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CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 INDIAN FILMS

2.1.1 Hindi and Other Indian Language Films

The film industry in India is vast and spread all over the nation, but

the largest Indian film industries are based in Mumbai, Chennai, Calcutta,

Trivandrum, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The Indian lm market derives

almost 90% of its revenue from non-English language films, largely

dominated by Hindi lms, followed by South Indian lms and other regional

lms”(Young 2011).

A vast majority of population in India is multilingual and based on

the demands of the population, film industry too is multicultural and

multilingual in India. To cater to the entertainment needs of this diverse

population, the film industry too offers diverse and distinct fare in more than

20 languages. Indian cinema is often classified and distributed according to

the language it is produced in. As Hindi is the language a vast majority of

Indians speaks, Hindi language films are also watched by a majority of the

population along with their own regional language films. Hindi films are

produced in Bombay and the film industry based in Bombay is aptly called

Bollywood, which has over the years gained recognition world over.

The South Indian film industry, which comprises the industry in the

four southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, is

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considered the biggest producer of regional language cinema. South India's

film industry accounts for the largest share of films produced in the country

— both in terms of value and volume (Ernest & Young 2011). Indian cinema,

like the nation, is diverse in nature. It represents a group of entities like Hindi

cinema, Bengali cinema, Tamil cinema, Malayalam cinema and so on and

hence it is apt to call Indian cinema as the “Indian cinemas” with the noun

‘cinema’ in plural (Rajan Krishnan 2009).

2.1.2 Viewership of Indian Cinemas

India being the second most populous nation in the world and the

largest democracy in the world, the consumption of cinema among Indians is

phenomenal. Home to one sixth of the world’s population, a whopping 23

million people, which possibly is the population of many established film

making nations, go to the cinema every day (Rajadhyaksha 2008).

So why is cinema so special to the Indians? For millions of Indians,

the art of cinema fascinates them because of its escapist nature. Indian films’

duration itself is unique. Most Indian films run for two and a half hours to

three hours. For an average Indian film goer, this two and a half hours spent

inside a theatre means an escape from the harsh reality and living in a dream

world. For many in India, a ticket cost would be his entire wage for a day, but

still they spend the money because this is a medium that allows them to

experience and even inhabit a life that they have not lived due to economic or

social reasons.

Cinema has the capacity to carry viewers to faraway places and

alternative temporalities as it engages viewers in an act of revelation and

transportation (Landsberg 2004). It is possible in Indian cinema for a

protagonist to thrash a dozen and odd thugs single handedly inorder to save a

woman, fight terrorism across border to save the nation while simultaneously

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romancing with a young girl in Switzerland and avenging the killing of his

father to fulfill the promise to his mother. This is the life a film hero lives in

two and a half hours and this performance or the ability to transform to

various “avatars” is what the average Indian loves and lives in that two and a

half hours inside the darkened theatres.

2.1.3 Distinctive Narrative Style in Indian Cinemas

Indian cinema’s distinctiveness is understood much more in the

words of the famous Indian poet and lyricist Javed Akthar:

“The difference between Hindi and western films is like that between an epic and a short story” (Thomas 2008).

Indian cinema’s narrative has endless circularities, digressions and

detours, and plots within plots, contrary to the linear and logical and

psychologized narratives of Hollywood cinema (Dissanayake 2004).“An

Indian filmis unique by its duration of two and half to three hours, but the

story spans at least two generations, often beginning with the protagonist.

Often, a film starts with the birth of a child and the narrative continues atleast

into the next generation by jumping twenty or so years, which is good

evidence that Hindi films have evolved from village traditions of epic

narration and the dramas (Thomas 2008).

In terms of narrative, the Indian cinema has a totally unique

formula of storytelling. No film in India is produced without song sequences,

comic interludes, sentiments, fight sequences and romantic scenes. Though

there is a great influence of Hollywood on Indian films, it is very difficult to

categorize and slot Indian films based on Hollywood genres and conventions.

Indian cinemas have a mix of everything like tragedy, comedy, romance,

horror and adventure, all in a single film. “Indian media has distinguished

Indian films with terms like ‘social’, ‘family social’, ‘devotional’, ‘stint’ or

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even ‘multi-starrer’, terms hard to gloss quickly for a western readership”

(Thomas 2008).

India is home to myriad art forms ranging from performing, visual,

literature and crafts. The diversity in language, religion, culture and tradition

is also reflected in its artistic expressions. Art was part and parcel of people’s

lives and intertwined in the environment through sculpture, architecture and

paintings. Before the arrival of mass media, it was these arts in the form of

folk songs, dances, recitals, storytelling and plays that entertained and

educated the people. It was these entertainment forms in diverse languages

and renditions that basically taught people their values and culture. Each

community had its own art form patronized by its people. Even these art

forms were victims of caste hierarchal systems. Certain art forms were

considered highbrow and patronized by the elite, while others were demeaned

as it was performed and enjoyed by the socially discriminated and ostracized

poor communities. But there was a system which clearly demarcated these

arts and also a code of non-interference between these art forms which made

them accessible and enjoyable within their own socially demarcated lines.

The commonality between all Indian arts is that it derives stimulus

from myths, legends and two of the greatest Indian epics “Ramayana” and

“Mahabharata”. When cinema was introduced in India, Indians were quick to

use this medium in continuing their artistic tradition to reach a wider

audience. From its inception, Indian cinema drew upon the epics of

“Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” for themes and story lines” (Dissanayake &

Guneratne 2003).

The basic underlying theme in every film will be of the good

eventually overcoming evil which is also the fundamental ideology of both

the epics. “The very first surviving Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra,

made in 1913, was based on the Ramayana. Since then hundreds of films have

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drawn on the Ramayana and the Mahabharata for plots combined with themes

related to motherhood, femininity, patrimony and revenge in Indian cinema”

(Dissanayake & Guneratne 2003).

2.2 THE TAMIL FILM INDUSTRY

Tamil film industry is part of the Indian film industry. Tamil film

industry, based in Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu, produces on an

average 200 films every year. Tamil cinema has a special place in the history

of Indian cinema for its domineering influence on the social, cultural and

political aspects of the lives of people in Tamil Nadu. The language spoken

by the population, “Tamil”, is what distinguishes them and their cinema from

the rest of India.

Tamil cinema plays the multifarious functions of educating,

entertaining and informing its audience, through its reflection of the popular

culture intertwined directly with the lives of the Tamil people, their belief

systems and culture. Tamil cinema serves as a platform which fulfills the

social and cultural needs of the Tamil community” (Jesudoss 2009). “As a

form of popular culture, it provides an array of existential and ontological

points of reference, from cultural identity to the production of norms, values

and beliefs and dissemination of dominant values” (Velayutham 2008).

2.3 TAMIL LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CINEMA

Tamil cinema emerges from the land called Tamil Nadu, situated in

the southern part of the Indian subcontinent; it is home to a population of 7.21

crore people (Times of India 2013). With a worldwide diaspora, the language

spoken by the population is what sets them apart from the rest of India. Tamil

is one of India’s national languages, with a status of classical language.

Belonging to the Dravidian language group, it is spoken not only in this state,

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but also in countries where the Tamil population have settled like Sri Lanka,

Singapore, Malaysia, Mauritius and so on.

2.3.1 The Tamil Language and Identity

For Tamilians, the language was not seen just as a tool of

communication, but an embodiment of their culture, arts, religion, tradition

and also as their bonding with their land. “The ancient origin, roots and

literary tradition of Tamil language have given impetus to the production of a

powerful myth and trope of signification between language, identity, territory

and ‘Tamilness’ (Pandian 1995) (Ramaswamy 1997) (Velayutham 2008). For,

Tamilians believed strongly that invasion need not be physical takeover of

land alone, but can happen through language and culture. When their

language and literature is slowly replaced by another, it will eventually result

in the extinction of their cultural identities. This is one of the reasons why the

state of Tamil Nadu even today resists the introduction of any other Indian

language, including Hindi (one of the official language and a language of

communication between the Indian states), in schools all over Tamil Nadu.

Though English language is the medium of instruction in many schools across

the state and a compulsory second language in schools where the medium of

instruction is Tamil, people didn’t see English language as a threat to their

culture.

Violent clashes escalated in the mid-sixties in Tamil Nadu, when

Hindi was introduced as a compulsory language in educational institutions as

the Tamil community and leaders feared that it is a tool used by the central

government to slowly phase out Tamil language from schools. Tamil leaders

strongly believed that this introduction of Hindi will result in the erosion of

Tamil language, and for Tamilians, it meant loss of their identity. Selvaraj

Velayutham, in his book “Tamil Cinema-The cultural politics of India’s other

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Film Industry”, quotes historian Ramaswamy from her book on “Language

Devotion in Tamil India”

‘….the state of the language mirrors the state of its speakers; language is the essence of their culture, the bearer of their traditions, and the vehicle of their thoughts from time immemorial’ (Velayutham 2008).

The Tamil leaders saw this as a weapon wielded by the central

government, which would eventually lead to the homogenization of the

population with the rest of India, and losing their Tamil identities.

