Contemporary British Cinema's Representations of the Post-Colonial Diaspora of India

The British Raj, or the British rule over India, has long since passed; however, the remnants of the pro-colonization have lingered around and are seemingly even making a comeback. Salman Rushdie in his essay, Outside the Whale, notices this romanticisation of Britain’s colonial past in the resurgence of Raj fiction and films. Rushdie, in his criticisms, embraces theories from Edward Said, and hints at theories from Frantz Fanon. By emphasizing the influential language of Raj films and texts, analyzing Orwell’s theory institutional denial, and finally calling for a systematic upheaval of oppressive thinking, Salman Rushdie’s essay and criticism mirrors John McLeod’s theories and definitions of colonial discourse and recognizes that with the comeback of Raj fiction comes a resurgence of the pro-colonization colonial discourse that it originated with.

Many of America’s first colonists left their homes to find a place they could be free. They would no longer be persecuted for religion or social class. America soon became a place known for accepting a diverse group of people but ironically was home to the largest number of slaves in the world. Slavery in America was an institution that built the nation fiscally and physically. Eventually slaves went from living in “the home of the free” with no rights to fighting in legal battle in the court room and actual battles in The Civil War for their freedom. I am able to analyze this progression through the films, 12 Years a Slave, Glory, Amistad, and Amazing Grace. All the films are true stories that are brought to life through beautiful cinematography and brilliant acting.

In this essay, three movies; City of God, Güeros and Wadjda were compared and their variations were discussed, each movie had an equal coverage. The factors in which the comparison was based on where, mobility, social disconformity, isolation and any cultural factors that influenced the lead actress actions,

This semester I chose the Art 160 class, which talks about South Asian art and culture. During study, I learned a lot from this class. When the topic came to Indian movie, it made me become interested. I watched many movies before, tried to learn how the music goes in many movies. One of my friends is in movie major, he told me Bollywood movies were pretty good. After the class, I went to watch some movies like 3 idiots, PK and Taare Zameen Par. I was shocked, because I never think that India movie could be that good. All of them show the society issue and problems. These movies helped me to understand more about

Even the first Indian film with sound was about a prince and a gypsy girl. This has greatly impacted how the western world see’s us today. Not a land of cities and urban people like every other civilized nation earth, but a strange exotic land. That is why we have ignorance from them when they come to India. We may complain that the Western world is stuck within it’s little bubble, but when we fuel orientalism , we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Films, have grown popularity rapidly in past decades, can be served as a good indicator of culture. As mentioned by the famous film producer, Tom Sherak, “Film is a reflection of society, both present and past.” Films are mediums for someone in the society to say something they want to tell the public. Films are a form of communication to provoke people awareness and self-evaluation of their own attitudes to the

First, give some context and history to British films of the 80 's. Using pp. 340-347 outline the films, filmmakers and themes of 80 's British film.

And with this growth came a wider variety of films. But, perhaps inevitably, it was not until the political upheaval in the years following WWII and the onset of the Palestinian Israeli conflict that Arab cinema took up more hard-hitting themes.” (Seymour 70). Therefore, the European colonization of the Arab nations touched the industry of Arab films positively.

In one perspective national cinema is “descriptions from a perspective point of view”, instead of an actual description (Higbee, 2010). Examining transnational cinema from a local perspective, rather than globalized. The article explains how borders are blurred by “telecommunications technologies”, and debates between nations are transferred into films (Higbee, 2010). The article states,” there are three essential elements applied in film studies in order to define transnational cinema. The article deliberates the limitation of a national cinema, in correlation with transnational cinema, which construes relationships between cinema, and cultural economic factors. Also, transnational is interpreted as creating the film from a regional phenomenon. Finally, transnational cinema represents culture and identity, “to challenge the western construct of a nation and national culture and by extension, national cinema as stable….” (Higbee, 2010). In transnational cinema, there is a

In the globalization era, people all over the world have the ability to constitute the images of other countries although they have never physically been to those places. Appadurai (1990, p.296) has extended Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined community, suggesting the notion of ‘imagined worlds’ that are established by the intersecting five aspects of global cultural flows: ethnoscapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, mediascapes, and ideoscapes. That is to say, the dynamic transnational movements of people, technology, capital, images, and ideas have been creating and shaping imaginary illustrations of the world in each individual’s mind. Additionally, because of the rapid development of information technology, the information is

This portrayal has different, interrelated dimensions – namely, lack of modernity, prejudice, and dependency. Throughout the film, India is portrayed as unmodernised. This links to the colonial fantasy of a traditional India. As previously mentioned, the original setting was changed from the ‘modern IT-hub’ Bangalore to the more traditional Jaipur. By using a more traditional Indian location over a modernised, technology-based one, the film chooses to portray India as ‘backward’. Thus, Bell’s argument that the film envisages India as ‘traditional’, ‘regressive’ and ‘unmodernised’ while ignoring its ‘economic development’ is convincing (2016, p.1979). This establishes further distance between India and western ‘first-world’ countries like Britain, thus fuelling colonial Orientalism’s idea of ‘European superiority over Oriental backwardness’ (Said, 2004, p.7). Indeed, Bell goes on to argue that this presentation “reinforces the colonialist values” of superiority within “these new settlers” and “the film overall.” (2016,

One of the most popular and important film theory 's that it still around today is Third Cinema also known as the Postcolonial theory. Third cinema emerged in early 1960 through the 1970 's in Latin America and was seen as a militant tool leading to freedom and a revolution. Third cinema was not only about films rather it was about literature and artwork as well as political manifestos written by filmmakers.

This essay explains the journey of Bollywood (Indian Film Industry) and how it has changed itself and its audience’s perspective on Hindi Cinema. Applying the key features from Dennis McQuail’s “Normative Theory”, the relationship between Bollywood and the audience, controlled by the censorship board will be explained; and how both, the Bollywood industry and Censor Board are responsible for bringing changes to each other in the terms of rules, regulations, audience’s attitudes and their demands, in every period of time. According to McQuail (2010), a normative theory is adopted to clear the confusion prevailing in the information industry, that has become self-centred in modern days; and also to examine if the information

The term Bollywood is relatively new title that congregates various types of films that stem from all around India and sadly get put into one single category, often times the films being underestimated by U.S. pop culture. The films’ subject matter and themes have continued to evolve, as does the country of India, and the change is all seen reflecting from the films social and political themes and concerns. When the industry began the films plots spanned from all across the map, in order to compensate for language differences almost key terms were created which would set the staple for the themes and motives. These phrases or words were about lust and love, revenge or justice for wrong doings, good and bad as well as killing. With these themes people all across the nation were united, one way or another people related to the films that were being viewed. It was at this point and time that Hindi cinema became a voice for those who could not be heard in politics, but actions would be glorified or exaggerated to appease all status of the caste system. Throughout pivotal moments in history, new themes would be expressed throughout film.

In 1899 the first Bollywood short film was screened for the first time, which planted seeds for pop culture to take root within music and redesigned what Hindi music was and will ever be. In a western society like the United States, Bollywood takes on the role of squashing the many stereotypes that linger and taint the image that defines what exactly Indian