From Symbolic to Agential

The Evolution of Natural Representation in Indian Eco-Sensitive Films

Bibliographic Data

ID7165997
AuthorsRakesh Kumar Pankaj (0000-0003-2376-8760)
Year2025
Volume42
Issue2
Pages472-492
Publication date2025-02-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueQuarterly Review of Film Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0146-0013 • E-ISSN: 1543-5326
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10509208.2023.2231820
OpenAlexW4383815456
LanguageEN
References cited31

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsRakesh Kumar PankajRakesh Kumar Pankaj is a Doctoral Scholar of English Literature at Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, Punjab, India. He has a research experience of more than four years. His research interests include Ecocriticism, Folk Literature, Film Studies and Ethnic Studies. He also works as a Project Associate on a Project headed by Dr Dibyakusum Ray in collaboration with Royal Holloway College, London University.Dibyakusum RayDibyakusum Ray teaches English, Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the Indian Institute Technology, Ropar, Punjab, India. He has worked on what may loosely be called the archaeology of concepts of ‘Other’ and ‘Liminality’, proliferated through an inverted history of continental philosophy of a century, and its absorption in Bengali ‘radical’ literature. Right now, Ray is heading a centrally funded project on the archiving of lost media elements during the Indian National Emergency, 1975–77, in collaboration with the Royal Holloway College, London University. He is the coeditor of an ongoing anthology on Horror and South Asian Popular Culture from University of Wales Press. His single authored volume on postcolonial urbanism (titled Postcolonial Indian City-Literature: Policy, Politics and Evolution) in India has very recently been published by Routledge.Notes1 Although academic discussion tends to focus on the effect of neoliberalism majorly on Hindi mainstream film industry, there is considerable discussion on its entrenchment in regional film industries too, like in Tamil (Velayutham and Devadas 2021 Velayutham, S., and V. Devadas. 2021. Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: Caste, Gender, and Technology. Oxon: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 92–93), Malayalam (Gopinath 2021 Gopinath, S. 2021. “Hypermasculine Images and the Hindu Identity in Malayalam Cinema.” In The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities, edited by O. Hakola, J. Salminen, J. Turpeinen, and O. Winberg, 149–165. Lanham: Lexington Books. [Google Scholar], 149), Bengali (Shabnam 2018 Shabnam, S. 2018. “In Defence of Sustho Sanskriti (Healthy Culture): Understanding Bengali Middle Classness in Neoliberal India.” History and Sociology of South Asia 12 (1): 48–64. doi:10.1177/2230807517741794[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 50) cine-industries, abounding discourses on gender, class, caste, sexuality and worldview. In other words, neoliberalism had an expansive effect on Indian cinema as a whole.2 This is also the reason why we have not used the term Ecocinema in this context. The established signification of the term (Gustafsson and Kappa 2013 Kaapa, P. 2013. “Transnational Approaches to Ecocinema: Charting an Expansive Field.” In Transnational Ecocinema: Film Culture in an Era of Ecological Transformation, edited by P. Kaapa and T. Gustafsson, 21–43. Bristol: Intellect.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Macdonald 2013 Macdonald, S. 2013. “The Ecocinema Experience.” In Ecocinema Theory and Practice, edited by R. Stephen, M. Salma, and C. Sean, 17–41. New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) calls for “Patience and mindfulness”, “ongoing commitment to the natural environment”, the fusion of “the natural world within a cinematic experience” (Macdonald, 2013 Macdonald, S. 2013. “The Ecocinema Experience.” In Ecocinema Theory and Practice, edited by R. Stephen, M. Salma, and C. Sean, 17–41. New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 19) that embodies Nature not only within the diegetic space, but in the film production process as well. As will be even clearer as our paper progresses, such cinematic facets are a rarity in Indian parallel films which consider social existentialism or escapist fantasies as the primary narrative. Nature, until very recently, has always played a secondary symbolic role in Indian cinema. 3 This corporatisation, as both Thussu (Punathambekar and Kavoori 2008 Punathambekar, A., and A. P. Kavoori. 2008. Global Bollywood. New York: NYU Press. [Google Scholar], 105) and Sarkar, Shah, and Dutta (2020 Sarkar, S.,. A. M. Shah, and S. K. Dutta. 