Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Relying on a quixotic blend of catchy tunes, frenetic dances, colourful costumes, and comically elaborate plot narratives, Indian films attract large audiences from across South Asia and around the world. Important in the appeal of this cinematic "masala" has been an idealized depiction of India and an overall disparaging representation of the West. Recently, film-makers, in their pursuit of creating ever more dazzling spectacles, have also become increasingly interested in portraying other world cultures, with non-Indian Asian societies being especially favoured. Using film music as a focal point, this article explores the emergent constructs and depictions of Asia vis-à-vis India and the West. It focuses specifically on representations of Islamic West Asia, especially Turkey, and industrialized East and Southeast Asian urban centres like Bangkok, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Analyses of songs in such films as Mission Istaanbul, Bombay to Bangkok, and Chandni Chowk to China reveal not only how India sees itself with respect to the rest of the continent, but also the extent to which the way it sees itself is and is not premised on Western Orientalist paradigms. Keywords: Representationfilm musicfilm songIndiaAsia Notes 1 For an overview of several of the most profound influences, see Gokulsing and Dissanayake (Citation2004), pp. 19–24. 2 Rajagopalan Citation(2008) provides a fascinating study of the impact Indian cinema has had in post-Stalinist Russia and the larger Soviet orbit. 3 For a brief theoretical overview of this process, see Frith (Citation1996), pp. 115–122. 4 The songs set in the Swiss Alps in Aditya Chopra's 1995 blockbuster Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Brave-hearted Will Take the Bride) epitomize the trend. 5 Saxophone cues are also used as indicators of Western or Westernized identities in such films as Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (Straight from the Heart, 1999) and Raja Hindustani (Indian King, 1996). 6 The skyline is meant to be that of Los Angeles, though the one depicted is that of Vancouver. Budget constraints, lack of awareness among domestic audiences, and the tendency to view the West as a monolithic whole all make such substitution acceptable. In Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Budapest is used as a substitute for Italy. 7 All translations of film dialogue and song lyrics are based on English subtitles found on official DVD releases. They are often modified to correct grammatical errors, to better convey poetic meaning, or to conform to the more idiomatic forms of standard international English. 8 See Booth Citation(2007) for proposed alternate readings. 9 See Locke Citation(2009) for a more complete discussion of Spanish exoticism. 10 Dwyer (Citation2006, pp. 112–129) identifies several genres of so-called Islamicate films, including "fantasy" films, "historical" films, courtesan films, and Muslim socials. 11 For an extended discussion of the treatment of Turkish and Ottoman culture in Western art music, see Locke (Citation2009), pp. 110–126. 12 For a recent survey of the Islamic influence on Bollywood cinema, see Bhaskar and Allen Citation(2009). 13 For a brief overview of the under side of the film industry itself and of the real-life Muslim dons and racketeers who controlled it, see Pendakur (Citation20030, pp. 51–55. 14 In its cultural insensitivity, it bears a striking parallel to Wai Ka-Fai's comedy Himalaya Singh (2005), a Hong Kong production thriving off of Chinese and Western stereotypes of India.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".