This book asserts the existence of the "Eastern" as an analytically significant genre of film. Positioned in counterpoint to the Western, the famed cowboy genre of the American frontier, the “Eastern” encompasses films that depict the eastern and southern frontiers of Euro-American expansion. Examining six films in particular―Gunga Din (1939), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Heat and Dust (1983), A Passage to India (1984), Indochine (1992), and The English Patient (1996)―the author explores the duality of the "Eastern" as both assertive and seductive, depicting conquest and romance at the same time. In juxtaposing these two elements, the book seeks to reveal the double process by which the “Eastern” both diminishes the "East" and Global South and reinforces ignorance about these regions’ histories and complexity, thereby setting the stage for ever-escalating political aggression.
Author(s): Nalini Natarajan
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 204
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Figures
1 Introduction
2 The Western and the Eastern
Hollywood Motion Pictures
The Western
The ‘Eastern’ (See p 3)
Romance
3 Treasure and Thugs: The East as Mystery and Disorder
The Moonstone
4 The Eastern Desert and the Lone Hero
The Desert
Anti-Empire Film in Intervening Decades
The English Patient
5 The Colonial Gaze, Modernism, and the Trauma of the Tropics
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
6 The East and Love in the Time of Decolonization
7 Conclusion
The Global Eastern
Afterword
Bibliography
Index