Another historical event on the basis of language and identity crisis

started in India’s neighboring nation Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, which consists

of two ethnic population Tamilians and Sinhalese, a conflict started when the

Sinhalese majority made Sinhala the official language of the nation. Though

there were other rights violations and issues which escalated the conflict into

25 years of fierce civil war between the rebel Tamil tigers and the Sinhalese

government, the war started as a demand for a homeland on ethno linguistic

basis – a new nation where Tamilians have their freedom to communicate in

their own mother tongue Tamil, worship their gods and practice their culture

and traditions. “These tendencies of separatism and linguistic nationalism are

also a salient feature of the Tamil film industry” (Velayutham 2008).

Tamilians, as an ethnic group, are known to have fiercely

safeguarded their uniqueness by protecting their language. Tamilians from

time immemorial are known to have quoted the following lines to stress on

the fact that Tamil language is the mother of all south Indian languages, a

hyperbole which is brushed aside by scholars --“When the rocks had not

degenerated into sand; even at that time, existed the language Tamil”.This is

the pride the community exhibits in talking about their ancestry. Tamilians

world over, even third generation and fourth generation settlers in foreign

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land, insist on their children learning the language and speaking the language

at home. Today, Tamil cinema is one of the important medium through which

the entire Tamil community connects to the homeland.

2.3.2 The Beginnings of Tamil Cinema –The Silent Era

Cinema as an innovation was introduced in 1897 in Tamil Nadu by

an English man, M. Edwards, who screened shorts such as ‘The Arrival of a

Train at La Coitat’(1896) and ‘La Sortie des Usines Lumiere’ (1895), in the

Victoria Public Hall in Chennai (Baskaran 2009). This new media attracted a

large number of audiences and quickly more number of screenings were

organized in other parts of the city. The arrival of drama films from the west

inspired the locals to adopt the technology and churn out films based on their

own stories. In 1916, Nataraja Mudaliar founded the first studio in South

India and made his first film “Keechakavatham” (The slaying of Keechakan),

based on a mythological story from Hindu religion (Baskaran 2009). Soon

more films were made by other film makers, and the numbers of films made

during the period between 1916 to 1934 in south India, was about 124 films.

Even during the Silent era of cinema, the 124 films made set out to address

the issues of untouchability, temple entry, temperance and nationalism

(Baskaran 2009).

2.3.3 Arrival of Talkies and Independence Movement

With the arrival of sound in the year 1931, production of films

increased with an assured Tamil audience as their base for business. The first

full-length Tamil talkie was “Kalidas” (1931). With the arrival of talkies,

stage actors and troupes migrated to the film studios. They brought the

dramatic structure, music and style of acting from the stage (Baskaran 2008).

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According to Stephen Hughes, professor of Anthropology and

Sociology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of

London, on the origins of cinema in colonial Madras, with the advent of

sound, mythological films too had an infusion of subtle political ideologies

especially against the British regime to attract masses (The Hindu 2010). He

says cinema, even at its nascent stage, was the best platform to spread and

share intellectual thoughts as the industry was a melting-pot of literary and

music activities.

The themes of social reform like alcoholism ruining families,

elevation of downtrodden, removal of untouchability, the evils of domestic

violence, were found along with the ideologies of the freedom struggle

movement in Tamil films. Even though direct political content was restricted

in films, the films were geared towards provoking political action. Film

makers had to struggle a lot as the British government was not in favour of

cinema, even if it dealt only with social issues as the British considered social

reforms as part of independence movement (Baskaran 2008). Hence, Tamil

cinema as a medium even in its infancy was used as a platform to question

authority (Baskaran 2008).

2.3.4 Tamil Cinema in Independent India

India got its Independence from the British in the year 1947.The

nation had so many development priorities and cinema was the least concern

of its national leaders. The national leaders were concentrating on nation

building efforts and modernising all sectors, including agriculture, education

and health. The nation was not producing enough food and was maimed with

its own social issues in terms of caste, religion and poverty. So, the leaders

were fully concentrating on developmental issues, rarely bothering about

cinema.

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2.3.5 Emergence of Regionalism and Tamil Cinema

With newly formed states on linguistic basis with well-defined

borders, cinema became the only tool available for regional politicians to

safeguard their regional identities and they used it to the fullest. The

domination of north India in politics and the feudal domination by few elitist

literate classes were met with strong opposition through the medium of

cinema. The medium of cinema questioned these hegemonies and served to

humanize everyone, irrespective of their class, gender, caste and religion.

With independence, the British departed India and with them, the

legacy of English cinema also left. Cinema was one medium which became

free for all. But cinema was successfully used by the regional political parties

to promote the concept of nationhood and also indicative of regionalist

identity (Baskaran 2009). Cinema, which once promoted the nationalistic

ideals, started to deviate from the nationalistic identity to the Tamil ethno

linguistic identity. The emergence of regional parties meant that the Congress,

the nationalist political party, started to lose its control over the newly formed

states whose borders were defined by the language the population spoke.

Playing on this language identity, regional parties started to emerge all over

India, especially in Tamil Nadu.

2.3.6 Dravidian Movement and Cinema

In Tamil Nadu, more than being political, the ethnolinguistic

identity arose out of a popular movement called the Dravidian movement.

“Dravidian” signifies the race of the Tamil population, which is different from

the races of the population of the north.

After independence, the film actors as a community, who had

earlier been backing the cause of the Congress, moved on to support the

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Dravidian movement. The practice of utilizing the popularity of film artistes

among the masses to garner political support continued at a much more

intense form after the inception of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK),

a regional political party promoting the cause of Tamilians. Actors lent their

support to the movement and helped in its political mobilization programme.

In the process, the phenomenon of ‘star politician’ emerged and cinema

became a powerful factor in the social and political scenario of Tamil Nadu,

in a manner unparalleled elsewhere in the world (Baskaran 2009). No other

party in the history of Indian politics has used the medium of cinema to

promote its ideology like the DMK. Though nationalist leaders didn’t see

cinema as a threat or a useful medium, potential of cinema in political spheres

was fully realized by the leaders of DMK. Cinema was used for the

construction of an imagined community based on linguistic homogeneity

(Velayutham 2008).

Hariharan (2013), noted film maker and film scholar, notes that

cinema was a tool used effectively to question corruption in society from the

year 1952 with a Tamil film like “Parasakthi”. India became 22 States in 1947

and Indian films once again started questioning the administration and this

time it was targeted at the Indian Republic ruled by Indians themselves. The

film ‘Parasakthi’ questioned the caste system, temple system and double

standards of the legal system. From then onwards, cinema has represented the

deprived sections of society (ReachOut 2013).

The use of cinema for political purposes, namely the construction

of an imagined community based on linguistic homogeneity, was one of the

central themes that preoccupied post-colonial Tamil cinema up to the late

1970’s (Devdas 2006). The close relationship between film and politics has

been the subject of academic research, which examines the ways in which

both the DMK and AIADMK parties used the medium of cinema to

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disseminate the ideology of Dravidian movement through the cinematic

apparatus in post-colonial India. Textual analysis of specific films, star

analysis, auteur theory and ethnographic approaches done by scholars

conclude the relationship between Tamil cinema and Tamil Nadu politics as

symbiotic (Devdas 2006).

2.3.7 Social Movements and Cinema

In the seventies, the trend of film making changed. From the drama

based stories shot entirely in studio, Tamil films, with the arrival of directors

like Balu Mahendra, Bharatiraja, Mahendran and Sridhar, moved away from

the studios to the villages. The seventies also saw the entry of graduates from

the Film and Television Institute of India, in Pune and Chennai. The graduates

with fresh ideas revived Tamil cinema by giving it a touch of realism. Tamil

cinema, for the first time, had its own art movement of parallel cinema

movement. The seventies constitute a period in the history of Tamil cinema

when there was a sustained attempt towards an alternative form of cinema

(Pillai 2005).

This era also saw the emergence of social movements,

dissatisfaction over the political system, unemployment, civil disturbance

followed by the declaration of national emergency, thus curtailing the

democratic rights of citizens (Pillai 2005). Ragunath Raina, in his article

titled “Social Roots of Indian Cinema”, states that in the seventies, was a

period of “unprecedented changes, a virtual breakdown of democratic

institutions, systemic rot, sharpening of disparities and rise of a

non-ideological, self-serving political class” and “film makers departed from

song and dance formula films, brought out the rich variety of Indian

experience and growing existential problems of the people. They exposed the

exploitative power structure and focused on increasing bush fires of social

discontent” (Raina 2001).

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The seventies and eighties in Tamil cinema also witnessed another

genre of film popularly known as the “Angry Young Man” genre (Maderya

2010). The angry underdog hero, who fought in the action-packed films

against a criminal and corrupt establishment, is still remembered today as the

most prominent cinematic icon of the 1970s and 1980s (Rajamani

2012).While in Hindi cinema it was Amitabh Bachchan, in Tamil cinema it

was the twin actors Kamal Hassan and Rajnikanth who rose to become mass

heroes through their performance of angry young man. These films in this

genre glorified the cult of violence for revenge and advocated the ideology

that evil can be dispensed only with evil (Raina 2001).

