Simply put, film posters are frozen images of narrative cinema whose primary object is to arouse the curiosity of potential spectators, to persuade them to enter the movie theatre. These posters are essentially created just before the film is ready for distribution. As a publicity icon, the poster is meant to convey the theme, the genre, the locations, the emotional contour and the primary star cast of the film. Don was released in 1978 at the peak of Bachchan’s career. In the poster of the film presented here as fig. 01, the actor is reproduced thrice in the frame. We see him in action right in the centre. We see Helen on the left as she pours a drink for the actor. Finally, the typical Bachchan face is profiled on the right. The bottom center shows Zeenat Aman, pointing a gun at the spectator. This poster of Don is a clear example of how cinematic elements get distilled into a set of frozen visual codes through which we imagine the film. The three avatars of Bachchan in the poster convey action, dramatic interiority and seductive charm. Helen’s presence in the poster conveys the possibility of a cabaret, while the presence of female oriented action is conveyed through Zeenat Aman, sporting a short haircut, a determined expression on her face as she points the gun at the viewer.

In the days of Amitabh Bahchan’s stardom, film posters were the most important vehicle for film publicity along with official theatrical trailers and printed advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Television made its entry as a domestic item only in the early seventies and was controlled entirely by the government until the 1990s. Most of TV programming was still predominantly pedagogical in nature and film content was only allowed as part of the Sunday feature, or as short programmes on film music. No advertising was allowed on television and therefore the medium was not available for filmmakers to publicize their films. It was the printed poster, plastered on walls, buses and trains that operated as the primary pre-release publicity vehicle. As a major component of visual culture, the film poster added tremendous signage to street life and created a parallel discourse for the marketing of films. This period also saw a combination of the hand painted poster and the “cut and paste” form. For the hand painted poster, the artist painted the poster design on canvas on the basis of stills provided by the producer. The “cut and paste” method on the other hand was a combination of photographic cut outs and painted embellishments. In both versions, a master copy was prepared by hand, shot on camera and then the photographed image was used for mass printing.³ The cultural iconography of the poster as we will see always relies on both cinematic and extra cinematic discourses to evoke a form where industrial practice, spatial and cultural value, historical circumstances, questions of stardom and melodrama come together. While these elements are central to the films themselves, the posters not only offer a parallel discourse, but also directly highlight changes in the film industry, making certain tensions more visible. These tensions include conflicts between stars, between the creative vision of directors and the publicity drive of producers. One could then treat these posters as documents of contradictions, absences, and subterranean narratives of the film industry, where the visible, the invisible, and the conflictual, jostled for space.

The Arrival of Amitabh Bachchan

Amitabh Bachchan’s “superstar” status has been documented considerably, both by journalists and by academics.⁴ Imagined as the “angry man” in the 1970s by the writer duo Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, Bachchan found himself catapulted into a strikingly new cinematic imagination of political and social turbulence. Writing about the actor in 1996, journalist Avijit Ghosh sums up the moment well: “The hollowness of official slogans like Garibi Hatao ["Eradicate Poverty"] reflected itself everyday in rising prices, growing unemployment and rampant corruption. Cynicism bred easy, accentuated further by the State’s insensate treatment… of the JP student movement. But there was also a sense of helplessness that spawned a bitter and impotent rage. It simmered until Amitabh Bachchan showed how the underdog and the underprivileged could strike back. When his clinched fist and baritone boom burst with primeval intensity, in darkened cinema halls smelling of sweat and urine, a nation’s eager fantasy came to fruition.”⁵ Bachchan’s image as the “angry man” circulated widely and gained the currency of a modern myth. Never before had an actor had this kind of presence, embodying the social and political turbulence of his time. This iconic presence of a single actor also signified major transformations that were taking place in the film industry from the 1970s onwards, an issue that is not always highlighted in existing accounts of Amitabh Bachchan.

