Bride and Prejudice and diasporic cinema

Indian films are being watched more and more by international audiences ever since the global markets opened up in the 1990s. This because of the transformations that occurred in the communication and media sector as a result of new information and communication technologies.[1] The new global broadcasting environment and the availability of online delivery systems and digital television made it possible to get Bollywood cinema (Hindi language film industry, based in Mumbai, India) to international audiences.[2] In addition, blended forms with both Hollywood and Bollywood style elements arose. This blog post will discuss the example Bride and Prejudice. Besides the fact that the movie is aesthetically hybrid, something else is happening in the scope of (trans)national identity.

The British Indian director Gurinder Chadha produced the movie Bride and Prejudice in 2004. This movie, based on Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice (1813), bridges the gap between Western and Indian popular cinema.[3] The two genres that can be recognized are the Western film musical and Indian Bollywood cinema but it also presents  issues about limitations that native Indians have in the eyes of others.[4] This last part fits in the concept of diaspora (which will be defined in the next paragraphs). This blog post will explain  what makes Bride and Prejudice an excellent example of diasporic cinema. The outline will be as follows: first we will elucidate the plot of Bride and Prejudice as adapted from Pride and Prejudice, then the position of Gurinder Chadha as an Indian British filmmaker will be defined whereupon the movie aspects of Bride and Prejudice will be placed on the spectrum of diasporic cinema and finally, we will draw a conclusion.

In this paragraph some more information about the plot will be given. As mentioned in the paragraph above, the plot of Bride and Prejudice is taken from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a British comedy of manners. The novel is adapted into a love story between an Indian woman and a contemporary American businessman who represents the original character Darcy. In this adapted plot Darcy comes to India to look for investments but unexpectedly meets the woman Lalita (originally called Elizabeth). The class conflict that keeps Darcy and Elizabeth from getting together in the original novel has been transformed into an intercultural conflict. The social positions dilemma has been replaced by the main characters’ prejudices about the other’s culture and as a result,intercultural relations become the main theme.[5] Thus, not only the conventions of both Hollywood’s musicals and Bollywood’s cinema are mixed, the plot is a combination of the Western and the Eastern culture  as well. In fact, the movie was filmed in India, as well as in the United Kingdom and the United States.[6] In the end Darcy overcomes his prejudices and accepts Lalita’s different cultural background.

It is no coincidence that director Gurinder Chadha mixes East and West as she is from Punjab, a region that encompasses the north of India and the east of Pakistan, but grew up in London. This makes her a ‘diasporic filmmaker’ as she only has very remote experience of migration.[7] According to Hamid Naficy’s study An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001) diasporic cinema is dominated by its relationship to the homeland and by the lateral relationship to the experiences and communities of the diaspora.[8] However, as stated by Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg in their article Locating Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe (2010), it is not necessarily the film-maker’s nationality or ethnicity that determines the classification of a production as diasporic. They consider diasporic cinema as being demarcated by subject matter. The diaspora space (this space includes next to migrated people and their descendants also natives) can problematize the subject position of the “native” as well as the boundaries of exclusion and inclusion, of otherness and belonging and of “us” and “them”.[9]

The South Asian diasporic cinema in particular tries to challenge the limitations that native Asians have in the eyes of others.[10] This is what Chadha does in Bride and Prejudice, as she explains in an interview for the British film magazine Sight and Sound (October 2004):  “Bride and Prejudice is a multinational, multi-cultural crowd-pleaser that touches on American Imperialism, the way the West looks at India and what people regard as backward or progressive. In a populist, entertaining movie, the drama is questioning the audience’s Eurocentric attitude.”.[11] In other words, Chadha foregrounds issues of diversity. An example where the characters discuss this diversity can be watched here.

As mentioned earlier, Bride and Prejudice can be considered a part of aesthetically hybrid cinema because it uses elements of both Western film musical and Indian Bollywood cinema. The aesthetically hybrid cinema juxtaposes and fuses stylistic templates, generic conventions, narrative and musical traditions, languages and performance styles from more than one (film) culture.[12] Chadha shows us the differences and blendings of Hollywood and Bollywood (even in her cast).

So Gurinder Chadha is a diasporic filmmaker but what really makes Bride and Prejudice a diasporic cinema movie is the fact that she points out the otherness of the so called “us” and “them” wherein “us” can be seen as the western world with their Eurocentric attitude and “them” being the Indian population. This is supported by the use of aesthetically hybrid cinema in form of the fusion of Hollywood and Bollywood cinema elements. This all makes the movie an excellent example of diasporic cinema.

Tweet:
The fusion between both Hollywood and Bollywood cinema elements show that reflexivity is a key component of diasporic cinema.