2.3.8 Globalisation and Tamil Cinema

Globalisation and the opening up of the Indian economy in the

nineties, had an impact on Indian cinema too. The nation was in transition

from a socialist economy to capitalist mode and this era witnessed an

assortment of films–some glorified sex and violence while others “resorted to

sharper critique of commodification of culture and some valourised

traditionalism, family values, sanctity of relationship, in fact all those aspects

of social life which came under threat as a result of marketization, foreign

television channels and displacement of indigenous industries under the

onslaught of multinational companies” (Raina 2001).

A decade after globalization, there was revival in Tamil cinema

where again the directors returned to realistic cinema. From the urban setting

of the 1990s, the Tamil cinema after 2000 looked for alternatives and viewers

were also seeking fresh alternatives. The decades beginning in 2000 saw films

venturing back to the villages. “The movement towards realistic cinema

might have begun with ‘Kaadhal' in 2003 and by 2007, many script writers

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had moved in this direction, thus coming up with ventures like ‘Paruthiveeran'

and ‘Subramaniapuram’ (Venugopal 2011). According to Raina (2001), the

films in the new millennium and after are not about convincing the audience

that the imaginary was real, but it was about convincing the viewers that the

real is imaginary.

In his book on the history of Tamil cinema, film director and

industry insider Muktha V. Sinivaasan categorizes phases of development in

Tamil films (Maderya 2010). He says the first period i.e., during 1931-1950,

Tamil cinema narratives were dominated by Hindu mythology and folk

stories, the second phase i.e., during 1951-1975, Tamil cinema narratives

were based on melodrama. The third phase i.e., between the years 1976 and

1985, Tamil cinema moved to realism, and also anti-sentimentality and

anti-establishment films defined the stories of this era. The fourth period

(1985-1993), according to him, was marked by gratuitous violence and sex

(Maderya 2010). The fifth period (1993 - 2000) saw the valourisation of

traditionalism, family values, sanctity of relationship (Raina 2001). The sixth

period beginning in 2000 saw films venturing back to the villages, a

movement towards realistic cinema (Venugopal 2011).

Throughout history, Tamil cinema had a diverse function, role and

a lasting impact on its viewers. In her article ‘The Role of Cinema -Framing

Cinematic Indians within the Social Construction of Place’, Cynthia-Lou

Coleman infers that Harold Lasswell mass media theory, which states that

media provides five-fold functions - surveillance, correlation and transmission

functions - acting as watchdogs of government (surveillance), interpreters of

events (correlation) and conveyers of norms, myths and values (transmission),

are the roles befitting cinema as it provides multiple functions of

surveillance, correlation, transmission, economic, entertainment and the

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construction and conveyance of social meanings observable in cultural

artifacts (Coleman 2005).From the history of Tamil cinema, one can say that

Tamil cinema has performed all the above mentioned functions and is still

going strong.

Films, as a mass medium, have the power to entertain, educate,

reflect and shape our sense of who we are and our understanding of the world

in which we live in. In Tamil Nadu, films “play a big role in raising

consciousness of the masses and transforming perceptions and motivating

social action” (Dissanayake & Gokulsing 2004). Cinema as an art form is

steeped in the cultural practices of a society and also a dominant entity that

influences the culture, values and beliefs of its audiences. Tracing the trends

in the narratives of Tamil cinema historically, one can conclude that Tamil

cinema has been a direct reflection of the socio-political cultural milieu of

Tamil Nadu across the decades.

2.3.9 Censorship and Control of Cinema in India

Cinema was introduced in India during the British colonial regime

and “cinema houses emerged as the first democratic space, where anyone

could get in and be together for a few hours, with a common purpose, without

the distinction of caste, class or religion” (Baskaran 2009). Even in the

production of a film, this stratification was nullified as people from various

arts came together and worked together with a single goal of producing a

good film.

The nullification of stratification and the emergence of a new mass

culture through this power visual media of cinema were seen as a threat by the

upper classes of the society in India from the very beginnings of the

introduction of cinema in India. Watching cinema was not approved by the

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upper and dominant classes of society and even it was considered as a vice

like drinking and smoking (Baskaran 2009). The educated classes, who were

part of the administration in the government, set about regulating and

controlling cinema. Firstly, in the form of regulation of the actual space - the

cinema houses itself - and secondly, control over what was screened in

cinema houses, in the form of film censorship (Baskaran 2009). As cinema

mediated the social and political concerns of the people and cinema houses

brought disparate group of people together in one place, censorship became

an important instrument of political control in the hands of the alert British

government and subsequently in the hands of the Indian government after

independence (Baskaran 2009).

Even today’s world where restrictions on media is next to

impossible as the international boundaries have collapsed due to convergence,

digitalization and the World Wide Web, Cinema is still under the scanner of

the government. No other media has so much restriction and is carefully

scrutinized like cinema in India. As a democratic nation, the media is

considered the fourth estate and is greatly valued for protection of the rights

of its citizens. So India has a relatively free media, be it newspapers or

television, but the medium of films alone calls for censorship in India. No

film is allowed to screen in theatres without the censor board certification.

Severe action, including shutting down of the theatre, will be initiated by the

government against the theatres if they screen films without the certificate

from censor board.

The Supreme Court of India, the highest judicial institution in

India, in one of its judgment on the need for censorship in cinema, has stated,

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“……because the visual nature of the film assures a high degree of attention and retention as compared to the printed word. The combination of act and speech, sight and sound in semi-darkness of the theatre with elimination of all distracting ideas will have a strong impact on the minds of the viewers and can affect emotions. Therefore, it has as much potential for evil as it has for good and has an equal potential to instill or cultivate violent or good behavior. It cannot be equated with other modes of communication. Censorship by prior restraint is, therefore, not only desirable, but also necessary….” (CBFC- India2012).

The Indian constitution, under Article 19(1)(a) of the Fundamental

Rights chapter, entitles “freedom of speech and expression” to all its citizens.

This also includes the freedom of expression for the press and media. The

‘freedom of expression’ right includes expressions by word of mouth, writing,

printing, picture or any other manner, including films. But the government

points out the clause wherein this freedom of expression right is subject to

“reasonable restriction” on grounds set out under Article 19(2) of the

Constitution, which permits the government to censor films.

For example, there was this episode in Tamil Nadu in the year

2009, when a film titled “Thambiyudavan” based on the water conflict

between two Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka on sharing of water

between them was submitted for censor board approval and certification. In a

cinematic solution to the century-old water conflict, the Tamil hero of the

film, unable to see the plight of farmers with withering crops, abducts the kin

of a powerful minister of the neighboring state and as a ransom demands the

release of water from the dam to the delta farmers in Thanjavur. This water

conflict in reality had seen many violent clashes between farmers and workers

of the two states, and the case was pending with a tribunal. The censor board,

sensing the potential threat to peace and stability in both the states, denied

censor certification and banned the film. The director of the film argued his

right to expression, but the censor board refused permission for screening.

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Only after resubmission of the film with 45 cuts (edits), which

meant removable of objectionable scenes like abductions, was the film given

clearance and issued a censor certificate (Southdreamz 2009). Some of the

reasonable restrictions include the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of

India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, public

order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or

incitement to an offence.

So, cinema in India cannot be taken lightly. It is a medium strongly

administered and regulated by the government in terms of film policy,

financial assistance, subsidies, censorship board, taxation, licensing

regulations, Unions for all talents and workers as well as the locally and

nationally instituted awards and film festivals, as cinema is considered as an

architect of public opinion and action in India (Chakravarty 1993).

2.4 ENVIRONMENTALISM IN INDIA-A BRIEF HISTORY

2.4.1 Country of Contrasts and Contradictions

India is often called a country of contrasts and contradictions. One

of the oldest civilizations in the history of humanity, the legacy of this ancient

kingdom continues even today in the form of tradition and culture, which are

strictly adhered to by its people. On the other side, India is one of the fastest

growing economies in the world with a boom in I.T sector. This indeed is an

existence where there is an amalgamation of both the old and new worlds.

A modern world with a capitalist philosophy and all the “freedoms” that

accompany that, flourishes side by side with a traditional world steeped in

eastern philosophy with the taboos of culture, a discriminatory practice of

caste system and patriarchal supremacy.

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A better way to understand this nation’s paradoxes is a quick scan

of the news headlines in Indian media, where news on extreme poverty and

starvation deaths appear alongside the launch of a super luxurious star hotel or

building of a golden shrine. India is the biggest democracy in the world and

the seventh largest country in the world, in terms of geographical area. It is

the second most populous country in the world with a population of about 1.2

billion people (Indian Census 2011).

In the pre-colonial era in India, societies were strongly influenced

by eco-centric or bio-centric ideologies which emerged from the very many

religions which originated in India and followed by the people of the nation.

But in this age of modernization and globalization where newer forms of

exploitations of nature occur, these eco-centric philosophies do not make an

impact as these ideologies, “is of little use in understanding the dynamics of

environmental degradation in modern India” (Gadgil & Guha 2013).

