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Mythopoeia has always been a steady proponent in the construct of any socio-cultural order. In contemporary times, owing to the rise of cultural studies, a steady interest in revisionist literary texts has also surfaced. The association of Indian culture and values with a plethora of mythological narratives have made several scholars curious because they do offer an array of new perspectives of understanding the art, aesthetics and also the politics of myths within a larger social, religious and cultural context. Similarly, by exploring the trope of myth, it has been possible to look at other countries' cultures as well. This anthology offers new readings of classical myths across continents and cultures. The anthologized essays have collectively explored the various trends of revisionist literature. Sincere attempts have also been made to highlight the ways in which re-readings of select literary works can admirably transform set notions and ideas of human existence.
In Unveiling Desire, Devaleena Das and Colette Morrow show that the duality of the fallen/saved woman is as prevalent in Eastern culture as it is in the West, specifically in literature and films. Using examples from the Middle to Far East, including Iran, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Japan, and China, this anthology challenges the fascination with Eastern women as passive, abject, or sexually exotic, but also resists the temptation to then focus on the veil, geisha, sati, or Muslim women’s oppression without exploring Eastern women’s sexuality beyond these contexts. The chapters cover instead mind/body sexual politics, patriarchal cultural constructs, the anatomy of sex and power in relation to myth and culture, denigration of female anatomy, and gender performativity. From Persepolis to Bollywood, and from fairy tales to crime fiction, the contributors to Unveiling Desire show how the struggle for women’s liberation is truly global.
BollySwar is a decade-wise compendium of information about the music of Hindi films. Volume 8 chronicles the Hindi film music of the decade between 2001 and 2010. This volume catalogues more than 1000 films and 8000 songs, involving more than 2000 music directors, lyricists and singers. An overview of the decade highlights the key artists of the decade - music directors, lyricists and singers - and discusses the emerging trends in Hindi film music. A yearly review provides listings of the year's top artists and songs and describes the key milestones of the year in Hindi film music. The bulk of the book provides the song listing of every Hindi film album released in the decade. Basic informat...
'Bollywood' is the dominant global term to refer to the prolific Hindi language film industry in Bombay (renamed Mumbai in 1995). Characterised by music, dance routines, melodrama, lavish production values and an emphasis on stars and spectacle, Bollywood films have met with box-office success and enthusiastic audiences from India to West Africa to Russia, and throughout the English-speaking world. In Bollywood, anthropologist and film scholar Tejaswini Ganti provides a guide to the cultural, social and political significance of Hindi cinema, outlining the history and structure of the Bombay film industry, and the development of popular Hindi filmmaking since the 1930s. Providing information and commentary on the key players in Bollywood, including directors and stars, as well as material from current filmmakers themselves, the areas covered in Bollywood include: history of Indian cinema narrative style, main themes, and key genres of Hindi cinema significant films, directors and stars production and distribution of Bollywood films interviews with actors, directors and screenwriters.
The subtitle says it all: how and why Bollywood found it worthwhile to explore the reality of the millennial women who are thriving in India - small part of the demographics but very influential. Advertising discovered women as The Hindi film Heroine is a brand and brand ambassador. The market met contemporary women who are independent, with freer attitudes to relationships, including pre-marital sex, Rom coms of the new millennium reflect this new-found freedom, defying patriarchy that still defines our society. Globalisation is culturally irreversible. From the 1990s onwards, Bollywood has responded to globalisation with fear of loss of identity and desire to integrate with global trends. It results in popular cinema becoming glocal. Bollywood celebrates nonconformists, subversives woman as the hero, stories in their own way unequivocally said No means No. Most daringly. Iconic characters like Choti Bahu, Paro and Chandramukhi transformed into today’s women with the power to change their lives. This happened with the energy infused into the mainstream by indie filmmakers with vision and the will to tell stories in their own way.
Story name: 31st December night. It’s a story of a serial killer, who kills his victims brutally and leaves the dead body naked on the street of Kolkata. The body of the victims are found to be affected with following things, firstly the face is burnt with acid; secondly the back bone is broken into pieces, and thirdly the penis of the man is uprooted. As the body, is found naked with its facial skin badly burnt, leaves no sign of identification. The story does not have any detective aspect, but it deals with the plots and actions performed by the killer to murder and the reason underlying behind his murder. The serial killer is a 19years old guy name, Sam, who takes his revenge against those men who killed his love Adity. Adity is a girl, two years elder than Sam, who once become the victim of gang rape and finally murdered. Sam, without getting his desired response from Indian Judiciary, starts his voyage of revenge, killing those men in the same way as Adity was killed. How they met each other? How and what kind of hindrances cropped up in their relation? How Adity had to face such consequence? And How Sam took his revenge? The story answers back these sets of questions.
The award-winning filmmaker Onir, whose directorial debut, My Brother Nikhil (2005), broke new ground in LGBT representation on the Indian silver screen, opens up fully for the first time. From his childhood days in Bhutan to when he was a young man with no connections in the Hindi film industry who dreamt big and fought to carve a niche for himself, Onir takes the reader through his struggles and triumphs to offer an intimate glimpse of his fascinating journey to success. Now one of the few openly gay directors in Bollywood, Onir remains fearless about his identity and passionate about his role as a filmmaker in opening up the road to difficult conversations about identity and resilience. I Am Onir and I Am Gay is a raw, eloquent and inspiring memoir about confronting and transcending frontiers. Written with his sister Irene Dhar Malik, this emotionally gritty and unabashedly honest personal story is a pathbreaking narrative of hope, love and the pursuit of dreams.
Bollywood’s New Woman examines Bollywood’s construction and presentation of the Indian Woman since the 1990s. The groundbreaking collection illuminates the contexts and contours of this contemporary figure that has been identified in sociological and historical discourses as the “New Woman.” On the one hand, this figure is a variant of the fin de siècle phenomenon of the “New Woman” in the United Kingdom and the United States. In the Indian context, the New Woman is a distinct articulation resulting from the nation’s tryst with neoliberal reform, consolidation of the middle class, and the ascendency of aggressive Hindu Right politics.
This book traces the heightened time-consciousness that has emerged since the 1990s in popular Indian discourses – across cinema, television, print and consumer culture – and argues that these anxieties concerning time are symptomatic of the struggle between labor and capital. Drawing on critical theory, cinema and media studies and Marxist-feminist concepts, Kapur shows how the recent political-economic shift in India toward neoliberalism has been accompanied by a new emphasis on youth and a preoccupation with change, novelty and the acceleration of time, with profound consequences for conceptions of time, youth and the relations between generations.
"Throughout history, the religious imagination has attempted to control nothing so much as our bodies: what they are and what they mean; what we do with them, with whom, and under what circumstances; how they may be displayed-or, more commonly, how they must be hidden. Religious belief and mandate affect how our bodies are used in ritual practice, as well as how we use them to identify and marginalize threatening religious Others. This book examines how horror culture treats religious bodies that have stepped (or been pushed) out of their 'proper' place. Unlike most books on religion and horror, This book explores the dark spaces where sex, sexual representation, and the sexual body come tog...