Mantras of the Metropole: Digital Inscriptions and Mythic Curvatures of Profane Time

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The widespread inauguration of the talkies during the early thirties, along with an altered environment of 'secular' national polity and feelings (the rise of organized dalit movements, or the proliferation of regional and linguistic impulses) precipitated a significant change in the panorama of Indian cinema. The mythological was gradually replaced by ostensibly 'secular' formats like the reformist social or the stunt film in terms of generic preponderance. This shift from an agrarian twilight to what are apparently urban, juridical, and secular-constitutive themes of the modern spectrum demands attention. It can be argued that despite the vanishing of gods and monsters as formal entities on screen, a primal mythic impelling remains consistent in the dominant 'secular/realistic' dispensation of narrating the national in the subsequent decades. A genealogical understanding of these exchanges between epic, lyrical, and ceremonial ontologies and realist-prosaic forms of representing the world could allow one to see how they have acquired an altogether new dimension in the contemporary age of planetary electronic publicity.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)65-78
JournalPOST SCRIPT
Volume25
Issue number3
StatePublished - Jun 2006

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Mantras of the Metropole: Digital Inscriptions and Mythic Curvatures of Profane Time'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this