International
Conference @ DMC College | Goa
#goamusings #thedaytoday
1st
March 2024
Early
in the
morning today, I went for a stroll down the streets of Mapusa, Goa, and I was quite fascinated by all things Goan!
Their
architecture especially is something that requires a vivid detailed description in
a separate post altogether!
This
Portuguese
architectural legacy beautifully blends the Mughal, the European and the Indian
into an amalgam that gives Goan architecture its own unique aura of sorts!
On
either side of the roads – one could see roadside shops selling eggs,
milk and coconuts in makeshift tables spread out for the purpose!
And
these temporary shops disappear within two hours into the morning, when traffic
reaches its peak, and the sun gets into ‘intense’ mode! 😊
DMC
College
is situated in a lovely hill that overlooks the Mapusa region of Goa.
We
all had
our breakfast in College. So happy to see two of our students from Chennai had made it to this Conference. Gautham who is presenting his paper, said that he had come all the way from Chennai to Goa, to present his first paper. So proud of you Gautham and Ezhil!
Sharp
at 10 am,
the Conference started in the Conference Hall. The invited guests lit the lamp,
and this was followed by the Key Note Address by Dr. Vivek Sachdeva, Professor
& Dean, University School of Humanities and Social Sciences, GGSIP
University, New Delhi.
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| The Mobile Book Van @ the Conference Venue |
His
talk was on the topic, ‘New Cinema Form and Shifting Ideologies’.
Confining
the scope
of his talk to Hindi Cinema, Professor Vivek spoke about the impact of OTT and the
new avenues for film distribution, that have changed the way films are made
today, and on how we understand the OTT platform as a ‘new space’.
This
‘new space’ must be seen in relation to globalization, liberalization,
digital revolution, and the post-pandemic scenario, etc, and for this this I'll
fall back on narrative theory, he said.
Excerpts
from his talk -
By
new spaces, I mean, OTT has opened up new platforms – today,
Turkish, Iranian, Korean films and a lot of South Indian films are made available
online, based on subscriptions.
Moreover,
they are
simultaneously dubbed into multiple languages as well.
Some
Hindi films were released on Amazon Prime even before they could be
released on screen.
They've
created a neo-cultural space for cinema through the OTT Platform.
This
new space
is an alternative space!
However,
this
alternative space is also controlled by consumerist ideology.
It's
not a space of enunciation or alternative ideology but only a space for
alternative consumption!
It
has changed the relationship of viewers with cinema.
The
old cinema
was based on class-based stratification where those who cannot afford the
luxury seats, were often seated in the front rows, or on the ground!
Imaginary
communities watched the same movie together.
The
use of Hindustani language also became a tool of resistance against
British Raj.
It
contributed towards fostering and imagining the nation.
Immediately
after
independence, depictions in Indian cinema included, themes of reforming rich
brats or hardened criminals, and the challenges before India as a young nation,
and the responsibility of young Indians towards society.
The
poor
were a regular constituent of the cinemas of the 1950s.
In
contrast,
the nature of cinema changed after the introduction of multiplexes. It
increased the cost of living, and the poor were excluded from these cinema
halls.
Films
like
Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994) offered a spectrum of affluence. The folk
songs and traditional rituals and Diwali celebrations have influenced society
to such an extent that society has become bollywoodised! In short, Hum Aapke
Hain Koun..! has become the paradigm or the very epitome of a family movie!
New
cinema today is made with the newly emerging New Middle class, with the
beginning of liberalization in India.
The
new middle
class with better pay package gave a fillip to consumerism.
These
spaces were ‘spaces of consumption’ were food, high-priced popcorn and
cinema were consumed at the same place!
Privatization
of internet
services with ‘broader’ bandwidth gave boost to video content on internet.
The
first OTT
was BigFlix launched by Reliance Entertainment in 2008.
The
policies of liberalization allowed Amazon [2016] and Netflix [2017] to set
shop in the Indian market, as a result of free economy.
Movies
began
to be watched in laptops, and became a highly personalized experience which has
eventually affected the form, and the narrative experience as well!
A
new genre, the Web series - a serialized form of narrative emerged because
of the OTT Platforms.
