short essay about a Bollywood movie

Melodrama Lecture by Alka Kurian based on the following readings: - W. Dissanayake and M. Sahai, “Sholay and the Discourse of Evil” - R. Vasudevan, 2010. “The Melodramatic Public"

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• This lecture focuses on the cinematic genre of melodrama • What is it and how has its meaning evolved? • How does it apply to cinema in general and in particular, to Indian cinema?

• Central to the understanding of melodrama, are the concepts of evil and social order • We will look at how these concepts have been defined, the centrality of evil

melodrama and the relationship of social order with evil, and how they are understood in traditional Indian culture and Hinduism?

• We will also examine: • Some of the key characteristics of heroes and villains in Indian cinema • How heroes in some films depart from their conventional model? • What role does family play in them? • How is the body represented in them?

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Melodrama

• The word melodrama stems from the Greek word melos: • Meaning of the word melos is song • The signification of melos is “a stage play”

• But the meaning of the word has evolved overtime. • So that “songs” has given place to a theater of “exaggeration, passion, hyperbole, action,

violence, pretentiousness, moral contrasts” • Melodrama has historically been seen as emotionally manipulative and cheap

entertainment • However, it has recently been redefined because

• There isn’t a hegemonic definition or yardstick of this concept in cinema • Melodrama might itself be produce by ideology • Women could trigger action and take the narrative forward • And also purely for the purpose of scopophilic pleasure

• There is no direct translation of this term in Indian languages • And yet, Indian cinema in many ways represents the idea of melodrama

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Characters in Melodrama

• What kind of characters do we see in melodrama? • Easily recognizable, stereotypical, cardboard characters representing good and evil • Simplistic in nature and devoid of psychological complexity • It is not difficult to identify their emotions and moral ideology • They lack verisimilitude (realism) and embody universal and symbolic truths

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How do we define the concept of evil?

• It is an inevitable and ubiquitous force in society • The Oxford English Dictionary offers two definitions of the term:

• The opposite of good: bad, malevolent, wicked, debased, decadent • Unkindness, unpleasant, aggressive

• Paul Ricouer: Tainting/spoiling of something clean and pure • Galileo: Contested idea • David Parkin claims that by spotlighting moral evil on others helps our humanity and

determination to grow. He argues that there are 3 kinds of evil: • Moral degradation, natural disasters, conflict of egos.

• Paul Siwek: Evil negates human development and self-expression • Also, we need to understand the ways in which as a fabricated category, the

understanding of evil is culturally-specific • What is acceptable in a culture (for example pre-marital sex) can be seen as an expression of

moral depravity in another culture

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Centrality of evil in melodrama

• Evil central to Eastern and Western melodramas • Peter Brookes • Melodrama is a Manichean battle between good and bad where the good and

bad forces are real/tangible forces • The goal of melodrama is to restore an ethical and moral world • The presence of evil surfaces the strength and moral fiber of the hero: he

asserts his moral authority by defeating the source of evil and ensuring that it doesn’t take over • The stronger the evil, the more attractive becomes the narrative • The audience is immobilized and paralyzed by evil

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Evil in traditional Indian culture and Hinduism • The meaning of evil is rooted in Indian mythology in the shape of

drama and conflict • Indian mythology represent evil as stemming from greed and lust • God gives divine power to truthful and honest men to do anything, including

determining their birth and death • Like in the Golden Age, where people were happy and democratic • However, they lose this power as soon as they arrive on earth

• Their lives are marred by the newly-acquired emotions of greed and anger • The passions aroused by greed aroused make the wishing tree to disappear • Consequently, the gods abandon them, resulting in human beings trapped in a cycle of

life and death

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Evil in traditional Indian culture and Hinduism (Contd.) • However terrible it might be, evil is inescapable and indispensable for

maintaining social order. This is because: • Happiness/unhappiness; truth/lie; dharma and adharma are inseparable and the

opposite forces of the same emotion • Evil is understood as a positive force as it helps define the good • Social order can only be maintained by keeping evil under control • A world devoid of evil, and characterized by goodness alone

