Review of "Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity" by William Mazzarella (original) (raw)
Related papers
Book Review of Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity by William Mazzarella
In his book on India's film censorship William Mazzarella undertakes a brilliant analysis of the battle for public authority in a mass mediated society through the instrument of censorship. The book's value lies in the theoretical constructs it brings to life such as 'performative dispensations', the 'open edge of mass publicity' and many more. It offers a highly useful framework for analyzing the censorship battles waged all across the country in the name of protecting the 'sensibilities of the common man' and exposing its inherent contradictions.
Review Article-Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity by William Mazzarella
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2014
In his carefully researched ethnographic project, William Mazzarella uses the dialectical approach to analyze censorship in the Indian film industry, and he highlights that censorship has become a “burning topic of public controversy in India” (p. 3). To do so, he develops a theory of performative dispensation to show that “any claim to sovereign power is also a claim on a particular relation between sensuous incitement and symbolic order”.
Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicityby William Mazzarella
The author demonstrates a close reading of contemporary literature and popular culture, including, quotations, excerpts from newspapers’ editorials, interviews, film scenes, and court cases. His ethnographic approach throughout this book is amply justified and informed by the growing scholarship and references on the themes of public culture with reference to history, society and politics inside and outside India from 1830 to 2013.
AYAN, 2018
Regulation as a policy matter in the post-globalized India, has been questioned severely. Instead, the alternative for the government has been to look for the role of facilitator. In the field of economy, this transformation has been taken more seriously. But in the field of artistic creation and expression, a paternal and regulatory way of treatment is still the norm in India. Actually, it helps in many ways to maintain the traditional power structure of hegemony and political control by satisfying the orthodox hierarchical and feudal segments of society especially at a time when such expressions or creations questions them. It is in many ways a continuation of the colonial practices which had its own imperial compulsions. But its continuation in post-colonial India, surely ignores the changing environment, the opening up of society, the new aspirations and the freedom of making choices by an individual. Both at the central as well as at the provincial level, such regulation results into censorship and even ban of films. This study takes into account the historical journey of regulation through the cinematograph acts of India in both colonial and post-colonial age. Introduction: India is world's one of the largest film producing countries in modern times. But for the films to be released for public, it has to undergo through a process of seeking certificates from censor board, the creation of which has been the result of the promulgation of the cinematograph act 1 , which operates in India. These cinematograph acts aim at regulating and censoring motion picture in the larger 'interest of the society' by acknowledging it as a different form of 'art and expression'. 2 The cinematograph act operates not only at the national level but also at provincial level in forms of various state cinematograph acts, thus giving a wider range of control over the creativity of people in this form of art and expression. The history of the cinematograph act owes its origin in India to the colonial times in 1918, promulgatedfor providing safety and controlling the moral of the society. Since then, however, time, technology, aspirations and people's world have changed enormously, yet the colonial control still exists. In the post 1991 reform age, with the penetration of technology, exposure to liberal environment and the coming of a new generation with little hangovers carrying from the traditional past, the demand for a less control and more facilitation, has led to the questioning of the very purpose and essence of the masculinity of the colonial arm-twisting tactics to keep people in servility. At the similar vein, the overarching reach of the acts working at the regional level, is a further reminder of the gap which exists
"Not in Our Good": Nationalist and other Concerns in the Censorship Debates in Early Indian Cinema
Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, 2016
The article traces the historical and cultural roots of the censorship practices in cinema in late-colonial India. The emergence of the censorship in India, it suggests, carries a larger concern of the hierarchized nationalist public sphere which sought to establish its effective social control over the newly emerged medium of popular mobilization. Interestingly, the British film industry could enjoy only a limited entry into the film industry in India, and the colonial authority too showed their apparent reluctance towards carrying out necessary reforms in securing the prospects of the nascent sector. This specific feature eventually necessitated a coalition between the dominant social institutions and the colonial authority in carrying out the cultural policing of cinema. The development was further valorized by the emerging sector of literary intelligentsia whose rejection of all forms of films other than literary cinema instigated the middle class professional to enter into the production vis-à-vis the discursive domain of cinema in India. The article summarizes this historical process to locate the coordinates of the social control which, in the virtual absence of a regimented censored regime, produced the normative rules for cultural policing in order to overpower the constitutional exercise of censorship in India.
Woes & Echoes: Film censorship debate in ‘filmindia’ in the wake of India’s independence
With the departure of British from India in August 1947, Indian filmmakers hoped to see a liberal censorship regime in the country that would accommodate their creative aspirations. This turned out to be a misplaced expectation, as the nascent Indian state embarked on its own censorship project avowing to safeguard its citizenry from the evil influence of 'immoral cinema'. As a result, censorship of films was stepped up with 'colonial anxieties' of the British being replaced by 'moral anxieties' of the Indian elite in deciding what goes on the screen. This essay explores the position taken by filmgoer-citizens on the issue of censorship during this period by surveying the 'letters to editor' column of filmindia magazine, the most popular film journal of the time, for a period of three years immediately after independence. The letters show that the English speaking elite of the nascent state were enthusiastic votaries of censorship and wanted the state to exercise more-not less-control over the silver screens to ensure that 'uneducated', 'rustic' masses of the country are safeguarded from the "moral degradation". Under the missionary leadership of editor Baburao Patel, the 'letters to editor' column of filmindia became a faux control room to which 'morality guards' from across the country could write to raise alarm about violations committed by 'money-minded film producers' and demand corrective action from the "government of the people".
Deconstructing Indian Censorship
Deconstructing Indian Censorship " India's film censorship machinery and its agenda has been criticised for being caught in a colonial past. But in reality, the censorship regime in India presents a problematic engagement between the colonial past and the post-colonial present that supersedes any Victorian legacy. The need is to examine how far the present departs from the past and to what extent the past still resides in the present. While modes of content control characteristic of colonial times still exist, these too are constantly being manipulated in response to emerging modes of address — seeming to create a facade of change " (Bhowmik 3148) This research paper is the cumulation of a new interest in deconstructing the words colonial, postcolonial, and decolonization. Through my research I encountered several interesting works on postcolonial theory that would primarily focus on the etymology of these words, defining their relation to space and time. While these metaphysical works are mainly interested in challenging the dominant discourse, I would like to bring this new understanding of post-colonial theory to a more grounded application. Accordingly, I propose that we explore Indian film censorship in light of these concepts in order to highlight the country's colonial heritage. Therefore, I will argue that India, or any other country for that matter, cannot be defined as a postcolonial state, for postcolonial needs to be dissociated from its temporal linearity. Instead of conceptualizing postcolonialism in terms of the different temporal stages in the development of a country's social and political infrastructure and of its national identity, I would like to bring us to an understanding of the theory that would take into consideration its spatial fixity and relativity. In addition to its dissociation from its temporal marker, we need to fragment its outreach so as to become more inclusive of minorities and their colonial experience. The goal of which is to change the focus of the theory from the countries' material condition to the people who inhabit it, especially to the minorities whose voices are censored. This fragmentation is fundamental as it emphasizes post-colonial individual experiences as opposed to the all-encompassing grand