This document discusses two aspects of Indian film form: the iconic and narrative. For the iconic, it draws from three visual traditions - the Hindu concept of "darsana", the Mughal courtly durbar gaze, and live pre-colonial performances. It features a frontal encounter between a flattened image and audience gaze, unlike Renaissance perspective. For narrative, it discusses the masala film appealing to all, being organized around a film star rather than plot, and having a heterogeneous manufacturing form by separately producing components and assembling them.

1. Cinematic Art
Lecture 23

2. Indian Film Form: The Iconic
• Borrows from three visual traditions:
– The tradition of darsana: “The concept of darsana
(seeing the temple deity; also used reverentially or
sarcastically for more secular sightings, such as
seeing a special friend or a friend rarely seen)
carries explicitly Hindu connotations, making the
term problematic as a generic model of South
Asian visuality.” (Priya Jaikumar Cinema at the end
of Empire 2006)

3. – Gaze mobilized in a courtly durbar, the ceremonial
space where Mughal rulers met their subjects
– Live performances of the pre-colonial era
• Absence of “Renaissance” construction of
perspective
• A frontal encounter between a flat (often
deliberately flattened) planar image and an
audience gaze
• Hindi cinema borrows and continues these
visual encounters

4. Renaissance Perspective
• Las Meninas (1656) by Diego Velasquez
• Suturing of the spectator (the idealised
audience) in the film
• Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings and lithographs
• Company Paintings
• Bazaar Paintings

5. Indian Film Form: Narrative
• Amalgamation of different generic tendencies;
the masala film
• Appeals all and sundry; something for everyone
• Organised around a film star instead of narrative
• Marxist analysis of Hindi film form as theorised
by Madhava Prasad
• Organic versus heterogeneous form of
manufacture

6. • Heterogeneous Form of Manufacture
– Separate production of components
– Final assembly into one unit
– Bombay is dominated by the heterogeneous form
– Marx’s example: watch-making: “The components of
the watch are produced by different and separately
functioning skilled workers, and assembled into the
final product. If we consider that the Hindi film is
conceived in this way, as an assemblage of pre-
fabricated parts, we get a more accurate sense of the
place of various elements, like the story, the dance,
the song, the comedy scene, the fight, etc. in the film
text as a whole.” (Prasad 1998:43)