The Absolutist Gaze: Political Structure and Cultural Form
Author(s)
Prasad, M. M.
Abstract
The idea of the “passive revolution” with regard to the transition of a society from colonial to post-colonial state seems to be well documented in the Hindi film industry. That there was initially no strong bourgeoisie to solely direct the development of the cinema (as there was in France, for example) means that the Hindi film was a compromise between the bourgeoisie and the old colonial elite. To this degree, Hindi film was greatly informed by the genre of the feudal family romance, a genre that expressed the disparate view of modernity: the conditions of capitalist development in the periphery and the aspirations to reproduce the “ideal” features of the primary capitalist states. The cinema thus operates as means of contestation between the new aesthetic and cultural values placed on the development of democracy and the continuation of the western traditions of historical social position and aristocratic self-preservation.
