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Copyright by Reed Ethan Burnam 2010 The Thesis Committee for Reed Ethan Burnam Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Not Simply for Entertainment: The Failure of Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki and its Place in a New Generation of Televised Indian Mythology APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Kathryn Hansen Martha Selby Not Simply for Entertainment: The Failure of Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki and its Place in a New Generation of Televised Indian Mythology by Reed Ethan Burnam, B.A. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May, 2010 Dedication This work is dedicated to my grandfather, Paul Wayne Burnam, Ph.D., who received his MBA from the University of Texas in 1939. He always strove to inspire in me the value of education, as well as a good story. We all miss you grandpa. Acknowledgements Many people have been major sources of inspiration and aid in the completion of this project. First, I would like to thank my family, who have always been there for me in every situation. In particular, my mother and step-father for being wonderful and loving parents and friends who would go to any length needed of them in any instance, my father and step-mother for all their enthusiasm and support, and in many ways for their making possible this opportunity for me, and my younger brothers for being great friends and co-conspirators always. I love all of you dearly. I would also like to thank Prof. Kathryn Hansen, whose encouragement and helpful advice has from the beginning been integral to this undertaking, and Prof. Martha Selby, for her always sound guidance over the extent of my time in ANS. I would also like to thank the all the incredible teachers at AIIS in Jaipur who took time out of their busy schedules to excitedly watch many of these shows with me, and all the people across North India who made time to speak with me. Thanks to Harsh Kalan, who spent a blustery morning drinking too much coffee with me helping to transcribe episodes of Kahani . Additionally, I have to thank Ramia1983 (aka Vishnu), who diligently posted the entirety of Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki to Youtube. If not for his time spent uploading these videos, my project would have been impossible. Though he never responded to any of my emails, I thank him nonetheless. And last but surely not least, I would like to thank my fiancé and best- friend April Rose Wilson. Her unwavering support, boundless excitement, and unconditional love have been at my side through every step of this process, and I am perpetually in awe of the light and warmth she brings into my life. I do nothing if not for her, and it is to her that I dedicate my life and my work. Thank you. v Abstract Not Simply for Entertainment: The Failure of Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki and its Place in a New Generation of Televised Indian Mythology Reed Ethan Burnam, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2010 Supervisor: Kathryn Hansen This thesis looks at the media event of Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki (Our Story of the Mahabharat ), a serialized, televised version of the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata which ran on prime-time Indian television from July to November 2008. The show was created and produced by Balaji Telefilms and Ekta Kapoor, well known throughout Asia for extremely successful prime-time soap-operas which have come to be representative of the genre in India. Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki was canceled quite early in its run (it was intended to air for upwards of three years) due to low ratings and intense viewer criticism of the program. The bulk of the criticism compared it unfavorably to an earlier version aired by B.R. Chopra and his team in 1988-90, which is to this day remembered as one of the most watched events in Indian television history, vi and is still widely seen as a largely “successful” visual translation of the story to television. This thesis analyses the dimensions of Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki ’s promises to offer something both “old and new” to the Indian public, its internal structure, the influences upon its creation, its failure, the nature of the criticism against it, and how it sparked a large public debate about how “authenticity” and “tradition” are currently being conceptualized by modern popular media in India. The thesis takes data and evidence from a variety of scholarly, print, online, and ethnographic sources to demonstrate that Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki ’s failure was much more complex than the case of its being simply a “bad” show; rather it reveals that to many, Chopra’s earlier version has become in some ways monolithic, containing an essential “rightness” that speaks to broader concerns about the current state of India’s cultural and religious heritage as refracted through the lens of modern media. This thesis examines Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki as one unique occurrence within a much broader field of mythological/devotional programming currently available in India, and points to the need for a larger scholarly study of this phenomenon. vii Table of Contents List of Illustrations ................................................................................................. ix Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: A Short History of the Televised Mythological in India ..................... 12 Mythology on the Screen: A (Very) Brief Overview ................................... 13 Balaji Telefilms and Ekta Kapoor: Success and Controversy...................... 22 Chapter 2: The Promise of Something Both Old and New ................................... 28 Hyping the Program: The Possibility of Something “New”? ...................... 29 (Re-)Remaking Epics: Reconfiguration, Debate, and the Almighty Rupee 38 Chapter 3: Retranslating the Visual Text: The Structure of KHMK ................... 43 Narration and Narrative Progression ............................................................ 47 The Employment of Melodrama .................................................................. 57 The Appeal to Mainstream Hinduism .......................................................... 67 Style, Look, and “Feel" ................................................................................ 78 Chapter 4: The Portrayal of the Feminine in KHMK ............................................ 88 Chapter 5: Viewer Reception and Ethnography .................................................. 104 Conclusion: The Future of Televised Mythology? ............................................. 115 Appendix A: Survey Questionnaires in Hindi and English................................. 118 Bibliography ........................................................................................................ 120 Vita .................................................................................................................... 129 viii List of Illustrations Figure 1 : KHMK logo ..................................................................................... 31 Figure 2 : Arjun on the battlefield in television advertisement for KHMK ......... 31 Figures 3-4: Promo posters for KHMK. ............................................................... 34 Figure 5 : Ram and Sita,1987-88 Ramayan .......................................................... 37 Figure 6 : Rama and Sita, Sagar Arts’ 2008 Ramayan .......................................... 37 Figure 7 : Bhishma’s vow. .................................................................................... 62 Figures 8-9: Krishna presents his avatars to Kaliya-Naag ................................... 72 Figure 10 : Krishna at the temple ......................................................................... 75 Figure 11: The old woman takes darshan ............................................................. 75 Figure 12 : KHMK cast photo ............................................................................... 80 Figures 13-14 : Tattoos on KHMK cast-members. ............................................... 84 Figures 15-16 : Uma Shankar and Aryan Vaid ..................................................... 85 Figure 17 : The camera’s disembodiment of Ganga ........................................... 100 ix Introduction On July 7 th , 2008, the Indian Hindi-language medium television channel 9X launched a new program, promising to be “the most keenly awaited epic television production in many years.” 1 Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki (Our Story of the Mahabharat , hereafter KHMK) 2 ran in the 9:00 P.M. prime-time slot Monday through Thursday. KHMK was a new televised version of the ancient Indian epic the Mahabharata , put out by Balaji Telefilms and created by well-known media personality Ekta Kapoor, producer of highly popular Hindi-language soap-opera programming such as Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (Because the Mother-in-Law was once a Daughter- in-Law ). The new show was to be another serialized television undertaking of the Hindu epic, much in the vein of B.R. Chopra’s wildly successful and influential Mahabharat series, which was aired on the Indian state-run television network Doordarshan from 1988 until 1990. 3 Released on the heels of a large advertising blitz in both print and 1 Taken from official 9X website promotion for Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki . 2 Throughout this study, I have chosen from the outset to transliterate Hindi