Shiva Baby | Film and Culture | Openness of Thought

Welcome Readers!

It was a YouTube advertisement of an online film screening platform and a film trailer was shown. It seemed as casual as other film trailers hit the screen but what made me curious about it was the title.

Click Here to watch the trailer.

Yes. Shiva Baby. Indeed an eye-sparkling title for Indian audience. Digging deeper got me to the real fact about the real context of the word shiva. The film has no connection with Hindu god Shiva but it has a completely different perspective. Well, this makes me question that are we open to multiple cultures? How much do we know about other religions and their rituals and myths around them? These are not the questions of national interest or whose-who-GK kind but they too have their places.

Cultural Openness

The world has become a global village and in the time of fast progression and development, one needs to be open and sporty about all the cultures and religions around the world.

Meaning and the Context

Shiva is a Hindu god and the supreme strength in all respects among the Trimurti - Brahma Vishnu and Mahesh. But shiva is also a name of ritual of lamentation, mourning in Judaism. Isn't it beautiful that how two cultures share similarities and yet they are celebrated in different contexts? If one looks with wider view point, many stories of gods are much similar.

Here's a paragraph on this ritual. According to Wikipedia entry,

Shiva (Hebrew: שִׁבְעָה‎, literally "seven") is the week-long mourning period in Judaism for first-degree relatives. The ritual is referred to as "sitting shiva" in English. The shiva period lasts for seven days following the burial. Following the initial period of despair and lamentation immediately after the death, shiva embraces a time when individuals discuss their loss and accept the comfort of others.[1]

Its observance is a requirement for the parents, siblings, spouses, and children of the person who has died. It is not a requirement for an individual who was less than thirty days old at the time of death.[2] At the funeral, mourners wear an outer garment that is torn before the procession in a ritual known as keriah. In some traditions, mourners wear a black ribbon that is cut in place of an everyday garment.[3][4] The torn article is worn throughout the entirety of shiva. Typically, the seven days begin immediately after the deceased has been buried. Following burial, mourners[5] assume the halakhic status of avel (Hebrew: אבל, "mourner"). It is necessary for the burial spot to be entirely covered with earth in order for shiva to commence. This state lasts for the entire duration of shiva.

During the period of shiva, mourners remain at home. Friends and family visit those in mourning in order to give their condolences and provide comfort. The process, dating back to biblical times, formalizes the natural way an individual confronts and overcomes grief. Shiva allows for the individual to express their sorrow, discuss the loss of a loved one, and slowly re-enter society.[6]

A detailed, well-documented guide of how this ritual is conducted and followed in Judaist culture.

http://images.shulcloud.com/618/uploads/PDFs/mourning5.pdf

Now we have two contextual meanings of Shiva. Let's be open, and think global.

Happy Perspectives !!!

Cultural Studies - Five Types

Hello Readers!

In the previous blog of cultural studies, unit 1 thinking activity we have seen four goals of cultural studies and how power can operate and control the culture. Here we will explore some more points and look at five types of cultural studies. Click here to visit the reference blog.

Five Types of Cultural Studies

1. British Cultural Materialism

- Cultural studies was known as cultural materialism in Britain. It begins with Marxist ideology and power hegemony in society. In the late nineteenth century, Matthew Arnold redefined the "givens" or say coals of culture. There are two trajectories through which British cultural materialism can better understood and they are presence of the past and the other is future. The past contains the monarchy system and landowners which can be seen as leisure class. That class was ruling over working class such as land workers and labor class. In short, there were feudal hierarchies in society. Working class was dependent upon landowners or higher class. Future represents a kind of looking at Utopian society. F. L. Lucas, Louise Althusser and Marx were those who looked at the cultural future of Britain. Many British thinkers were inspired from Karl Marx. Raymond Williams states that

"there are no masses, there are only ways of seeing [other] people as masses." 

2. New Historicism

Stephen Greenblatt might have coined the term "New Historicism." Michael Warner phrases the motto of new historicism as "The text is historical and the history is textual". Frederick Jameson insisted that "Always Historicize!" A thought of returning to history became prevalent in the 1980s. New historicism studied letters, diaries, films, paintings and medical treaties in order to oppose the text which is recorded in history. Theorists also tried to bring out new meanings and reading of various events and cultures. In the zeitgeist of today's culture, one comes to know that how a small part of history is getting retold in modern adaptations like films and TV shows. Ram Leela, Padmavat, Bajirao Manstani and ohter historical films are examples.

Contribution of Michel Foucault in New Historicism

- How can new historicism answer the question raised against Laputa episode in Gulliver's Travels?

Susan Bruce suggests a new reading of the word Laputa. It is clear that why Swift has used the word for an Island. Laputa's literal meaning is whore, a lady with scandalous affairs. As the work of Bruce suggests, that Swift studied the

3. American Multiculturalism

As it is known that America is a continent which has become a habitat of several civilizations since long. People of different geographic parts came to America with their own religions, food, clothing, rites and rituals, and many other cultural practices. This plurality of various culture makes the word "Multiculturalsim". As far as the concept of oneness or diversity is concerned, America has diversity but doesn't have oneness in culture. After a great and restless struggle, African identities advanced and found their voice in society. Majorly the issue of "race" was the part of this struggle. Majorly the literary multi-culture consists of 1. African-American writers, 2. Latino writers and 3. Asian American writers. 

4. Postmodernism and Popular Culture

Like poststructuralism, postmodernism critiques the aesthetics. But rather than only critiquing, postmodernism denies the traditional thought. Postmodernism questions the thoughts of European philosophy, and it argues that it is the "others" who pays the price for empowering dominant society. Postmodernism had begun in the mid-1980s and it emerged in art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and other fields.

- Exemplify the four types of analysis of popular culture. Apply it on popular artifacts.

* Production Analysis


* Textual Analysis - checks how meaning is generated through texts of popular culture.


* Audience Analysis
Who purchases what? Which book is sold largely in which class of people? How the popularity of any book relies on a particular group? Which group of society consumes which kind of products? These are the questions which can be answered thorough analyzing the audience in popular culture. For example, while watching a film at the cinema theater, on the appearance of actress or on a fighting scene, hooting and shouting is done by people. Through this, one can analyze the shallow artistic sense of the audience. Similarly, the

* Historical Analysis


- Difference between modernism and postmodernism. Give examples if possible
There are two major theorist Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard who explained postmodernism at length. Lyotard


5. Postcolonial Studies

The word postcolonial refers to the time after the decline of colonialism. After the separation of the European empire from the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the third world countries were struggling to rebuild themselves. Many authors and theorists focused on both, colonialism and the changes created in a postcolonial culture. Edward Said's Orientalism was a touchstone to  study colonialism. Many theorists have worked on postcolonial studies. Frantz Fanon was a Caribbean Marxist and he wrote The Wretched of the Earth (1961), an important work to study postcolonial theory.  Gyatri Chakravorty Spivak coined the term subalterns for the colonially marginalized people. The authors of postcolonial literature like Salman Rushdie, Chinua Achebe are read alongside European responses to colonialism by writers such as George Orwell and Albert Camus.

References:
(1) Guerin, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature Fifth Edition. Oxford University Press, 2005.

Thank You !