Frames of Alterity
Recent
years have witnessed a veritable explosion of interest in the semiotic and
hermeneutic investigation of visual experience, and more broadly in a new
appreciation of the historical, political, and cultural mediations of cinema,
which enables a more ‘reflexive’ and ethical understanding of alterity and
marginalization. Through reference to Sadgati
(Deliverance), a fifty-minute film
adaptation of Munshi Premchand’s Hindi short story that Satyajit Ray made in
late 1981 for Indian television, it
will be my endeavor to explore Ray’s adaptation and cinematic enunciation of
the Dalit subject and delineate the powerful meanings he inscribes in his
filmic text through the compelling and innovative fashioning of varied
discourses that he forges out of Indian as well as Western forms of expressions
and resources. Owing to the radical discursive ‘force field’ of
‘visuality’ (Jay 2), this paper emphasizes the need to differentiate between
different ‘ways of seeing,’ ‘scopic regimes’, ‘discourses and practices of visuality,’
(Heywood, “Introduction” x) to form the context for new alignments, and
interdisciplinary research in the humanities and cinema studies.
Works Cited:
Heywood, Ian and Barry Sandywell.
“Introduction.” Interpreting Visual
Culture: Explorations in the Hermeneutics of the Visual. Ed.
Ian Heywood and Barry Sandywell.
London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.
Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes:
The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: U
of California P, 1993. Print.
Dr.
Nishat Haider,
Associate
Professor,
Department
of English and Modern European Languages,
University
of Lucknow.
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Vlogging the Text: Exploring the
Frontiers of Literary Adaptations
Videoblogging,
or vlogging as it is popularly known, started in January 2000 with Adam Kontras
posting a video alongside a blog entry informing his friends of his move to Los
Angeles. This was the first post of what was to later become the longest running
video blog in history. In 2004, Steve Garfield launched his own video blog and
declared that year “the year of the video blog.” The most popular video sharing
site, Youtube, was founded in February 2005. By July 2006 it had over a 100
million videos viewed daily and 65,000 new uploads per day. Vloggercon, the
first vlogger conference was held in New York City in 2005. In 2006 The
Vloggies, the first annual videoblog awards were created.
Vlogs
have not only narrated personal stories but have also created a new medium of
adaptation of literary texts. On April 9 2012 Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice premiered on Youtube
in the form of a vlog called The Lizzie
Bennet Diaries. Created by Hank Green and Bernie Su, the series concluded
when the 100th episode was posted on March 28, 2013. On the 200th
anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, The Guardian called TLBD “the best Austen adaptation around”. The success of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries led to a
series of web literary adaptations; to name a few – Emma, Peter Pan, Romeo and Juliet, Anne of Green Gables, and Frankenstein.
This
paper intends to examine whether vlogs can be considered adaptations in the
strict sense of the word and also how vlog adaptations are both similar and
dissimilar to cinematic adaptations of a literary work.
Ms.
Kuntal Tamang,
Associate
Professor,
Department
of English,
Motilal
Nehru College,
University
of Delhi.
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The
Marginalised: Looking at Rudaali through
the Glass of Feminism and Female Bonding
Throughout the history of civilization the role and
place of the female sex has been distinctly defined. In the Indian context the
obliging Sita has often been considered as the ideal woman. The Manusmriti has detailed guidelines on
how the life of a woman should be: in childhood she should be a subject to her
father, in youth to her husband and, when her husband dies, to her children.
Unsurprisingly, women in cinema are often depicted as fragile, gullible and
yielding. They are usually shown to be in constant need of a male super-hand to
guard against the most traumatic and difficult situations.
