Reading the Muslim on Celluloid

Reading the Muslim on Celluloid

Author: Roshni Sengupta

Publisher: Primus Books

Published: 2020-11-13

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9789389850888

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While Bollywood continues to be part of the psyche of Indians and South Asians the world over, the cinematic representation of identities, particularly of the Muslim as a cultural category, also contains within ideas about visualities and their impact. The contribution of cinema to ideological milieus is immense. Hindi cinema-through its romantic narratives and culture of myth-making-has tended to be one of the most powerful tools of political communication and propaganda. This book aims to bring cinematic narratives under the analytical lens and contextualize the representation of the Muslim in popular Hindi cinema. It also argues in favour of a noticeable transformation in the representation of Muslims in films through the 1990s and 2000s, culminating in the emergence of a secularized portrayal which is far from unproblematic. Can one discern an attempt to construct a visual binary where the Muslims can be categorized as 'good' and 'bad'?


Postcolonial Bollywood and Muslim Identity

Postcolonial Bollywood and Muslim Identity

Author: Nadira Khatun

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-12-31

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0198891059

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The book joins a growing scholarship in the field of Bollywood film studies, encompassing methodological sub-groups such as discursive or narrative studies, textual analysis, audience research, and the political economy of Bollywood. It particularly focuses on the representation of Muslims in postcolonial Bollywood cinema that draws upon earlier questions and concerns about narrative style and the politics of representing Muslims. It also includes issues concerning Muslim film genres and the chronological shift in the portrayal of Muslims that is contingent upon national politics. In Bollywood cinema, Muslims have traditionally been portrayed through the lens of religion. Narratives associated with that specific religious identity have been adapted, based on the socio-political setting of the country at the time of the film's making. The study, thus, adds to scholarship on 'representation' in popular Hindi cinema.


Music, Culture and Identity in the Muslim World

Music, Culture and Identity in the Muslim World

Author: Kamal Salhi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-17

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1317963091

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In contrast to many books on Islam that focus on political rhetoric and activism, this book explores Islam's extraordinarily rich cultural and artistic diversity, showing how sound, music and bodily performance offer a window onto the subtleties and humanity of Islamic religious experience. Through a wide range of case studies from West Asia, South Asia and North Africa and their diasporas - including studies of Sufi chanting in Egypt and Morocco, dance in Afghanistan, and "Muslim punk" on-line - the book demonstrates how Islam should not be conceived of as being monolithic or monocultural, how there is a large disagreement within Islam as to how music and performance should be approached, such disagreements being closely related to debates about orthodoxy, secularism, and moderate and fundamental Islam, and how important cultural activities have been, and continue to be, for the formation of Muslim identity.


Film, Media and Representation in Postcolonial South Asia

Film, Media and Representation in Postcolonial South Asia

Author: Nukhbah Taj Langah

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2021-07-28

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1000422577

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This volume brings together new studies and interdisciplinary research on the changing mediascapes in South Asia. Focusing on India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, it explores the transformations in the sphere of cinema, television, performing arts, visual cultures, cyber space and digital media, beyond the traumas of the partitions of 1947 and 1971. Through wide-ranging essays on soft power, performance, film, and television; art and visual culture; and cyber space, social media, and digital texts, the book bridges the gap in the study of the postcolonial and post-Partition developments to reimagine South Asia through a critical understanding of popular culture and media. The volume includes scholars and practitioners from the subcontinent to foster dialogue across the borders, and presents diverse and in-depth studies on film, media and representation in the region. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of media and film studies, postcolonial studies, visual cultures, political studies, partition history, cultural studies, mass media, popular culture, history, sociology and South Asian studies, as well as to media practitioners, journalists, writers, and activists.


The Celluloid Madonna

The Celluloid Madonna

Author: Catherine O'Brien

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2011-12-20

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0231501811

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The Celluloid Madonna is the first book to analyze the life of the Virgin Mary on screen from the silent era through to the present. For decades, Mary has caught the imagination of filmmakers from a range of religious backgrounds, whether Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Marxist, or atheist, and film's intersection of theology and secular culture has inspired some of the most singular and controversial visions of this icon in cinema history. Focusing on the challenge of adapting Scripture to the screen, this volume discusses Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927), Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977), Jean-Luc Godard's Hail Mary (1984), Jean Delannoy's Mary of Nazareth (1994), Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004), Catherine Hardwicke's The Nativity Story (2006), and Mark Dornford-May's Son of Man (2006).


