CINEMA OF INTERRUPTIONS: ACTION GENRES IN CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CINEMA Lalitha Gopalan. London: BFI Publishing, 2002, 240 pp. Lalitha Gopalan's Cinema of Interruptions proposes a view of popular Indian cinema that challenges the perception that as a narrative form, Indian films have not fully achieved the seamlessness of Hollywood films. The author argues that Indian cinema, with its "interruptions" of song and dance numbers, its interval or intermission, and its censored scenes, has an aesthetic coherence that marks it as uniquely Indian. Ratherthan considering these pauses or "interruptions" as side trips away from the narrative cause-effect chain, Gopalan argues that filmmakers make these interruptions integral parts of the narrative. For example, she suggests that the interval has been used in a variety of ways, such as to launch a new sensibility or to suture two genres together. Under her analysis, the interval (or intermission) emerges as a structuring device, rather than simply a break in an over-long, undisciplined narrative. I believe this central argument, reflected in the book's title, is the strength and main contribution of her work. It offers a way of viewing Indian cinema on its own terms, ratherthan those of the unified narrative of Hollywood. Gopalan demonstrates a breathtaking command of film theory and employs a panoply of these ideas to contextualize events on the screen. She relies extensively on close readings of films, teasing out the narrative structure, images, and editing techniques that support herthesis. In her introduction, she outlines her reliance on psychoanalytic screen theory, which argues that narrative form produces an idealized position of spectatorship. She effectively employs Laura Mulvey's essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" to highlight the oftenoverlooked argument that the fetishization of the female body interrupts the diegesis. Gopalan uses several contemporary films to demonstrate her theory that the "constellation of interruptions" actually sutures together a narrative and makes these films uniquely Indian. Her first chapter examines a series of films that feature the figure of the avenging woman. Narrative interruptions are written into these films: Gopalan argues that the camera withdraws just before a sexually explicit act, a move that is akin to coitus interruptus and that is followed by shots of "waterfalls, flowers, thunder, lightning and tropical storms" (21), metonyms for the missing act. Gopalan notes that even though this withdrawal of the camera is required by state censors, the camera will often focus on the breasts and hips of the woman, thereby fetishizing and fragmenting her body. This heightened objectification of the woman is a "ruse to circumvent censorship, resorting once again to the woman's body," a way of displacing the responsibility for this move onto the state. Gopalan applies both Mulvey's theory and Carol Clover's work on the horror film to the rape-revenge film, a popular genre in India. She examines the spectatorial positions possible in such films; both masochistic and sadomasochistic pleasure is mobilized, first in the rape and then in the revenge. This chapter presents a compelling analysis of the position of women in this emotionally charged genre, and the author gets good traction in her use of theoretical tools. Her third chapter, which focuses on notions of masculinity, examines the films of J. P. Dutta, and Gopalan presents this as an exhumation of the auteur theory from its premature interment by Roland Barthes. She cites the recent work of scholars who use the theory, and she points out that Dutta's films, which are critically acclaimed for their distinctive style, are marketed using "Dutta" as a type of branding strategy to build box office. One troubling move in her selection of texts, however-and it damages both her argument about the "cinema of interruptions" and about the auteur-is that she admits she will not discuss the narrative structure of four of Dutta's films because they do not support her argument. …

Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema

Investigation on a building-integrated passive solar energy technology for air ventilation, clean water and power

