Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Historicals

Timestamp:

Jun 23, 2012, 10:45:00 AM (12 years ago)

Author:

Trupti

Comment:

--

Historicals

@@ +1 @@
+'''Historicals'''
+
+
+Like the reformist social, the historical genre
+derived from late 19th C. novel and theatre
+writing. Used mainly to glorify epochs of
+regional (usually military) power, it
+incorporated ‘ Tipu Sultan in Kannada, Shivaji
+in Marathi, Pratapaditya or Siraj-ud-Dowla in
+Bengali - although Maratha and Rajput history
+transcended all bounds to gain an all-India
+popularity’ (Meenakshi Mukherjee, 1985).
+Often the language of the most spectacular
+historicals (see K. Asif, Sohrab Modi and
+Kamal Amrohi) was Urdu and the favourite
+settings were the Caliphates, the Delhi
+Sultanate (13th-16th C.) or the Mughal empire
+(16th C.). As Mukherjee points out via novelist
+Abdul Halim Sharar, the ‘Muslim evocation of a
+glorious past could hark back to the days of
+Moorish domination of Spain and other
+Mediterranean lands’. Generally, the genre was
+invented to represent the ‘moment of
+departure’ for Indian nationalism (Partha
+Chatterjee, 1986), resurrecting national or
+regional glory to create allegories for
+communal and regional difference and to
+consolidate the reform movements’ new
+historiography. The specific functions of the
+genre varied from region to region: in
+conditions where royalty had been reduced to
+a largely ceremonial role (e.g. South India), it
+was a specific response to imperialist
+domination: e.g. in Travancore where the first
+major novel by C.V. Raman Pillai (1858-1922),
+Martanda Varma (1891; filmed in 1931)
+resurrected the 18th C. emperor; in the old
+Mysore province several Company Natak
+plays returned to the glory of the Vijayanagar
+Empire (14th C.). The early cinema takes off
+directly from the stage historical (cf. Baburao
+Painter). The most evident influence was the
+Parsee theatre, where the genre was
+interpreted entirely as a play about feudal
+power and therefore a crucial mediation of
+kinship relations (see Aga Hashr Kashmiri,
+Mehboob). Influential regional imitations of
+this mode included the Bengali plays of
+Dwijendralal Roy (Mewar Patan, 1909),
+interpreted by Parthasarathy Gupta in the
+context of Swadeshi (cf. Gupta, 1988), and the
+famous Shahjehan (1909) or those of Khirode
+Prasad Vidyavinode (e.g. Alamgir, 1921, staged
+by Sisir Bhaduri). Imperial Studio re-coded
+the genre along Cecil B. DeMille lines. Bhalji
+Pendharkar and G.V. Iyer (in his Rajkumar
+films) used the genre for directly ideological
+ends. In most instances where the cinema took
+off from folk or popular theatre (as in Telugu),
+early historicals are usually blurred into other
+genres like the mythological or the Saint film
+(e.g. Vel Pics) and are conventionally referred
+to as ‘costume’ dramas, a tradition later
+continued by Gemini’s adventure films and
+politicised as an imaginary pseudo-history by
+MGR.
+
+[[Film]]