[Reader-list] new issue of rouge

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Many on this List seem to be obsessed with and thrive on highlighting negative aspects of India. You will rarely, if ever, see such people able to talk about anything positive to  celebrate about India. There seems to be a scare that if they do so they might be accused of promoting a "Nation State". If that is the reason then such people either do not understand what is implied by "Nation State" or have an extremely limited understanding of India.
 
In the midst of such attitudes on this List,  it is good to see Alexander Keefe drawing attention to the essay by Vinzenz Hediger who mentions that for a 'supranational' European cinema 'that transcends regional and national cultural boundaries', the Hindi cinema can serve as an 'instructive example'.
 
As compared to those List members I referred to earlier, Vinzenz shows better understanding of India not being a "Nation State".
 
Interestingly, (Vinzenz seems to be unaware of it), there is not much "Hindi" in "Hindi cinema". The overwhelming majority of films from "Hindi cinema" use "Hindustani" which is a mixture of "Hindi" and "Urdu". The 2 languages are 'sisters' by 'linguistic' norms with many of the Nouns, Adjectives and Adverbs in each finding their roots in Sanskrit in the case of "Shudh (pure) Hindi" and from Persian, (some) Turkish, (and increasingly now) Arabic in the case of "Khaalis (pure) Urdu". 
 
To the "Hindustani" of the so called "Hindi cinema" sometimes get added words from other languages in India, both in the dialogues as well as in the "lyrics" of the songs.
 
Javed Akhtar is quoted as proposing to think of Hindi cinema as ‘India’s 17th member state’. Conceptually brilliant. Factually incorrect. Last I knew India had 28 States. Either Javed Akhtar is misquoted or the reference is lost on me.
 
Kshmendra
 

--- On Mon, 11/24/08, Alexander Keefe <alexanderaugust at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Alexander Keefe <alexanderaugust at gmail.com>
Subject: [Reader-list] new issue of rouge
To: "sarai list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Monday, November 24, 2008, 2:56 PM

At long last, the new issue of Rouge has come out: http://rouge.com.au/

Of particular interest to list-members will be the lead essay "Politique
des
archives" <http://rouge.com.au/12/hediger.html> (in English, despite
the
title) by film and media theorist Vinzenz Hediger.

During a long discussion on the possibilities and conditions for the
emergence of a "European cinema," he takes a detour through the
theoretical
implications of Bollywood's supraregional status in India, noting that
"Hindi cinema's condition as a post-colonial, not-quite national, or
rather
hyper-national cinema that incorporates a multiplicity of cultural
differences without giving preference to any specific set of cultural
traits, a condition that is undoubtedly one of the key elements of Hindi
cinema's enduring success in India and with Indian audiences residing
abroad. At the stage of European unification that we are now, European
cinema could be similarly thought of as an imaginary 26th member state, an
imaginary territory, located everywhere and nowhere in Europe, inhabited by
everyone who chooses to live his or her life of dreams and aspirations
through films originating from somewhere close to that territory,
incorporating a multiplicity of cultural differences without giving
preference to any specific set of cultural traits. However, despite all the
best efforts by state and European authorities, and even though many cinema
networks, particularly of the avant-garde, have always been European rather
than national in scope, such an imaginary 26th member state has so far
failed to emerge on the European stage. Hence also, and sadly so, there was
no European cinema there to blame for its failure to provide the necessary
supranational projections and thus preventing the failure of the European
constitution. "

-- 
jugaadoo.blogspot.com
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