Abstract
In the last two decades, South Asian film studies have called attention to its generic difference from Euro-American cinemas by locating it within Indian narrative, visual, and performative traditions. This chapter interrogates the popular perception of Indian commercial cinema as a poor imitation of Western popular cinema not only through the concept of mimicry as defined by postcolonial theorists, but also through the traditional trope of naqal or imitation, the defining principle of several Indian performing arts. The question to be addressed is whether the element of imitation complicates the summary dismissal of Indian cinema as copy in order to isolate an alternative aesthetic of the “copy.”
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Notes
- 1.
In India, Hindi films are classified into A-, B-, and C-grade films based on their content, viewership, and exhibition space. A-grade films are usually family entertainers and cater to the tastes of the urban middle class, B- grade films are lowbrow in nature and can include comedies and horrors, and C-grade films include stunt and semi-pornographic movies. As Govinda puts it, “My films have always been considered total time pass entertainment, as B-grade films. They were never called good films. They were never acclaimed even though they did well” (Govinda 2003).
- 2.
Naql (tale, report, anecdote; naqal in popular pronunciation) denotes the act of copying, transmitting, relating, and imitating, or the result of such copying, impersonation, and tradition. Naqal, with a long vowel in the second syllable, refers to a person, who is a storyteller, impersonator, and jester mimic. This word is used for mimics and actors in Persian. Steingass translates Naqal as “a mimic, actor, player” (Christina Oesterheld, Personal Communication with Author, July 2011). Kumiko Yamamoto defines naqal as “an Iranian storytelling tradition in which epic and religious narratives have been transmitted in both spoken and written words” that originated during the Safavid (1501–1736) period (2003: 20).
- 3.
In Sanskrit, Bhand means a jester, and the caste are called Naqal (actor). According to William Crooke, “The Bhand is sometimes employed in the courts of Rajas and native gentlemen of rank, where he amuses the company at entertainments with buffoonery and burlesque of European and native manners, much of which is of a very coarse nature. The Bhand is separate from and of a lower professional rank than the Bahurupiya” (Russell 1916: 349).
- 4.
John Emigh and Ulrike Emigh define bahurupiya as “a wandering mimic and comic” (149). Baazigar is a performer who performs Baazi (Persian play) or an “entertaining performance based on physical acts” (Schreffler 2011: 218).
- 5.
The intersection between Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s concept of signifying the Yoruba figure of a monkey demonstrates the similar tactics employed by marginalized groups to subvert the dominant power (Gates 1988).
- 6.
I thank Amrit Srinivasan for pointing out that the absence of a written script in Bollywood film production probably facilitates the porous legalities through which the Hindi film trade operates.
- 7.
Another version of The Godfather is Feroz Khan’s Dayavan (1988).
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Roy, A. (2016). Naqal and the Aesthetics of the Copy. In: Lee, JH., Kolluri, S. (eds) Hong Kong and Bollywood. Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94932-8_12
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