Imperial narratives displaced by Indian subaltern identities in early amateur films

摘要

This article analyses how representations of Indian people in colonial amateur films from the 1920s challenged and displaced imperial narratives. It explores how conventional visual colonial rhetoric allowed typological (mis)representations of Indian people, and how these can often voice a suppressed collective history outside the films' customary early twentieth century imperial narrative on race and indigenous traditions. It discusses how British and Indian amateur filmmakers employed visual tropes of colonial discourse on race and identity when constructing, controlling and (mis)representing Indian identities as ‘criminal’ tribes, ‘savage’ colonial subjects, members of esoteric groups, and as members of the imperial elite. Most British amateur filmmakers modelled their records after colonial picture postcards of India or ethnographic and travelogue films, and supported Britain's ‘civilizing’ imperialism by portraying Indian people within a ‘primitive’ romanticised colonial locus. Some Indian amateur filmmakers often employed the journalistic style of British actualities (newsreels) across their entire collections and especially when recording state visits and durbars. Drawing on theoretical perspectives borrowed from the subaltern studies framework, this paper investigates issues of Indian racial and gender agency in four colonial amateur films, and argues that the visual (mis)representation of several Indian subaltern identities ultimately cancels conventional imperial narratives. The research corpus includes missionary films, ethnographic travelogues and home movies made by Anglican missionaries, British ethnographers and freemasons and Maharajahs in the late 1920s. These examples belong to film collections held by the British Film Institute, the Centre of South Asian Studies (University of Cambridge) and the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum.View full textDownload full textKeywordssubaltern identities, subaltern studies, colonial amateur filmmaking, imperial narratives, British RajRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2011.571036