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"Motherhood in motion pictures."
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Deleuze and the Gynesis of Horror
Applying Deleuze’s schizoanalytic techniques to film theory, Deleuze and the Gynesis of Horror demonstrates how an embodied approach to horror film analysis can help us understand how film affects its viewers and distinguish those films which reify static, hegemonic, “molar” beings from those which prompt fluid, nonbinary, “molecular” becomings. It does so by analyzing the politics of reproduction in contemporary films such as Ex Machina; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Mad Max: Fury Road; the Twilight saga; and the original Alien quadrilogy and its more recent prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Author Sunny Hawkins argues that films which promote a “monstrous philosophy” of qualitative, affirmative difference as difference-in-itself, and which tend to be more molecular than molar in their expressions, can help us trace a “line of flight” from the gender binary in the real world. Deleuze and the Gynesis of Horror demonstrates how the techniques of horror film – editing, sound and visual effects, lighting and colour, camera movement – work in tandem with a film’s content to affect the viewer’s body in ways that disrupt the sense of self as a whole, unified subject with a stable, monolithic identity and, in some cases, can serve to breakdown the binary between self/Other, as we come to realize that we are none of us static, categorizable beings but are, as Henri Bergson said, “living things constantly becoming.”
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The 'ART' of
This article examines how the technological intervention of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART)(3) has had a profound impact on the sociocultural practices surrounding motherhood in India. The experience of motherhood has now been divided among different individuals: the genetic mother, the gestational mother, and the social mother. This expansion of motherhood roles has led to the re-emergence of co-mothering practices, where a child is nurtured by someone other than the birth mother. As nuclear heteronormative families became the norm in India, traditional co-mothering by grandmothers and aunts went out of practice. With rising infertility and the rearrangement of familial structures through single and queer parenting, ART treatments have become socially endorsed alternatives. This article examines the representation of ART-enabled mothering in Bollywood to understand its reception and practice in the Indian sociocultural context. Through a thematic analysis of Filhaal (dir. Gulzar, 2002), Good Newwz (dir. Mehta, 2019), and Mimi (dir. Utekar, 2021), this article explores how the biological experience of motherhood is being reinterpreted by mothers, and how they navigate the stigma associated with infertility and non-biological mothering. Most importantly, this article probes how traditional family structure and gender roles are being restructured following the advent of ART-enabled motherhood.
Journal Article
The 'ART' of
This article examines how the technological intervention of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART)(3) has had a profound impact on the sociocultural practices surrounding motherhood in India. The experience of motherhood has now been divided among different individuals: the genetic mother, the gestational mother, and the social mother. This expansion of motherhood roles has led to the re-emergence of co-mothering practices, where a child is nurtured by someone other than the birth mother. As nuclear heteronormative families became the norm in India, traditional co-mothering by grandmothers and aunts went out of practice. With rising infertility and the rearrangement of familial structures through single and queer parenting, ART treatments have become socially endorsed alternatives. This article examines the representation of ART-enabled mothering in Bollywood to understand its reception and practice in the Indian sociocultural context. Through a thematic analysis of Filhaal (dir. Gulzar, 2002), Good Newwz (dir. Mehta, 2019), and Mimi (dir. Utekar, 2021), this article explores how the biological experience of motherhood is being reinterpreted by mothers, and how they navigate the stigma associated with infertility and non-biological mothering. Most importantly, this article probes how traditional family structure and gender roles are being restructured following the advent of ART-enabled motherhood.
Journal Article
The 'ART' of
This article examines how the technological intervention of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART)(3) has had a profound impact on the sociocultural practices surrounding motherhood in India. The experience of motherhood has now been divided among different individuals: the genetic mother, the gestational mother, and the social mother. This expansion of motherhood roles has led to the re-emergence of co-mothering practices, where a child is nurtured by someone other than the birth mother. As nuclear heteronormative families became the norm in India, traditional co-mothering by grandmothers and aunts went out of practice. With rising infertility and the rearrangement of familial structures through single and queer parenting, ART treatments have become socially endorsed alternatives. This article examines the representation of ART-enabled mothering in Bollywood to understand its reception and practice in the Indian sociocultural context. Through a thematic analysis of Filhaal (dir. Gulzar, 2002), Good Newwz (dir. Mehta, 2019), and Mimi (dir. Utekar, 2021), this article explores how the biological experience of motherhood is being reinterpreted by mothers, and how they navigate the stigma associated with infertility and non-biological mothering. Most importantly, this article probes how traditional family structure and gender roles are being restructured following the advent of ART-enabled motherhood.
