Cinema as Intertext in Midnight’s Children Essay -- Essays Papers

Cinema as Inter textual matter in Midnights Children Saleem in Midnights Children makes an accurate evaluation of India when he states, Nobody from Bombay should be without a basic film vocabulary (Rushdie 33). Bollywood, the capital of the film industry in India, is the largest manufacturer of motion pictures in the world. A large percentage of the films ar either mythical romances or musicals and often they last longer than three hours in length. While watching Indian pic would be a severe ordeal for Western audiences, Indians embrace the industry and are very proud of their film heritage. Indians would argue that it is the distinct differences in Bollywood filmmaking that sets India apart from the Western world. It is the desire to clear themselves from Western culture that makes the Bollywood film industry so successful and accounts for Indias obsession with film. However, while film is a major part of Indian society, cinema does have its origins in the Western world. Salman Rushdie uses intertextuality to portray how Indian society changes the Western influence of cinema to express Eastern culture and how cinema depicts the narrator Saleem as unreliable. Intertextuality is the process of deriving meaning from the ways in which texts stand in relation to each other. This is the theory that all authors imitate styles, themes, and ideas from previous writers and, therefore, no text is entirely original. Thais Morgan asserts in his article The Space of Intertextuality that there are two different levels of intertextuality influence and inspiration. Morgan says, Text A influences text B when the amateur can demonstrate that B has borrowed structure(s), theme(s), and/or image(s) from A ... ...ollywood films help strengthen motivations of characters and demonstrate the unreliable narration of Saleem. Lastly, the usage of cinematic language sets a quality of both romance and disbelief in the words of Saleem as he struggles with rem embering a traumatic event from the past. In all three examples of cinema as intertext, Rushdie transgresses conventional uses of cinema and crafts new and unique ways for it to appear in the text. This establishes Midnights Children as an original contemporary work, relinquishing it from any claims of introductory influence from previous texts. Works CitedMorgan, Thais. The Space of Intertextuality. Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction. Ed. Patrick ODonnell and Robert Con Davis. Baltimore The John Hopkins University Press, 1989. 239-279. Rushdie, Salman. Midnights Children. London Picador, 1982.