Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Mythologicals

Timestamp:

Jun 26, 2012, 7:58:58 PM (12 years ago)

Author:

Trupti

Comment:

--

Mythologicals

@@ +1 @@
+'''Mythologicals'''
+
+
+The Malayalam cinema has a tradition of
+Biblical mythologicals traceable to P.J.
+Cherian’s stage work (e.g. Snapaka
+Yohannan, 1963; P.A. Thomas’ Jesus, 1973; the
+biblical epic shot in 1991 for TV by Appachan),
+but the genre effectively refers to the Hindu
+mythological and is also known as the Pauranic
+genre. ‘Puranas’ or ‘ancient stories’ have
+become mere religious fables and cant,
+whatever historical content they once
+possessed having become encrusted with myth
+and diluted with semi-religious legends. The
+stories were collected and elaborated into the
+Mahabharata, a text going back to 400 BC and
+undergoing a series of mutations until c.AD400.
+This process, which saw the rise of a caste
+system in India, also evolved a textual
+hierarchy with the ‘official’ Sanskritised text
+repeatedly rewritten to justify the accumulation
+of agrarian surplus by the Brahmins (priest
+caste). There are several popular versions
+presented for the benefit of the lower classes
+but these also continued the oral and pictorial
+traditions of the ‘heroic lays of ancient war’
+(Kosambi, 1962). Major historical interventions
+include the Buddhist revolution and the
+regional linguistic proliferation leading to the
+medieval Bhakti and Sufi movements.
+Industrial genres immediately preceding film
+are evidenced in the visual arts (see Pat
+Painting and Ravi Varma) and in the theatre
+(see Radheshyam Kathavachak and
+Betaab). An economically developed
+commercial stage in most urban centres often
+adapted modes of folk performance to the
+European proscenium, creating technical
+precedents for several of the earliest
+conventions of film shooting and editing (see
+Phalke). The most famous traditions are the
+Ramleela and Raasleela (later assimilated into
+Parsee theatre; cf. Indrasabha, 1932), the
+Yakshagana, Nautanki, Bhavai, Burrakatha and
+Jatra. The form has been and continues to be
+used for explicitly ideological ends. Among its
+first industrialised manifestations were Ravi
+Varma’s self-conscious appropriation of
+Brahmical ‘classicism’ for the benefit of his
+royal patron and the Mysore court (cf. G.V.
+Iyer). The stories were also used as encoded
+messages of nationalist patriotism (e.g. Phalke’s
+work, or Bhakta Vidur, 1921), as a way of
+conveying ‘Gandhian’ national chauvinism in
+Vijay Bhatt’s films, to bolster regionalist
+separatism in Rajkumar’s Kannada films or
+simply to shore up temple cults with a mass
+following (e.g. the films on the Guruvayoor
+and Sabarimalai icons in Kerala). Recently,
+mythologicals have been used to propagate
+Hindu chauvinism, e.g. in Ramanand Sagar’s
+TV Ramayan (1986-8). The genre can also be
+seen in terms of its performative traditions
+shading into the melodramatic idiom,
+condensing complex contemporary tensions
+and codes in its figures. Ritwik Ghatak
+mobilises this dimension as do Raj Kapoor
+and several others, e.g. in their references to
+the goddess Seeta when wives and mothers are
+at issue. In spite of the pervasive references to
+the myths in Indian cinema, mythologicals
+cannot be regarded as a matrix or a master text
+for Indian narrative art in general, but rather as
+a nationally familiar and flexible stock of
+figures and topoi which can be used as
+shorthand to register more immediate historical
+issues (cf. Bhakta Vidur, 1921). The invocation
+of myths is less important than the way the
+stories are treated as a genre, modified as
+narratives or formally deployed as allegorical
+relays within a conservatively constructed
+notion of the social as a cinematic genre.
+
+[[Glossary]]