Moreover, the environmentalism of the west is also of little help as it too

prescribes the preservationism and conservationism over the needs of the poor

masses.

2.4.2 Environmentalism in Eastern and Western Nations

Many experts had reiterated the fact that there is a major difference

between the first world environmentalism and third world environmentalism,

or in other words, environmentalism of the rich is different from

environmentalism of the poor. For the rich, it is about raising their standards

of living, but for the poor it is about survival as their existence depended on

nature and its resources (Guha &Gadgil1994). For example, historians of

environmentalism call western environmentalism as a ‘full stomach’

phenomenon, as economic affluence leads to the desire to enjoy the beauty of

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wilderness areas and clean air comes to be cherished, once basic material

needs have been fulfilled (Nash 1982) (Guha & Gadgil 1994).

For third world nations, environmentalism is about survival and

not a luxury. The people depend on nature and natural resources for their

livelihood. For example, villagers depend on forests for firewood, fodder for

their cattle and produce of the forest for food and income. So logging and

denuding the forest means loss of livelihood and their survival becomes a

question. As the noted environmental scientist and editor of the magazine

“Down to Earth” Sunita Narain says, Indian environmentalism essentially can

be called as ‘utilitarian conservationism’ as it was not born out of the need to

conserve nature for nature per se, but for its value as a resource to people who

depend on it (Narain 2012). But even within India, given the understanding

that it is a land of contradictions and diversity, there are vast differences in the

environmental ideologies people from various backgrounds ascribe to.

The rich, the business community, the urban can be slotted as pro

development and industrialization orientated against the poor, who have

protested against many development projects in view of their utilitarian

conservationism ideals. Major site for conflicts on environment were on

government funded projects like building dams, commissioning nuclear

power plants, setting up factories in forest areas and in coastal zones with

local communities protesting vehemently and sometimes violently in their

desperate attempt to continue their lives in their ancestral lands.

Western nations have invested heavily on technology, innovations

and science in natural resource management and also with stringent

enforcement of laws have ensured that industrialisation in these countries do

not have the same consequences as in other poor nations. In poor nations,

science or scientists have a lesser say in environmental movements, rather it is

45

the ordinary people, whose livelihood is challenged by industrialization, who

form the protest groups (Guha & Gadgil 1994). Hence, in the west, people

approach the courts and law enforcement agencies for environmental

violations, but in the poor nations, protests are inspired and guided by

principles from spirituality and religion.

The protest methods adopted by these people adhering to principles

of non-violence have sometimes shocked nations, government and officials.

Recently, in the state of Maharashtra in India, the government’s initiative to

build Omkareshwar dam was met with stringent opposition from the adivasis

(tribal population) as their ancestral lands will be flooded upon

commissioning of the dam. The adivasis staged a unique protest against the

level of water in the dam which threatened to submerge their lands, called the

'Jal Satyagraha' (non-violent protest in water), where protesters stood in neck-

deep water in Ghogalgaon village in Khandwa district for 17 days. This

protest managed to get the attention of media. The images of men and women

in silence in neck deep water shocked the nation and initiated a public debate

and this prompted the government to reduce its water level in the dam and

also promised adequate compensation to the adivasis who will be affected by

the construction of the dam. This was a major victory for the people in the

recent history of environmental activism in India, where the government

budged to the demands of its people (The Hindu 2012).

In India, the struggles of people to save their environment have

taken many forms, but principally based on the “satyagraha”, meaning “truth

force”, a non-violent protest method inspired by the ideals of Mahatma

Gandhi. Ramachandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil (1994) list six forms of

protests predominantly used by environmental movements and ordinary

people resisting environmental degradation. First comes the “pradarshan”, a

collective show of strength and dissatisfaction involving the affected people

46

by undertaking a procession to power hubs and handing over a petition to the

government officials. Secondly, it is “dharna” or sit-down strike, an

aggressive method with the goal to stop activities like logging or sand mining.

Thirdly, it’s “gherao”, where officials, politicians or key persons in authority

are surrounded by protesters and booed till he or she accedes to their demands

or is rescued by the police. Fourthly, it is the “rasta roko”, which means road

blockade, where protesters block arterial roads and highways which inturn

affect the entire state. Fifth is the “jail bharoandolan”, which means to fill the

jail, by violating a law of prohibition of mass gatherings. The sixth technique

is the “bhookhartal” or fasting. Fasting could be collective or individual form

of protest aimed to compel the state to yield to the demands of protesters.

With new environmental issues, newer methods of protests are invented by

the people to show their dissatisfaction over the government policy and

decisions.

The “Narmada Bachao Andolan”, a movement which strongly

protested against the construction of a dam in the Narmada valley in

Maharashtra, used various tools of protest such as Satyagraha, “Jal Samarpan”

(sacrificial drowning in the rivers), “Rasta Roko” (road blockade at strategic

points),Gaon Bandhi or Gherao (refusing the entry of government officials

into the villages), demonstrations and rallies, hunger strikes and blockade of

projects (Nepal 2009). But, they failed in their attempt to stop the

commissioning of the dam.

But for every victory, there are also numerous failures like failure

of the people to stop the commissioning of the nuclear plant in Kudankulam

(KKNPP) in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Here too, it was the fishing

community which opposed the nuclear plant and staged innovative non-

violent protests like burying them in sand, fasting and “Jal Satyagraha” in sea,

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but the protests turned violent as police used force and opened fire to evict

people from the coastal area, resulting in loss of lives.

The law too was not in favour of the people as the Supreme Court

gave green signal to the nuclear plant. According to the verdict, “Larger

public interest of the community should give way to individual apprehension

of violation of human rights and right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of

the Constitution” and describing the negative aspects of the nuclear power

plant as “minor inconveniences and minor radiological detriments,

….compared to the enormous benefits we reap from KKNPP since nuclear

energy remains an important element in India’s energy mix which can replace

a significant part of fossil fuels like coal, gas, oil etc” (Venkatesan 2013).

Hence, it’s not always victory for the people and environment, but

environmental movement as such in India is always people’s movement. To

understand environmental movement in India, one needs to understand its

roots and origins. “Chipko Andolan” movement marked the beginning of

environmental movement in post-independent India.

2.4.3 The Beginnings-Chipko Movement

A group of peasants in a remote Himalayan village stopped the

felling of trees by loggers by hugging the trees on the 27th of March,

1973.This event saw the birth of the Chipko movement in India (Guha 2013).

Chipko movement is historical as it marked the birth of post-independent

India’s environmental movement. What Rachel Carson’s book “Silent

Spring” did to American environmental history, Chipko movement did to

India. The Chipko movement protesting against the violations on nature was

started not by scientists, but by ordinary people from rural communities. Also,

“Chipko” movement in the Garhwal Himalayas pushed aside urban armchair

naturalists (India Today 2008). The form of non-violent protest by hugging

the trees was inspired from the history of Bishnoi community of Rajasthan,

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who hugged the trees to prevent felling and in the process laid down their

lives (Guha 2008). The name of the movement comes from the word

'embrace', as the villagers hugged the trees and prevented the contractors from

felling them (TERI 2007).

Another significant point in this Chipko movement is the active

role women played in it (Women in the World History 2013). The Bishnoi

legend of the woman named Amrita Devi, who laid down her life to prevent

the Maharaja’s men from cutting the trees, was an inspiration for the women

from the Himalayan valley trying to protect their environment. The

movement, guided by leaders like Chandni Prasad Bhatt and Sunderlal

Bahuguna, and inspired by Gandhian principles of non-violence, was

representative of many protests undertaken by the common people against the

mindless exploitation and degradation of nature under the pretext of

development and foreign exchange earnings by the government of India

(India Today 2008).

Though Chipko movement gained popularity and the movement

spread to other parts of the nation and the collectivism was successful in

bringing about a 15-year ban on logging and tree felling in the Himalayan

forest state of Uttar Pradesh, the Western Ghats and the Vindhyas and

generated pressure for framing a natural resource policy which is more

sensitive to people's needs and ecological requirements, it was a

representative movement for the natural resource conflicts during the 1970s

and 1980s (TERI 2007).

The transformation from an agrarian society to an industrial society

had a very deep impact on the people. The government policies, based on

western principles of development, meant denial of the people’s ancestral

rights to forests, to the sea and grazing grounds, resulting in the displacement

of traditional communities. Inspired by the Chipko movement, communities

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entered into similar protests all over India. Battles were won and lost in the

years of struggle, like in the Chotanagpur Plateau, communities launched their

struggle to defend their rights in the forest, in Kerala coast, artisanal fisherfolk

protested the destruction of their fish stocks by large trawlers, in

Gandhamardan in Orissa, tribals resisted the damage to their lifestyle and to

the local ecology by bauxite mining (Guha 2008).

Sunita Narain, in her article ‘Changing environmentalism in India’,

states that these protests arose not as a struggle to protect nature and

environment for its intrinsic value, but with an anthropocentric virtue.

