Author: Vishnu, V
Publication Year: 2022
Keywords: Indian Cinema,Discourses of Science Technology,Modernity in Indian Cinema
Abstract: This dissertation, titled "Filming Reason: Discourses of Science, Technology, and Modernity in Indian Cinema", is an investigation into the narratives involving the nation, the state- in the form of its institutions and bureaucratic/political actors, and national identity- as a dominant cultural identity valorized as the authentic one, that are centered around discourses of science, technology, and modernity. It attempts to understand how the discourses around science, technology, and modernity in India informed popular culture and found popular expression through Indian cinema. In this thesis I look at cinema in three broad periods- Nehruvian India, the period following the declaration of the Emergency and leading up to economic liberalization, and the post-liberalization, nuclear India- in order to understand how the changing discourses around the role of science and technology in creating the idea of India were reflected, mediated, and reconstructed in them. I seek to understand how the nation- more specifically the nation through science, and technology has been constructed in cinema and how it has imbibed the evolving and often contradictory understandings of modernity. In the final instance, through this dissertation, I attempt to look at how this unique understanding of modernity has influenced the speculative imagination of science and technology in Indian cinema by analyzing the thematic and aesthetic conventions of Indian science fiction films. I tie this analysis of an ideal present or a future utopia envisioned in these films to a particular conception of the nation and its identity.
While most studies investigating the idea of the nation, as articulated through cinema, focus more on Hindi cinema, this one attempts at a broader canvas by including films from other regional languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Bangla, and Malayalam. While this thesis eschews a monolithic conception of the nation, it is a more direct attempt to trace out the ways in which the popular discourse on science has been encoded historically in the cinema of the time. This interdisciplinary work contributes a more focussed understanding of the nation, the state, and national identity by looking exclusively at cinematic texts that primarily reflect, translate, and reconstruct the discourses on science, technology, and modernity in their particular time periods. It seeks to understand how cinema negotiates with these evolving discourses and how it mediates the socio-political situations that give rise to them. It is in that aspect an account of the role which science and technology has had in the history of the nation- both in the struggle for its Independence and in its building and growth over the past seven decades. It also contributes to the understanding of the genre of science fiction in Indian cinema as it seeks to understand the aesthetic and thematic tendencies of the genre and the ideological impetus behind them. It tries to theoretically understand how the genre in its Indian iteration, despite its many resemblances to western science fiction and influences taken from it, is fundamentally unique. It is an exploration of this particular genre in order to understand its roots in the larger socio-political discourses of science and technology. In not limiting the films selected to any one regional cinema this thesis also gives a glimpse of the specific linguistic, cultural, and regional differences that exist across the cinemas of India.
In this dissertation I look at films as particular instances that are emblematic of larger trends in the cinema of a period and symptomatic of underlying political and cultural discourses that were prominent at the time. However, these discourses are not limited to their originary milieus nor are the films that draw inspiration from them. The films selected in each chapter are limited to those that comment upon or are inspired by the social, political, and academic discourses on science and technology that existed in the period of their release. I attempt to analyze the texts of these films as my primary sources in the backdrop of secondary academic and journalistic sources that discuss the social and political milieu of their respective periods. The primary methodology I employ in this thesis is textual analysis of the filmic texts which are my primary sources. I attempt a close reading of the plot, visuals, dialogues, songs, and promotional materials of selected films to see how the historically constructed discourse of science and technology are negotiated by them. Furthermore, I juxtapose plot elements and narrative strategies that are common to films across a period to understand the construction of a cinematic discourse of science and technology. I scrutinize the visuals to understand how general cinematography, mise-en-scène, blocking, and computer generated visual effects are employed to convey the desired effect of the narrative. Finally, I analyze the dialogues and songs as strategies that explicitly or implicitly construct the discourses of science and technology across various films. Through this textual analysis of the films, contextualized in certain key periods in the history of the nation and in the light of specific ideologies, I seek to answer the following key questions:
How has the discourse around science, technology, and modernity evolved over the years in India, from colonial times to the present?
Does the cinema of the time reflect the points of departure of the shifting discourse of science and technology in India?
What are the thematic and aesthetic choices deployed by popular cinema to articulate this discourse?
Is there a quintessentially "Indian" imagination of science and technology in popular cinema that is vindicated by the unique trajectory of this discourse?