E.H., N.S., L.D., K.H., D.L.


[1] Daya K. Thussu, ‘Cultural Practices and Media Production: The Case of Bollywood’,in Mediation Cultural Diversity in a Globalised Public Space, 2012, p. 119.
[2] Thussu, p. 124.

[3] Thussu, p. 124.
[4] Elena O. Aldea, Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice: A Transnational Journey Through Time and Space, 2011, p. 170.
[5] Sandra Heinen, Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Commodified Hybrid Utopia’: The Programmatic Transculturalism and Culture-Specific Audience of Bride and Prejudice, 2009, p. 61.
[6] Aldea, p. 168.
[7] Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg, Locating Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe, 2010, p. 16.
[8] Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, 2001, p. 15.
[9] Berghahn, p. 17.
[10] Aldea, p. 170.
[11] Cheryl A. Wilson, Bride and Prejudice: A Bollywood Comedy of Manners, 2006, p. 324.
[12] Berghahn, p. 41.

The Reality Television Format: How to "Make It Work"

           During the last two decades, reality television has become a popular television genre. Competition is often an important element in reality television shows such as Survivor, American Idol, and Project Runway. [1] We will focus on Project Runway because fashion designers compete with each other on the show in order to win the resources necessary to jumpstart their careers. A contestant is usually eliminated in each episode if the judges feel like he or she did not live up to that week's challenge. Contestants are especially eager to make it to the final three as they will then get the opportunity to show a collection during New York Fashion Week. What started out end of 2004 as an American show for a relatively niche audience has gone on to win a Peabody Award for "using the 'television reality contest' genre to engage, inform, enlighten and entertain."[2] The show has inspired the spin-offs Project Runway: All Stars, Under the Gunn, Project Runway: Junior; and the short-lived Project Accessory and Project Runway: Threads. In addition, Project Runway can be considered a worldwide success as 24 countries all over the world have created their own versions of the show that in essence are the same.

           Jean K. Chalaby writes that a format can be defined as "a show that can generate a distinctive narrative and is licensed outside its country of origin in order to be adapted to local audiences."[3] In addition, the popular format of the skill competition is "a set of rules built around a premise [...] that is then produced locally,"[4] which is less expensive than creating an entirely new show[5] and this is what has happened with Project Runway. This blog post will analyze which elements have made Project Runway a successful television format.

           In order to create a "distinctive narrative dimension" a format has to have an "engine" in order to "create dramatic arcs and produce storylines" and in the case of talent shows, such as Project Runway, "the narrative arc is based on the journey of the contestant."[6] The engine is by some defined as "essentially the rules [of the show]"[7] but this may be a bit too simple. In reality television, the producers and editors of the show are very influential in how the narrative progresses, or at least appears to progress for the viewer.[8] One episode of Project Runway generally has two full days of taping edited down to about an hour long so there are choices being made in what the viewer gets to see. Even though the contestants' mentor Tim Gunn has said that the show wants to portray everyone in the best light possible,[9] this might be hard to believe. This fits with the idea that nowadays "talent shows are reality-skewed" as they "place more emphasis on emotions and the contestants' journeys."[10] Project Runway combines two types of journeys, namely that of self-discovery and their journey into professional fashion design.[11] The designers competing on the show are encouraged to find and develop their personal design aesthetic, which is self-discovery, and in addition, the show gives them the opportunity to start a new career as not all contestants, such as Kelly from the deli from season 14,[12] are already working as designers and have a regular job to pay the bills.

           Of course, the influence of producers and editors does not mean that the show's rules are not instrumental in creating a distinctive narrative dimension. The fact that at the end of each episode a contestant is eliminated by the judges alone is enough to create drama as it can be considered a "trigger moment"[13] and even the episode's climax.[14] This progresses the narrative as the audience - as well as the contestants themselves - gets a new perspective on the competition and is one step closer in finding out who wins the show. In addition to this, the show's rules, such as time constraints also create stress and discomfort that influence the narrative.[15]   

 Each episode is structured in the same manner, with the
aforementioned trigger moment near the end. At the start, the designers get to hear their challenge, they get 30 minutes to sketch, they go somewhere to acquire the necessary materials, and back in the work room they have until 11pm and on set times their mentor comes in for feedback and the models come in for a fitting. The following day they can finish up, send the models to hair and makeup, and then it is time to get judged. Furthermore, the mentor and judges of the show have some standard sayings that they repeat often and have even become memes such as Tim Gunn's "make it work" and Heidi Klum's "one day you're in, the next day you're out" and "auf wiedersehen" to the eliminated contestant. The structure of the show provides the skeleton of the show that cannot be touched by international adaptations[16] and each version actually "performs the same set of action-events in tight, regulated recurrence." [17] However, there is room for local elements as the weekly challenges can be adapted to fit the national culture, such as designing an updated typically British raincoat in the British version and having the designers take inspiration from their own cultures as in this episode of the Vietnamese version where the contestants visited a traditional Vietnamese performance after which they had to design a new look.

