Mythologicals and Modernity
Contesting Silent Cinema in South India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v1i2_3.207Keywords:
Tamil film, mythological cinema, early modern cinemaAbstract
During the 1920s mythological films provided the first Indian cinematic formula for commercial success based on this presumed all-India appeal of Hindu religious stories. This article examines the early history of mythological films as a particularly useful site for addressing questions about the complex and changing relations between media, religion, and politics. In particular, this article concentrates upon a series of significant films and debates contesting the contemporary significance of mythological films in Tamil speaking south India during the 1920s. It argues that mythological cinema was implicated within and refigured a series of ongoing religious, political and cultural debates on modernity during the 1920s.
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Zutshi, Somnath. “Women, Nation, and the Outsider in Hindi Cinema.” In Niranjana, Sudhir, and Dhareshwar, Interrogating Modernity, 83–141.
Baskaran, S. Theodore. “Popular Theatre and the Rise of Nationalism.” In The Message Bearers: The Nationalist Politics and the Entertainment Media in South India, 1880–1945, 21–42. Madras: Cre-A, 1981.
Baudrillard, Jean. “The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media.” In Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster, 210–22. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1988.
Bhatia, Nandi. “Censorship and the Politics of Nationalist Drama.” In Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance: Theater and Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial India, 19–50. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
Burch, Noel. “Narrative/Diegesis—Thresholds, Limits.” Screen 23, no. 2 (July–August 1982): 16–34.
Cashman, Richard I. The Myth of the Lokamanya: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharastra. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
Charney, Leo, and Vanessa R. Schwartz, eds. Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Chatterjee, Partha. “Whose Imagined Community?” In The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, 3–13. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Dharap, B. V. “The Mythological or Taking Fatalism for Granted.” In Indian Cinema Superbazaar, ed. Aruna Vasudev and Philippe Lenglet, 79–83. New Delhi: Vikas, 1983.
Foucault, Michel. “What is Enlightenment?” In The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, 32–50. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
Gadre, A. H. “Dada Seheb Phalke: A Struggle from Start to Finish.” Screen [Bombay] (15 February 1952): 28–34.
Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar. “On Alternative Modernities.” Public Culture 27 (1999): 1–19.
Geetha, V., and S. V. Rajadurai. Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium, From Iyothee Thas to Periar. Calcutta: Samya, in association with Book Review Literary Trust, 1998.
Gupt, Somnath. The Parsi Theatre: Its Origins and Development. Trans. and ed. Kathyrn Hansen. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2005.
Hansen, Kathryn. Grounds for Play: The Nautanki Theatre of North India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
———. “The Migration of a Text: The Indar Sabha in Print and Performance.” Sangeet Natak 35 (2000): 3–34.
Hughes, Stephen. “House Full: Film Genre, Exhibition and Audiences in South India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 43 (2006): 31–62.
Indian Cinematograph Committee. Indian Cinematograph Committee: 1927–1928: Evidence. Calcutta: Government of India Central Publication Branch, 1928.
Irschick, Eugene F. Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism, 1916–1929. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
Iyer, T. V. Seshagiri. “Presidential Address.” In Reddy, The First All India Drama Conference, 1–10.
Kapur, Anuradha. “The Representation of Gods and Heroes: Parsi Mythological Dramas of the Early Twentieth Century.” Journal of Arts and Ideas 23–24 (1993): 85–107.
Kaviraj, Sudipta. “Modernity and Politics in India.” Daedalus 129 (Winter 2000): 137–54.
Larkin, Brian. “Theaters of the Profane: Cinema and Colonial Urbanism.” Visual Anthropology Review 14, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1998–1999): 46–62.
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Mankekar, Purnima. Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood and Nation in Postcolonial India. Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1994 (1964).
Montagu, Edwin S. An Indian Diary. Ed. Venetia Montagu. London: Heineman, 1930.
Muthaliyar, P. Sambanda. Natakamedai Ninaivukal, Part One. Chennai: Peerless Press, 1932.
Myleru, C. R. “The Tamil Drama.” Journal of the Annamalai University 3 (April 1934): 71–78.
Nair, P. K. “Those Illuminating Aspects.” Cinema In India 3, no. 9 (October–November 1992): 21–28.
Niranjana, Tejaswini, P. Sudhir, and Vivek Dhareshwar. Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1993.
Owen, Hugh P. “Towards Nationwide Agitation and Organization: The Home Rule Leagues, 1915–18.” In Soundings in Modern South Asian History, ed. D. A. Low, 159–95. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.
Phalke, Dhundiraj Govind. Phalke Commemoration Souvenir. Bombay: The Phalke Centenary Celebrations Committee, 1970.
Pinney, Christopher. “Photos of the Gods”: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. London: Reaktion Press, 2004.
Raghavan, V. “Methods of Popular Religious Instruction in South India.” In Traditional India: Structure and Change, ed. Milton Singer, 130–38. Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1959.
Rajagopal, Arvind. Politics after Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Rajadhyaksha, Ashish. “The Phalke Era: Conflict of Traditional Form and Modern Technology.” In Niranjana, Sudhir, and Dhareshwar, Interrogating Modernity, 47–82.
Reddy, C. R. Drama in the East and West. Bangalore: Amateur Dramatic Association, 1919.
———, ed. The First All India Drama Conference, 1921. Bangalore: Amateur Dramatic Association, 1927.
Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India, 1885–1947. Madras: Macmillan India, 1983.
Sastri, K. S. Ramaswamy. “The Motifs and Methods of Indian Drama.” In Reddy, The First All India Drama Conference, 11–22.
Shanmugam, T. K. “Avvai,” ed. Tamizh Natakametai Cankaratas Suvamikal Nuttandu Vizha Malar, 1867–1967. Chennai: Tavattiru Cankaratas Cuvamikal Ninaivu Manram, 1967.
Tamil Nadu Archives. Government Order no. 2260 Law (Gen) December 19, 1921.
Thompson, Kristin. “The Formulation of the Classical Style, 1908–28.” In The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, by David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Janet Staiger, 155–240. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Yajnik, R. K. Indian Theatre: Its Origins and Its Later Developments under European Influence. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1933.
Zutshi, Somnath. “Women, Nation, and the Outsider in Hindi Cinema.” In Niranjana, Sudhir, and Dhareshwar, Interrogating Modernity, 83–141.
Published
2005-12-03
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Hughes, S. (2005). Mythologicals and Modernity: Contesting Silent Cinema in South India. Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 1(2-3), 207-235. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v1i2_3.207
