Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Melodrama

Timestamp:

Jun 26, 2012, 6:32:36 PM (12 years ago)

Author:

Trupti

Comment:

--

Melodrama

@@ +1 @@
+'''Melodrama'''
+
+
+Defined in the Indian context mainly as a
+‘musical dramatic’ narrative in accordance with
+its original generic meaning. From c.1912,
+when the Indian cinema first attempted
+cinematic fiction as an indigenous economic
+enterprise, it relied on the melodramatic mode
+to narrativise the moving image and to give a
+sequential logic to the convention of frontal
+address central to India’s performative and
+visual art traditions. Melodrama drew from the
+same sources as e.g. the mythological but
+functioned as the aesthetic regime
+accompanying the socio-economic transition
+from feudal-artisanal practices to industrial
+ones, both formally and in its content matter
+(e.g. Painter’s Savkari Pash, 1925 & 1936). It
+recomposed traditional performative idioms
+and themes, drawing on Western narrative
+forms and similarly negotiating modernisation
+tensions. Often aligned with the reformism of
+the literary social reform movement, esp. in the
+inter-war period when it was mobilised to
+recast modernisation in nationalist terms by
+e.g. V. Shantaram and B.N. Reddi, continuing
+into the work of B.R. Panthulu and Puttanna
+Kanagal. The classic example of this
+development was the DMK Film which
+provided Indian cinema with some of its most
+spectacular melodramas. After Independence,
+the genre received a new, intense and conflictridden
+inflection in the work of Raj Kapoor
+and Guru Dutt in the 50s, generating a socialcritical
+type of melodrama. In their work, the
+negative sides of capitalist modernisation
+propel a darkly romantic narrative isolating the
+tragic hero as an individual. Ravi Vasudevan
+(1989) noted that this period of Hindi
+melodrama was overdetermined by the
+Oedipal triangle of the fearsome father, the
+nurturing mother and the traumatised son who
+could deal with these tensions either through
+renunciation or lawlessness. After WW2, the
+reformist melodramatic current was deployed
+to elaborate a pan-Indian narrative regime (see
+All-India Film) culminating in Mehboob’s
+influential Mother India (1957), restating the
+priority of kinship relations and parental/state
+authority. This later yielded Amitabh
+Bachchan’s or Uttam Kumar’s hero-asoutlaw,
+upholding an imaginary past’s
+‘traditional’ values in the face of a degenerated
+modernity. In Maharashtra, melodrama was
+used to legitimate a growing regional market
+(Bhalji Pendharkar, scenarist G.D.
+Madgulkar). In Bengal, where a cinema had
+developed which was economically strong but
+culturally subservient to the novel, melodrama
+acquired an oppositional force, e.g. in Barua’s
+work which subverted the literary, and in the
+Kallol film-makers where it later found new
+alignments with the IPTA’s formal emphasis on
+the folk theatre. Bengal also saw the only
+instance in Indian film where melodrama
+became the site where popular and classical
+idioms of performance merged with a
+Brechtian aesthetic, yielding a unique authorial
+practice: the work of Ritwik Ghatak,
+massively influential on the films of e.g.
+Kumar Shahani and the early Mani Kaul.
+Classic melodramas include: Savkari Pash
+(1925), Devdas (1935), Kunku/Duniya Na
+Mane (1937), Swargaseema (1945), Andaz
+(1949), Ezhai Padum Padu (1950), Awara
+(1951), Parasakthi (1952), Mother India
+and Pyaasa (both 1957), Kaagaz Ke Phool
+(1959), Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960), Nagara
+Haavu (1972), Muqaddar Ka Sikandar
+(1978), Tarang (1984). See also Social.
+
+[[Glossary]]