• Will hardly be a world as it needs both good and bad. • Evil and good are therefore not negative and positive forces • “Adharma is needed to act as a foil to dharma” • Evil is a necessary evil (source) to maintain social order

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Social Order

• Social order is based on a collective and shared (and not coerced) meaning of what is good and what is bad: • It results from a will of the people accepted by all • This has implications on the relationship between the individual and the

wider society, the compromise that people make to live in the society (family, state, Church, business) • But this reality is a manufactured one because

• It is not possible for people to live in isolation from others • The collective life is needed for human beings to survive and grow • But living in a collectivity requires guidelines and rules to make sure that the

intersection between power, speech, and ideology ensures social order

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Heroes and villains in classical Indian and folk theater • Hero:

“Well-bred, charming, liberal, clever, affable, popular, upright, eloquent, of exalted lineage, resolute, young, endowed with intelligence, energy, memory, wisdom, skill in the arts, pride, heroic, mighty, vigorous, familiar with the codes, and a just observer of the laws”

• Villain: • “Avaricious, stubborn,, criminal, and vicious”

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• Drawing on Peter Brooks, Ravi Vasudevan defines Melodrama as an essential upsetting • On the one hand, of what’s held as sacred • And on the other, of socio-political hierarchies

• It produces what’s called a “mode of excess” that emphasizes • Exaggerated gestures • An expressionist mise-en-scene (where the visual aspects on the screen

overwhelm the audience, triggering a personal reaction from it) • A theater of coincidences and peripeteia (that is to say, a sudden shift of

fortunes of the protagonist from the height of success to complete disaster)

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• At the core of melodrama is a search for truth • Where reality forces the protagonist to seek deeper meanings hidden

beneath the surface • A process which reveals the moral and spiritual values that sustain the

world • Where the protagonist – forever innocent and victimized – becomes a

voice for the truth and the just. • Melodrama is also defined as an ambivalent space occupying the gap

between tradition and modernity • Where a nostalgic protagonist, while seeking comfort from a harmonious

past, also struggles against tradition and the old order

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• In his “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observation on the family drama,” Thomas Elsaesser defines Melodrama as “an exaggerated rise-and-fall pattern in human actions and emotional responses” • A shift “from-the-sublime-to-the-ridiculous movement” • A rejection of a compression of life “in favor of intensity - all of which

produces a graph of much greater fluctuation, a quick swing from one extreme to the other than is considered natural, realistic or in conformity with literary standards of verisimilitude (realism)”

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• Given the social pressures and the moral framework of honor and respectability, there is little space for the protagonist to carry out strong, outward actions. • Instead, what we see is the protagonist locked in an “inner violence” projected at

themselves. • The life of the melodramatic hero is balanced between two extremes

• Inertia defined by a reality which is resistant to change from outside forces • Action defined as an act that is irrational

• At the heart of melodramatic genre therefore is the fundamental contradiction stemming from the protagonist’s inability to reconcile his/her desire with the law (or society, system, etc.) • This contradiction can be settled

• Either by the protagonist capitulating to authority • Or the protagonist’s madness or self-destruction

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Male and female versions of melodrama

• Thomas Elsaesser makes a distinction between the female and male versions of melodrama. He claims that: • The female protagonist’s “point of view acts as a source of identification,” and that

while women’s role is important, it does not take the story forward (this is interesting and something we can discuss in class)

• It is the male protagonist’s point of view, on the other hand, that explores the familial, sexual, and generational frictions.

• Elsaesser further makes a distinction between tragedy and melodrama: • The conflict in a tragedy lies within the man. • In melodrama, the tragedy lies among men or between man and the world. • Tragedy refers to man’s nature • Melodrama refers to the ways in which men live their lives

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