Bollywood to Hollywood

Page 21 March–April 2008 Gunkel continued from previous page and posttelevisual. More importantly, however, Friedberg’s analysis demonstrates how these various “posts” do not constitute a new and recent event but are themselves already contained by and operative in the windows and screens of history. The text’s five chapters are preceded by an introduction, succeeded by a brief conclusion, and punctuated by four theoretical interludes. These “dioptic devices,” as Friedberg calls them, provide a set of philosophical lenses that help to focus an understanding of the theoretical perspectives that come to be mobilized in the chapters that surround them. The first, “Descartes’s Window,” considers the tradition of Cartesian optics and the on-going debate it institutes between concepts of disembodied and embodied vision. The second, “Heidegger’s Frame,” investigates the figure of the frame and the concept of enframing as metaphors for representational thought. The third, “Bergson’s Virtual,” employ’s this thinkers understanding of “virtuality” and “multiplicity” as a means by which to complicate contemporary employments of these two terms. And the fourth, “Virilio’s Screen,” looks at the dematerialization of architecture as it dissolves into bits of digital information. Finally, as if attempting to reframe the entire project in retrospect, Friedberg appends a selfreflective epilogue, which she titles “Postlogue 2005.” This curious addition gives brief consideration to the volatile materiality of books in the age of digital media, the sociopolitical problems of the digital divide, and the task of writing theory in a post9 /11 world. I call this postlogue “curious,” because it does not so much reframe the book in the mirror of self-reflection, as it endeavors to provide a kind of belated and, I would suggest, unnecessary justification for the entire project. It is an understandable and genuine gesture, but it adds little or nothing to the fine analysis that had preceded it. David J. Gunkel is associate professor of communication at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of Hacking Cyberspace (Westview, 2001) and Thinking Otherwise: Philosophy, Communication, Technology (Purdue University Press, 2007). His website is http://www.gunkelweb.com/gunkel. Bollywood to Hollywood Jigna Desai Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair John Kenneth Muir Applause Books http://www.applausepub.com 352 pages; paper, $17.95 Occasionally, films like Gregory Nava’s El Norte (1984), Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001), Hanif Kureishi’s My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991), or Atom Egoyan’s Ararat (2002) by minority and/or migrant filmmakers introduce Western audiences to critical perspectives. Proliferating scholarship on these and other provocative films locate them within minority , diasporic, third, accented, and/or transnational cinemas and suggest that they provide alternative frameworks and theorizations of race, migration, globalization, and modernity. John Kenneth Muir’s Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair attempts to provide a sustained and in-depth look at the works of migrant and feminist filmmaker Mira Nair within this context. Muir is a prolific writer who has published both encyclopedic texts and monographs on “auteur” directors and genres. In particular, he is renowned for his expertise in the genres of science fiction, horror , and nostalgia television. His book Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair appears anomalous within this oeuvre for its focus on the films of South Asian cosmopolitan director Mira Nair. Couching his discussions and analyses within discussions of race, migration, and globalization, Mercy comfortably conveys the vagaries of producing and funding “independent ” films, but seems out of its element when attempting to provide cultural context and analysis of Nair and her films. Chronologically presenting information on the plot, context of production, and some analysis of Nair’s films, Mercy is strongest when it provides insight into the complex and trying circumstances of independent film production and direction through conveying the tensions experienced and choices made by filmmakers. However, Orientalism and ethnocentrism mar the larger argument and framing of the book. While blatantly unfamiliar with Indian cinema , Muir defines Nair as an auteur and, implicitly, India’s greatest living filmmaker. In evoking the category of auteur, he emphasizes both her rich and textural aesthetics and her thematic interests in displacement, being...