LANDSCAPE IN INDIAN CINEMA Synopsis Shailaja Shah (PA201015)
Abstract The thesis delves into cinema as an art form to find the cultural meanings of landscapes. It investigates interaction outcomes between spatiality and experience of the landscape through the cinematic lens. Landscape and cinema – both rely on vision and perception for representation (Lukinbeal 3-22). As present in cinema, landscape perception depends upon cognitive and experiential paradigms (Zube, Sell, and Taylor 1-33). It is necessary to note that these paradigms help in the construction of landscapes. The cognitive paradigm for landscape perception in the Indian cinematic space looks at socio-political and cultural discourses to search for meaning in landscape. The experiential paradigm considers significant properties of landscape based on man-landscape interaction. It allows landscape to be shaped in this process. The thesis looks at landscape in cinema where people, places, and spaces are re-presented in the cinematic vision.
Keywords: landscape, cinema, sense of place, perception, representation, Bombay
Introduction The notion of cinema as a lens for landscape perception and representation becomes simulating but highly unexplored field in the realm of landscape design. A landscape is a cultural image (Mcgreevy 477-479). It is a way of re-presenting and symbolising the surroundings. Landscapes have been represented by various materials and surfaces - land, water, and vegetation and have been recorded by schemata like painting, theatre, and literature. To understand a built landscape, it is necessary to understand both verbal and visual imagery. In a country like India with rich history but a predominantly illiterate society, non-verbal documents in landscape can be powerful visual signs and convey messages forcefully (Baker and Biger ). Cinema, thus, can be a useful lens to read landscape.
The study is divided into four major parts.
ONE: Representation of Landscape The often ambiguous definition of ‘landscape’ characterises it as a way of seeing the world. Based on viewpoints of people observing a certain landscape, the representation of the same would vary significantly. The graphics thus produced could vary from a geographer’s precise contoured drawing, to a painter’s abstraction, to an ecologist’s transect through the land or to a poet’s piece of literature, to name a few (Corner 243-275). All these ‘lenses’ inform us about that particular landscape even though they may be extremely contrasting in their schema. Each would provide us with different sets of meanings and subsequently alter our perception of the given landscape. Environmental Horticulture Ecology Religion Architecture
Practical
Pictorial
Dramatic
Painting Philately Textile Graphic
Land-art
Narrative
Design
Theatre
Literature
_________________________________Cinema, Photography______________________________
Painting and Theatre I discuss landscape as seen through the lens of painting and theatre. Landscape in film can be analysed using the same technique as that in painting ((Lefebvre 61-78) and theatre is considered to be the immediate predecessor to cinema (Lukinbeal 3-22). Since the pre-historic times, paintings have offered to be a window to the everyday events happening in a human’s life. These representations of landscapes have been acting as records of Indian landscape design. At times, these landscapes boasted of fictional spaces and at the other times, paintings recorded nuances of the existing landform. The
term ‘landscape as theatre’ was coined by J.B. Jackson in 1979. Jackson suggested that the term gained momentum from the 16th century where landscape was initially used as a visual backdrop to enact scenes. The literal meaning of the word ‘scene’ can be considered to be a location, an area or a space where the drama happens. Using theatre as a metaphor for landscape suggests three things: 1) theatre as a system of communication with its own set of rules and symbols, 2) people control and design their surroundings as if it were a stage, and 3) people consider themselves to occupy the centre stage (Jackson ) It is important to consider the analogy of theatre for landscape since it offers importance to the visual side of environment along with scaling the ‘scene’ to a specific space and time. I then look at the history of Hindi cinema over the past century since Indian cinema was developed in a socio-political context (Ganti ).
