special thanks to Dr. T Vasudevan and Dr. Soumya Murukesh for their valuable support for the preparation of my thesis. I express my gratitude to the authorities of University Library, SSUS, Kalady Chalachitra Academy, Thiruvananthapuram, State Central Library, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala University Library, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala Sahitya Academy Library and Public Library Ernakulam. Above all, I express my boundless sense of gratitude to the Almighty and my beloved parents, Sister, Arun and Friends who remained as beacon in my moments of confusion and steered me towards my goal. Divya U. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1-7 CHAPTER ONE INTERROGATING FILM THEORY 8-55 CHAPTER TWO AN OVERVIEW OF INDIAN ENGLIGH AND BRITISH INDIAN FILMS 56-94 CHAPTER THREE REPRESENTATION OF INDIANS IN INDIAN ENGLISH FILMS (Bride and Prejudice, Fire, Mr and Mrs Iyer, Midnights 95-141 Children) CHAPTER FOUR REPRESENTATION OF INDIANS IN BRITISH INDIAN FILMS (Gandhi, City of Joy, Passage to India, Slumdog 142-189 Millionaire) CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION 190-214 FILMOGRAPHY 215 BIBLIOGRAPHY 216-235 APPENDIX i-vii INTRODUCTION 1 Film is a visual art form; it has an extensive swaying power. The politics of film has buttressed the emergence of cultural studies in recent years. Its central proposition is that culture of all kinds produces, reproduces, and/or legitimizes forms of thought and feeling in society and that the well being of people in society is crucially affected and shaped by this. That is, who we think we are, how we feel about this, who we believe others to be, how we think society works. All of this is seen to be shaped decisively, perhaps exclusively, by culture and to have the most profound social, physical, and individual consequences. Cultural studies have focused on the particularities of cultures founded on social divisions of class, gender, race, nation, sexualities and so on. They also emphasise the importance of power, the different statuses of different kinds of social groups and cultural product and the significance of control over the means of cultural production. The aesthetic and cultural cannot stand in opposition. The aesthetic dimension of a film never exists apart from how it is conceptualized, how it is socially practised and how it is received; it never exists floating free of historical and cultural particularity. Equally, the cultural study of film must always understand that it is studying a film, which has its own specificity, its own pleasures, its own way of doing things that cannot be reduced to ideological formulations or what people (producers, audiences) think and feel about it. (Dyer 9) A film is seen as a ‘reflection’ of the dominant beliefs and values of its culture. It does not reflect or record reality but like any other medium of representation, it constructs and ‘re-presents’ its pictures of reality by way of the codes, conventions, myths, and ideologies of its culture as well as by way of the specific signifying practices of the medium. Just as a film works on the meaning systems of culture- to renew, reproduce, or review them- it is also produced by 2 those meaning systems. The filmmaker uses the representational conventions and repertories available within the culture in order to make something fresh, but familiar, new but generic, individual but representative. The result of cultural approaches to ‘film as representation’ is ultimately to focus on the relations between film’s representational languages and ideology. (Turner 131) Representation is one of the key terms of cultural studies. Films go to create the visual culture. Historical, cultural, social events, images etc are represented in the film. But representations are not innocent reflections of the real, but are cultural constructions. Here representation is intrinsically bound up with questions of power through the process of selection and organization that must inevitably be a part of the formations of representations. The power of representation lies in its enabling some kinds of knowledge to exist while excluding other ways of seeing. There are different kinds of representation as race, gender, nation and class. This thesis discusses how the race, gender, class and nation represented in the Indian English and British Indian films and how their politics are exhibited in these films. It has five chapters. The first chapter discusses the theoretical perspective of representation, which concerns the cultural theories and practices in the films and analyses gender representation in Indian English and British Indian films. Usually gender inequalities have been discussed in the films. Most of the films represent stereotypical representations, especially of women, transgenders, third world people, blacks etc. The dominant group in the society designates them as ‘other’. This ‘othering’ can also be seen in the films. Like gender representation, racial, nation and class representation are also discussed in this chapter. Race and class have a significant role in cultural studies. Racial discrimination is an important 3 theme not only in western films but in all other fields also. These racial and class discriminations are a serious issues even in the twenty first century and they are exhibited in their culture also. The racialized discourse is structured by a set of binary oppositions. There is a powerful opposition between ‘civilization’ (white) and ‘savagery’ (black) and an opposition between the biological or bodily characteristics of the ‘black’ and ‘white’ races, polarized into their extreme opposites. There are sound distinctions between these binary oppositions, between the white races and intellectual development- refinement, learning and knowledge, belief in reason, the presence of developed institutions, formal government and law, and a ‘civilized restraint’ in their emotional, sexual and civil life, all of which are associated with ‘Culture’: but in the case of black races and whatever is instinctual- the open expression of emotion and feeling rather than intellect, a lack of civilized refinement’ in sexual and social life, a reliance on custom and ritual and the lack of developed civil institutions, all of which are linked to nature (Hall 243). Popular representations of racial difference during slavery tended to cluster around two main themes- first, the subordinate status and innate laziness of the blacks and second by their innate primitivism, simplicity and lack of culture. In the same way, the culture difference between the east and the west is naturalised, that is, if the differences between the eastern and western people are cultural, they try to modify and change, but if they are natural, the ‘other’ people believed that they are beyond history, permanent and fixed. So ‘naturalization’ is a representational strategy designed to fix differences. It is an attempt to halt the inevitable slide of meaning, to secure discursive or ideological closure. But in the case of India race is based on religion. Minority groups are always marginalised 4 and suppressed by the dominant group. Their conflicts describe the racial discrimination. Most of the Indian English directors have this as the pivotal premise in their films. In the same way representation of nation is a significant one. The concept of nation is not a naturally transpiring phenomena, which is socially and culturally constructed. The idea of the nation can operate at the most basic levels of meaning and discourse. It becomes an overriding set of priorities which define what is acceptable and what is not, what is normal and what is not, all through defining what is Indian or British or American and what is not. In wider conceptions of politics—that is, not party politics but power relations generally— the idea of the nation is enlisted in achieving and maintaining hegemony. Hegemony is the process by which members of society are persuaded to acquiesce to their own subordination, to abdicate cultural leadership in favour of sets of interests which are represented as identical, but may actually be antithetical to their own.