The most prevalent industry discourse positioned the star as a “complete actor.” ⁶ This term essentially referred to Bachchan’s ability to handle comedy, action, dance, drama and romance. The process that went into the making of the “one man performer” who could do it all himself slowly ushered in a marginalization of comedians and several other peripheral characters who had traditionally provided interruptive relief, on the margins of the main story. Amitabh Bachchan as we all know was a versatile actor who could move easily between brooding anger, comedy, romance and most of all action. Bachchan’s stardom coincided with a particular kind of professionalization of action in the industry with stunt directors creating their own space. Bachchan himself became well known for doing his own stunts, something that was taken note of and appreciated by many action directors. M.B Shetty who had simultaneously emerged as the industry’s most highly rated stunt director said in an interview, “Show me one actor anywhere in the world who can do the kind of stunts Amitabh does without a double and I’ll give you my right arm.”⁷ Bachchan’s achievement with stunts was widely reported in the popular press and contributed profoundly to the consolidation of his masculinity.⁸ Bachchan’s limited but well known dancing steps became a familiar presence in several of his films, emerging as the quintessential Bachchan style. Most of all the female lead became marginal as Bachchan reached the position of the highest paid actor in the film industry. The idea of the “complete actor” therefore indicated an overwhelming consolidation of industrial practices around one figure. It is not surprising that the label of “one man industry” was used to identify Bachchan’s presence and power.⁹ Films sold because of his name and presence in the film. The actor was known to move at times between the shooting of three different films, all during the course of a single day. This mythology of stardom can be accessed in the Bachchan posters and reveal carefully worked out iconographic techniques. This was also a marketing strategy in which the industrial landscape, the turbulent political milieu of the period, Bachchan’s new style of acting, and stardom, came together.

Amitabh Bachchan’s tryst with action was a major highlight of the 1970s, represented with some creativity in posters of films like Zanjeer ("Chain;" Prakash Mehra: 1973), and Don (Chandra Barot: 1978). These posters generate a sense of the kinetic through body movement, agility with guns and a mise-en-scene of violence, establishing Bachchan as an action hero. Zanjeer is the film that catapulted Bachchan to fame, even as he was the fourth choice for the lead role.¹⁰ Written by Salim Javed, Zanjeer is a straightforward revenge film based on the childhood trauma of a young Vijay (Bachchan) who witnesses his parents’ murder. Two posters of Zanjeer (figs. 02 and 03) display all the major characters of the film, but the themes of anger and action have a centrality that becomes a recurrent motif in other Bachchan posters. This was thus, the first film to display the iconography of anger that marked Bachchan’s stardom in the years to come.

A low budget film that ended up becoming a huge success at the box office, Zanjeer was subsequently re-released. As evidenced by the caption on the posters, “Prakash Mehra’s smash hit now in cinemascope,” these are obviously re-release posters of the film designed after a new cinemascope version was created to add to its value. The change in projection technique is highlighted in the poster as an additional attraction. The caption also makes it clear that the producers were capitalizing on the success of the star after a series of hits and re-released the film with a new print blown up to cinemascope. In the days before the arrival of the VCR, the re-release of films was a major source of revenue for the film industry and was always accompanied by a new set of posters. Additional information is therefore added to the Zanjeer poster for the film’s re-release.

¹ See Sara Dickey, “Still One Man in a Thousand,” and Rosie Thomas, “Zimbo and Son Meet the Girl with the Gun," in David Blamey and Robert Desouza ed., Living Pictures: Perspectives on the Film Poster in India. London: Open Editions, 2005, 27-44 and 69-78. Also see R. Srivatsan, “Looking at Film Hoardings: Labour, Gender, Subjectivity and Everyday Life in India,” in Public Culture, Vol.4, Number 1, Fall 1991, 1-23.
² For a detailed account of the production, design and technological transformation of posters in India, see Ranjani Mazumdar, “The Bombay Film Poster,” in Seminar, Vol. 525, May 2003, 33-41. Also see Rachel Dwyer and Divya Patel, Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Films New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2002, 101-183.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Madhava Prasad, The Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Reconstruction, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, 117-159; Vijay Mishra, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, Routledge, 2002; Ranjani Mazumdar, Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, 1-40; Sushmita Dasgupta, Amitabh: The Making of a Superstar, Penguin Global, 2007; and Valentina Vitali, Hindi Action Cinema: Industries, Narratives, Bodies, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, 184-229.
⁵ Avijit Ghosh, “India’s Journey with Amitabh Bachchan” The Pioneer, November 24, 1996. The term “JP movement” refers to the powerful movement of students and youth against government corruption led by the Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan, particularly in the states of Bihar and Gujarat. During this movement, Narayan gave a call for peaceful “Total Revolution”. The JP movement was a significant opposition to the Central Government in power and Indira Gandhi, the then prime minister, responded by arresting Narayan and thousands of activists, finally imposing a state of National Emergency. For more on the JP movement, see Francine Frankel’s India’s Political Economy 1947-77: The Gradual Revolution New Jersey, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978 and Bipin Chandra’s In The Name of Democracy: JP Movement and the Emergency Penguin Books, India, 2003.
⁶ In interviews with script writers Salim Khan, Javed Akhtar and Javed Siddiqui and directors Ketan Desai and Mahesh Bhatt, the term “complete actor” constantly came up during discussions to refer to Amitabh Bachchan. It was also widely used in Screen and the Trade Magazines, Film Information and Trade Guide. Komal Nahata, the editor of Film Information was the first to explain the concept to me. It is rumored that the French filmmaker François Truffaut first used it for Bachchan. All interviews conducted in Bombay, July, 1995.
⁷ Quoted in Udaya Tara Nayar, “Amitabh Bachchan Superstar” Indian Express, June 24, 1984.
⁸ Vijay Mishra, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, New York: Routledge, 2002,130.
⁹ Tarun Tejpal, “The Mirror has Two Faces,” Outlook, July 20, 1998.
¹⁰ Interview with Javed Akhtar, Bombay, April, 2003. Raj Kumar, Dev Anand and Dharmendra were the other actors

