Bollywood and its representation of the Muslim 'other'

Bollywood and its representation of the Muslim 'other'

1. Motivational text: The representation of the Muslims across different periods in the history of Bollywood

   • Colonial period (1913 - 1947)
     • the following genres amongst others were famous during this period
       • Mythological genre
       • Devotional genre
       • Social genre
         • The only genre where Muslims were depicted
   • Post-colonial period (1947 - late 1980s)
     • 'Muslim' social genre
       • Muslims as part of Indian nation and history
     • Amitabh Bachchan ruled the movies in 70s and 80s
       • In his movies, Bachchan played the role of someone who is a Hindu and a Muslim
   • Post-liberalization (late 1980s - now)
     • New consumer market
     • Western influences
     • Digitalization
     • New ways of financing and new distribution
     • Hindutva Movement (Hindu nationalist)
     • More formulaic movies
       • Muslims as terrorist and fundamentalists
   • Because Bollywood has such an extensive repertoire of movies I will only choose the following movies while referring to others as further examples
     • Elan (Mehboob Khan, 1947)
     • Mughal-e-Azam (K. Asif, 1960)
     • PK (Rajkumar Hirani, 2014)

2. AV-essay

   • Poetic
     • Images speak for themselves
   • Explanatory
     • Voice-over
     • Text+image
   • My video essay will contain elements of both poetic and explanatory modes of av-essay
     • Images depicting Muslim characters and/or Islamic culture
       • Maybe images of Hindus for comparison
       • Explaining the shift in the representation of Muslims across different periods and how this 'othering' of the Muslims takes shape
         • What does this mean? / What do we learn?
       • Language (for example in lyrics)
       • Clothing
       • Performance (qawwali)
       • Films that are going to be used as material for editing
         • Elan (Mehboob Khan, 1947)
         • Mughal-e-Azam (K. Asif, 1960)
         • PK (Rajkumar Hirani, 2014)
     • Voice-over explaining the images (only when the images are not sufficient enough to speak for themselves)
     • Text (if necessary)
     • Music score(s) (from the movies mentioned above)
     • Supercuts
     • Split-screen