2
Indian Cinema and the Construction of Cultural Identity
Wimal Dissanayake (1988) in Cultural Identity and Asian Cinema: An Introduction
examines the importance of film within Asian culture. He posits that even
though the East, embraced the introduction of cinema by the West, as a vehicle
for artistic expression; it also introduced a crisis between the modern and the
traditional. Reconciling the ‘imported’ nature of the medium with the need to
use it as a tool to explore cultural identity and reinforce traditional beliefs has
been one of the driving forces behind Asian cinema (p. 1). According to
Dissanayake, cultural identity is paramount to Asian filmmakers and this
cultural identity is manifest through a traditional versus modernist dichotomy
that needs to be addresses. He argues that the ‘internationalization’ of film at
time when cultural identity is being challenged within many of the Southern
nations makes this argument central to Asian filmmaking. Bikram Singh (1983)
compares the impact of film in Indian culture to the domination that television
has within the West (p. 28). He writes that,“ …it is an entire environment
seeping into peoples lives, intertwined with their fantasies and life styles,
meeting and determining cultural needs…” (p. 28). Thus film cannot, in India,
be viewed outside of the context of the culture and its need to reassert tradition
in the midst of modernity.
Aruna Vasudeva (1988) addresses this collision of modern versus
traditional in his articulations about women in Indian films. He writes in The
Woman: Myth and Reality in the Indian Cinema that Indian film is indeed guided by
Convention