Sunday, May 18, 2014

The Hidden Symbolism of Amar Akbar Anthony

That hit movie from 1977, Amar Akbar Anthony,  supposedly has deep ideological significance.   In Body & Society Vol. 15(2): 71–99  DOI: 10.1177/1357034X0910343,  Jacob Copeman in his paper "Gathering Points: Blood Donation and the Scenography of 'National Integration' in India" cites Cohen (2001)

Cohen (2001) has described the 1977 film Amar Akbar Anthony in which three brothers, separated at birth, have been brought up as Hindu, Muslim and Christian, respectively. 
A woman, unbeknownst to them their mother, requires a transfusion.
In the transfusion scene, three intravenous lines connect the men to the woman, Bharati, whose name ("Indian") and body figure the nation.  The camera pans showing the three young transfusers in turn with a temple, mosque or church respectively as backdrop.  (2001: 15).
India herself is the centre into which its constituent religious populations deliver themselves in an image of transfusion as national integration.

As Cohen (2001) points out, however, that the transfused woman is Hindu ensures that 'integration' takes place under a Hindu sign, thus suggesting a vertical interpretation of national integration, with Hinduism the overarching national schema into which 'minorities' must obligingly position themselves.  This, of course, can be read as a departure from the Nehruvian insistence on the equal status of all religions, and serves as a reminder that 'national integration' is a contested category, the egalitarian content of which cannot be taken for granted. (McKean, 1996; Sheth, 1996) 38.
One of the famous lines from the movie is this gibberish: "You see the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the haemoglobin in the atmosphere, because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated with the exuberance of your own verbosity."

But the gibberish of the social "scientists" beats it hollow.

Comments (5)

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That's a good one. Can't stop laughing....
Priceless anthropopimp material. The guy will get tenure at Harvard and Columbia. Next thing you know, Indians will be hailing him as an "expert" in all matters Indian.
AG,

Did you check the credits for the movie AAA? Perhaps the script was written by anthropologists?
1 reply · active 567 weeks ago
Seems I should read the book reviewed here: Sidharth Bhatia's Amar Akbar Anthony: Masala, Madness and Manmohan Desai.
http://madhulikaliddle.com/book-reviews/book-revi...
On blood transfusions:
From the NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/31/opinion/x-men-n...
Quote:
Now about those bathrooms. The Pentagon, which opened in 1943, was furnished with 284 of them — twice the number needed for the work force. This was to accommodate Jim Crow laws that defined black people as a lesser species of human being. At the height of their influence, these laws barred black people from contact with white people in every possible setting, including schools, restaurants, public conveyances, and hospitals that turned away black patients when no “Negro beds” were available.

Franklin Roosevelt noticed the duplicate bathrooms and prevented “white” and “colored” signs from going up. But by that time, the Roosevelt administration had placated segregationists on many fronts, etching their philosophies into national policy.

For example, the administration had validated the idea of eugenics by insisting that the blood banks serving the military be segregated by race so that white soldiers would not be fearful of receiving Negro blood.

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