The Man Who Was Seen Too Much: Amitabh Bachchan on Film Posters

By Ranjani Mazumdar

The film poster as a publicity icon has been around for most of the 20th century, creating its own parallel universe and history alongside that of celluloid. Along with billboards, posters in India have played a pivotal role in creating a colorful and vibrant buzz around cinema.1 As film memorabilia, the poster operates in public memory literally like a device that triggers off a series of associations linked to cinema, stars, stories, public spaces, events, music and more.2 This essay attempts a journey into the recent past to look at a collection of posters that showcase one of Hindi cinema’s biggest stars, Amitabh Bachchan, during the most significant period of his career. I undertake this journey with knowledge of the films and the position the star had in that period. While we may now recognize the importance of the poster as an ancillary production unit of the film industry, a close look at posters of a particular historical moment which got identified with a star can reveal the complex mechanisms of a visual culture associated with cinema. A relational reading across a set of posters displaying one star’s iconographic journey can help us understand the film industry’s negotiation of the box office and the way star value was assessed. An analysis of these posters will also reveal the tussles of the 1970s and 80s when a superstar such as Bachchan was operating alongside the multi-star form, generating interesting tensions within the film industry.

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Here is the invitation to our special exhibit of paintings and photographs of India for DIWALI - please try to come!

Kathleen Scarboro Studio
9 rue de la Révolution Montreuil  93100
14 - 17  October, 2011     14h - 20h,
contact : 01 49 88 08 38   scarborokat@gmail.com   www.kathleenscarboro.fr
métro Croix de Chavaux

works by Nadine Le Prince, Joël Cadiou, Iqbal Malhotra, and Kathleen Scarboro

Consider figure 02 titled New India, possibly published sometime between Indian independence on August 15, 1947, and the so-called “accession” and “integration” of princely states between August 1947 and 1951⁶ and the states re-organization that began in the mid-1950s.⁷ The lion capital (the newly installed national emblem), and the tricolor national flag at the top of the print suggest that this print was possibly meant to celebrate the arrival on the political landscape of the Republic of India on January 26, 1950.⁸ Although “India” is not named as such, and is instead cartographically depicted as a proliferation of numerous constitutive units, all meticulously delineated and named, the newly created Pakistan is identified, as are other neighbours (Nepal, Burma, and Ceylon), the colour green reserved as in many such maps and prints for the new Muslim country. This print adheres to the terms of state cartography in its general conformity to national boundaries as these began to be inscribed—in a highly contested process that ensued after the so-called Radcliffe award of August 1947—in normative maps. And yet, what sets New India apart from normative maps of the country and makes this an instance of “barefoot cartography,” is the presence of the heads of the leaders of the nation—the “big men” of India—arranged in roundels around its borders. It is almost as if the newly-won national territory cannot be merely shown as empty cartographic space, marked off by geometric lines and blocks of hues, and instead needs the legitimizing presence of these faces, left un-named but well known to any patriotic citizen as the men who had led India to freedom. These familiar faces then appear to introduce the recently configured national territory (the nation’s “geo-body”)⁹ to the citizen-subject, lending their recognizable—and possibly comforting—presence to the new spatial reality that had come to fundamentally alter the lives of everyone on the subcontinent after August 14-15, 1947.

