Understanding Indian Movies: Culture, Cognition, and Cinematic Imagination

Chapter Four: “So, What’s the Deal with All the Singing?”: The Cognitive Universality of the Hindi Musical

c h a p t e r f o u r “So, What’s the Deal with All the Singing?” The Cognitive Universality of the Hindi Musical Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham . . . The first thing non-Indians say when they see a mainstream Bollywood movie is often something along the following lines: “So, what’s the deal with all the singing? Things are going along normally . Then, out of the blue, somebody starts to croon. The next thing you know, the entire village is engaged in an elaborate dance number. I don’t get it.” Moreover, this response is not confined to newcomers. As Dwyer and Patel note, films of “the Hindi commercial cinema . . . are criticized” for a number of things, prominently including “their song and dance sequences ” (7); indeed, “Song sequences . . . are often used to denigrate” the “Hindi film” (37).1 This reaction is in some ways peculiar. After all, the musical is well established in the United States. Though less prominent in Hollywood, it is a staple of Broadway, and has certainly made its way into mainstream cinema. Nonetheless, the musical format—which dominates Bombay film—serves as a salient marker of difference for many non-Indian viewers. It is, in a way, a symptom of the alienness, not only of Hindi film, but of the culture it represents and expresses.2 Even leaving aside Broadway and Hollywood musicals, this evaluation is, I believe, deeply mistaken. Far from being a disruptive case of cultural difference, song and dance numbers in Indian cinema are—like the stories, 161 The Cognitive Universality of the Hindi Musical themes, and emotions we have considered thus far—cultural specifications of universal patterns. There is nothing truly alien about them. More exactly, in studying the song interlude, two basic issues arise in a cognitive context. The first concerns provenance. Just what principles generate the song and dance numbers in Indian films? The second issue concerns reception.What effects does or should the song interlude have on viewers? Equivalently, how can viewers come to understand and appreciate such interludes—or to criticize them for particular features in individual cases (rather than dismissing them generally)? In fact, the two issues are closely related. The universal principles that give rise to the interlude do so because they manifest universal functions. Those functions define just what it is that the song interlude should do, and thus what aspects of the interlude are most important for our understanding and response (our attentional focus, encoding, and so on) as viewers. Narrative Junctures: On the Sources of the Song and Dance Interlude So, what universal principles lie behind the song interlude? Where does it come from and what effect is it supposed to have? To answer these questions , we need first to understand something about the structure of narrative . As a range of narrative theorists have noted, stories proceed in segments . The segments are joined at points where there is some significant change. Two thousand years ago, the Sanskrit narrative theorists referred to these moments of transition as junctures (see Chapter Twenty-one of Bharatamuni). About fifteen years ago, the cognitive narratologist Keith Oatley referred to them with the same term, rediscovering the idea and the metaphor. Plots provide instances of an objective series of events that force a clear change in a character’s situation and possibilities. Romeo and Juliet pursue romantic union. In the course of this pursuit, real events sharply alter their situation, as when Romeo is exiled. However, a juncture may be subjective as well as objective—as when Hamlet contemplates suicide. For example, the hero may simply lose heart or suffer doubt as he or she seems to make no progress, although there is no particular catastrophic event. In connection with this, the Sanskrit theorists referred to one very important juncture as the “pause.” The pause is a moment where the hero rethinks his or 162 understanding indian movies her goals and actions, reflecting on his or her condition in light of preceding efforts and larger interests. A somewhat peculiar feature of junctures is that, cross-culturally, they are often marked by distinctive non-story features. In other words, they are not solely a matter of plot. They frequently involve some discursive or related changes as well. Sometimes there is an authorial intrusion or evaluative commentary. Sometimes—as in the “pause”—there is an extended reflection by a character. Most important for our purposes, there...