           Project Runway has become a successful television format because it has a very clear structure that makes it easy - as well as relatively inexpensive- to adapt the show to international audiences while still leaving room to incorporate elements of the local culture. In addition to this, the show's rules create enough drama and narrative to keep the viewer interested. Tweet: Reality television shows, even when they are about skills and talents, are mainly watched because people enjoy the drama and fights.

KH, EH, LD, DL, NS

[1] Jean K. Chalaby (2011), ‘The making of an entertainment revolution: How the TV format trade became a global industry’, in: European Journal of Communication 26 (4), 2011, p. 299.

[2] http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/project-runway

[3] Chalaby, p. 295

[4] Tasha Oren (2013), 'On the Line: Format, Cooking and Competition as Television Values’, in: Critical Studies in Television 8 (2), p. 27.

[5] Chalaby, p. 295

[6] Chalaby, p. 295

[7] Chalaby, p. 294

[8] Leigh H. Edwards (2013), ‘The Triumph of Reality TV: The Revolution in American Television,’ p. 30.

[9] http://www.mylifetime.com/shows/project-runway/video/season-14/episode-15/season-14-reunion-special

[10 Chalaby, p. 301

[11] Chalaby, p. 294

[12] http://www.buzzfeed.com/caseyrackham/kelly-from-the-deli

[13] Chalaby, p.295

[14] Oren, p.30

[15] Oren, p.30

[16] Chalaby, p.295

[17] Oren, p.28

Orphan Black's Clone Club: Redefining the Audience

The Canadian show Orphan Black is stuck somewhere between a cult-show and a global hit. Though it is widely watched in North-America and recently became available on Netflix in the Netherlands, it’s a show that will get you a lot of “I don’t know it, what is it about?” However, trying to explain the show is not so easily done, as the plot is complicated and dense. It is a little bit of sci-fi, mixed with feminism, sexuality, societal pressure and biology. But giving away too much of the plot will ruin the surprise. Orphan Black is a show that you need to watch in order to understand it. And it may be exactly that mystery, which leads Orphan Black into the cult corner. Only if you have seen it, you understand it. Almost like an elite.

An elite that outs itself through a fiercely devoted (online) movement, titled Clone Club. And now we’ll ruin it for you, but in order to understand this essay you need to know: the main characters, all girls, are clones. This blog will look at how Orphan Black challenges traditional audience-text relations in which the  audience as a receiver is the end-point of a message. It will examine how Orphan Black is defined through its fan community and how this community confirms the thesis that cultural scholar Jack Z. Bratich poses in an article called From Audiences to Media Subjectivities: Mutants in the Interregnum, namely that relations between consumers and producers of media texts are being challenged, and thus currently in limbo. Or as Bratich calls it, the interregnum.  

#savedelphine: Audiences as Producers & Gatekeepers

To say passive audiences do no longer exist might be too forward, but as Shayla Thiel-Stern argues in her essay Exploring New Media Audiences and the Limits of Cultural Production, audiences are no longer just audiences.[1] The interactive nature of new media has paved the way for audience interaction, causing them to turn into producers and gatekeepers (deciding what the public sees) next to being consumers.[2] The Orphan Black community provides an excellent example.  

It's crazy, there's such a movement of fans online. They have a community and find a voice to express themselves. I don't think we'd have a show or a second season if not for the fans. They force their parents to watch it; force their friends to watch it. There's fan art on Tumblr. I keep up with it — it's amazing.[3]

Here, Orphan Black’s leading lady Tatiana Maslany points out the role of audiences both as active producers of fan art, but also as gatekeepers for the show. An example of this is that at the end of season two it becomes clear that the show is introducing male clones, something that stirred online uprising from the community who had built their fandom around the face of Tatiana Maslany (who plays all the clones) and were afraid that the introduction of male clones would mean a decline in Maslany-clones. Currently the show is in production for its fourth season, but creators Graeme Manson and John Fawcett ended season three with a huge cliffhanger, which triggered the popular hashtag movement #savedelphine. The character of Delphine is a definite fan-favorite. One of the reasons for this is her key role in the subjects the show is acclaimed for: sexuality and feminism. She is a female scientist who’s supposedly straight but falls for a girl, realizing sexuality may be fluid. The show’s large and loyal (LGBT) following obviously feel that the show’s narrative will change for the worst if she were to be killed off. Even though they have no idea about the overarching narrative the writers are aiming for.