Because people’s lives were so intertwined with the existence of those trees,

that they perceived their culture and survival to be at stake. This was the

agenda behind the nationwide environmental movement which spread during

the 1980s and 1990s with protests against deforestation, construction of dams,

destruction of wildlife, and growing pollution. According to her, “India never

witnessed the rise of green groups like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth. It

was not ecology, but socio-ecology at work –a pro-poor, human-centred

environmental ethic, compared to the nature-centred environmental ethic

espoused by the greens of the West” (Narain 2012). In the words of Anil

Agarwal, for the Indian environmentalist what mattered in the Indian context

is not “gross national product”, but “gross nature product”, as still people

lived in biomass based subsistence economy (Narain 2012).

India in the seventies was a close ally of the Soviet Union, hence

environmental activists of Chipko and other movements were dismissed as

agents of Western imperialism, funded and promoted by foreigners who

wanted to keep India backward. But, India being a democracy, the sheer

persistence of these protests forced the state to make some changes in terms

of establishing the Department of Environment, promulgating new laws to

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control pollution and protect forests and restoring community systems of

water and forest management (Guha 2008).

2.4.4 Environmental Movement in Globalisation Era

The nineties India faced a severe economic crisis, the rupee value

plummeted to lowest in history. The closed economy based on socialist

principles led to the dire need for foreign exchange. India was bound to open

its economy, so in 1991 the Indian economy under the leadership of

Dr.Manmohan Singh, the then finance minister, embarked on the New

Economic policy with the intention to liberalise, privatize and globalize the

nation’s economy (Singhal & Rogers 2007). The policy of liberalization,

privatization and globalization meant more damage to the environment as the

state welcomed investors into the country and gave private parties legal rights

over resources. Industries such as mining, initially in the state’s hands, were

slowly shifted to private parties and thus began an era where the communities

had to fight multiple opponents. The government-private media partnership

ensured that environmentalists were often dismissed as anti-government and

pro-naxal groups.

In 2009, the state of Environment Report India, brought out by the

Government of India, records that “about 45 percent of India's land is

degraded, air pollution is increasing in all its cities, it is losing its rare plants

and animals more rapidly than before and about one-third of its urban

population now lives in slums” (Live 2009).

The report, prepared by NGO Development Alternatives for the

Ministry of Environment, attributes the degradation of land to erosion, soil

acidity, alkalinity and salinity, waterlogging and wind erosion. It says the

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prime causes of land degradation are deforestation, unsustainable farming,

mining and excessive groundwater extraction (Live 2009).

Post liberalization, the status of environment deteriorated at a rapid

pace and the reasons are:

a) Corruption has become a major spoilsport for environment in

India, illegal sand mining and stone quarrying are undertaken

by corporates and individuals with police-politician nexus and

there were incidents of transfer or life threats to officials when

the administration interferes.

b) One can also attribute the lack of awareness among people on

environmental issues to the scientific community. Unlike the

west, where the scientists come forward with their findings,

here in India scientists are not voicing their concerns openly in

media. In India, even though there are many scientists who

had contributed to environmental understanding in a big way,

still their work is limited to academic circles and has not

reached the masses, thus adding to the woes of environmental

degradation.

c) Another reason is lack of proper official bodies to check and

regularize the usage of natural resources. There is a grave

need for newer regulatory policies to understand and

promulgate new law according to the innovative

environmental crimes happening in India.

Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, had said: “God forbid

that India should ever take to industrialization after the manner of the West.

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The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (England) is

today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to

similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts”

(Guha & Gadgil 1994). Mahatma Gandhi’s fears have come true, as India had

followed an erroneous way of development and in this decade, it is facing the

consequences of these unsustainable practices.

India today is facing an environmental crisis; the consequences of

decades of environmental degradation have resulted in a host of new

problems and crisis, affecting humans and living forms. Strange diseases and

new forms of environmental disasters and threats have awakened the people

to the importance of protecting their environment. Environmentalists today

are level headed, they don’t ask people to go back to old practices, or to shun

development, but are demanding the application of scientific and traditional

practices to achieve sustainable development, ensuring a cleaner and greener

future for the coming generations.

2.4.5 Indian Environmental Movement and Ideology

Guha & Gadgil (1994) identify three dominant and distinct

ideological perspectives within the Indian environmental movement.

(a) Crusading Gandhi: It is an environmental philosophy based

deeply on religion and completely rejects the modern way of

life. It upholds the pre-capitalist and pre-colonial village

community as the exemplar of ecological and social harmony

(Sasikala 2013). Environmental degradation and social issues

are seen as a moral problem, caused by the widespread

acceptance of materialism and consumerism, which draws

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humans away from nature. His quote “frugality is not poverty,

but a way of life”, questions the western idea of development

and progress. For Mahatma Gandhi, philosophy of Ahimsa is

based on the Hindu scriptures where the fundamental principle

is reverence to nature and all living things.

(b) Ecological Marxists: Marxist philosophy is based on the

question of unequal sharing of resources, as they view both

the rich and poor as responsible for environmental

degradation. Marxists claim that the rich are responsible for

the destruction of environment inorder to add on to their

wealth and the poor do so to survive. For Ecological

Marxists, therefore, the creation of an economically equal

socialist society will be the only solution for maintaining

social and ecological harmony. Marxist practitioners reject

tradition and religious beliefs and promote rationalism. They

involve the poor in collective activism, sometimes even in

extremism, with the goal of redistribution of economic and

political power (Guha & Gadgil 1994).

(c) Appropriate Technologists: The appropriate technologists

depend on both tradition and modernity for solutions to

environmental crisis. They have done pioneering work in the

generation and diffusion of resource conserving, labour

intensive and socially liberating technologies. Their emphasis

is on demonstrating in practice a set of socio-technical

alternatives to the centralizing and degrading technologies

presently in operation (Bhatt 1992) (Reddy 1982) (Guha&

Gadgil 1994).

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2.4.6 Eco-restoration

Guha & Gadgil talk about the ecological restoration programmes,

which even though less publicized, are used by many environmental groups

with active involvement of people. The “Sarvodhaya movement” was initiated

by Mahatma Gandhi, inspired by the principles of “uplift/welfare of all” in

John Ruskin’s book “Unto his Last”. Inspired by Sarvodhaya movement,

religious reform movements and international relief organizations, eco-

restoration was taken up by many voluntary organizations as they organize

villagers in programmes of afforestation, soil and water conservation, and the

adoption of environmentally sound technologies. By focusing on

environmental rehabilitation in preference to struggle or publicity, lot of

constructive work was undertaken by these movements.

2.4.7 Media and Environmental Movement in India

Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha say that eventhough this

repertoire of protest has helped to focus public attention on specific natural

resource conflicts, in a democracy where the state tilts markedly towards the

rich and powerful, these forms of protest collectively constitute the ‘weapons

of the weak’ (Scott 1985) (Guha & Gadgil 1994). It is very true that the

people’s movement, unless supported by prominent personalities, good

leaders and the media, would go unnoticed or crushed by force or even

mocked at by the majority who are in favour of the project. So it is media

which plays an important role in drawing the attention of the nation to these

protests and also helping them seek solutions from the official machinery.

During the seventies and eighties, it was the print media which

actually gave good coverage on environmental news as broadcast media was

state controlled. With print media, the popular medium of cinema too played

an important role in fictionalizing and presenting the nature-based conflicts in

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a manner wherein even the uneducated and illiterate masses could understand

the issue, thereby creating a new environmental ideology among the masses.

As the masses in India were mostly illiterate and newspapers were beyond

their reach, it was cinema in this era which influenced public opinion more so

even in the sphere of environment in India.

Till 1990, Indian broadcast media was monopolized and was under

state control. With globalization and the onslaught of satellite channels, public

broadcast media was sidelined. With the arrival of satellite channels, there

was a fundamental shift in the types of programmes. While state owned

broadcast media operated with development agenda, the private media’s

agenda was entertainment and profit-oriented. Hence, the television channels

were instrumental in the promotion of consumerist culture with pro-western

model of development ideology. Media houses were capitalist ventures and

hence capitalist ideologies were promoted and in many reports, socialists and

environmentalists were depicted as a threat to the nation.

2.5 ECOLOGICAL DISCOURSES IN CINEMA

2.5.1 Environmental Communication in Popular Culture of Cinema

The Encyclopedia of Communication Theory describes

“Environmental communication as a field within the communication

discipline, as well as a meta-field that cuts across disciplines. Research and

theory within the field are united by the topical focus on communication and

human relations with the environment” (Little John & Foss 2009). Living in

an age, which is witnessing the impacts of environmental degradation due to

anthropocentric activities, it is important to study the ways people

communicate about natural world.

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Communication researchers have studied how media

representations and media coverage of the environment, influence public and

political perceptions and actions. Ultimately, the assumption, whether explicit

or implicit, behind most research into media representations of environmental

issues is that these play a role in shaping and influencing public

understanding/opinion and political decision-making in society (Hansen

2010).There is an increase in the number of studies in communication,

journalism, literature, science communication and the social sciences,

studying the role and influence of environmental communication especially in

the sphere of popular culture. Growing number of studies have proved that

popular culture images like those in films and advertising have a direct and

deep influence on the environmental ideologies of individuals and societies

(Cox 2013).

