Papers by Deimantas Valanciunas
Acta orientalia Vilnensia, 2011
Indijos fantazija Didžiosios Britanijos „paveldo filmuose“: „Kelio į Indiją“ analizė | India’s Fantasy in British ‘Heritage Films’: Analysis of A Passage to India
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Dec 1, 2014
This article deals with the reconfiguration of the colonial discourse and imagining the 'Oth... more This article deals with the reconfiguration of the colonial discourse and imagining the 'Other' in British heritage films and the analysis of David Lean's film A Passage to India (1984)-an adaptation of F.M. Forster's novel of the same title and a representative of a specific subgenre of the 'heritage films', known also as the 'Raj revival'. The analysis of Lean's A Passage to India is carried out in relation to the 'Thatcherite' era, conservative politics in Britain, and the ideologically constructed nostalgic gaze to the colonial past. As the analysis of the film has showed, the film is rather ambiguous. On the one hand, the film displays a critical attitude towards the Empire and emphasizes the brutality and inconsistency of the colonial regime in India, while on the other hand it invites the spectators to enjoy India as a nostalgic colonial spectacle and constructs it through the sexualisation and orientalisation of the country. The analysis has also showed that the film recharges its characters with an erotic content. The film A Passage to India eroticises the Indian man, where the character of Aziz is constructed as a man radiating a dangerous sexuality, which may lead to painful psychopathological consequences when encountered by a British woman – a discourse which becomes relevant once again in relation to the anti-immigration politics of the 'Thatcherite' Britain of the '80s.
Re-imagining Hindu Mythology in the Twenty-First Century: Amish Tripathi and Indian Fantasy Fiction in English
Springer eBooks, 2023
Introduction – South Asian Diasporas and (imaginary) homelands: why representations still matter
South Asian Diaspora, Jan 2, 2021
ABSTRACT This special issue of South Asian Diaspora explores how films, literature, photography a... more ABSTRACT This special issue of South Asian Diaspora explores how films, literature, photography and social media construct and re-present narratives of homelands and diasporas, as well as investigating the ways which these same narratives are disseminated, appropriated and/or challenged in relation to recent political developments in South Asia and in the diaspora. By focusing on a spectrum of different media of communications, the articles collected in this special issue pose the work of representation at the centre of diasporic politics as they investigate the ways in which representations inform the ways in which diasporic subjects (writers, filmmakers, social media users, etc.) imagine themselves as well as their homelands.
The Traumatic Legacy of the Sri Lankan Civil War in Selected Writings of Nayomi Munaweera
Routledge eBooks, Nov 16, 2022
Forgetting or making to forget: memory, trauma and identity in Kazuo Ishiguro’s "The Buried Giant
Cambridge Scholars Publishing eBooks, 2018
Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies, Oct 1, 2017
This article analyses the British fi lm Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle. The fi lm h... more This article analyses the British fi lm Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle. The fi lm has created hype all over the world by supposedly showing a "true India," thus generating a number of negative responses, mainly from India. The article employs postcolonial criticism in analysing particular visual and narrative aspects of the fi lm. As the research revealed, despite Slumdog Millionaire's attempts to recreate the authentic voice of India by employing hybrid cinematic aesthetics, the fi lm remains an ambiguous project whose certain visual and narrative strategies contribute to the construction, exploitation and dissemination of exotic discourses and (neo)colonial relics.
South Asian Diaspora, 2020
The article is concerned with the recent literary and cinematographic representation of the Sri L... more The article is concerned with the recent literary and cinematographic representation of the Sri Lankan civil warone of the most gruesome and violent conflicts in the history of contemporary South Asia. It analyses Sri Lankan-American author's V. V. Ganeshananthan's novel Love Marriage and French filmmaker's Jaques Audiard's film Dheepan. The aim of this article is to investigate how two forms of different cultural production (a novel and a film) hailing from different cultural backgrounds and experiences, explore and discuss the traumatic legacies of Sri Lankan civil war in the diasporic space. The article argues that the novel and the film function as trauma narratives which insist on the haunting quality of war-related memories and experiences, emphasising trauma's transnational and transhistorical aspect since it continues possessing its subjects no matter of where they come from or where they are born.
Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, 2008
Vilnius UniversityThe present paper concentrates on particular mytho-religious symbolism and myth... more Vilnius UniversityThe present paper concentrates on particular mytho-religious symbolism and mythological structures used in two popular films by famous contemporary Indian film director Ashutosh Gowariker: Lagaan (2001) and Swades (2004). These films are significant in the history of Indian popular cinema not only for their complex problems related to the sensitive topics of anti-colonialism, nationalism and patriotism, but also for their widely used mytho-religious symbolism. My goal in this essay is to analyse these two films, identifying the mythological symbols and mythological structures used in the films, and to see how they organise the films’ narrative and how they are connected with the issues of anti-colonialism, Hindu nationalism, and the construction of (idealised) Indian identity. In this paper I argue that the usage of mythological and mytho-religious symbolism functions as a useful tool for the director to transfer ideas related to national identity, nationalism, and...
Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, 2011
Vilnius UniversityThis paper investigates Indian horror films as a site of socio-economical tensi... more Vilnius UniversityThis paper investigates Indian horror films as a site of socio-economical tensions in India at the end of the 1980s through the employment of the postcolonial reading of the 1990 Ramsay brothers’ horror film Bandh Darwaza. This paper argues that specific references to the European gothic tradition and employment of imagery and interpretation of a western monstrosity (Dracula) in the film are not merely the exploitation of the exotic discourse, but an unconscious articulation of fears and anxieties summoned by the specific socio-economic conditions of India. The political turmoil and the economic changes at the end of the 1980s created a specific platform for fears and anxieties that were articulated through the deformed monsters of the western gothic tradition.
Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, 2011
Vilnius University Cardboard skulls decorating the book of the dead’s pink cover―the Necronomicon... more Vilnius University Cardboard skulls decorating the book of the dead’s pink cover―the Necronomicon; intoxicated young ladies having a ‘kitty party’ then gang raping their male servant; secret agents 077 and 707 serving the nation; a shape-shifting monster’s head rotates 180 degrees while tracing a doomed bride in red and the list of similar images is far from exhaustive. The above mentioned aesthetical and narrative cinematic devises just happen to come from a variety of Indian films―usually ascribed to the ‘lower’ cinematic cultures and labeled as exploitative, B-grade or even ‘trash’ cinema. Often despised and ridiculed by academicians, critics, and the big budget film industries while at the same time enjoying vast popularity in smaller urban centers and towns, these Indian low budget films co-exist with Bollywood and other major industries―yet work by their own sets of rules and agendas. These films remain a part of the national as well as global film consumption, even if slightl...
Literatūra, 2015
Specifinė Didžiosios Britanijos kino filmų grupė, išpopuliarėjusi praėjusio šimtmečio aštuntojo d... more Specifinė Didžiosios Britanijos kino filmų grupė, išpopuliarėjusi praėjusio šimtmečio aštuntojo dešimtmečio pabaigoje ir devintajame dešimtmetyje ir dažnai vadinama „paveldo filmais“ (angl. heritage films), tradiciškai yra siejama su paveldo kaip industrijos atsiradimu minėtu laikotarpiu ir nurodo į tam tikrą grupę filmų, kurie, kaip pažymi Leachas, „pažvelgė atgal į pastebimai mažiau problemų turinčią praeitį, ypatingą dėmesį skirdami aukštuomenei edvardiškuoju periodu, laikotarpiu po Pirmojo pasaulinio karo“ (Leach 2004, 201). [...]
Bollywood and slum tours: poverty tourism and the Indian cultural industry
Cultural Trends, May 16, 2023
Haunting Memories: Sri Lankan Civil War,Trauma and Diaspora in Literature and Film
South Asian Diaspora, 2020
The article is concerned with the recent literary and cinematographic representation of the Sri L... more The article is concerned with the recent literary and cinematographic representation of the Sri Lankan civil war – one of the most gruesome and violent conflicts in the history of contemporary South Asia. It analyses Sri Lankan – American author’s V. V. Ganeshananthan’s novel Love Marriage and French filmmaker’s Jaques Audiard’s film Dheepan. The aim of this article is to investigate how two forms of different cultural production (a novel and a film) hailing from different cultural backgrounds and experiences, explore and discuss the traumatic legacies of Sri Lankan civil war in the diasporic space. The article argues that the novel and the film function as trauma narratives which insist on the haunting quality of war-related memories and experiences, emphasising trauma’s transnational and transhistorical aspect since it continues possessing its subjects no matter of where they come from or where they are born.
This article analyses the British fi lm Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle. The fi lm h... more This article analyses the British fi lm Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle. The fi lm has created hype all over the world by supposedly showing a "true India," thus generating a number of negative responses, mainly from India. The article employs postcolonial criticism in analysing particular visual and narrative aspects of the fi lm. As the research revealed, despite Slumdog Millionaire's attempts to recreate the authentic voice of India by employing hybrid cinematic aesthetics, the fi lm remains an ambiguous project whose certain visual and narrative strategies contribute to the construction, exploitation and dissemination of exotic discourses and (neo)colonial relics.
ACTA ORIENTALIA VILNENSIA 12.2 (2011): 47–60, 2014
This paper investigates Indian horror films as a site of socio-economical tensions in India at th... more This paper investigates Indian horror films as a site of socio-economical tensions in India at the end of the 1980s through the employment of the postcolonial reading of the 1990 Ramsay brothers' horror film Bandh Darwaza. This paper argues that specific references to the European gothic tradition and employment of imagery and interpretation of a western monstrosity (Dracula) in the film are not merely the exploitation of the exotic discourse, but an unconscious articulation of fears and anxieties summoned by the specific socioeconomic conditions of India. The political turmoil and the economic changes at the end of the 1980s created a specific platform for fears and anxieties that were articulated through the deformed monsters of the western gothic tradition.
ACTA ORIENTALIA VILNENSIA 9.2 (2008): 159–174, 2008
the present paper concentrates on particular mytho-religious symbolism and mythological structure... more the present paper concentrates on particular mytho-religious symbolism and mythological structures used in two popular films by famous contemporary Indian film director Ashutosh Gowariker: Lagaan (2001) and Swades (2004). These films are significant in the history of Indian popular cinema not only for their complex problems related to the sensitive topics of anti-colonialism, nationalism and patriotism, but also for their widely used mytho-religious symbolism. My goal in this essay is to analyse these two films, identifying the mythological symbols and mythological structures used in the films, and to see how they organise the films' narrative and how they are connected with the issues of anti-colonialism, Hindu nationalism, and the construction of (idealised) indian identity. in this paper i argue that the usage of mythological and mytho-religious symbolism functions as a useful tool for the director to transfer ideas related to national identity, nationalism, and anti-colonialism to the viewer effectively, as well as to express a political and social critique of contemporary India and to construct the images of idealised indian identity in response.
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Papers by Deimantas Valanciunas