Hindi, Hindu, Horror – Economic and Political Weekly

Filming Horror: Hindi Cinema, Ghosts and Ideologies by Meraj Ahmed Mubarki comes at a time of friction. The established Indian film studies, largely concerned with popular films (mostly Bollywood, with niche response towards major alternatesTelugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi and Bengali), stands refractory with the new European cinema studies, the latter dedicated to the aesthesis of the revival of art films in Europe. The first school treats the Indian popular as a pre cinematic narrative (Prasad 1998: 69)cinema as a part of a mutating ideology governed by the political through time. The second treats extant theory as a corollary to the film textthe text not as a tool of larger sociopolitical machinery; its existence warrants its appreciation, not the other way around. Mubarki apparently pledges fealty to the former, takes up a slice of the Indian popular and posits it as axial to a shifting culturalpolitical modernity, yet his frequent incursions into disparate contexts like aesthetic theory, Anglophone studio horror and a partial refusal to relegate the film text as a stooge of the social narrative entirelyall make the book under review a moderately important addition to the canon of Indian Film Studies.

As a book with clearly academic aspirations, it however faces a greater challenge from within its geo-specificity. Judging the worth of this book in scholarly terms can never be separate from mapping its context, since the near-saturation of the Indian popular film scholastics is dependent on an immensely established canon. Any new work is to be judged in retrospect. What is, for example, the popular Hindi canon? How inclusive is it regarding world cinematic elements, or elements from the parallel Indian film industries? Is the popular film genre (action, melodrama, romance, horror) hermetic or overlapping? This book, of about 196 pages spread through five chapters, seeks to understand the emergence and contemporary articulations of the genre made possible by larger social forces at work (p 1).

Mubarki starts with the assumption that the Indian horror film is hermeticwith a definitive arc of evolution from the Nehruvian polity to a shift towards a Hinduist, right leaning governance. Apart from the introductory chapter Indian Cinema and Ideology there is an attempt not to mirror the schematics of the larger filmic world into the appreciation of the Hindi horror. To an informed reader, this is reminiscent of Ashish Rajadhyakshas theory of the Indian popular owning its aesthetics by distancing itself from other industries. Bollywood has been around for only about a decade now. The term today refers to a reasonably specific narrative and a mode of presentation he says (Rajadhyaksha 2004: 119). Mubarki likewise talks about the individualistic difference that a genre must maintain, referring to sources as diverse as Freud, Andrew Tudor and Julia Kristeva to suggest the specificity of genre codes of Hindi horror: of the general recognition of traditional spirituality that must happen in horror films before any meaningful skirmish with evil can take place (p 37). Again, canon speaks of another Bollywood that is a non-monolithic text: the popular Hindi cinema that has its history written all over its body. The film ceases to be the ubiquitous song-and-dance-routine replica and starts to speak of complex ideological facets through its apparently simplistic, straightforward plotting. The difference notwithstanding, the Indian film genres share a common ground, a set of aesthetic concerns, certain dominant tendencies (Prasad 1998: 5) as a result of being governed by the same mutating nation state.

Mixing Elements

Hence, although much of the book (pp 72172) traces the ideological coherence of the Hindi (Hindu) horror cinema, Mubarki takes the middle way approach. Chapters 1 to 3 display the strain of commonality emerging from the Nehruvian secular cinemaa more rationalistic/scientific outlook towards horror giving way to faith and a scriptural reverence to the evil/good dichotomy. Throughout his argument, he talks exclusively of horror cinema, but does not cease to draw references from other genresnative and foreign. Mubarkis ambivalence, ironically, is the greatest flaw and/or the most discerning quality of the book, because although convincing the reader of the superstructural genre boundaries by the first 40 pages it has dedicatedsomewhat digressivelyconsiderable space for a seamless filmic convention that mixes elements of social cinema, psychoanalysis, emergent forms of critical traditions and romantic melodrama. So, is the horror genre exclusivist or latently colluding with others? Mubarki keeps this alive, as the book declares that the popular Hindi films ideology is the outcome of the same sociopolitical elements that govern other film texts, resulting into a different hybrid every time they are summoned to generate a guiding principle. This does not mean that there is a prevailing parity that cripples any chance of radicalism or subversion. Bollywood is other/unique/conforming/subversive, and such hyphenated existence is prevalent amongst all the elements of Indian cinema. The book, by its limitations, proves this perennial point about the Indian popular films through the making/unmaking of the horror genre. Whether Mubarki intended that effect, is the purview of a more detailed critique of the book.