2.5.2 Impact of Environmental Narratives on Audience

It is an accepted fact among communication scholars that there is a

definite impact of popular entertainment medium like cinema on the

ecological ideologies and perceptions of its audiences. In summer of 1975,

the Hollywood movie ‘Jaws’ was released. The film’s central character, the

great white shark, from then on became to be known as killer machines. The

response of the film’s audience to the film’s central character ‘the great white

shark’ was “an unprecedented tidel wave of hysteria and paranoia” (Shivji &

Wilkinson 2005). The movie based on Peter Benchley's best-selling book

“Jaws” about a fictional great white shark that terrorized a fictional small

beach town, have greatly amplified public risk perceptions of shark attacks

(Leiserowitz, 2004). “The imagery and theme music of this movie still

resonate in the public mind, stoking individual fears, influencing behavior

(such as vacation and swimming preferences), and generating countless

secondary ripple effects, including re-emergent, media-driven “shark panics”

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such as was seen in the United States in the summer of 2001” (Leiserowitz,

2004). To sum it all up, the general public couldn't separate fiction from fact

and they perceived their natural world from the ideas they received from the

fictional narratives.

Another example from Hollywood cinema is the dramatic portrayal

of a “nuclear accident” in movie ‘The China Syndrome’ released in the year

1979. The audiences were able to compare the movie with the subsequent

real-world accident at “Three Mile Island” (Leiserowitz, 2004). The movie

and the real world incident went on to initiate a public debate about the safety

of nuclear power and amplified the perceived risk of nuclear power, thus

eroding the public confidence in nuclear power and other high-tech industries

and regulatory institutions (Leiserowitz, 2004). Thus an entertainment

oriented medium like cinema can emerge as a powerful medium in

communicating environmental messages, in constructing ideologies, in

forming public opinions and influencing behaviors of its audiences. The

medium of cinema as a form of popular culture has been dynamic in the

sphere of “Environmental Communication” both in Hollywood and in

cinemas from around the world.

Corbett (2006), in her book “Communicating Nature”, states that

“Environmental Communication is a complex and multi-layered phenomenon

and all environmental messages have ideological roots that are influenced by

individual experience, geography, history and culture”. According to her,

“environmental communication not only involves exchange of information

and ideas, but also actions”. It could be simple routine things like the choice

of food, but these actions could bear a serious impact on the environment such

as “the use of land, the use of water and chemicals and food waste and waste

disposal (Corbett 2006).

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There are also numerous studies which highlight the environmental

communication can have a direct impact on the actions of the audiences. For

example, the movie “The Day After Tomorrow”, a disaster movie, based on

the catastrophic impact of global warming was released in 2004 by Twentieth

Century Fox. The movie had a powerful impact on the “climate change risk

perceptions, conceptual models, behavioral intentions, policy priorities and

even voting intentions of moviegoers” (Leiserowitz, 2004). The results of a

national survey conducted before and after release of the movie “Day After

Tomorrow” demonstrate that the representation of environmental risks in

popular culture is powerful and can influence public attitudes, behaviors and

actions more than official risk communications from scientists, government

officials, or special interest groups (Leiserowitz, 2004).

From the above mentioned examples, we can clearly state that

environmental communication through a powerful entertainment medium like

cinema does have a considerable and functional role to play in shaping public

opinions and actions of the audience. Environmental communication, be it in

any form or in any medium serves two different functions a) pragmatic and b)

constitutive (Cox 2013). Environmental Communication is pragmatic, which

means it educates, alerts, persuades and helps us to solve environmental

problems as in the case of ‘Day After Tomorrow’. With a constitutive

function, it constructs or composes representations of nature and

environmental problems as subjects for our understanding like in the case of

‘The China Syndrome’ and ‘Jaws’(Cox 2013).

Cox (2013) contrasts the term “Environmental Communication”

with the Shannon–Weaver model of communication. Claude Shannon &

Warren Weaver (1949) proposed a model that defined “human

communication as simply the transmission of information from a source to a

receiver”. This model did not account for meaning or for the ways in which

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communication acts on, or shapes our awareness. Unlike the Shannon–

Weaver model, environmental communication assumes that language and

symbols do more than transmit information, they actively shape our

understanding, create meaning, and orient us to a wider world. Hence, it is

necessary to study the narratives in popular culture, especially on the notions

of scripts, cultural packages, interpretative packages and cultural resonance

for understanding the nature and potential power of popular media

representation of nature and the environment (Hansen 2010).

2.5.3 Environmental Ideologies in Cinema

Corbett (2006), in her book “Communicating Nature”, defines

environmental ideology as a “fully formed environmental belief system or a

way of thinking about the natural world that a person uses to justify actions

towards it. So this ideology articulates a relationship to the land and its

creatures and to some extent guides the way societies act towards it” (Corbett

2006). According to Corbett, “Environmental belief systems or ideologies are

formed and shaped by (a) childhood experiences, (b) a sense of place, and

(c) historical and cultural contexts”.

Various studies have proved that the fundamental environmental

ideologies and beliefs which individuals and societies hold stem from

communication which happens at various levels from individual to

institutional communication, and analyzing these communications especially

which relate to cinema is vital in understanding the environmental ideologies

this medium of cinema propagate. Nandy (1998), in his book “The Secret

Politics of Our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema”,

states that all films are particular ways of seeing the world and have a relation

to that dominant way of seeing the world which is the ideology of an age.

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Hughes, in his article on ‘Ideology’, says that every film has an

ideology, based on the director's sense of right and wrong--an ideological

perspective is present in the form of the privileges certain characters,

institutions, and cultures enjoy on screen. Certainly, all films project ideology,

but the levels do vary (Hughes 2003).

Hollywood films today contain many environmentalist messages –

some explicit, some subliminal, but all intentional. Driving this trend called

“eco-messaging” into storylines of Hollywood movies are activist

environmental organizations like Environmental Media Association (EMA).

Organisations like EMA, mostly non-profit work behind-the-scenes with

screenwriters, producers, and directors to identify environmental issues a

given film should address and the positions it should take on those issues

(D’Agostino 2003). EMA urges Hollywood producers and screenwriters to

insert discreet environmentalist messages in storylines like characters

“Coming back from grocery shopping carrying a canvas bag,” “turning off

lights when leaving the room,” “donating old household items to charities,

shelters, schools etc.,” and “eating and drinking from reusable kitchenware

and mugs” into popular movies and TV shows (D’Agostino 2003).

Even Pixar’s animated films like ‘Finding Nemo’, ‘Toy Story’, ‘A

Bugs Life’ contain implicit, complex, nuanced, philosophical and political

essence that; humans alone does not have a monopoly on personhood

(Munkittrick 2011). Even other animated movies like ‘Happy Feet’ contain

messages on the effects of global warming on Penguins. Explicit ideologies

are found in Hollywood movies like the “Promised Land” based on the impact

of fracking (a colloquial term for Hydraulic fracturing), the latest oil drilling

method which though drastically increased U.S energy output resulted in

heavy costs on environment (Schneyer & McAllister 2012). The film

‘Promised Land’ highlights the environmental impact fracking, , and initiated

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debate over the use of this method for extraction of oil. The film was

criticized for its anti-fracking ideology by the U.S energy industry. According

to Joseph Cappella, a professor of communications at the University of

Pennsylvania, films with environmental themes and ideologies often can

change opinion of the audience like Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" on

climate change, and "Erin Brockovich," a film based on an expose of water

contamination by an industrial plant (Schneyer & McAllister 2012).

Based on the narratives, the ideologies could be categorized into

neutral, implicit and explicit (Hughes 2003). Film with neutral ideologies are

escapist films providing light entertainment with emphasis on action,

pleasure, and entertainment reflecting a very consumerist value system and

has a superficial treatment of right and wrong. In films with implicit

ideologies, the protagonist and the antagonist represent conflicting values, but

these values or ideologies are not dwelled upon. In films which have explicit

ideologies, the intention of the director is to influence, teach or persuade

(Hughes 2003).

2.5.4 Types of Environmental Ideologies in Cinema

Environmental ideologies are historically rooted and definitely have

a wide spectrum of belief systems. The concept of “environmentalism” cannot

be slotted as one entity as mainstream media or people understand, but

presents a broad spectrum of beliefs. Everything from the environmental laws

which are enforced, the environmental education in schools, to environmental

activists groups represent and follow an ideological view (Corbett 2006). So it

is important to have a good knowledge of these various ideologies to

understand and analyze environmental messages and discourses in popular

culture.

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In chapter two of her book “Communicating Environment”, Corbett

(2006) sorts these environmental ideologies into various categories according

to the relationships it ascribes with the natural ecology. On a scale, she states

that these ideologies start with anthropocentricism (which includes

“unrestrained instrumentalism”, “conservationism”, preservationism) , and

ends with ecocentricism (which includes ethics and value driven ideologies,

transformative ideologies including ecological sensibility, deep ecology,

social ecology, eco-feminism, Native American ideologies, and Eastern

traditions).

