Listening with a Feminist Ear

Soundwork in Bombay Cinema
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-0-472-13248-5
Verlag: University of Michigan Press

Buch, Englisch, 262 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Listening with a Feminist Ear is a study of the cultural politics of sound in Bollywood cinema. Taking as its subject the expansive domain of the aural in cinema, this book identifies singing, listening, and speaking in cinema as key sites in which notions of identity and difference take form. The book traces sonic representations of gender and community across seven decades of Hindi film history and asks which sounds and tongues Bombay and its cinema call their own. The book takes seriously the radical potential of listening and models a critical orientation to the aural that can engender new imaginaries, while still being attuned to questions of difference, power, and privilege. Keeping in play the many different sonic elements that films use, as well as the “inter-aural” fields in which those sounds register, Listening with a Feminist Ear helps chart new and interdisciplinary paths through the history of cinema. Challenging the ocular-centrism of cinema studies and its emphasis on medium specificity, the book offers a feminist interpretive practice that centers sound and listening. It also moves beyond national, monolingual, and Eurocentric frameworks, generating counter-hegemonic understandings of belonging so sorely needed in our times.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Musiktheorie, Musikästhetik, Kompositionslehre
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Listening With a Feminist Ear
Listening as Habit and Hermeneutic
Soundwork
Inter-Aurality
Politics of Nation
Singing, Listening, Speaking
Chapter One: Singing
From Singing to Musicking: Women’s Voices, Bodies, and the Audiovisual Contract
Conjoining Sound and Image
Playback Singing and the “Old” Audiovisual Contract
Singing on Television
The “Ethnic” Voice and the Aural Lag
Millennial Soundwork
Women’s Musicking and the Somatic Clause
Chapter Two: Listening
Re-Sounding the Islamicate: The Cinematic Qawwali and its Listening Publics
Qawwalis’ Classic Features
5
Ishq Ishq! Romance in Classic Qawwalis
World Music and Post-Liberalization
De-Islamicization and Irrelationality In Sufipop
Pious Listening in Dargah Qawwalis
Spectacular Dancing in Item Number-Esque Qawwalis
Chapter Three: Speaking
Speaking of the Xenophone: Language as Sound in Satya
From Cinematic Language to Dialogue-baazi
Language, Politics, and Cinema
Hindi Film Languages
Accenting Bambaiyya
Language, Violence, and Marginality
Dhichkiaoon! And Other Cinematic Sounds
Coda
Listening, Loving, Longing
Textual and Aural Pleasures
Translation and Temporality
Seditious Touching in Soundwork
Bibliography
Index