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