Reel Bad Arabs

Reel Bad Arabs

Author: Jack G. Shaheen

Publisher: Interlink Publishing

Published: 2012-12-31

Total Pages: 637

ISBN-13: 1623710065

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A groundbreaking book that dissects a slanderous history dating from cinema’s earliest days to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters that feature machine-gun wielding and bomb-blowing "evil" Arabs Award-winning film authority Jack G. Shaheen, noting that only Native Americans have been more relentlessly smeared on the silver screen, painstakingly makes his case that "Arab" has remained Hollywood’s shameless shorthand for "bad guy," long after the movie industry has shifted its portrayal of other minority groups. In this comprehensive study of over one thousand films, arranged alphabetically in such chapters as "Villains," "Sheikhs," "Cameos," and "Cliffhangers," Shaheen documents the tendency to portray Muslim Arabs as Public Enemy #1—brutal, heartless, uncivilized Others bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners. Shaheen examines how and why such a stereotype has grown and spread in the film industry and what may be done to change Hollywood’s defamation of Arabs.


Bollywood Boy

Bollywood Boy

Author: Justine Hardy

Publisher: John Murray Pubs Limited

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780719564857

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"Justine Hardy follows the meteoric rise of Hollywood's new mega-star Hrithik Roshan" -- Back cover.


The Lawgiver

The Lawgiver

Author: Herman Wouk

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-11-13

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1451699409

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"A lighthearted and delightful tour de force" (The Washington Times). A romantic and suspenseful epistolary novel about a group of people trying to make a movie about Moses in the present day, The Lawgiver is a story that emerges from letters, memos, e-mails, journals, news articles, Skype transcripts, and text messages. At the center of The Lawgiver is Margo Solovei, a brilliant young writer-director who has rejected her rabbinical father’s strict Jewish upbringing to pursue a career in the arts. When an Australian multibillionaire promises to finance a movie about Moses, Margo does everything she can to land the job, including reunite with her estranged first love, an influential lawyer with whom she still has unfinished business. Two other key characters in the novel are Herman Wouk himself and his wife of more than sixty years, Betty Sarah, who, almost against their will, find themselves entangled in the movie. As Wouk and his characters contend with Moses and marriage, the force of tradition, rebellion and reunion, The Lawgiver reflects the wisdom of a lifetime. Inspired by the great nineteenth-century novelists, one of America’s most beloved twentieth-century authors has now written a remarkable twenty-first-century work of fiction.


Islam and the Future of Tolerance

Islam and the Future of Tolerance

Author: Sam Harris

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2015-10-06

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 0674737067

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“A civil but honest dialogue...As illuminating as it is fascinating.” —Ayaan Hirsi Ali Is Islam a religion of peace or war? Is it amenable to reform? Why do so many Muslims seem to be drawn to extremism? And what do words like jihadism and fundamentalism really mean? In a world riven by misunderstanding and violence, Sam Harris—a famous atheist—and Maajid Nawaz—a former radical—demonstrate how two people with very different religious views can find common ground and invite you to join in an urgently needed conversation. “How refreshing to read an honest yet affectionate exchange between the Islamist-turned-liberal-Muslim Maajid Nawaz and the neuroscientist who advocates mindful atheism, Sam Harris...Their back-and-forth clarifies multiple confusions that plague the public conversation about Islam.” —Irshad Manji, New York Times Book Review “It is sadly uncommon, in any era, to find dialogue based on facts and reason—but even more rarely are Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals able to maintain critical distance on broad questions about Islam. Which makes Islam and the Future of Tolerance something of a unicorn...Most conversations about religion are marked by the inability of either side to listen, but here, at last, is a proper debate.” —New Statesman


Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film

Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film

Author: Peter Cherry

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-09-23

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0755601734

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A climate of Islamophobia allows anxieties about Muslim men living in and migrating to Britain to endure. British Muslims men are often profiled in highly negative terms or regarded with suspicion owing to their perceived religious and cultural heritage. But novels and films by British migrant and diaspora writers and filmmakers powerfully contest these stereotypes, and explore the rich diversity of Muslim masculinities in Britain. This book is the first critical study to engage with British Muslim masculinities in this literary and cinematic output from the perspective of masculinity studies. Through close analysis of work by Monica Ali, Nadeem Aslam, Guy Gunaratne, Sally El Hosaini, Hanif Kureishi, Suhayl Saadi, Kamila Shamsie, Zadie Smith, Zia Haider Rahman and Salman Rushdie, Peter Cherry examines how migrant and diaspora protagonists negotiate their masculinity in a climate of Islamophobic and anti-migrant rhetoric. Cherry proposes a transcultural reading of these novels and films that exposes how conceptions of 'Britishness', 'Muslimness' and those of masculinity are unstable and contingent constructs shaped by migration, interaction with other cultures, and global and local politics.