TY - GEN AU - Uberoi, Patricia TI - Freedom and destiny : gender, family and popular culture in India SN - 9780198060833 U1 - 306.850 PY - 2023/// CY - New Delhi PB - Oxford University Press N1 - Contents Acknowledgements vii Preface ix List of Illustrations xvii 1 'BEAUTYFULL WIFE, DENGER LIFE': ENGAGING WITH POPULAR CULTURE 1 I A Moving Message 1 'Beaucyfull Wife, Denger Life' 1 Il Reading Popular Culture 3 The Concept of Popular Culture 3 The Semiotics of Popular Culture 7 Imagining the Nacion 10 III Gender and Genre 12 Visual Culture and the Controlling 'Gaze' 13 Reading the Romance 16 Gender and Resistance 17 IV Rethinking the Family 20 The Kinship Map of lndia 20 The Indian Joint Family 22 Arranged Marriage 24 Dowry and Brideprice 26 The Limits of Family Change 28 The Moral Economy of the Indian Family 29 V Dharma and Desire, Freedom, and Destiny 33 2 FEMININE IDENTITY AND NATIONAL ETHOS IN CALENDAR ART 48 I Woman/Goddess/Nation: A Contemporary Controversy 48 II Defining Calendar Art 49 III Ravi Varma and the Invention of Calendar Art 52 IV Deciphering the Archive: Gender and Calendar Arr 58 Objects of Desire/Commodities on Sale 60 Icons of Nation 62 Plurality and Difference 66 V Trajectories of Change? 68 3 'BABY' lCONS: FORMS AND FIGURES OF A NEW GENERATION 85 I Introduction 85 II Envisioning Childhood 87 III South Asian Childhoods 90 Child Socialization as Pathology 91 Childhood between Tradition and Modernity 93 Cosmologies of Childhood 95 IV Representing the Child 97 God-baby 98 Welcome-baby 100 Citizen-baby 102 Hero-baby 103 Customized-baby 104 4 DESIRE AND DESTINY: RESCRIPTING THE MAN-WOMAN RELTIONSHIP IN POPULAR CINEMA 114 I Prologue: On a Personal Note 114 II The Body Language of Popular Cinema 117 III The Problematics of Romance 119 Dharma and Desire 121 Freedom and Destiny 123 IV A Paradigm of Desire 124 Jabba and Bhoothnath 125 Chhote Sarkar and the Courtesan 126 Chhori Bahu and Chhote Sarkar 127 Bhoothnath and Chhoti Bahu 129 V Happy and Unhappy Endings 130 5 IMAGINING THE FAMILY: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF VIEWING HUM AAPKE HAIN KOUN . . . ! 138 1 What Makes a 'Clean' Movie? 143 The Lack of 'Vulgarity' 143 The Display of Affluence 148 The Spirit of 'Sacrifice' 150 The Family as 'Tradition' 152 II The Constitution of the Ideal Indian Family 155 The Ideal of the Joint Family 156 Affinity as a Value 158 The Truth-telling Voice 159 III The Pleasures of Viewing: Voyeurism, Narcissism, and a Happy Ending 162 IV The Emblematic Family 168 6 THE DIASPORA COMES HOME: DISCIPLINING DESIRE IN DDLJ 180 I Prologue 180 II Indianness: At Home and Abroad 181 III Dilwale Dulhania Le ]ayenge 185 IV Romance, Indian Style 189 V The Tyranny of 'Tradition' 196 VI Pardes: Reinstituting the Contradiction of India and the West 200 VII '.American Dreams, Indian Soul' 204 VIII Indian Dream, Transnational Location 206 7 LEARNING TO 'ADJUST' : THE DYNAMICS OF POST-MARITAL ROMANCE 217 I Domesticating Romance Fiction 217 II Woman's Era 220 III Twenty Tales of True Romance 222 Tales of Courtship 223 Tales of Conjugal Love 224 Sources of Marital Tension 226 Mediation 227 Resolution 231 IV True-life Tales of Marital Breakdown 232 V Prescription for a Happy Marriage 235 VI Conclusion 238 8 SCRIPTING ROMANCE? TRIBULATIONS OF COURTSHIP IN POPULAR FICTION 248 I Introduction: Constructing the Problematic 248 II Narrative Trajectories 252 Making 'Love' Respectable 252 Putting 'Love' into Arranged Marriage 256 III Conclusion 261 References 264 Index 301 ER -