2020. “Bollywood in Transition: Chiragdeep’s Reflection of the Film Industry.” Emerging Economies Cases Journal 2 (2): 79–86. doi:10.1177/2516604220968537[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) note, started in the late 1990s closely following the neoliberalisation of the Indian economy. In 1999, the Indian government passed a law exempting film export earnings from tax, along with ordering state-run banks to finance films. This also encouraged large, non-filmic corporate houses to invest in films. The result was an integrated production, distribution, exhibition and in relation, aesthetic experience.4 This also reflects on the inextricable relation between neoliberalism and individualism, with the former encouraging choice, responsibility and individual independence over social membership and collective unions (Gooby and Leruth 2018 Gooby, P. T., and B. Leruth, eds. 2018. “New Challenges for the Welfare State and New Ways to Study Them.” In Attitudes, Aspirations and Welfare: Social Policy Directions in Uncertain Times, 1–28. Cham: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-75783-4_2[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2). Our argument is, the advent of individualism in Indian neoliberal polity and its effect on eco-sensitive filmic narratives as well, with the human individual’s psychosomatic engagement with the larger world given the primary importance. The themes are thus limited, rational, legible and relatable by smaller sections of the society.5 According to Derrida, an animal does not come under the purview of any kind of law applicable for ordinary people. “[t]he wolf, is an outlaw... unbound by laws except for the dictates of nature” (Direk, 2017, 32). Derrida also points out that this phantasmatic position of the animal is precisely the reason why humans subordinate animal life to human domination. The agency of the animal, Derrida concludes, should be brought within the moral and ethical standards to stop animal cruelty.6 According to the National Forest Policy 1988 National Forest Policy. 1988. https://asbb.gov.in//Downloads/National%20Forest%20Policy.pdf [Google Scholar], encroachment, hunting and deforestation of existing national forest grounds are punishable by law (1988, 6–7). The 1990s was the time when the implementation of this resulted in frequent conflict between the indigenous population and local administration.7 The apolitical-ness of the antagonistic forces of the narrative, and the absolving of the national government of its conservatism, is a trend in Indian commercial cinema that started from the neoliberal times. Unlike the 1970s, when most of the Indian cinema subscribed to “a broad left-liberal political consensus” (Rajadhyaksha 2009 Rajadhyaksha, A. 2009. Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar], 242), Indian films from the 1990s started to align themselves to a holistic, apolitical portrayal of nationalism, traditionalism and other ethnocentric tropes. Kantara, similarly, considers the nation-state as benevolent, affirming Appadurai's observation that “roots” (nationalistic, ethnic, religious etc) in Indian cinema are a conservative myth (Rajagopal 2001 Rajagopal, A. 2001. Politics after Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 239). It may also be noted that in Indian cinema of the past decade, marginalized cultural expressions are subsumed into an overarching glorification of Hindu nationalism. Interested readers may consider Mukherjee and Sen’s analysis of how indigenous arts like Kalaripayattu are “appropriated by neoliberal and global promoters of hyper-masculinity or by conservative right wing ultra-nationalists” (Mukherjee and Sen 2017 Mukherjee, I., and S. Sen. 2017. “The Kalaripayattu and the Capoeira as Masculine Performances: From Bodies of Resistance to Neoliberalism Tourism Bodies.” Between 7 (13): 1–22. [Google Scholar], 2). Kantara’s depiction of tribal culture has been repeatedly accused of feeding to the larger “Hindu nation” agenda of ruling BJP party (Janardhanan 2023 Janardhanan, A. 2023. “K for Kantara, K for Karnataka: BJP’s Cultural Project for South India.” The Indian Express, February 18. https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/kantara-karnataka-bjp-south-india-8451788/ [Google Scholar]).8 As a filmmaking style that employs barebone editing, minimal production values and handheld, shaky cinematography, cinema verite is termed by Hubert Smith as “a film that always minimizes the limitations that film imposes in transferring reality. It is a film that gets as close as possible to the visual, aural, and kinesthetic sense of actual presence” (Smith 1967 Smith, H. 1967. “The University Film Director and Cinema-Verite.” Journal of the University Film Producers Association 19 (2): 58–62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20686864. [Google Scholar], 58). It is largely employed in documentaries

Art · Art history · Bengali · Ecocriticism · Literature · Media studies · Movie theater · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Tamil · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Law · South Asian Cinema and Culture

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