The present paper discusses Mahashweta Devi’s short
story Rudaali, which is a tale about the struggle of the
impoverished women and the environment of denial in which they live. The conditions
they live under are harsh and the patriarchal society further oppresses them so
that prostitution becomes an option; women are forced to fall back on it as an
outcome of their poverty and corrupt social dynamics. Kalpana Lajmi adapts
Mahesweta Devi’s short story of the same name to highlight the plight of a
woman in the system of exploitation and hunger. Amidst the never ending class
struggle that Devi has so effectively depicted, the struggle of gender becomes
the issue of highlight for Lajmi. In the search for the self, Lajmi tries to
discover a language through which the subaltern may speak and in Rudaali
it is the language of tears. Tears, that have been eternally associated with women,
become the unique language of the feminine to speak for themselves in Lajmi and
Devi. Lajmi keeps the primary theme of death and poverty intact in the film but
wraps it in the cloak of feminism. Amidst all struggle and poverty, it is the
woman trying to hold her ground. She uses the language of tears not only to
mock back at her oppressors but also at the same time use it to tell her
individual tale. In the cultural terrain where language of man is the norm, Rudaali
is an exception, for it neither conforms to the societal constructions of the
gender nor the hierarchical communal life.
Dr. Neenu Kumar,
Department of English,
Aditi Mahavidyalaya,
University of Delhi.
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Recreating Ramayana: Changing
Dimensions of Mythology by changing Literary Medium
Cinema,
as we know, is a very popular medium. Films based on literature and literary classics
have
been made in the past and will continue to be made in the future. Though literature
and film are two different mediums they perform the same function, which is
telling of tales. To achieve their objective they depend heavily on each other,
borrowing as well as reciprocating. Though it may not be fair to compare the
two it cannot be denied that films do have an edge over written text.
This paper will try to
evaluate Sita Sings the Blues, an animated feature length film by American animator
Nina Paley, which puts an interesting, modern, westernized spin on the ancient
Indian myth. Her film is a personal interpretation of Valmiki’s Ramayana
where she chooses to focus on Sita, and Rama’s rejection of her, and compare
the ancient myth to a parallel narrative of her own failing marriage.
The Ramayana is traditionally a religious
text meant to inspire its readers and listeners to the path of dharma; Paley
adapts the plot to fit her concept of “the greatest break-up story ever told,”
the official tagline for the film. Rather than focusing on the title character
and epic hero, Rama, she centres her narrative on the plight of Rama’s wife
Sita to juxtapose her own unsuccessful romance. The film
Sita Sings the Blues can be called a product of women’s cinema and can serve as
‘counter cinema’ as it has a potential to posit an alternative presentation of
women. Paley does not boldly comes out and say “Sita is a feminist
model,” but by comparing Sita to her own experience as an independent
woman scorned by a man, Paley is bravely, but not shamefully, petitioning for
alternate meanings that can be read in myths. This paper will conclude with the
fact that all that we write,
picturise or see needs understanding of; ourselves, of real important
issues, of different outlooks and of film craft which is an aid to
understanding the basic issues of today and tomorrow.
Ms. Aprajita Mishra and Ms. Meetali Asiwal,
BA (Hons.) English (Semester 4),
Bharati College,
University of Delhi.
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Familiarization of Shakespeare: The
tragic trilogy of Vishal Bhardwaj
This
paper will analyse Vishal Bhardwaj’s trilogy Maqbool, Omkara and Haider, adaptations of William
Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet respectively. We will also try to understand the cultural
transformation that come into play when a written text is visualised in the
audio-visual, cinematic context. It will also comment on the near-universality
of Shakespeare’s themes and their being open to multiple interpretations and
interpolations.
The
first in the trilogy, Maqbool (2003),
is set in contemporary Bombay with Macbeth being a gangster succumbing to love
and guilt. Omkara (2006) is set in rustic
Uttar Pradesh and shows the tragic protagonist killing his lover because of the
misunderstandings created by one of his supposed loyalists. Last but not the
least, Haider (2014) takes place in
beautiful Kashmir but contradicts this beauty with its dark and miserable
reality. These movies have developed a new interpretation of Shakespeare’s
masterpieces.
Hence,
his paper will evaluate the respective films and their success to argue that
with visualization of a literary text in a different culture, its
interpretation may change but the main idea is conveyed through the important
transformations in the adapted text.
Ms.
Rashmi Singh and Ms. Mamta Kumari,
BA
(Hons.) English (Semester 4),
Bharati
College,
University of Delhi.
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