Notwithstanding the chapterisation, this book can be divided into three discursive categories: (i) the making of the genre; (ii) the juncture of the rationalism/uncanny; and (iii) the evolution of religiosity and sexual dogma. This is treated as a subtext of the mutating political dominance in India, temporally spanning the entirety of the postcolonial nation (Mubarki starts with Kamal Amrohis Mahal (1949) till Vikram Bhatts Haunted (2011) as textual mainstays), while frequently digressing into various critical traditions (possibly in an attempt of mediating amongst film studies canons) with variant degrees of success. In his attempt to flash on (sub)generic possibilities. Made possible by larger social forces (p 1), Mubarki provides a brief overview of the visual tradition of the Indian cultureSanskrit theatre, Parsi theatre, the more indigenous nautankis and ramlilas, and how they affect the emergence of the Indian film experience in the British raj, primarily, appealing to the collective reverence to (Hindu) mythologies (this theme shall recur as the closing argument of the book). Mubarki also talks about the colonial policy to keep the indigenous away from the Western liberalismthat is Hollywoodconsidering the preferable spatiotemporal distance between the Empire and its subjects (p 10). Ergo, the Hindu cinema thrived, other-ing the larger Muslim populace. Moreover, Mubarki mentions the works of V Shantharam, M Bhavnani et al to nod at the fictive unity the Hindu cinema tried to evoke by imagining a shared experience of national pride through films primarily concerned with one religious identity. Other identities are/were welcome, as long they share the Hindu nationalist reverie.

Making of the Genre

What makes horror, horror? Moreover, what makes Hindi horror deserving of its moniker? Mubarki reverts to the previously stated ambiguity while addressing issues raised in Chapter 2 (pp 1446): Genre, Codes and the Horror Cinema. Mubarki attempts a significant excursus into a variant and atemporal critical canon structuralism, auteur theory, Freudian psychoanalysis, Stephen King, theories by Robin Wood and Julia Kristeva, and Hollywood Horror since the 1930s. Such inclusions, Mubarki claims, serve to track the heritage of the Hindi Horror genre. Horror is the repressed, it is also the secret bestial urge of psyche, it can still be the abject that defies conventions and sticks out in the face of normativity, but not before it aligns itself with the sexually aberrant, morally depraved (pp 2528). This befuddling tendency of the author still begs some spatial relevance: why does this occur right after a chapter axially devoted to the making of the Hindu cinema? How was the Hindi Horror (as Mubarki will show, the Horror tradition started from a secular, rationalist approach) derived from this (un)filmic wont at all? Why is not more space given to a proper analysis of this mammoth undertaking? Mubarki meanwhile continues his dissemination of genre conventions, quoting Bakhtin (p 34) that generic attempts are pastiches, never originaryyet analysing how Hindi horror is less ambitious than its Hollywood counterpart in matters of world domination and corporeal monstrosity, how the evil here is mostly eldritch. Mubarki believes that reverence to traditional spirituality is what defines the genre of Hindi Horror, yet he declares that the foundational horror moments of Hindi cinema adhered to Nehruvian secular rationalism.

There is no denial that genres come quite simply, from other genres (Todorov 1990: 15), yet the Hindi horror genre revolves exclusively around the concerns of the majority Hindu community (p 42). While unclear about the transition between ideological compunctions (How and when the Hindi film skewed towards Religiosity Rationalism Religiosity), Mubarki does indeed maintain this strain in the latter part of the book, unfolding his argument of the socio-rationalist nature mutating into Evil/Good binary pretty much seamlessly in the last three chapters (pp 47171).

Juncture of Rational/Uncanny

The Nehruvian drive to create an ideal nation state made an easy alliance with secularism and rationality that, we may assume, tried to subvert the earlier religious dogma. The aim was to regulate social life in accordance with the principles of reason and to eliminate or to banish to the background everything irrational from the conscious (p 48). Is there a God and perennial Evil? The Horror cinema of the 1950s1960s does not give/have an easy answer, often leaving conclusions open, much in the vein of German expressionist films which influenced films like Mahal, Madhumati (1958) and Kohraa (1964) stylistically. Mubarki takes these three films as case studies, providing details of their plot, and explaining how they are concurrent to the vogue of rationalist approach to the unknown. For example, the eldritch is either not present, or selectively appearing to specific characters, creating a legitimate confusion whether the horror is of the mind. Yet, there is a negotiation with the Nehruvian rationality, Mubarki argues. The irrationalthe Ghostis present in Madhumati, and characters feel its vengeful presence and flinch away from the apparition akin to the visceral depiction of the monster movies. Yet the ghost never oversteps the boundaries of the state machinery, and helps the unmasking of the culprit to the eyes of the law.

