Pavitra Sundar
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190261122
- eISBN:
- 9780190261153
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190261122.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, History, Western
This chapter focuses on the singer Ila Arun to elucidate how economic ‘liberalisation’ transformed the Indian cultural landscape in the 1990s, dramatically altering representations of women in Bombay ...
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This chapter focuses on the singer Ila Arun to elucidate how economic ‘liberalisation’ transformed the Indian cultural landscape in the 1990s, dramatically altering representations of women in Bombay cinema. The postliberalisation period saw the waning of playback singer Lata Mangeshkar’s decades-long monopoly, and the rise of singers with very different styles and strengths. With her coarse timbre, full-throated folk style, and uninhibited vocal and visual presence, Arun articulated the opposite of the good Indian woman Mangeshkar represented. While the bawdiness and bodily sound of her voice earned her great fame as the ethnic woman, the chapter argues that Bombay cinema’s audiovisual contract was mostly intact during this transitional period. In specifying how this contract worked and how ideas about voice and body integral to it were being transformed, the universalist thrust of Michel Chion’s theoretical construct is tempered while the historiography of women’s voices in Indian cinema is also extended.Less
This chapter focuses on the singer Ila Arun to elucidate how economic ‘liberalisation’ transformed the Indian cultural landscape in the 1990s, dramatically altering representations of women in Bombay cinema. The postliberalisation period saw the waning of playback singer Lata Mangeshkar’s decades-long monopoly, and the rise of singers with very different styles and strengths. With her coarse timbre, full-throated folk style, and uninhibited vocal and visual presence, Arun articulated the opposite of the good Indian woman Mangeshkar represented. While the bawdiness and bodily sound of her voice earned her great fame as the ethnic woman, the chapter argues that Bombay cinema’s audiovisual contract was mostly intact during this transitional period. In specifying how this contract worked and how ideas about voice and body integral to it were being transformed, the universalist thrust of Michel Chion’s theoretical construct is tempered while the historiography of women’s voices in Indian cinema is also extended.
Ming-Yuen S. Ma
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781526142122
- eISBN:
- 9781526155535
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526142139.00007
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
Using Michel Chion’s concept of an ‘audiovisual contract’ as a framework, this chapter explore the broader questions of how sound and image, as well as listening and seeing, interact to produce ...
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Using Michel Chion’s concept of an ‘audiovisual contract’ as a framework, this chapter explore the broader questions of how sound and image, as well as listening and seeing, interact to produce meaning in experimental media art. These questions are considered within the specific context of cinema and media studies, art history and art criticism, sound studies, as well as more specialized discussions, including the ‘sound art’ versus ‘sound in art’ debate. This introductory chapter argues that experimental media art today generates new relationships between sound and image that both challenge the ocularcentric assumptions art and media scholarship, while pointing to the possibility of larger paradigmatic shifts in the human sciences that can destabilize the visual hegemony. This chapter also outlines the structure of the book, highlighting the flow of its main arguments and connections among individual chapters.Less
Using Michel Chion’s concept of an ‘audiovisual contract’ as a framework, this chapter explore the broader questions of how sound and image, as well as listening and seeing, interact to produce meaning in experimental media art. These questions are considered within the specific context of cinema and media studies, art history and art criticism, sound studies, as well as more specialized discussions, including the ‘sound art’ versus ‘sound in art’ debate. This introductory chapter argues that experimental media art today generates new relationships between sound and image that both challenge the ocularcentric assumptions art and media scholarship, while pointing to the possibility of larger paradigmatic shifts in the human sciences that can destabilize the visual hegemony. This chapter also outlines the structure of the book, highlighting the flow of its main arguments and connections among individual chapters.