Fanart & Clonecast: The Audience has an Audience

Orphan Black’s online community shows a very interesting dynamic of what Thiel-Stern described as the audience having an audience, and being aware of that audience.[4] The Clone Club is very active on Tumblr, posting anything from fan-videos, stories, artworks, or they blog about theories and discuss possible outcomes. As Thiel-Stern said, in their production the Clone Clubbers are aware of their audience (fellow Clone Clubbers) and they will conform to their online identity as being part of the Clone Club. Bratich defined fans as being motivated through minor rewards such as social status and recognition,[5] but the motivation of Clone Club goes beyond the awareness and recognition of their peers. They know that those that are responsible for the show are potentially watching them. As Maslany said about fan art “I keep up with it – it’s amazing.” Orphan Black has its own podcast called Clonecast. Clonecast not only recaps and discusses the narrative of the show, but regularly features the show’s actors and producers and always has a segment that is focused on fan art. Next to that, actors and creatives on the show regularly show their awareness and involvement with the fan community by talking about the fan contributions, or engaging with fans on social media. The appreciation by those that create Orphan Black not only adds an extra dimension to the audience being aware of their own audience, but also makes the creators into an audience, because they are viewing fanart and following what is going on within the fandom. It forms an interesting dynamic to think about the fact that the audience of Orphan Black consciously produces content in the realm of the fandom and that this fandom is viewed by the creators of the show, who then are aware of the fandom when producing the show. This forms a vicious circle, in which audiences are inspired by other audiences.

This is an interesting phenomenon when looking at the idea of audiences becoming producers and gatekeepers. In a way, as Tatiana Maslany describes in the video, she becomes a producer by taking ideas and drawing inspiration from the fanart, but she’s also a gatekeeper by continuing to play these characters to which audiences react by producing fan-texts.

The #savedelphine Problematic

As mentioned before, the cliffhanger of season three triggered an online movement against the death of a major character. A website was launched, a petition was started (and got almost 2,500 supporters), and #savedelphine still gets daily mentions on social network platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. It is here that the audience can be reviewed as “an object of concern, […] a ‘problem’ or threat, […] a source of anxiety.”[7] Because the power/knowledge relations have shifted due to online presence and the engagement of the show’s producers with the audience, the audience feels as if they have agency. In other words, the fans feel as if they have a say in the continuation of the show’s narrative, simply because of their (albeit significant) role in the online community. It is almost as if fans feel like they know what is best for the show because they are so passionate about it. And this feeling is fueled by the show’s creatives constantly reaffirming the importance of the Clone Club. We can link this phenomenon back to Bratich’s argument of the interregnum. In his description of fans, Bratich said that, “the ambivalence of fans as media subjects involves the tension between resistance and conformity,”[8] and that there are several types of possible antagonisms between the fan and the creators of the show. He argues that, because fans are depended upon the show’s existence to produce their content, creators keep the agency. But the voice of Clone Club after the season-finale of Orphan Black proves an important point Bratich tries to makes, namely that we are currently in an in-between, or interregnum, in which the relations between producer and the “people formerly known as the audience,”[9] are uncertain and in need of redefinition. And, just like all those waiting for season four of Orphan Black, we’ll just have to see where it goes.

Tweet: Go wild and speculate. Based on Orphan Black's Clone Club, what exactly is the role of the 'audience'? 

EH, DL, NS, LD, KH 

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[1] Shayla Thiel-Stern, “Beyond the Active Audience: Exploring New Media Audiences and the Limits of Cultural Production,” The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies Volume 6 (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2013), 2.

[2] Shayla Thiel-Stern, “Beyond the Active Audience: Exploring New Media Audiences and the Limits of Cultural Production,” 2.

[3] David Marchese, “Tatiana Maslany Talks Prepping for Orphan Black Season 2,” Rolling Stone, April 15, 2014, accessed November 14, 2015,  http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/tatiana-maslany-talks-prepping-for-orphan-black-season-two-20140415#ixzz3rP1y2Lna

[4] Shayla Thiel-Stern, “Beyond the Active Audience: Exploring New Media Audiences and the Limits of Cultural Production,” 2.

[5] Jack Z. Bratich, “From Audiences to Media Subjectivities: Mutants in the Interregnum,” The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies Volume 6 (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2013), 19.

[6] Ibid, 15

[7] Jack Z. Bratich, “From Audiences to Media Subjectivities: Mutants in the Interregnum,”2.

[8] Ibid, 19.

[9] Ibid, 2.