Between the cat and the devil: Adaptation Studies and Translation Studies

The Swaminarayan Movement and Religious Subjectivity

This thesis attempts to offer a reconceptualization of translation analysis. It argues that there is a growing interest in examining translations produced outside the discipline‟s historical field of focus. However, the tools of analysis employed may not have sufficient flexibility to examine translation if it is conceived more broadly. Advocating the use of abductive logic, the thesis infers translators‟ probable understandings of their own actions, and compares these with the reasoning provided by contemporary theories. It finds that it may not be possible to rely on common theories to analyse the work of translators who conceptualize their actions in radically different ways from that traditionally found in translation literature. The thesis exemplifies this issue through the dual examination of Geoffrey Chaucer‟s use of translation in the Canterbury Tales and that of Japanese storytellers in classical Kamigata rakugo. It compares the findings of the discipline‟s most pervasive theories with those gained through an abductive analysis of the same texts, finding that the results produced by the theories are invariably problematic.
The thesis demonstrates that understandings of translation practice have been given to change over time, and vary substantially across cultures. Therefore, an individual theory is unlikely to be able to rationalize particular practices or features of translations irrespective of the cultural context in which they are found. Abductive logic aims to describe translations in particular, rather than translation in general. It can be used to infer factors that may have influenced translators‟ understandings of the roles their texts will take, and hence, their aims in translating. Many theories tend to be underpinned by inductive logic, which essentially restricts textual analysis to the application of pre-defined labels of translation phenomena. Abductive logic forms hypotheses based on the context in question, going far beyond this kind of textual categorization.

Theorizing in Unfamiliar Contexts:New Directions in Translation Studies

1. Acknowledgements 2. Foreword (by Devy, Ganesh) 3. Introduction (by Kothari, Rita) 4. Caste in and Recasting language: Tamil in translation (by Prasad, G.J.V.) 5. Translation as resistance: The role of translation in the making of Malayalam literary tradition (by Ramakrishnan, E.V.) 6. Tellings and renderings in medieval Karnataka: The episode of Kirata Shiva and Arjuna (by Satyanath, T.S.) 7. Translating tragedy into Kannada: Politics of genre and the nationalist elite (by Tharakeshwar, V.B.) 8. The afterlives of panditry: Rethinking fidelity in sacred texts with multiple origins (by Merrill, Christi A.) 9. Beyond textual acts of translation: Kitab At-Tawhid and the Politics of Muslim Identity in British India (by Raja, Masood Ashraf) 10. Reading Gandhi in two tongues (by Suhrud, Tridip) 11. Being-in-translation: Sufism in Sindh (by Kothari, Rita) 12. (Mis)Representation of sufism through translation (by Farahzad, Farzaneh) 13. Translating Indian poetry in the Colonial Period in Korea (by Hyun, Theresa) 14. A. K. Ramanujan: What happened in the library (by Simon, Sherry) 15. An etymological exploration of 'translation' in Japan (by Wakabayashi, Judy) 16. Translating against the grain: Negotiation of meaning in the colonial trial of chief Langalibalele and its aftermath (by Ridge, Stanley G.M.) 17. Index

Decentering translation studies : India and beyond

The burden of refuge : the Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat

Post nineteen eighties, what made English translation from Indian languages a culturally desirable activity? This question leads Kothari to examine the changing cultural universe of urban, English-speaking middle class in India. She examines in detail readership patterns, attitudes to English, and the course of translation studies in general. The comfort with which English is used with an Indian language as in "Yeh Dil Maange More" or "Hungry Kya" reflects a sense of familiarity that has been made with English. From this broader context of bilingualism in the first part of the book, Kothari moves on to the state of Gujarat. Taking up the case of Gujarati, she demonstartes the micro issues involved in translations and politics of language. Kothari asks new questions in translation studies and makes the production, reception and marketability of English translation her chief concern. Translating India brings amultidisciplinary perspective to literature and translation, authenticity and representation.

Translating India : the cultural politics of English

Sai Paranjape's acclaimed film Katha (1983) shows the protagonist Rajaram Pushottam Joshi living in a chawl in Bombay in India of the 1980s . Dressed in a half- sleeved shirt and slightly shapeless trousers, he missed his first bus to work almost every single day. The city transport bus required a passenger to muscle his way on board, brutally elbowing aside anyone who got in the way.

The Middle Class in India

Memories and Movements: Borders and Communities in Banni, Kutch, Gujarat

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Rita Kothari

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