Author: S Sreetilak
Publisher: Viva Books
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 133
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8130904012
Description
Whether English is really an Indian language or not may be difficult to answer. But English in India is surely a distinct and fast-expanding culture. In this first-every book on Indian English film, Sreetilak draws a colorful and accurate picture of the social life of English in India, showing the significant ways films and fiction in Indian English correspond to each other and respond together to the emergent new English India.
The progress from the English-admiring gentry of Aparna Sen’s 36 Chowringhee Lane to the confident urban Indians of Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding parallels the social evolution of Indian English culture. In fiction, instead of a laid-back Malgudi what we see today is the metropolises of glitz, sensuality and angst. The urban ambience and modern ethos that films and fiction in Indian English share correspond to the life in new English India.
With offbeat and illustrative examples from tabloid press, advertisements, music videos, television spoofs and a graphic novel-apart from the films and stories-Sreetilak analyses the Indian sensibility that responds to things English. He argues that as post-industrial societies will depend more on alternative forms of capital and power English will prove infinitely handy for India to deal in commodities of culture.
Contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FOREWORD BY K NARAYANA CHANDRAN
INTRODUCTION: Indian English Fiction and Indian English Film: Some Correspondences
The Stories of English India
The Degree of Anglicisation and the External Point of View
From Word to Image, and Back
Correspondence and the New English India
Acknowledgements
Works Cited
INDEX OF NAMES
GENERAL INDEX