TV
adaptations of serialized visual Narratives.
However
when
it comes to OTT, the content part is tutored.
TV
serials and TV series are different in their essence and they are based
on the structure of narratives.
Web
series like Mirzapur are based on crimes in remote parts of India. The Delhi
police in fact appreciated the makers, because it was so close in the storyline
to the Delhi police records.
[But
we must
also remember it is just a narrative of Delhi police record.] 😊
The
tone and
tenor of representation changes in web series.
Mirzapur
– the TV
series highlights the nexus between money power and political power in society.
It
tells the pressures of middle-class families, happily married women, their
hidden sexualities etc.
This
way focalisation assumes significance here.
Crime
is no longer contained to the metropolis. Mumbai is not only a city of
opportunities now but also a city of crime.
It
differs from Italian new realism as well. It makes the films deceptively
realistic, since they're made of lesser-known casts and crew as well. It lacks
the dramatic acting and sounds which are associated with Bollywood.
These
pseudo-realistic movies produced a reified image of rural India that's originally
not there.
Away
from the family, it gives them an individualised perspective to experience a
story away from the gaze.
One
drawback of these crime thriller series is that, they fail to give a
socio-economic perspective to the crime, which used to be part of the new
cinema of the 1950s.
Newly
imagined
gender roles are also shown, which blurs our perspective towards good and evil.
OTT
has given
space for alternative Narratives that have not found a space on big screen. Eg.
Deepa Mehta!
OTTs
hence are
like online parlours with different packages.
They
have emerged as an alternative space with new kinds of Narratives, but they
have also become capitalistic!
OTTs
have hence
resulted in affecting the other forms and modes of cinema produced in the
country.
In
the context of ideology and habitus, the question that I would like to
leave with you today is –
Do you think art can transcend these metrics?
Signed
off
Dr. Vivek Sachdeva!
Then
Dr. Geetha
Bakilapadavu spoke on ‘Film and Ideology’.
Dr.
Geetha
is with BITS Pilani, Goa Campus.
Dr.
Krishna Manavalli, Professor & Chairperson, Dept of English, University
of Mysore, spoke next on ‘Christie Calling: Adaptations of Agatha Christie in
Hindi Cinema’.
She
began
her talk with an interesting anecdote!
The
queen of
crime fiction – Agatha Christie - after a failed marriage and a traumatic
divorce, or rather two years after her divorce, while visiting friends on an
expedition in Iraq - she chanced upon Max Mallowan, an archaeologist who was 14
years her junior.
She
found him
quite engaging. But Max was sceptical, and so he asked her -
I
don’t think you’d find life with me interesting. Won’t you be disturbed
by the fact that so much of my work has to do with corpses?
She
reassured
him: "I adore corpses and stiffs."
With
that began
an exhilarating romance, and they lived happily ever after. 😊
The
genre of whodunit films.. hasn't received much justice, said Dr. Krishna.
Where's
the reader in the translation?
Where's
the viewer in the adaptation?
asked
Dr. Krishna, before signing off on her Plenary Session!
On
the whole,
it was a very engaging morning session of Plenary Talks!
In
the afternoon, while going for our lunch, all of a sudden, I saw a familiar
voice beckoning me from quite nearby!
It
was
Dr. Susan Deborah! 😊
It’s
been ages
since we had last met in Goa, some six years ago, and so it was so delightful to meet
up with Susan. We missed meeting up with Rayson though! [Rayson, btw, is Professor
with BITS Pilani, Goa Campus.]
She
had
arrived just in time to chair the afternoon’s session.
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| With the Speakers, Paper Presenters and the Organisers |
I
was so
happy that we could talk over our lunch together.
It
also reminded me of our vibrant Assam sojourn that had happened exactly 12 years
ago, where we had presented our papers in the Conference in which Professor
Gayatri Spivak was the Key-Note Speaker! 😊
It
was such a
joy for all three of us back then, to spend three days in the intellectual
company of Professor Spivak in Sibsagar College, Assam.
PS:
You may want to read more about our memorable Assam Sojourn, and our
rendezvous with Professor Spivak, on our past post HERE.
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