Ingram (2000) in his book ‘Green Screen: Environmentalism and

Hollywood Cinema’ defines “environmentalist” films as those “in which an

environmental issue is raised explicitly and is central to the narrative”.

Ingram, in his book, also identifies and categorizes the environmental

ideologies and discourses in Hollywood films broadly into (i)

conservationism and preservationism, (ii) reformist and radical wings of the

environmental movement, including deep ecology, social ecology, and eco-

feminism, (iii) “cult of wilderness,” (iv) animal rights, (v) the romanticism of

the “ecological Indian,” (vi) the Promethean (anti-environmentalist) impulse

and (vii) mastery of nature. Ingram states that Hollywood’s environmentalist

films use their concerns with non-human nature as a basis for speculation on

human-social relationships, thereby making those concerns conform to

Hollywood’s commercial interest in anthropocentric, human interest

stories”(Ivakhiv2008).

Greg Garrad (2008), in his book titled “Eco-criticism”, also

discussed about the various environmental ideologies and belief systems.

According to him, even though ‘Environmentalism’ is relatively a young

movement, it has already a number of distinct eco-philosophies. Each of these

approaches understands environmental crisis in its own way, and also

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indicates a range of solutions with its own political slant. He categorizes these

ideologies into two major groups, i.e. Cornucopia and Environmentalism.

Cornucopia is actually a radical belief system, sometimes even

called anti-environmentalist, where despite the remarkable degree of

consensus that exists amongst scientists about the environmental threats posed

by modern civilization, it stresses that such dangers predicted by scientists

and environmentalists are illusory or exaggerated. Promoted by capitalists and

industrialists, this philosophy suggests that capitalist economies will generate

solutions to environmental problems, as capitalist economy will generate the

wealth needed to pay for environmental improvements (Garrad 2008).

Cornucopians point out scarcity of a resource will lead capitalist

entrepreneurs to search for alternatives like fibre optics for copper wires,

which relatively brought down the need for copper. ‘Scarcity’ is therefore an

economic, not an ecological phenomenon, and will be remedied by capitalist

entrepreneurs, not the reductions in consumption urged by environmentalists.

Garrad classifies environmentalism into four radical forms, i.e. deep ecology,

eco-feminism, social ecology or eco-marxism and Heideggerian

ecophilosophy (Garrad 2008).

For example, a research on the kind and origin of images and

popular constructions of nature and science in media, especially those related

to genetics and biotechnology, reveal the deeply rooted cultural ideologies

that have shaped the narratives and stories – for example, the Frankenstein

story. The ideological clusters, packages or script say that meddling with

nature will result in things going awry (Hansen 2010). A similar ideology can

also be seen in the movie ‘Jurassic Park” a block buster movie based on

Michael Crichton novel “Jurassic Park”. The film based on the idea of cloning

dinosaurs using their DNA also acted as a warning to the society that

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ambitious modern scientific technology in wrong hands and scientific

experimentation which neglects moral and ethical values can result in a

catastrophe. The movie fundamentally presents the accepted cultural and

social ideology that nature selects and if humans meddle with nature the

results are catastrophic.

2.5.5 Rhetoric in Environmental Communication

Ecological discourses define human beings’ relationship to the

natural world, frame environmental issues and shape values and control their

actions. It is important to study how the three “R”s of environmental rhetoric

(relationship with nature, the risks and response) are framed by naturalists,

scientists, officials, activists and media personnel.

The animated televised series, ‘The Simpsons’ environmental rhetoric

–‘with a two-pronged approach of exposing social ills and creating a new

discursive space for marginalized opinions’ - demonstrates the power of the

comic frame in spreading awareness on the ecological impacts of human

activity (Todd 2009). The series’ portrays the counter culture of

environmental activism as an alternative to anthropocentrism, through the

juxtaposition of characters that represent the extremes on an ecological

spectrum (Todd 2009). According to Todd (2009) ‘The Simpsons’ series

exposes the effectiveness of pop culture as medium for ecological

commentary. The series increases public awareness of environmental issues,

and serves to educate the television audience while at the same time

entertaining them (Todd 2009).

Aristotle defined rhetoric as “the discovery of the possible means of

persuasion”, and also as a tool that allowed people to explore significant

social and moral issues and make wise or prudent decisions. Familiarity with

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rhetoric and its analytical methods can help us understand the nature of our

environmental debates and their outcomes (Herndl & Brown 1996).

Brummett, in his book “Rhetoric in Popular Culture”, argues that rhetoric is

the social function that influences and manages meanings and it does so in

both professional forums and popular culture. Brummett (2006) concludes

that “if we could see how we are influenced (by rhetoric), if our repertoires

for making reality were broadened, we might make the world into something

different”.

Herndl and Brown, in their book “Green Culture:

Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America”, prescribe a rhetorical

triangle model for analyzing environmental discourse, where the rhetoric of

‘ethos’ is seen as ethnocentric-Nature as Resource (Regulatory Discourse),

the rhetoric of ‘logos’ seen as anthropocentric-Nature as object (Scientific

Discourse) and the rhetoric of ‘pathos’ as eco-centric-Nature as Spirit (Poetic

Discourse) (Herndl & Brown 1996).

Holstein et al, in their book titled “Reconsidering Social

Constructionism: Debates in Social Problems Theory”, refers to Ibarra and

Kitsuse definitions of rhetorical idioms as vernacular claims for the existence,

magnitude and immorality of the proposed problem. They identify the

rhetoric of loss which nostalgically laments the devaluation of something

previously valued, the rhetoric of endangerment to the health and safety of the

human body, the rhetoric of unreason or concern about being made a dupe or

fool, and the rhetoric of calamity which invokes utter disaster, the rhetoric of

entitlement “institutional access the unhampered freedom to exercise choice

of self-expression, the sensibility expressed by this idiom is egalitarian and

relativistic (Holstein & Miller 2007).

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Anders Hansen, in his book “Environment, Media and

Communication”, states that environmental communication is not about

imparting information, but it’s the power to define our relationship with

nature and the environment, and the power to define what the “problem” with

the environment is, who is “responsible” and what course of “action” needs

to be taken (Hansen 2010). The medium of cinema, with its story telling

function is a perfect platform for defining an environmental problem (setting)

ascertaining the people responsible for the problem (the conflict) and the

course of action to solve the issue (resolution). Environment as such is not a

subject for discourse in the medium of cinema, but environmental issues,

problems and crisis is what is discussed in the public sphere and is considered

worth the time in popular media. So environment in popular culture like

cinema is highly constructed as the mere notion of environment as an issue or

a problem is itself the product of active ‘rhetoric work’ and construction in

the public sphere(Hansen 2010).

2.6 AN ECOCRITICAL STUDY OF CINEMA

William Rueckert coined the term “eco-criticism” in his essay

titled ‘Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Eco-criticism in the year

1978’. His intent was to focus on “the application of ecology and ecological

concepts to the study of literature” (Glotfelty & Fromm1996). Eco-criticism is

the “study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment.

Just as feminist criticism examines language and literature from a gender-

conscious perspective, and Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of

production and economic class to its reading of texts, eco-criticism takes an

earth-centered approach to literary studies” (Glotfelty & Fromm 1996) .

Eco-criticism is mainly concerned with how literature transmits

certain values contributing to ecological thinking of humans (Oppermann

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1999). Eco-criticism is a recognized and readily accepted theory worldwide

today. It is also known by many names like green cultural studies, eco-

poetics and environmental literary criticism (Shika 2011). Most ecological

work share a common motivation, that is, the awareness that we have reached

the age of environmental limits, a time when the consequences of human

actions are damaging the planet’s basic life support system. This awareness

brings in a desire to contribute to environmental restoration, and eco-critics

encourage others to think seriously about the aesthetics and ethical dilemmas

posed by the environmental crisis and about how language and literature

transmit values with profound ecological implications (Shika 2011).

William Rueckert’s original conceptualization of eco-criticism still

shares commonalities with eco-criticism in its modern form. According to

Rueckert’s theory:

“[M]an’s tragic flaw is his anthropocentric (as opposed to bio-centric) vision, and his compulsion to conquer, humanize, domesticate, violate, and exploit every natural thing. The ecological nightmare … is of a monstrously overpopulated, almost completely polluted, all but totally humanized planet”.

It is, thus, the literary representation of the interconnectedness

between humanity and nature, and the examination of humanity’s treatment of

nature, which are among the main thrusts behind eco-criticism, both in its

early and current conceptualizations (Wyk 2012).

Eco-critical theory was initially applied to literary texts alone, but

later content in other popular visual media like television and films were also

included by scholars for the study as they played an important role in

influencing the behavior and attitude towards environment (Marcondi, 2010).

Content with environmental discourses takes on various forms and genres in

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popular media like nature documentaries, news stories, debates, discussion,

eco-films which constantly generate debate on ecological issues, hence

experts have included them as texts for eco-critical analysis.

