Seduced by the Familiar

Title: Seduced by the Familiar : Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema
Author: M.K. Raghavendra
ISBN:9780195696547
Binding: Hardback
Date: August 2008
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Number of Pages: 362
Price: Rs 695/-


Description
Seduced by the Familiar looks at contemporary social history from the perspective of popular Indian cinema. M.K. Raghavendra interprets a wide range of films––including Sant Tukaram (1936), Baazi (1951), Sangam (1964), Sholay (1975), Hum Aapke Hain Koun…! (1994), and the recent Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2006)––in the context of events like colonial rule, Independence, the Indo–Chinese War, the political conduct of Indira Gandhi, and the economic liberalization initiated in the 1990s.



Locating his approach within the body of scholarship on the subject, Raghavendra creates the basis for a new reading of Indian popular cinema based on its narrative strategies. He examines Indian popular cinema’s ‘grammar’––its definition of space, time, and causality, as well as its ‘voice’, reliance on melodrama, ‘aggregate’ nature, and moral preoccupations. A large number of films are analysed chronologically in this context to provide a consistent (and often surprising) interpretation of film motifs.



A significant advance for film studies, Seduced by the Familiar makes a vital contribution to the reading of Indian popular culture. Lucid and persuasive, this book consciously avoids the jargon associated with the study of cinema today and is accessible not only to students and teachers of film and cultural studies, but also to lay readers.





About the Author


M.K. Raghavendra Freelance film critic and scholar living in Bangalore. He writes for a number of international and Indian film journals, and is one of the founder editors of Deep Focus. He has taught cinema in India and abroad and has also been on several film festival juries. Raghavendra was awarded the ‘Best Film Critic Award for 1996–Swarna Kamal’ by the President of India.





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