BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies

This article analyzes some Hindi film remakes using the overlooked component of film costume. Costuming in Devdas, Don, and Om Shanti Om can be read as a strategic effort to situate each film along with its predecessors in a new vision of the industry’s past and present. Since the early 1990s, India has been transformed by economic policies that have nurtured the growth of capitalism. Consumerism is celebrated in film at the same time, as filmmaking itself is undergoing structural change. Costume plays a critical role in these processes, operating in remakes to appropriate elements of each film’s forerunners in ways that illustrate the new film’s superiority. The case studies presented here illustrate how this is done: costumes are readily translatable into the commoditized clothing that is part of the new consumerism: they signal high production values; they are complicit in the construction of contemporary stardom; and they embody “professionalism” via the employment of well-connected fashion designers. At the same time, by illustrating the limits of masquerade or by reconfiguring the dilemmas of modernity as a myth, costume assists in the projection of themes that are more conservative than those of each film’s forerunners.

This article argues for the necessity of rethinking the beginnings of cinema in South India through a broader historical consideration of the specific entertainment contexts, which both preceded and were eventually transformed by the introduction of film. The first film exhibitors introduced film to Madras as a kind of European entertainment using the same local venues as the European variety circuit. Their shows conformed to a variety format and they frequently mixed films with other kinds of live performances. In addition to situating early touring cinema shows within the local, European entertainment circuits of Madras city, the second strand of my argument is that we need to rethink the mobility of early cinema in India. Rather than fixating on any discrete point of origin, I suggest that our attention needs to turn to how early cinema worked as a portable technology that traveled along various transnational networks through India. Thus, in our effort to ground early cinema as part of local history in Madras, we must also reconcile this with a better understanding of its spatial movement throughout South Asia and beyond.

What can the cinema tell us about its time? This article explores the problem by focusing on the role the Telugu film industry played in the rise to economic and political prominence of a post-colonial and post-feudal elite in what is now the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. A two decade period in the history of Telugu cinema is examined to show how the industry came under the control of entrepreneurs of peasant origin by becoming a destination of surpluses generated by agriculture and related activities. During this period, an industry model that facilitated the absorption of large infusions of capital at the production center in Madras, as also relatively small retail investments at the local level, was assembled. The model, predicated on syndicated investments and distribution of risk, fell into place at a time when peasants began to migrate out of the village for a variety of reasons and were expanding their activities from agriculture, commodity speculation, and rural money lending.

Anuja Ghosalkar introduces her grandfather, Ram Tipnis, whom she fondly refers to as “Papa Ajoba” (“father-grandfather” in Marathi). Her interviews were originally conducted in Marathi. Anuja is an independent researcher, whose blog (http://papaajoba.blogspot.com/) is primarily dedicated to recording Ram Tipnis’ memories of a long career in the film industry.