Connections: Exploring Heritage, Architecture, Cities, Art Media
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CONNECTIONS: EXPLORING HERITAGE, ARCHITECTURE, CITIES, ART MEDIA • Paper / Proposal Title: Gali, Mohalla aur Bazaar: A Study of Neighbourhood Culture in the Mediated Representation of the Small Towns in Contemporary Hindi Cinema • Author(s) Name: First author: Sayanty Chatterjee Second author: Prof. Aysha Iqbal Viswamohan • University or Company Affiliation: Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India • Abstract (300 words): Of late, ‘chhote shehar’, or ‘small towns’ have gained currency in the mainstream Hindi cinema. Owing to several socio-political factors combined, ‘small town’ has seemed to become the buzzword of popular Hindi cinema of recent times. This paper intends to look into the mediated representation of the centrality of neighbourhood culture in the Indian small towns as a “site of everyday class, gender and caste relations” through the cinematic lens of contemporary Hindi cinema (Donner and De Neve, 2006). Following the argument of the urban geographer Henri Lefebvre, the endeavour would be to investigate the production of ‘social space’ through the unfolding of various public spaces like streets, lanes, shops, river banks and houses that cumulatively formulate the idea of ‘mohalla’ (neighbourhood) in the small town spaces. With the help of the methodological tool of mise-en-scène in select films like Shuddh Desi Romance (2013), Raanjhanaa (2013), Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015), Bareilly ki Barfi (2017) and Manmarziyaan (2018), this study will explore the visual representation of the bazaar space, the places of lovemaking, the domestic sphere, the choice of attire and the use of language and signs in order to understand the ‘ethnoscape’ of the small town neighbourhood (Appadurai, 1990). Located in the interstices of the metropolis and the rural space, the small town which “invades these two cliché-ridden polarities between the urban and rural”, brings forth a new territorial understanding of spatial realties in the South Asian context (Shoma A Chatterji, 2017). This paper would, therefore, be particularly interested in engaging with the theoretical underpinning behind this emerging preoccupation with the small town imagery in contemporary Hindi cinema. • Author(s) Biography (200 words each): Sayanty Chatterjee has completed her graduation in English Literature from Bethune College, University of Calcutta; M.A. in English from Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi and M.Phil. in Translation Studies from University of Hyderabad. Presently, she in enrolled in PhD programme at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in IIT Madras, Chennai. Her M.Phil dissertation was on "Translating Shakespeare in Indian Cinema: An Analyses of Maqbool, Omkara and Haider". Her broad research area consists of cultural studies, popular culture and Indian films. Currently, she is working under Prof. Aysha Iqbal Viswamohan on the representation of small-town spaces in contemporary popular Hindi films. Aysha Iqbal Viswamohan is a professor of film studies, drama and popular culture in the department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras. She has widely published in film studies and popular culture, including edited volumes like Stardom in Contemporary Hindi Cinema: Celebrity and Fame in Globalized Times (2020) and Behind the Scenes: Contemporary Bollywood Directors (2017), to name a few. Her research interests are popular culture, studies on fashion and Indian cinema. .