Chapter Summaries
In the introductory chapter I primarily investigate the ways in which Indian cinema has framed the narrative of the nation, how it has mediated between tradition and modernity, and the ways in which it has negotiated with the state, which seeks to both control it as an art form and deploy it as a vehicle of mass mobilization and nation building. Here I look at how cinema has evolved historically as state policy and industry practices through the socio-political shifts that have occurred over the years since independence. The review of academic sources included in this section illustrates how cinema reflects its immediate socio-political reality, translates it into a popular idiom, and disseminates specific formulations of it.
The second chapter looks at four films- Puthiya Akasam Puthiya Bhoomi (New Sky New Earth. Malayalam. 1962), Aswamedham (Horse Sacrifice. Malayalam. 1967) and its sequel Sarasayya (Bed of Arrows. Malayalam. 1971), and Manthan (The Churning. Hindi. 1976)- and how they reflect the ideals of the Nehruvian state. Spanning a period from the early sixties to the emergency these films reflect the narrative of science and the scientist/rational technocrat as the prime motivators of social change and economic progress. The chapter investigates the characterizations of the protagonists who are all "men of science" and how a personal conviction in science and reason dovetails with the national project of economic and social development. These messianic figures, bearing the authority of science, are at once the catalysts of social change and the vanguard of the state. Through them the Nehruvian ideal of progress- a rapid influx of technology that would enable India to catch up after centuries of colonial exploitation,and an adherence to a scientific temper that supersedes concerns of class, caste, religion, and private interests- is elevated into a moral and emotional question rather than one of cold reason. The reason of the state and the rationality of the technocrat are articulated in terms of duty. humanism, and sacrifice. The state, in the earlier films investigated in this chapter remains, as Partha Chatterjee, defines it, "a system-theorists utopia" (Nationalist Thought 160), that was above petty realpolitik concerns or the vice of corruption. The chapter traces the evolution of these narratives from the earlier films, suffused with melodramatic idealism of the statist vision that combined the technocrat as a messianic martyr and the common populace who were the enlightened engines of progress, to the later film in Manthan which complicated this idealism. The scientific expert of the state is no longer a heroic individual who is martyred so as to be converted into an unassailable symbol of a scientific temper and duty to the nation. The romanticized state, in turn, changes from being a resolute engine of social change and economic development, to one that succumbs easily to the realpolitik pressures of caste, class, and capital. The chapter argues that the slow but sure erosion of the position of the state as an unequivocal ally of science, reason, and progress to a top down imposition of unrealistic ideals is reflective of a change in the discourse that surrounds the ideals of the Nehruvian state towards the end of its period of ideological ascendancy in India.
The third chapter continues this thread to investigate how the narrative of progress through heavy industrialisation and technological infrastructure came under fire in the post-Nehruvian era along with the embattled position that science itself came into. Modern science was no longer a universal, dispassionate, engine of progress but was questioned as an imperial remnant and a tool of violence both upon the populace and nature. The chapter looks at the political and economic turmoil that India faced in the immediate aftermath of Nehru's death and during Indira Gandhi's tenure as the PM and the eventual loss of trust in the state and its founding ideals. It traces the rise of Popular Science Movements as a grassroots, bottom up movement to reclaim both the discourse and practice of science for a disenfranchised citizenry. Science itself had become the idiom of resistance against the developmentalist agenda of the state that did not include the people or the natural resources in its calculations. The chapter looks at Ganashatru (The Enemy of the People. Bangla. 1990) and Ek Doctor ki Maut (The Death of a Doctor. Hindi. 1991) as examples of films in which the figure of the "man of science" is. disengaged from a state which is no longer dispassionate and scientific in its single-minded pursuit of development, but is motivated by political concerns, greed, and religion. The films mark a change in the discourse of science wherein the authority of science as a positive force of social change is still embodied by the figure of the scientist who remains an idealist and a martyr for its cause. Susman (Essence. Hindi. 1987) and Current (Hindi. 1991) further explores the mutation of the state into an obstacle to progress. Susman, directed by Shyam Benegal- who also directed Manthan, marks the decay in the optimism surrounding cooperative societies as state instituted, citizen run collectives that would operate according to scientific reason. Current echoes this disillusionment in the structures of the state and is a scathing indictment of the bureaucracy that has become an accomplice for a nexus of the political, feudal, and capitalist interests in the exploitation of the common farmer. The film, on a much deeper level, transforms. the very idea of technology into an oppressive and terror inducing concept. The chapter finally looks at Agantuk (Guest. Bangla. 1990) and Paithrukam (Heritage. Malayalam. 1991) in the context of the postmodernist critique of western science that arose in India in the 1980s which sought to challenge the hegemony of western science as a universal body of knowledge and critiqued it as a tool of systemic violence on both the common citizen and nature. The chapter claborates how, while explicitly rejecting modern civilization and scientific reason, both these films valorise either mainstream Hindu traditions or non-western cultures and argue for a return to them.