There are other examples in the Priya Paul Collection of similar prints from the dawn of Independence that resemble a prolific genre of popular imagery that is called the school or educational chart.¹⁰ In figure 03, also titled New India, the emphasis is certainly on distinguishing Pakistan (in deep green) from the “new” India, but the artist—whose name might well be R. S. Mukherjee, as printed on the bottom right—also appears to be keen on showing the continuing presence of the so-called “princely” states which are set off in bright yellow within Indian national territory—not yet divided up into the fourteen new administrative units—colored red. Gandhi beams down on the newly created nation-state, his haloed presence possibly dating this print to after his death in January 1948, although by the time of his death the vast majority of these princely states had merged into India or Pakistan (some rather contentiously), dissolving their autonomous identities over the course of 1948-49.¹¹ Such prints also appeared in the many languages of India (as instanced in the Hindi example in figure 04 and a Bengali reproduction titled Bijayer Pathe in figure 05, with “Netaji” Subash Chandra Bose joining Gandhi). In New India No. 2 (Figure 06), such big men are displaced by the Everyman, tilling the soil of the nation to yield a rich harvest, while Gandhi smiles down on vignettes of the patriotic-bucolic (although one suspects that he might not have entirely approved of the presence of the industrial-scale technology in the fields of Nehruvian India).

⁶ The classic “eye-witness” treatment of this process can be found in Menon, V.P. 1956. The Story of the Integration of the Indian States. New York: Macmillan. See also Coplan, Ian, 1997. The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 1917-1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 229-287; Ramusack, Barbara, 2003. The Indian Princes and their States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 245-274; and Guha, Ramachandra, 2008. India after Gandhi (New York: HarperCollins), pp. 51-96. None of these studies however discuss the role that cartographic knowledge and maps obviously played in this complicated and contentious “endgame of empire,” and the so-called “bloodless revolution.” Covering about 1/3 of British India in area, over 550 in number with varying legal arrangements and degrees of sovereignty and privileges, the autonomous princely states more or less lost hope by June 1947 to strike out on their own, and had to choose between joining either India or Pakistan. By August 15, 1947, most had joined India, and those that had not (such as several states on the new Indo-Pak border, Junagadh, Hyderabad, and Kashmir) did so over the course of the next few months, but they only progressively merged with the “provinces” of India over the course of the next couple years, or formed autonomous “states unions.” A document issued by the Government of India in 1951 proudly noted, “On the eve of independence the map of India was studded with as many as 562 States…These yellow patches on the map of India have now disappeared. Sovereignty and power have been transferred to the people. The edifice of new India has arisen on the foundation of the true patriotism of the Princes and the people” (Government of India. 1951. Democracy on March. New Delhi: Publications Division, no page number mentioned).

⁷ Although the demand for internal reorganization of provinces conforming to linguistic (and ethnic) identity goes back to the 1920s, it is only in 1953 with the carving out of Andhra Pradesh out of Madras and the passage of the States Reorganization Act in 1956 that this became a geo-political and cartographic reality. The creation of Maharashtra and Gujarat in 1960, and the re-ordering of Punjab in 1966 further altered the map of post-colonial India. Despite the transformative importance of the mid-20th century “states reorganization,” there is no single rigorous scholarly study of this process, and no analysis of the manner in which cartographic knowledge played a role in the process (Although Guha titles his chapter “Redrawing the Map,” there is no allusion to how maps were actually used in the process of this re-drawing. See India after Gandhi, pp. 189-208).