Garrard (2008), in his article titled 'Eco-criticism - the ability to

investigate cultural artifacts from an ecological perspective' states that

“environmental crisis in their cinematic representation poses not only

technical, scientific and political questions, but also cultural ones”. According

to him, the film “The Day After Tomorrow” collapses the period of climate

change phenomena into a few days of climactic drama, vilifies an individual -

the US Vice-President - for the whole problem, and reduces global warming

to a silly spectacle. He stresses on the importance of analysing these

cinematic discourses to understand culture and values which needs a complete

transformation if a sustainable society is to be achieved. He concludes by

saying that the “study of the relationship between cinema and physical

environment”, known as “eco-criticism”, is part of the struggle to replace

anthropocentric values of the society with eco-centric culture (Garrard 2008).

“Eco-critics interested in unpacking the environmental meanings in

film and visual media, will have to be dependent on fields like environmental

philosophy, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and visual culture and media

studies. So it is important to study not only the “images of ecology”, but, as

Andrew Ross argues, the “ecology of images”, that is, the ethics, politics,

economics, and “ecologics” of the way images are produced, circulated, and

consumed in our society. The latter might best be thought of as consisting of

three interconnected dimensions or levels: the material, the perceptual and the

social. Looking at cinema according to these multiple dimensions will allow

for the emergence of a more full-fledged and mature ecological cinema

criticism to develop” (Ivakhiv 2008).

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Marcondi (2010), in the introduction chapter of her book 'Framing

the World Explorations in eco-criticism and film', urges readers to adopt an

eco-critical stand point toward all types of films as eco-criticism and film

criticism together offer a much needed viewpoint on the motives and impact

of a culture’s portrayal of nature and of environmental justice concerns.

2.7 STUDYING TAMIL CINEMA

Cinema is an art form which reflects the aspirations, dreams and

concerns of the people it is made for. Cinema, apart from its entertainment

value, also serves as a historical record for generations. The argument that

feature films cannot be used as historical evidence as there is an element of

fiction in it is countered by film historian Theodore Baskaran, as he states

historians’ view that a source material is most valuable when the purpose for

which it was recorded is the farthest away from the motive of the historian

(Baskaran 2009). Moreover, filmmakers are also part of the society they make

films for, and their narratives are based on the events and incidents of that

particular society. Whether historical or contemporary, films are a reflection

of every aspect of a society at a given point of time. These do serve as a

historical record as most events are weaved by the directors themselves based

on the happenings around them.

The study of cinema as an academic discipline has its own

challenges as academic institutions consider cinema as just an entertainment

medium not worthy of study. The only university in India which has a

department of cinema, is the Jadavpur University in West Bengal. But the past

two decades saw a spurt in academic curiosity in cinema as studies by

scholars like M.S.S.Pandian proved the close interaction between politics and

cinema in Tamil Nadu (Baskaran 2009). “Tamil cinema, backed by a

productive industry and a wide distribution network that appeared in the wake

of the Tamil diaspora, has been drawing a lot of scholarly interest recently.

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This medium of cinema has been an area of interest for lot of researchers in

the recent decade, from various academic disciplines, as the impact of cinema

is all pervasive in the society” (Baskaran 2009).

2.8 IMPLICATIONS OF THE REVIEW

The fundamental environmental ideologies and beliefs which

societies hold transpire from communication, which happens at various levels

from individual to institutional communication, and analyzing these

communications is vital to understanding the relationship between humans

and nature.

Everything from the environmental laws which are enforced, the

environmental education in schools, to environmental activist groups follow

an ideology (Corbett 2006).Environmental ideologies fall into various

categories, ranging from anthropocentricism to eco-centricism (Corbett 2006).

Knowledge on these ideologies is essential to understand and analyze

environmental messages and discourses in popular culture.

Environmental communication is both pragmatic and constitutive,

it educates, alerts, persuades, and helps us to solve environmental problems,

and on the other hand constructs the representation of nature and

environmental problems as subjects for our understanding (Cox 2013).

Environment in popular culture is highly constructed, as the mere

notion of ‘environment as an issue or a problem’, is itself the product of

active ‘rhetoric work’ and construction in the public sphere (Hansen 2010).

In the pre-colonial era in India, societies were strongly influenced

by eco-centric or biocentric ideologies, but in this age of modernization and

globalization where newer forms of exploitations of nature occur, these eco-

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centric philosophies do not make an impact (Gadgil & Guha 2013).Also, the

environmentalism of the west is of little help as it too prescribes the

preservationism and conservationism over the needs of the poor masses.

Indian environmentalism comes under what experts call ‘utilitarian

conservationism’ as it was not born out of the need to conserve nature for

nature per se, but for its value as a resource to people who depend on it

(Narain 2012).

The three dominant and distinct ideological perspectives within the

Indian environmental movement are the ‘Crusading Gandhi’, an

environmental philosophy based deeply on religion and which completely

rejects the modern way of life; ‘Ecological Marxists’, an ideology based on

Marxist philosophy on the question of unequal sharing of resources; and

‘Appropriate Technologists’, which depend on both tradition and modernity

for solutions to environmental crisis (Gadgil & Guha 1994).

In India, the struggles of people to save their environment has taken

many forms, but principally based on the “satyagraha”, meaning “truth force”,

a non-violent protest method inspired by the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi.

Representation of nature in popular cinema or any media shapes

our attitude and beliefs to the natural environment, which inturn patterns our

actions which can either be preserving or destroying in relation to nature; our

actions, in turn, enables to either preserve the ecosystem or damage it

(Corbett 2006).

The most popular, influential and all pervasive mass medium in

Tamil Nadu is cinema. Tamil cinema, with its mass appeal and reach, has the

potential to promote a new culture or challenge existing social, cultural and

political beliefs and norms.

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Cinema has very deep influence and impact on every aspect of life

of the people in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in India. Tamil cinema has

grown to become the most domineering influence on the cultural and political

life of Tamil Nadu (Baskaran 2009).Socially, narratives in cinema have

effectively erased the practice of untouchability, caste consciousness,

religious supremacy and economic dominance in Tamil society (Baskaran

2009). Politically, five Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu were actively involved

in Tamil cinema, either as writers or actors.

The popularity of cinema in Tamil Nadu can be attributed to the

unique characteristics of the medium of cinema (a) the escapist nature of

films, (b) literacy not being a prerequisite for watching a film,

(c) consumption of cinema not requiring a huge capital investment like

purchase of a television set or radio, but anyone who can afford a ticket could

go and watch a film.

No other media has so much restriction and is carefully scrutinized

like cinema in India. India has a relatively free media, be it newspapers or

television, but the medium of films alone calls for censorship in India.

According to the Supreme Court of India, the visual nature of the film assures

a high degree of attention and retention and hence evil ideas will have a

strong impact on the minds of the viewers and can affect emotions (CBFC-

India 2012). Therefore, medium of cinema cannot be compared to other

modes of communication as it has as much potential for evil as it has for good

and has an equal potential to instill or cultivate violent or good behavior.

No film in India is produced without song sequences, comic

interludes, sentiments, fight sequences and romantic scenes (Thomas 2008).

Though there is a great influence of Hollywood on Indian films, it is very

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difficult to categorize and slot Indian films based on Hollywood genres and

conventions. Indian cinemas have a mix of everything like tragedy, comedy,

romance, horror, and adventure, all in a single film. “Indian media has

distinguished Indian films with terms like ‘social’, ‘family social’,

‘devotional’, ‘stint’ or even ‘multi-starrer’, terms hard to gloss quickly for a

western readership” (Thomas 2008).

The difference between Hindi and western films is like that

between an epic and a short story (Thomas 2008). Indian cinema’s narrative

has endless circularities, digressions and detours, and plots within plots,

contrary to the linear and logical and psychologized narratives of Hollywood

cinema (Dissanayake 2004).

Tamil cinema narratives are complex and multi-dimensional in

structure. Cinema, unlike other mass media, has layers of meanings super

imposed on every action it portrays on screen (Velayutham 2008). The

subjects addressed by Tamil cinema say as much about Tamil society, its

people and culture as they do about Tamil films (Velayutham 2008).

Films that have tasted commercial success are a valuable source for

study and are a potential source of information about the shared, collective

concerns of the group for whom the film was made (Monaco 1976).

An eco-critical study of the relationship between cinema and the

physical environment will contribute to the understanding of ecological

values of the society and can contribute to struggle to replace anthropocentric

values of the society with eco-centric culture (Garrard 2008).

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Eco-criticism aims to promote ecological awareness and bring

ecological consciousness to the study of texts and other media, and

understand the place and function of humans in relation to the non-human

world (Marcondi 2010).

Films with environmental themes and ideologies like "Erin

Brockovich," on water contamination, “A Promised Land” on fracking, “Day

After Tomorrow” on climate change, “The China Syndrome” on nuclear

disaster greatly influence attitudes and actions of the audience. Growing

number of studies have proved that popular culture images like those in films

and advertising have a direct and deep influence on the environmental

ideologies of individuals and societies (Cox 2013).