The Slumdog Phenomenon

Ajay Gehlawat

Description

Featuring a dynamic combination of landmark essays by leading critics and theorists, “The ‘Slumdog’ Phenomenon: A Critical Anthology” addresses multiple issues relating to “Slumdog Millionaire,” providing new ways of looking at this controversial film.

“The ‘Slumdog’ Phenomenon” addresses multiple issues related to “Slumdog Millionaire” and, in the process, provides new ways of looking at this controversial film. Each of the book’s four sections considers a particular aspect of the film: its relation to the nation, to the slum, to Bollywood and its reception. The volume provides a critical overview of the key issues and debates stemming from the film, and allows readers to reexamine them in light of the anthology’s multiple perspectives.

Notes on Contributors; List of Figures; Acknowledgments; Introduction: The “Slumdog” Phenomenon – Ajay Gehlawat; “SLUMDOG” AND THE NATION: Chapter 1: National Allegory – Brian Larkin; Chapter 2: “Slumdog Millionaire” and the Emerging Centrality of India – Sharmila Mukherjee; Chapter 3: Slumlord Aesthetics and the Question of Indian Poverty – Nandini Chandra; Chapter 4: Watching Time: “Slumdog Millionaire” and National Ontology – Lakshmi Padmanabhan; “SLUMDOG” AND THE SLUM: Chapter 5: “Slumdog Millionaire” and Epistemologies of the City – Ulka Anjaria and Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria; Chapter 6: A Million Dollar Exit from the Slum-World: “Slumdog Millionaire”’s Troubling Formula for Social Justice – Mitu Sengupta; Chapter 7: Slumdogs and Millionaires: Facts and Fictions of Indian (Under)development – Snehal Shingavi; “SLUMDOG” AND BOLLYWOOD: Chapter 8: Slumdogs, Coolies and Gangsters: Amitabh Bachchan and the Legacy of 1970s Bollywood in “Slumdog Millionaire” – Claus Tieber; Chapter 9: “It is Written” (in Invisible Ink): “Slumdog Millionaire”’s SFX and the Realist Overwriting of Bollywood Spectacle – Samhita Sunya; “SLUMDOG”’S RECEPTIONS: Chapter 10: Why the Sun Shines on “Slumdog” – Anandam Kavoori; Chapter 11: “Slumdog” Celebrities – Priya Jaikumar; Chapter 12: “Slumdog Millionaire” and the New Middlebrow – Robert Koehler; Chapter 13: Slumdog Comprador: Coming to Terms with the “Slumdog” Phenomenon – Ajay Gehlawat; Chapter 14: The Life-Cycle of “Slumdog Millionaire” on the Web – Thomas Elsaesser and Warren Buckland; Conclusion: Jai Who? – Ajay Gehlawat; Select Bibliography; Films Cited; Index 

Sujets

• History of film

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780857282958
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

TheSlumdogPhenomenon

New Perspectives on World Cinema

TheNew Perspectives on World Cinemaseries publishes engagingly written, highly accessible, and extremely useful books for the educated reader and the student as well as the scholar. Volumes in this series will fall under one of the following categories: monographs on neglected films and filmmakers; classic as well as contemporary film scripts; collections of the best previously published criticism (including substantial reviews and interviews) on single films or filmmakers; translations into English of the best classic and contemporary film theory; reference works on relatively neglected areas in film studies, such as production design (including sets, costumes, and makeup), music, editing, and cinematography; and reference works on the relationship between film and the other performing arts (including theater, dance, opera, etc.). Many of our titles will be suitable for use as primary or supplementary course texts at undergraduate and graduate levels. The goal of the series is thus not only to address subject areas in which adequate classroom texts are lacking, but also to open up additional avenues for film research, theoretical speculation, and practical criticism.

