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E-book Sirens of Modernity : World Cinema via Bombay

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Penilaian

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Can true love materialize from a transactional affair? Let me turn to a certain Akira Kurosawa in order to broach my preoccupation with this capacious question, one that preoccupied a set of commercial Hindi films in a postwar, post-independence period of the long 1960s. By “Akira Kurosawa,” I am referring to a song sequence (clip 1) from the unassuming Hindi comedy Chintu Ji (Mister Chintu, Ranjit Kapoor, 2009). The sequence offers a playful retrospective homage to a historic binary that crystallized over the period in question: between the spec-tacular audiovisual excess of the Bombay-based Hindi-language cinema on the one hand and the canonical acclaim of an auteur-driven world cinema on the other.The lyrics of “Akira Kurosawa” at first seem to be the gibberish of an unin-telligible, exoticized indigenous language. The song opens upon a stereotypically generic mise-en-scène of natives, replete with tom-toms, feathers, a teepee, and a white captive who has been tied up before a ridiculously outfitted chieftain The music is percussive and upbeat, and it is joined by a twangy riff on a synthesizer that is followed by the chieftain’s rhythmic chanting of apparently nonsensical syllables. On closer listen, they are in fact “tarantino! vittorio! mizo-guchi! coppola!” A strappy leather-clad dancer gyrates before the camera against a bevy of white backup dancers and indigenous extras, and she sultrily croons in the voice of a playback singer: “tarantino wilder capra, ozu bertolucci peckinpah, fellini visconti oshima, coppola, coppola!“ (fig. 2) A litany of canonical—and largely midcentury—world cinema auteurs’ names continue as the ostensibly primitive gibberish of the song’s chorus: “akira kurosawa vittorio de sica, wyler hitchcock wajda, mizoguchi de palma, wyler hitchcock wajda, brian de palma! akira kurosawa vittorio de sica . . . ”The sequence unfolds as a parody of the item number and the pejoratively termed “tribal” number, both of which are often categorized among the most bla-tantly commercial forms of song-dance sequences in contemporary Hindi films. A tribal number is a production number1 whose demeaning portrayals of indig-enous people “is usually embarrassing as they frequently wear ridiculous clothes, usually fairly skimpy costumes, with Himachal hats that often look more like something one would wear to a children’s party.”2 An item number is a fast-paced production number, typically featuring a cameo by an actress whose embodied sex appeal is highlighted through an eroticized focus on her dancing body and bare flesh.3 Actor Rishi Kapoor plays himself as a film star in Chintu Ji, and he stars as the chieftain in the “Akira Kurosawa” song sequence, which occurs as a film shoot within the film. The star of the parodic tribal-cum-item number is dancer-actress Menaka4 (played by actress Sophie Choudry, who lip-syncs to the voice of play-back singer Anushka Manchanda). Later invoking the story of Pocahontas, the sequence spoofs the absurdity of Hollywood films’ depictions of Native Americans as well.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

791.43 SUN s

Penerbit

USA : University of California Press., 2022

Deskripsi Fisik

272 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

978052097678

Klasifikasi

791.43

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Motion Pictures, Movies

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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