Freedom and Destiny: Gender, Family, and Popular Culture in India

New Delhi; New York: Oxford University Pres, 2006. Hardcover. Near fine(+) with extremely minor edge wear to boards and jacket. Jacket housed in archival mylar and about near fine(+) although, due to previous sticker residue, front jacket flap is adhered to front paste-down. in fine dust-jacket. Octavo in duotone green jacket illus un color (front); xix, 309 pages: chiefly color illustrations; 23 cm; bibliographical references (pages 264-299) and index. "This volume of seven essays on themes of family and gender in Indian popular culture seeks to commend popular culture as an important resource for sociological insights into contemporary social issues and processes. Drawing its material from three popular media - 'calendar art' (popular chromolithography), commercial 'Bollywood' cinema, and magazine romance fiction - the essays bring a gender-sensitive perspective to bear on the representation of the family, of childhood, of courtship and conjugality, of arranged and love marriage, of femininity and masculinity, and of sexuality within and outside marriage, as well as on the wider dilemmas and dynamics of Indian modernity and nation-building."--BOOK JACKET. Contents: 1. 'Beautyfull wife, denger life': engaging with popular culture -- A moving message -- 'Beautyfull wife, denger life' -- Reading popular culture -- The concept of popular culture -- The semiotics of popular culture -- Imagining the nation -- Gender and genre -- Visual culture and the controlling 'gaze' -- Reading the romance -- Gender and resistance -- Rethinking the family -- The kinship map of India -- The Indian joint family -- Arranged marriage -- Dowry and brideprice -- The limits of family change -- The moral economy of the Indian Family -- Dharma and desire, freedom, and destiny -- 2. Feminine identity and national ethos in calendar art -- Woman/goddess/nation: a contemporary controversy -- Defining calendar art -- Ravi Varma and the invention of calendar art -- Deciphering the archive: gender and calendar art -- Objects of desire/commodities on sale -- Icons of nation -- Plurality and difference -- Trajectories of change? -- 3. 'Baby' icons: forms and figures of a new generation -- Introduction -- Envisioning childhood -- South Asian childhoods -- Child socialization as pathology -- Childhood between tradition and modernity -- Cosmologies of childhood -- Representing the child -- God-baby -- Welcome-baby -- Citizen-baby -- Hero-baby -- Customized-baby -- 4. Desire and destiny: rescripting the man-woman relationship in popular cinema -- Prologue: on a personal note -- The body language of popular cinema -- The problematics of romance -- Dharma and desire -- Freedom and destiny -- A paradigm of desire -- Jabba and Bhoothnath -- Chhote Sarkar and the courtesan -- Chhoti Bahu and Chhote Sarkar Bhoothnath and Chhoti Bahu -- Happy and unhappy endings -- 5. Imagining the family: an ethnography of viewing Hum Aapke Hain Koun ...! -- What makes a 'clean' movie? -- The lack of 'vulgarity' -- The display of affluence -- The spirit of 'sacrifice' -- The family as 'tradition' -- The constitution of the ideal Indian family -- The ideal of the joint family -- Affinity as a value -- The truth-telling voice -- The pleasures of viewing: voyeurism, narcissism, and a happy ending -- The emblematic family -- 6. The diaspora comes home: discipling desire in DDLJ -- Prologue -- Indianness: at home and abroad -- Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge -- Romance, Indian style -- The tyranny of 'tradition' -- Pardes: reinstituting the contradiction of India and the West -- 'American dreams, Indian soul' -- Indian dream, transnational location -- 7. Learning to 'adjust': the dynamics of post-marital romance -- Domesticating romance fiction -- Woman's era -- Twenty tales of true romance -- Tales of courtship -- Tales of conjugal love -- Sources of marital tension -- Mediation -- Resolution -- True-life tales of marital breakdown -- Prescription for a happy marriage -- Conclusion -- 8. Scripting romance? Tribulations of courtship in popular fiction -- Introduction: constructing the problematic -- Narrative trajectories -- Making 'love' respectable -- Putting 'love' into arranged marriage -- Conclusion. / Women in popular culture -- India. Women -- India -- Social conditions. Families -- India. Femmes dans la culture populaire -- Inde. Femmes -- Inde -- Conditions sociales. Famille -- Inde. Familles -- Inde. Families. Women in popular culture. Women -- Social conditions.