TWO: Landscape and Cinema The second chapter focuses on finding various identities of landscape in the Hindi cinematic space. Popular Hindi cinema has peculiar ways of addressing landscape. However, there are three categories in which landscape perception of Hindi cinema could be divided into: 1. Landscape as a respondent – where the observer starts looking at the quality and the sense of landscape. 2. Landscape as a process – where the observer tends to look at the image-ability and identity of landscapes. The observers start to acknowledge meanings of these landscapes. 3. Landscape as a participant – Here, the observer starts to interact with the social space, responds to the style of landscape and changes in the physicality of space. Based on this, from the literature review, there were two theories for narration and representation of landscape in the cinematic space. 1. Helphand, Kenneth I. "Landscape films."Landscape Journal5.1 (1986): 1-8. •Establishes four approaches to represent landscape in cinema –Subject, Setting, Character, Symbol •Derived pre-dominantly from Western cinema
2. Higson, Andrew. "Space, place, spectacle."Screen25.4-5 (1984): 2-21. •Proposes four functions that landscape can serve in narrative cinema –Place, Space, Spectacle, Metaphor •Derived from all kinds of cinema –Western and International
These theories were derived from the Western cinema and are explained as follows.
However, these theories coincided with each other. Thus, the Hindi cinematic landscapes could be looked at from the following five perspectives. 1. Place (Landscape as a respondent) 2. Space (Landscape as a respondent) 3. Spectacle (Landscape as a process) 4. Metaphor (Landscape as a process) 5. Character (Landscape as a participant) THREE: LANDSCAPE AS CHARACTER The thesis then probes deeper into the fifth category of ‘Landscape as a Character’ and investigates the notion of ‘the city’ in the Hindi cinematic space. Hindi cinema saw films that were based on socialist themes along with tradition-modern conflict. 1940s saw a lot of changes happening in the country on the socio-political and cultural front. Filmmakers like Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Mehboob Khan and many more made films based on these backgrounds. Post-independence, by 1950s, cinema in India was considered to be art, industry and a mode of depicting reality (Rajadhyaksha 20). Hindi films, since then, have been closely linked with this process of urbanisation and expansion of cities. Hindi cinema has not only portrayed the process of urbanisation as a struggle towards coming to terms with and formulation agendas for modernity, but also as reactions to and counter-programmes against this process (Kaarsholm ). Ever since cinema looked at the notion of ‘the city’, the choice of metropolis had always been Bombay (Prasad 83). Cultural and social identities are interrelated and these have been portrayed in the popular Hindi cinema. They often also include a strong notion of ‘utopia’. This is done by the choice of landscape the director uses to represent the same, which usually is depicted through the ‘city’. Bombay was, and still is, considered to be a mosaic of several kinds of people living in the same area and sharing the same services, open spaces and amenities. I discuss the transformation of
open spaces of Bombay city as seen through the cinematic lens. I do so by analysing Shree 420 and Deewar. The landscape of the metropolis of Bombay in Raj Kapoor’s Shree 420 has the power to solve problems through social actions revealing cultural values of that particular city. In the opening shot, the central character is seen walking through a meandering road in a rural landscape symbolising uncertainty in his life. From open wavering roads of rural India, the narrative undergoes a shift when he enters a busy street in Bombay. He is exposed to various urban issues like living on the footpath, need for low-income housing, urban poverty, unemployment, and corruption. The city of Bombay is envisioned as an active character throughout the narrative and open spaces of the city are associated with the common man.
Deewar is a story of two brothers who move to the ‘city’ from the ‘country’ in order to survive. Here, the industrial Bombay affects the lives of the protagonists wherein the older brother leaves his education unfinished to support the family and educate the younger brother. In the process, he gets involved in crime and smuggling and earns money from the same. The younger brother, symbolises ethical living and faces unemployment till he becomes a police officer. The landscape of the film looks at alternative use of open spaces, homelessness, dockyards and streets as an active character in the lives of the poor. Deewar also mocks the disparities in the lives of people wherein the rich become richer and the poor become poorer.
While Shree 420 invests in the idea of ‘Nehruvian optimism’ by depicting the issues of a newly independent nation through the city, Deewar represents the difficulties faced in the city due to modernism. Both films represent ideas that were prevalent during that era. It is the landscape of the city through which these notions are represented.
