Chapter 13 - The Rural in the Glocal Intersection: Representation of Space in Welcome to Sajjanpur and Well Done Abba

Summary

INTRODUCTION

With the advent of globalisation, the constant negotiation between Western globalising ‘modernity’ and local ‘traditions’, resulting in culturally hybridised and contingent social formations, has provided an interesting contour to the socio-cultural and political zeitgeist of rural India. Globalisation as a process ‘generates contradictory spaces, characterised by contestation and internal differentiation’ that brings about a shift in our understanding of topographical paradigms of space. The idea of a ‘global’ space vis-à-vis a confluence of the global and the local space or the ‘glocal’ has been contested in the theoretical understanding of globalising spaces. The change in the landscape and the mindscape in the aftermath of globalisation has brought forth an intersection between ‘globalisation’ and ‘glocalisation’ as George Ritzer has argued. He has located the origin of globalisation in the capitalistic endeavours of multinational companies and the modern nation-states to wield power. The boom of market economies in the post-liberalised world plays a major role in this accomplishment. Such processes resulted in the diffusion of non-distinctive social formations, such as credit cards and McDonald’s restaurants – in Ritzer’s words, ‘nothing’ – which remained identical from culture to culture, leading to cultural homogenisation. On the other hand, glocalisation is the ‘interpenetration of the global and the local’, which emphasises how indigenous agents can appropriate global influences for unique and unpredictable ends. In the course of this chapter, we strive to understand how the influences brought forth by the globalising processes in the space of the rural get appropriated in the realm of the local. We will be discussing representation of space in two of acclaimed Hindi cinema director Shyam Benegal’s later films. Through the analyses of the mise-en-scène in Welcome to Sajjanpur (2008) and Well Done Abba (2009), the focus of the study is to perceive the socio-cultural and political context of rural India on the cusp of globalisation and how the social space is produced through the various spatial networks.

SHYAM BENEGAL AND HINDI CINEMA

Shyam Benegal was born in 1934 in Hyderabad. His father, a still photographer by profession, instilled a passion for films in his son.