Freedom and destiny :gender, family, and popular culture in India

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. 'Beautyfull wife, denger life' : engaging with popular culture. I. A moving message. 'Beautyfull wife, denger life' ; II. Reading popular culture. The concept of popular culture. The semiotics of popular culture. Imagining the nation ; III. Gender and genre. Visual culture and the controlling 'gaze'. Reading the romance. Gender and resistance ; IV. Rethinking the family. The kinship map of India. The Indian joint family. Arranged marriage. Dowry and brideprice. The limits of family change. The moral economy of the Indian Family ; V. Dharma and desire, freedom, and destiny -- 2. Feminine identity and national ethos in calendar art. I. Woman/goddess/nation : a contemporary controversy ; II. Defining calendar art ; III. Ravi Varma and the invention of calendar art ; IV. Deciphering the archive : gender and calendar art. Objects of desire/commodities on sale. Icons of nation. Plurality and difference ; V. Trajectories of change? -- 3. 'Baby' icons : forms and figures of a new generation. I. Introduction ; II. Envisioning childhood ; III. South Asian childhoods. Child socialization as pathology. Childhood between tradition and modernity. Cosmologies of childhood ; IV. Representing the child. God-baby. Welcome-baby. Citizen-baby. Hero-baby. Customized-baby -- 4. Desire and destiny : rescripting the man-woman relationship in popular cinema. I. Prologue: On a personal note ; II. The body language of popular cinema ; III. The problematics of romance. Dharma and desire. Freedom and destiny ; IV. A paradigm of desire. Jabba and Bhoothnath. Chhote Sarkar and the courtesan. Chhoti Bahu and Chhote Sarkar. Bhoothnath and Chhoti Bahu ; V. Happy and unhappy endings -- 5. Imagining the family : an ethnography of viewing Hum Aapke Hain Koun ...! I. What makes a 'clean' movie? The lack of 'vulgarity'. The display of affluence. The spirit of 'sacrifice'. The family as 'tradition' ; II. The constitution of the ideal Indian family. The ideal of the joint family. Affinity as a value. The truth-telling voice ; III. The pleasures of viewing : voyeurism, narcissism, and a happy ending ; IV. The emblematic family -- 6. The diaspora comes home : discipling desire in DDLJ. I. Prologue ; II. Indianness : at home and abroad ; III. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge ; IV. Romance, Indian style ; V. The tyranny of 'tradition' ; VI. Pardes : reinstituting the contradiction of India and the West ; VII. 'American dreams, Indian soul' ; VIII. Indian dream, transnational location -- 7. Learning to 'adjust' : the dynamics of post-marital romance. I. Domesticating romance fiction ; II. Woman's era ; III. Twenty tales of true romance. Tales of courtship. Tales of conjugal love. Sources of marital tension. Mediation. Resolution ; IV. True-life tales of marital breakdown ; V. Prescription for a happy marriage ; VI. Conclusion -- 8. Scripting romance? : tribulations of courtship in popular fiction. I. Introduction: Constructing the problematic ; II. Narrative trajectories. Making 'love' respectable. Putting 'love' into arranged marriage : III. Conclusion.