FOUR: THE CONCLUSION The concluding chapter focuses on developing a theoretical framework for perceiving landscape in cinema based on the analysis done in the previous chapter. The intent of the thesis is to establish cinema as a lens for landscape perception. At some level, the thesis also suggests landscape has thus always been central in formation of Indian cinematic spaces. The way spaces are used and places are portrayed in cinema reflect the prevailing culture, ethics, and society (Aitken and Zonn 3-25). Along with this, they sometimes take a backseat and add to the narration of the story. Articulations of ‘flaneur’ in cinema allow us to be disengaged while viewing these narratives from a distance. However, there is a strong connection in this disengagement while viewing and the space where the action happens (Lukinbeal 3-22). The thesis delves into finding connotations of landscapes by their narration and representation in the Indian cinematic space.
Hypothesis The way spaces are used and places are portrayed in cinema reflect the prevailing culture, ethics, and society. Similarly, the impact of cinema on the audience can structure social, cultural, and environmental experiences. Premise ‘Landscape and cinema –both rely on vision and perception for re-presentation.’ Aim The thesis aims to synthesize various identities of landscape by their perception and representation in the Indian cinematic space. Objectives a. To establish the centrality of landscape in the Indian cinematic space b. To illustrate that landscape is the dynamic encounter between people and physical environment through the lens of Indian cinema Scope a. The thesis focuses on landscape narration and representation in cinema. It does not investigate the technical aspects of cinematic construction. b. The references used to achieve the given aim and objectives will be limited to Hindi cinema because of the prevalent time constraint. In Hindi cinema, the thesis will refer to only fictional cinema. Limitations a. Cinema as a lens to illustrate landscape has its own limitations. The process of analysing cinema is subjective since it deals with personal experience and thought process. b. The attempt here is not to draw parallels of the practice in each field but to understand how the manifestation of one (landscape) is used (both as visual and symbolic elements) in the other (cinema). The theories chosen to illustrate the same may come out to be a subjective decision. c. The selection of films is again a personal choice. They are chosen as the most appropriate examples as per my knowledge to put forth the analysis and interpretations. d. To correlate the narrative experience of landscape and it’s representation in cinema, the thesis will not look at landscape as ecology, habitat, and system. It will only look at spatial and visual aspects of landscape in cinema. Furthermore, the thesis does look at semantics and semiotics to illustrate the same in Hindi cinema since a certain selection of frames/sets/places for the films chosen may be purely coincidental. e. The thesis analyses the films in the form of images and text since it refers to eras and not specific years to illustrate the landscape.
Works Cited
1. Aitken, Stuart, and Leo Zonn. "Re-Presenting the Place Pastiche." Place, power, situation and spectacle: A geography of film (1994): 3-25. Print. 2. Baker, Alan RH, and Gideon Biger. Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective: Essays on the Meanings of some Places in the Past. 18 Vol. Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print. 3. Corner, James. "Representation and Landscape: Drawing and Making in the Landscape Medium." Word & Image 8.3 (1992): 243-75. Print. 4. Ganti, Tejaswini. Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema. Routledge, 2013. Print. 5. Jackson, John Brinckerhoff. The Necessity for Ruins, and Other Topics. Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1980. Print. 6. Kaarsholm, Preben. Unreal City. Seagull Books, 2004. Print. 7. Lefebvre, Martin. "On Landscape in Narrative Cinema." Revue canadienne d'études cinématographiques/Canadian Journal of Film Studies (2011): 61-78. Print. 8. Lukinbeal, Chris. "Cinematic Landscapes." Journal of Cultural Geography 23.1 (2005): 3-22. Print. 9. Mcgreevy, P. THE ICONOGRAPHY OF LANDSCAPE - ESSAYS ON THE SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION, DESIGN, AND USE OF PAST ENVIRONMENTS - COSGROVE,D, DANIELS,S. 79 Vol. , 1989. Print. 10. Prasad, Madhava. "Realism and Fantasy in Representations of Metropolitan Life in Indian Cinema." City flicks: Indian cinema and the urban experience.22 (2004): 83. Print. 11. Rajadhyaksha, Ashish. "Neo-Traditionalism-Film as Popular Art in India." Framework.32 (1986): 20. Print. 12. Zube, Ervin H., James L. Sell, and Jonathan G. Taylor. "Landscape Perception: Research, Application and Theory." Landscape planning 9.1 (1982): 1-33. Print.