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- Volume 1, Issue 2, 2009
Studies in South Asian Film & Media - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2009
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2009
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Patriotism and valor are in your blood: necropolitical subjectivities in The Terrorist (1999)
By Mike DillonThis essay uses Santosh Sivan's art film The Terrorist and its portrayal of a female suicide bomber as the basis for exploring discourses on terrorism that often dismiss the explosive politics of suicide bombers as unequivocally immoral and irrational and take as a given the notion that female combatants are subservient to patriarchal models in contexts of war. The essay draws from social theory, particularly Achille Mbembe's Necropolitics, to consider the ways in which subjectivities are marginalized and rendered invisible in violent societies, and how the suicide bomber complicates the paradigms by which such subjectivities are deemed to be alive. The essay then moves into textual analysis of the film to consider the ways in which its art-cinema style negotiates these matters by portraying the central conflict between individual and social death that challenge how we register the motivations behind suicide bombings and the intellectual discussions that frame them.
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Slumdogs and superstars: negotiating the culture of terror
More LessThe War on Terror has brought about a transformation of the cultural sphere as the US-led coalition propagated Islamophobic narratives, identifying Muslims as a threat to the security of nations. This article examines the blockbuster film Slumdog Millionaire (Boyle/Tandan, 2008) as an instance in this War, revealing its cultural politics. Beginning with an examination of the key (trans)national issues raised by the film, I analyse Slumdog's representation of its two Muslim protagonists. The article ends with a discussion of how two Bollywood superstars, A.R. Rahman and Shah Rukh Khan, have publicly negotiated their Indian/Muslim identities in relation to the film. The article draws attention to the centrality of the national in constructions of the global in the culture of terror.
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Cartooning Mumbai's 9/11: an exploration of image decolonization
More LessPhotographs and TV footage of the Mumbai terror attacks (November 2008) reflect the image(ination) of the US's 9/11. How do we account for the colonization of tragedy in a postcolonial democracy? Can an alternative mode of imagery question and move beyond the usurpation of tragedy fixated by the imperial homogenization of images throughout the world? In my article, I study Ajit Ninan's cartoon images in the context of the Mumbai terror attacks, and explore the potentials in political cartooning as a mode of image (de)building. I explore how the apparently simple form of cartooning illuminates complex reality with breathtaking dexterity and thus engages in image de-colonization or an unwrapping of the political exigencies that shroud the event.
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Guns and guys in the jungle; news and terrorism in north-east India
By Daisy HasanThis article examines representations of terror in north-east India on state and privately owned television channels. North-east India sustains many subnational insurgencies against the Indian state. Most of these separatist movements, which are a response to structural and cultural inequalities, have faced brutal military repression. The article looks at the silences and absences surrounding the use of terror in the region on the state-owned broadcaster, Doordarshan. It contrasts this with the surge in representations of terror (perpetuated both by the Indian army and by insurgent groups) on privately owned national television networks. While stories of terror are considered newsworthy by private channels the region does not otherwise receive regular coverage as it is generally regarded as culturally remote and politically insignificant. Regional television enterprises operating in local languages, on the other hand, are often able to achieve a more complex representation of issues around the use of terror by state and non-state actors.
The article critically examines the aesthetics of terror constructed both by state-owned television and privately owned media. State-owned television's representation of terror, it is argued, tends to lobby for a particular point of view one that emphasizes the authority of particular figures and symbols of the state. The local media offers a more nuanced picture of terror but has received a mixed response from the public. It has, however, encouraged people to question violent political means and exclusive identities thereby promoting the growth of civil society in the region.
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Intimate terrors: changing representations of structural violence against women in Malayali cinema
More LessThis article examines the opposing attitudes towards structural violence against women in Ramu Kariat's Chemmeen (1965) and Fazil's Manichitrathazhu (1993). While both films are considered mainstream releases and have an iconic status in the history of Malayali cinema, the films convey starkly different attitudes towards the enforcement of gender ideologies. While Chemmeen critiques the employment of restrictive constructions of womanhood, Manichitrathazhu nostalgically celebrates patriarchy and depicts unrestricted women as a source of terror. While this trend could be attributed to a decline of the status of women in the state, I argue that this dramatic difference in attitude is largely the product of the changing nature of Kerala's film industry, which has developed distinct categories of mainstream and parallel cinema since the release of Chemmeen. By bringing established discussions of gender in Kerala in conversation with studies of the state's film industry, this inquiry seeks to examine the evolutionary relationship between the popular film industry in Kerala and attitudes concerning gender identity.
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