Series Editors

Wheeler Winston Dixon – University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA Gwendolyn Audrey Foster – University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA

Editorial Board

David Sterritt – Columbia University, USA Valérie K. Orlando – University of Maryland, USA Thomas Cripps – Morgan State University, USA Robert Shail – University of Wales Lampeter, UK Catherine Fowler – University of Otago, New Zealand Andrew Horton – University of Oklahoma, USA Frank P. Tomasulo – City College of New York, USA

TheSlumdogPhenomenon

A Critical Anthology

Edited by Ajay Gehlawat

Anthem Press An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2013 by ANTHEM PRESS 7576 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK and 244 Madison Ave. #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

© 2013 Ajay Gehlawat editorial matter and selection; individual chapters © individual contributors

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library CataloguinginPublication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested.

ISBN13: 978 0 85728 001 5 (Hbk) ISBN10: 0 85728 001 5 (Hbk)

Cover image © 2009 amexicanartist

This title is also available as an eBook.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors List of Figures Acknowledgments IntroductionTheSlumdogPhenomenon Ajay Gehlawat SLUMDOGAND THE NATION Chapter 1National Allegory Brian Larkin Chapter 2SlumdogMillionaireIndiaand the Emerging Centrality of Sharmila Mukherjee Chapter 3 Slumlord Aesthetics and the Question of Indian Poverty Nandini Chandra Chapter 4Time: Watching Slumdog Millionaireand National Ontology Lakshmi Padmanabhan

SLUMDOGAND THE SLUM Chapter 5Slumdog Millionairethe Cityand Epistemologies of Ulka Anjaria and Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria Chapter 6Million Dollar Exit from the SlumWorld: A Slumdog Millionaire’s Troubling Formula for Social Justice Mitu Sengupta

vii xi xiii xv

3

9

29

39

53

69

vi

Chapter 7

THESLUMDOGPHENOMENON

Slumdogs and Millionaires: Facts and Fictions of Indian (Under)development Snehal Shingavi

SLUMDOGAND BOLLYWOOD Chapter 8 Slumdogs, Coolies and Gangsters: Amitabh Bachchan and the Legacy of 1970s Bollywood inSlumdog Millionaire Claus Tieber

Chapter 9

“It is Written” (in Invisible Ink):Slumdog Millionaire’s SFX and the Realist Overwriting of Bollywood Spectacle Samhita Sunya

SLUMDOG’S RECEPTIONS Chapter 10the Sun Shines on Why Slumdog Anandam Kavoori Chapter 11SlumdogCelebrities Priya Jaikumar Chapter 12Slumdog Millionaireand the New Middlebrow Robert Koehler Chapter 13Comprador: Coming to Terms with Slumdog theSlumdogPhenomenon Ajay Gehlawat Chapter 14LifeCycle of The Slumdog Millionaireon the Web Thomas Elsaesser and Warren Buckland Conclusion JaiWho? Ajay Gehlawat

Select Bibliography Films Cited Index

91

109

121

143

149

155

163

179 201

205 211 213

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Ulka AnjariaEnglish at Brandeis University, withis assistant professor of research interests in Indian literature and popular film, postcolonial studies and narrative theory. She is the author ofRealism in the TwentiethCentury Indian Novel: Colonial Difference and Literary Form, published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. She is currently working on a second book on social realism in contemporary India.

Jonathan Shapiro Anjariaassistant professor of  is anthropology at Brandeis University. He has published inAmerican Ethnologist,Cityand CommunityandEconomic and Political Weekly, among others. His coedited volume (with Colin McFarlane),Urban Navigations: Politics, Space and the City in South Asia, was published by Routledge in 2011.

Warren Buckland is reader in film studies at Oxford Brookes University, UK. His research interests include film theory, narratology and contemporary American cinema. He has several books to his name, including:Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions(2012);Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies(ed., 2009);Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema(ed., 2009);Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster(2006);Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis (2002) (with Thomas Elsaesser); andFilmThe Cognitive Semiotics of the(2000). He is also the editor of quarterly journalFilm and Television StudiesNew Review of .

Nandini Chandrateaches in the Department of English at the University of Delhi. Her book,The Classic Popular: Amar Chitra Katha (1967–2007),was published by Yoda Press in 2008.

