Abstract
The book under review is a lively and detailed analysis of the ideological subtext of horror in Hindi cinema. As a genre study of horror films, it explores an area severely under-represented in writing on Hindi cinema in academia. Indeed, one of the greatest strengths of Filming Horror lies in its central premise—that Hindi horror films provide an aesthetic and ideological framework through which reconfigurations of the nation-state and ideas of nationhood may be understood.
Spanning the development of the genre from the early 1920s to the present moment, Mubarki covers a wide range of cinematic texts that he feels most aptly represent the confluence of mythology, ideology and religious identity—as they interact to interrogate or construct the idea of the nation.
The introduction provides a rather broad historical overview of early Hindi cinema, though it makes some insightful connections, such as, the anxiety over censorship that characterised both the British and Indian cinematic praxes around depicting moral/religious/colonial identities in film. Mubarki iterates the ideological function of cinema as cultural production that necessarily represents hegemonic discourses of power. He notes how cinema developed from an apparatus of the colonial state into becoming a medium of representation of an alternative nascent Indian identity (with its own history and mythology) in the 1930s, drawing from, and speaking to, the Swadeshi movement that gripped the popular imagination of the people of the time.
In the second chapter, entitled ‘Genre, Codes and Horror Cinema’, Mubarki elucidates his theoretical framework and lays out the broader aspects of his analysis. Drawing from Sigmund Freud’s conception of the ‘Uncanny’ (1923, The Ego and the Id) and Robin Wood’s reworking of the Freudian ‘return of the repressed’ (2003, Hollywood from Vietnam to Regan and Beyond), Mubarki anchors his analysis in Julie Kristeva’s theoretical ‘Abject’, described as the horror found in ‘feelings of disgust and loathing’ (1982, Powers of Horror: An Essay of Abjection). As Mubarki states, referencing B. Creed, ‘Monsters as constructed in narratives of horror are grounded in sociocultural notions of abjection and abomination: murder, incest, sexual promiscuity, bodily secretions…and the ultimate abjection: corpse’ (pp. 26–27) (1993, The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis).
Much of Mubarki’s focus revolves around this monstrous or ghastly ‘Other’—generally the antagonist or the source of the textual disruption—and what its function in the plot is. The representation of this Other takes precedence in his analysis of the cinematic texts over other generic considerations such as audience response, filmic conventions or auteur studies of the producers/directors of the films (the Ramsay brothers excepted).
As is necessary with all analyses of the Hindi film industry, Mubraki addresses the development of the Hindi horror genre compared to that of the megalith of Hollywood, as well as the influences of the Italian, Korean, Thai and Japanese horror industries. Mubarki stresses the importance of reinterpretation in this context. He says:
To view every generic attempt at horror in terms of ‘copy’ ignores the ideological subversion that the original is often subjected to, for every attempt at reconfiguration … entails a mix of pastiches, parody, parallel tracks of comedy and love stories that make them uniquely sophisticated and mark their departure from the archetype. (p. 34)
Curiously, Mubarki makes no mention of regional horror cinema in any context, whether as influencing, or itself drawing from Hindi cinema. Admittedly it does not fall under the ambit of his main thesis but the omission seems even more glaring in the face of the fact that Bhool Bhulaiya (2007)—one of the texts he covers—is a remake of a much re-made Malayalam film, Manichitrathazhu (1993).
Mubarki concludes this chapter with a return to his overarching argument, setting up the nature of the horror genre in Hindi cinema as a struggle between the fundamental binary of the modernist discourse (secular, westernised, rational) and traditional (ancient, normative, spiritual) order as they rose or fell, concomitant with the progression of the socio-economic and political order.
Dividing his cinematic texts thematically, Mubarki follows a roughly chronological progression and traces the evolution of three narrative strands, or ‘paramount socio-cultural obsessions’ (p. 45)—the Nehruvian secular consciousness, the mordantly conservative traditional–cultural order that arose in the wake of the Emergency and the Hindutva ideologic that emerged post-liberalisation.
Taking off from the influences of German expressionism that seeped into the Hindi film industry, Mubraki shows how the films Mahal, Madhumati and Kohraa usher in the genre’s response to the Nehruvian discourses of secular, scientific and modernist thought that predominated in the 1960s and picked up again in Bhool Bhulaiya (2007) as a timely re-visiting of a rationalist school of thought. Mubarki points out how these films allow for the tenuous supernatural/spiritual dimension to be either rejected and ignored, or subjugated and tolerated by the secular order. Psychological (scientific) explanations are given as much validity (if not more) as the phantasmagorical. This chapter sees some absorbing, and all-too short, diversions on the Ramsay Brothers, restrictions on the types of audiences, and film conventions of the time which do not quite fit the theme of the chapter but are nevertheless delightful to read.