The complex relation of the conservative blocs to an increasingly centralised state machinery is thus rendered clear, Mubarki argues (pp 6061). If there is a poetic, divine justice, it must occur through the secular states agency. If not, then the apparition must remain within the boundaries of the psychethe shadow line that may signify both real and unreal, as happens when the ghost of Poonam is visible only to Raj and the audience in Kohraa. The supernatural either stays within the boundary of explainability, or it surpasses such boundaries through the liminal zoneat the end the audience is unsure whether the Ghost really ever was. The genre was testing the doctrinal boundaries of the nation statethe seeds of its later subversion into spirituality was intact, yet its tryst with the scientific dogma harnessed the spectral presence, and deals with the temporal affairs (p 66).

Mubarki concludes this strand with a few examples of a purported reversal of the Nehruvian sentiments, in films like Bhayanak (1979) and Bhool Bhulaiya (2007) that reinforce rationalism behind seemingly supernatural occurrences or banishes the evil through secular, multi-religious approach: The demonic fiend is entrapped inside a church and divinely impaled ... [by] ... a sacred cross (p 68). What remains unclear is the reason of this reversal. Is there a dissidence within the Hindu film genre? Is this dissidence cyclical, surfacing once in every decade? Is there such a metanarrative present at all?

Religiosity and Sexual Dogma

The third and largest part of the book re-affirms the extant hypotheses of Indian film studiesgenre films thematically mutate with the political shift. Mubarki calls the change subaltern, and describes it as a resistance against the hegemonic formulations of the Nehruvian state, which ignored the underworld about gender, society and social relations for a modern secular, post-colonial modern Indian entity (p 76). The most explicit aesthetic manifestation of this shift towards deep religiosity is its unambiguitythe luminal is rejected in favour of direct transaction with the supernatural: it exists, it is hostile and it can only be banished by Hindu rituals. Mubarki traces the genealogy of such films from the 1970s to 2014, aligning it with the rise of the slums point of viewthe dominating aesthetics of the mass seminally analysed by Ashis Nandy. A greater number of case studies occurfrom Jadu Tona (1967) to Haunted (2011). What is interesting is Mubarki dedicating a sub-chapter to the depiction of the monstrous feminine other that turned out to be a recurrent subject of the horror movies of this era.

In fact, Mubarkis argument in this part of the books can further be divided into three broad categories. The first constitutes the emergence of overt spirituality in banishing the evil. Films like Gehrayee (1980) or Phoonk (2008) seek a decisively Hindu deux ex machina to battle the demon possessing an innocent victim. The spirit of Nehruvian rationalism thwarted thus, the Hindi horror film shifted its gaze to the pervasive effect of Science. Chehre Pe Chehra (1981) reiterates the effect of Science on the cohesion of a placid, non-conflicted personality by showing Sanjiv Kumars character suffering terrible fate because of his scientific curiosity that leads him in discovering a personality-altering serum. At the end, the character remorsefully affects reconciliation with faith. He dies at the altar of the very church whose spiritual proficiency he had earlier denied (p 107). In 13B (2009) characters are haunted by vengeful spirits who use the television as the portal between worlds. The third phase is the monstrous feminine where female agency is wilfully submitted to an overarching patriarchal structure, eager to conserve the placidity of the home and motherhood. Mubarki also points out how the sexually unrepressed female body often turns into the stooge of evilby possession or postmortem.

Conclusions

This book is an easy read, with enough scholarly inflections to warrant a research-driven analysis. Mubarki deftly handles the shift in the genre, while struggling to maintain the middle ground between canons explained earlier. A discerning reading may point out two major devices that stall an organic readingMubarkis habit of resorting to critical traditions (filmic, philosophical and literary) is often digressive and does not add to mainframe argument; an overall lack of analysing the point of transition between thematic mainstays. His attempt to preserve a critical ambiguity and transcending the barriers set by a saturated school of thought is commendable. The book is recommended for serious non-academic audience.

References

Prasad, M Madhava (1998): Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Rajadhyaksha, Ashish (2004): The Bollywoodisation of the Indian Cinema: Cultural Nationalism in a Global Arena, City Flicks: Indian Cinema and the Urban Experience, P Karsholm (ed), Calcutta: Seagull Books, pp 11339.

Ray, Dibyakusum (2014): Self, Other and Bollywood: The Evolution of the Hindi Film as a Site of Ambivalence, Bollywood and Its Other(s): Towards New Configurations, Vikrant Kishor, Amit Sarwal and Parichay Patra (eds), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 216.

Thacker, Eugene (2011): In the Dust of This Planet: Horror of Philosophy, Vol 1, Hants, UK: Zero Books.

(2015): Tentacles Longer than Night: Horror of Philosophy, Vol 3, Hants, UK: Zero Books.

Todorov, Tzvetan (1990): Genres in Discourse, Catherine Porter (transl), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Hindi, Hindu, Horror - Economic and Political Weekly