Thomas Elsaesserfilm and television studies at theis professor emeritus of University of Amsterdam, and, from 2006 to 2012, was visiting professor at Yale University. He has authored, edited and coedited twenty volumes, many of which have been translated, notably into German, French, Italian, Korean

viii

THESLUMDOGPHENOMENON

and Chinese. Among his books are:Studying Contemporary American Film(2002, with Warren Buckland),European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood(2005);Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses(2010, with Malte Hagener) andThe Persistence of Hollywood(2012).

Ajay Gehlawat is assistant professor of theatre and film in the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at Sonoma State University. He is the author of Reframing Bollywood: Theories of Popular Hindi Cinema (Sage, 2010). His essays and articles have appeared in numerous journals and collections, including the Journal of South Asian Popular Culture,Cultural StudiesTOPIA: Canadian Journal of , Journal of African American Studies,CineAction,Quarterly Review of Film and Video, andSouth Asian Review.

Priya Jaikumarassociate professor at the University of  is Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, Department of Critical Studies. She studies the colonial pasts of European cinema, and transformations in Indian film policy and film form. Publications include the bookCinema at the End of Empire(Duke, 2006) and articles most recently featured inPostcolonial Cinema Studies,WasafariandFilm and Empire.

Anandam KavooriJournalism and is professor in the Grady College of Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. He works in the areas of international communication, new media and media literacy. He is the author or editor of eight books includingGlobal Bollywood(2008, with Aswin Punathambekar) and, most recently,Digital Media Criticism(2010).

Robert Koehlerwrites forVariety,Cinema Scope,The Christian Science Monitor and blogs on filmjourney.org.

Brian Larkinthe author of is Signal and Noise: Infrastructure, Media and Urban Culture in Nigeria, and the coeditor ofMedia Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. He teaches anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Sharmila Mukherjeeteaches English at the City University of New York’s Bronx Community College and at New York University. She received her PhD in English from New York University. Her areas of scholarly interest include literature and globalization, and popular culture and globalization. Her debut novella will be published by Penguin India in the fall of 2012.

Lakshmi Padmanabhanis a PhD student and Chancellor Thomas Tisch Fellow in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

i

x

She has a BA in sociology from Stella Maris College, University of Madras and an MA in communication, culture and technology from Georgetown University. Her interests include contemporary South Asian film, new media philosophy, queer theory, race and globalization studies.

Mitu Sengupta is an associate professor in the Department of Politics at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada. Mitu has published widely on Indian market liberalization and development, on labor and migration, and on the politics of sporting and cultural events. These writings are united by a concern for how knowledge about poverty, inequality, and “development” is produced, disseminated, interpreted and understood. Her new research builds on these critical inquiries to engage more directly with linking theory to practice, and is concerned with the creation of legal frameworks and policy interventions for poverty eradication in India and other developing countries, and for social and global justice.

Snehal Shingaviis an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of the forthcomingThe Mahatma Misunderstood: The Politics and Forms of Indian Literary Nationalism(Anthem Press, 2013), has translated Munshi Premchand’sSevasadan(Oxford University Press, 2005) and has a forthcoming translation of Ajneya’sShekhar: a Biography(Oxford University Press, 2013).

Samhita Sunyais a PhD candidate at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and has also been a graduate research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society in Bangalore, Karnataka. Samhita is completing a pre history of “viral” media and cinephilia in the digital era, through an account of Hindi film/songs. Her teaching and research interests include comparative media studies, sound and genre studies and adaptation studies.

Claus TieberSalzburg. He studiedis research assistant at the University of theatre, philosophy, political and communications studies at the University of Vienna. After years as a commissioning editor for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), he started an academic career in 2001, teaching film history and theory at the Universities of Vienna, Kiel and Salamanca. Recent publications includePassages to Bollywood: Einführung in den HindiFilm (2006), Schreiben für Hollywood: Das Drehbuch im Studiosystem (2008),Fokus Bollywood: Das indische Kino in wissenschaftlichen Diskursen (2009) andStummfilmdramaturgie. Erzählweisen des amerikanischen Feature Films 1917–1927(2011).