The fourth chapter looks at how the discourse of nationalistic pride in technological accomplishments have evolved over the years. This chapter looks at films from post-liberalization, nuclear India of the the 2000s where the country has emerged as a major global power and a powerful geopolitical entity. This chapter looks at narratives of science and technology as markers of national pride and yardsticks of international prestige. It traces the evolution of the centrality that science and technology had achieved in the articulation of a demand for nationhood in the colonial times and looks at how this has transformed to include India's postcolonial identity and its geopolitical ambitions. The first film that this chapter explores, Hawaizaada (Airborne. Hindi, 2015), is a fictional biopic of an Indian inventor, Shivkar Talpade, who allegedly invented the first aircraft in history. In the film, this piece of machinery is not just an advancement in the field of science and technology but also a symbol that defies the colonial narrative of how English rule, by virtue of their scientific and civilisational superiority, over the subcontinent was natural and in the interest of Indians. While the narrative of the nation and its freedom seems to hinge on a technology, the science that is behind this technology is not of the West but of the mythical Indian past. The second film. Parmans: The Story of Pokhran (Atom: The Story of Pokhran. Hindi. 2018), based on India's nuclear tests in Pokhran in 1998, positions the country as being cornered into taking a stand in the face of increasing military threats from external aggressors and as the only solution to its embattled position in world politics. The discourse of the film eschews the complex political considerations leading up to the tests and the nation's historical stance of nuclear weapons converts the event, converting it into a metaphor of a struggle for righteousness and justice which is a clear ideological statement of what the country and its geopolitical and military strength signifies. Parmanu faithfully recaptures the discourses of jingoism and religious fervor surrounding the tests by telling a story of celebratory one-upmanship and sanctifying it as a moralistic victory with the religious discourse that runs through it. The third film, Mission Mangal (Mission Mars. hindi. 2019), continues the discursive tropes of Parmanu that equates technology with pride and shame. The question of respect, especially from global superpowers like the US and China, are central to the narrative of Mission Mangal and it tells the story of how it is earned in a way that is uniquely Indian. The film celebrates the historic Mars Orbiter Mission carried out by the ISRO in 2013 and the ingenuity of the Indian scientists who carried it out on an extremely low budget. The film however, roots technology in the culture whereby Indian science and ingenuity is something unique, a doppelganger of its Western counterpart, identical yet immediately recognizable as fundamentally different. The film packages its celebration of a technological achievement inside a larger one of an idea of being Indian.
The fifth chapter looks at science fiction cinema in an attempt to understand how the historically evolved popular discourse of science is reflected in speculative cinematic imagination. This chapter traces out a unique imagination of science and technology across the various regional cinemas of the nation that reflect the specific ways in which science and technology has been historically constructed in the popular imagination. It analyses the common visual and thematic elements of Indian science fiction films in general to understand the unique genre markers that make it distinct from its western counterparts and which can be traced back to the unique trajectory of the discourse of science and technology in the nation.
Taking the specific cases of four science fiction films, Aditya 369 (Telugu, 1991), Bharathan Effect (Malayalam. 2007), 7aum Arivu (Seventh Sense. Tamil. 2011), and Baar Baar Dekho (Look again and again. Hindi. 2016) the chapter uses Darko Suvin's theoretical concept of "novum"- the technological/scientific novelty that is at the core of the estrangement in a science fiction narrative- to delineate a prevalent tendency of Indian science fiction films. All three films therefore use mythical and religious concepts as the central novum of their narratives and envisions futures that are in fact driven by the past. These films are representative of a general trend in Indian science fiction that conflates the scientific and the mythical in the speculative imagination of science and technology.
University: The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad
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Category: Film Studies
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