Journal Article
Representations of Christianity in Chinese Independent Cinema: Gan Xiao’er’s Postsocialist Religious Critique
Representations of Christianity in contemporary Chinese cinema are very limited, making the scholarship of this subject underexplored. Filmmaker Gan Xiao’er has made three feature-length independent films focusing on Christianity in China. These films, The Only Sons (2003), Raised from Dust (2007), and Waiting for God (2012), are used for case studies, with close analyses of their narratives and formal elements. They are also examined in the social and cultural contexts of postsocialist China. This article argues that Gan’s religious features are significant in the context of postsocialist Chinese cinema. They not only depict the religious experience of Chinese Christians, which has been under-represented cinematically, but also provide a religious critique rarely seen in Chinese films. On the one hand, these films critically engage with the experience of underprivileged people during the Reform period, when economic development and materialism became dominant, while the socialist political system remained. Gan’s religious features provide an alternative perspective that cares for people’s spiritual needs. On the other hand, Gan’s later films interrogate the local religious institution in China, questioning the arbitrary separation of the ‘holy’ and the ‘unholy’, proposing a more inclusive approach to the religious concept of love.
Journal Article
The 'ART' of Production: Understanding Motherhood Beyond Biological Destiny
This article examines how the technological intervention of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART)(3) has had a profound impact on the sociocultural practices surrounding motherhood in India. The experience of motherhood has now been divided among different individuals: the genetic mother, the gestational mother, and the social mother. This expansion of motherhood roles has led to the re-emergence of co-mothering practices, where a child is nurtured by someone other than the birth mother. As nuclear heteronormative families became the norm in India, traditional co-mothering by grandmothers and aunts went out of practice. With rising infertility and the rearrangement of familial structures through single and queer parenting, ART treatments have become socially endorsed alternatives. This article examines the representation of ART-enabled mothering in Bollywood to understand its reception and practice in the Indian sociocultural context. Through a thematic analysis of Filhaal (dir. Gulzar, 2002), Good Newwz (dir. Mehta, 2019), and Mimi (dir. Utekar, 2021), this article explores how the biological experience of motherhood is being reinterpreted by mothers, and how they navigate the stigma associated with infertility and non-biological mothering. Most importantly, this article probes how traditional family structure and gender roles are being restructured following the advent of ART-enabled motherhood.
Journal Article
The Ethical Quandaries of Commercialized Surrogacy in India and Its Representation in Bollywood Films
Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) has been seen as a blessing for couples and individuals who desire to have children and who do not want to adopt. A common technique of ART is surrogacy-the process by which a woman agrees to carry and give birth to another individual's or couple's child, often as an act of philanthropy. Because of the costly medical expenses for this process in high-income countries, many clients have sought surrogates in lower-income countries, such as Nepal, Thailand, and India, to lessen the cost. This has contributed to what is known as \"surrogacy consumerism,\" in which women are paid to be surrogate mothers. In these Global South nations, many women living in poverty have turned to commercial surrogacy in order to survive. India became the most sought-after destination for commercial surrogacy because of its well-established medical infrastructure and the legalization of commercial surrogacy in 2002. However, concerns regarding the potential exploitation of women and children prompted the Indian government to ban commercial surrogacy with the Surrogacy Regulation Act of 2021, which came into force in January 2022. This study explores the multifaceted landscape of surrogacy and its representation in popular culture in India, unravelling the motivations behind its popularity and the challenges associated with its practice. The discussion explores the economic, legal, and cultural factors that contributed to India's emergence as a hub for surrogacy services between 2002 and 2022. The lower cost of medical procedures, coupled with lax laws, made India an appealing option for international couples facing financial constraints in their pursuit of parenthood. This paper argues that the once altruistic act of surrogacy became a tool for the global elite to exploit and commoditize the womb, motherhood, and Indian women. Apart from discussing the Indian social and legal scenario, this paper analyzes three famous Bollywood movies, Chori Chori Chupke Chupke, Filhaal, and Mimi, in order to discuss their depictions of surrogacy and how films represent the changing societal, cultural, and legal landscape in India.
Journal Article
Enforcing and Resisting Hindutva: Popular Culture, the COVID-19 Crisis and Fantasy Narratives of Motherhood and Pseudoscience in India
This article analyzes how Hindu nationalists employ fantasy narratives to counteract resistance, with a particular focus on narratives of ‘motherhood’ and ‘pseudoscience’. It does so by first introducing a conceptual discussion of the relationship between fantasy narratives, ontological insecurity, gender, and anti-science as a more general interrelationship characterizing pre- and post-COVID-19 far-right societies and leaders, such as India. It then moves on to discuss such fantasy narratives in the case of India by highlighting how this has played out in two cases of Hindu nationalist imaginings: that of popular culture, with a specific focus on the town Varanasi and the film Water (produced in 2000), and that of the COVID-19 pandemic and the emerging crisis and resistance that it has entailed. Extracts of interviews are included to illustrate this resistance.
Journal Article