Next, Mubarki delves into the return of the traditional–cultural narrative from the mid-1970s right through till the early 1990s. Mubarki names this the ‘tralatitious order’, what he defines as handed-down or traditional, ‘non-monolithic and operationally plural quotidian cultural practices’ (p. 43). This chapter easily comprises the core of the book and sees a diverse range of texts collated to support richly detailed arguments. It delineates the growing disillusionment in the 1970s with the government’s abilities—its floundering Nehruvian policies, successive wars with Pakistan, China and the Emergency—and shows how this manifests in a return to the traditional, folkloric and religious interpretations over psychological/scientific explanations in the narratives of Jadu Tona, Gehrayee and Phoonk. Mubarki states, ‘This tralatitious/mythic/traditional order is aligned not just against the discourse of science and technology and modern medicine but also against the modern secular state apparatus because it marks the dissolution of space between the secular and the temporal’ (p. 75).
The idea of science as rife with a potential for ‘evil’ is seen in Chehre Pe Chehra and Dahshat, both of which see an overlap in the genres of science fiction and horror. They see science (and, therefore, the secular consciousness) as inherently authoritarian, imposing an artificial order on nature/the normative. Both texts depict the body horror that lies in transmutation of the human body, triggered by the twisted ambitions, and amoral intent, of their evil scientists. Later, the mythic order triumphs over this scientific discourse, by reinterpreting modern scientific rationalism through indigenous belief-systems. This is seen in the Ramsay Brothers’ films, Veerana and Shaitani Ilaka and Aatma, as well as other films like Raat, Shaapit: The Cursed, Ragini MMS and even Ra.One, when psychiatric and outright technological scientific discourse finds itself embedded in Hindu mythological, or folkloric terms, and often sees a return to faith for their hapless characters.
Mubarki also addresses the peculiar generic convention of the ‘Monstrous Female Other’, which revolves around what he calls ‘masculinity-in-crisis’ (p. 111), where a terrifyingly unbridled and (usually) sexually depraved supernatural female figure tries to upturn the patriarchal order, and feasts on the victimised, passive male protagonist. Delving into the gendered representation of this trope, which appears in film after film, Mubarki shows the process of deification of a traditional, normative femininity whose sexuality is strictly controlled by patriarchal codes of conduct. This is seen to intensify with the modernisation of patriarchy in the post-liberalisation era, as seen in films of the 2000s such as Raaz, Krishna Cottage, Eight: The Power of Shani, Darling and Click.
Throughout this section, Mubarki’s tight control on the transitions from text to analysis makes for compelling if somewhat heavy reading. Since this book is primarily a genre study, it may seem churlish to demand it, but I feel that more attention to, or information about audience responses to these films, as well as the attitudes of the producers (and actors) to their own content would have enriched the (already rich) study.
The final part of Mubarki’s analysis outlines the rise of a prevalently Hindutva ideologic emerging in the horror genre, following the advent of liberalisation, and with a rise of right-wing polemic in the political sphere. This is the shortest section in the book, and perhaps the most explicitly linked with the political economy of the Hindi film industry at large. Mubarki uses the examples of two films, 1920 and Haunted, which while toppling even the possibility of a secular/rationalist solution focus on the ineffectuality of both the Christian and Islamic faiths in contending the forces of darkness. As the concluding chapter, this draws out the shift in the genre’s perspective to an ‘overtly Hindu subaltern religiosity’, as a direct reflection of the larger social and political temper. With the intensification of this attitude’s performativity across different mediums and cultural spaces that is taking place today, finding its manifestation in the horror genre of our contemporary age seems both timely and important.
As Mubarki states in the first chapter, ‘Hindi horror cinema, with its own aesthetics, rituals and structural conventions has escaped academic attention and needs to be studied in its own right’ (p. 1). By choosing to focus a firmly analytical eye on the admittedly ‘low art’ form of popular (or cultish) horror cinema Mubarki pays homage to it. Filming Horror is exemplary of such academic attention—painstakingly researched, widely referential and almost clinical in its tone and attitude towards the obscene/absurd/visceral/esoteric nature of its content. In fact, one sometimes gets the fleeting impression that brevity and levity have been avoided as much as possible, even when the space for it exists, precisely because of the lack of seriousness, or substance, otherwise accorded to the horror genre.
At this point, I would like to draw the potential readers’ attention to the dedication of the book. It reads, ‘Dedicated to my mother Umida Begum and to the memory of my father, the late Md. Ahmed Mubarki, film distributor and a fanatic horror film buff’. To me, this one line is poignantly evocative of a childhood intimate with the best (and worst) of Hindi horror cinema. One is tempted to get drawn into an auteur reading of Filming Horror itself, and speculate about Mubarki’s personal attitude towards and emotional resonance with the genre. This emotive charge and passion for the genre can be abundantly read into his motive for writing the book though it is not indicated in the provided author biography, nor explicitly stated by the author. Perhaps an interesting addition to be considered for later editions would be an inflection of such a personal, biographical perspective.
Fans of Hindi horror cinema, and the horror genre at large, will find much space for delight at the author’s perceptive and earnest explication of the grim shadows, spectral wailing, taboo themes, blood, gristle and melodramatic excesses that characterise the genre, as valuable and important and, most of all, relevant to a larger political ambit.
Ultimately, Filming Horror: Hindi Cinema, Ghosts and Ideologies is a rewarding read even for those with a fleeting interest in the genre, pushing, as it does, the impulses of escapism implicit in the consumption of horror, directly into the path of its contemporary moment, and the grim(mer) material reality it seemingly escapes.