⁸ One of the less-studied symbols of the new Republic, the lion capital has been discussed in Nair, P. Thankappan. 1987. Indian National Songs and Symbols. Calcutta: Firma KLM Pvt. Ltd, pp. 74-97. Despite strict injunctions against non-official use of the national emblem, especially for commercial purposes, the lion capital appears in many popular prints from the 1950s (for some dramatic examples, see Neumayer, Erwin, and Christine Schelberger. 2008. Bharat Mata: Printed Icons from the Struggle for Independence in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, Plate 58; Ramaswamy, The Goddess and the Nation, figures 33, 37; and Singh, Amrit Kaur, and Rabindra Kaur Singh. 2003. Images of Freedom. New Delhi: Indialog Publications, Plate 22). On the semiotics and politics of the national flag, see especially Virmani, Arundhati. 2008. A National Flag for India. Rituals, Nationalism and the Politics of Sentiment. New Delhi: Permanent Black, and Roy, Srirupa. 2006. A Symbol of Freedom: The Indian Flag and the Transformations of Nationalism, 1906-2002. Journal of Asian Studies 65 (3):495-527.

⁹ Thongchai Winichakul introduces this term to refer to the novel representation of territory as an objectified bounded whole created by the sciences of geography and cartography. “Geographically speaking, the geo-body of a nation occupies a certain portion of the earth’s surface which can be objectively identified. It seems to be concrete to the eyes and having a long history as if it were natural…The geo-body of a nation is merely the effect of modern geographical knowledge and its technology of representation, a map” (Thongchai Winichakul. 1996. Maps and the Formation of the Geo-Body of Siam. In Asian Forms of the Nation, edited by H. Antlov and S. Tonnesson. London: Curzon Press, p. 70).

¹⁰ Sirish Rao, V. Geetha, and Gita Wolf. 2001. An Ideal Boy: Charts from India. Stockport, U.K./Chennai: Dewi Lewis Publishing/Tara Publishing. In this important work that draws our attention to this visual form and pedagogical tool that has been hitherto ignored by scholars, the map of India is featured in some charts (pp. 63, 111). Despite its presence as a “school article” in one such chart (p. 47) and on the wall in the school room (pp. 9, 17, 23, 25, 84), the authors do not analyze wall maps which begin to appear in Indian classrooms from the early years of the nineteenth century but especially after the 1850s, as the paradigmatic form of this kind of pedagogical tool used especially for science education.

¹¹ Hyderabad was the most intransigent of the hold-outs and was compelled through military action to join India in September 1948. By November 1949, “only 6 of the 552 states that had acceded to India—namely, Hyderabad, Mysore, Bhopal, Tripura, Manipur and Cooch-behar—remained as separate entities within their old boundaries” (Copland, Princes of India, p. 263). This list does not include Jammu and Kashmir, which although by this time a part of India, was a partitioned state; Sikkim and Bhutan also remained nominally independent.

Artful Mapping in Bazaar India

Teaching the Nation’s Map Form:

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Romantic comparisons are a staple of the tourist industry. That is, after all, how Udaipur became the “Venice of India,” and then “the Kashmir of Rajasthan.” But the title of “the Norman Rockwell of South India” as a description of the South Indian popular artist, K. Madhavan, (as revealed by his wife, Pankajakshi Ammal), suggests a considerable stretch beyond the insular world of mid-20th century Madras.

How this epithet was devised or circulated is unclear to me; however, it now makes sense that the two artists’ careers should be compared, and particularly Rockwell's forty years doing the covers of Saturday Evening Post and then Look, and Madhavan's ubiquitous colour covers for Tamil periodicals like Ananda Vikatan, Kalaimagal, and Mutharam (Fig. 01).¹ The two artists were almost contemporary, working from the early part of the 20th century to their deaths in the late 1970's, but more important was their celebrated capture and codification through reproduction of poignant moments in the life of their respective cultures. Both have been subject to the reproach of the art establishment for what was perceived to be their saccharin sentimentality.

Although Rockwell visited India in 1962, and did a famous Post cover of Nehru the same year, he probably never imagined he had a counterpart in this country. If the influences of popular culture had been more evenly distributed globally in the 20th century, Norman Rockwell might have been known as “the K. Madhavan of Middle America”. Bollywood came too late.

The graphic mythmaking of both Rockwell and Madhavan became so influential that their most beloved designs seeped into a diverse range of vehicles, well beyond the magazine covers where they often originated. This essay begins to reclaim the biography of an exceptional artist, to look at the stunning diversity of his production and to consider his contribution to the aesthetics of 20th century India. This attempt is constrained by the fact that there is no archive of his work of which I am aware and I so far have access to only a few more than one hundred of the thousands of images he created. Most of these have been excavated from the informal inspirational archives (dusty piles of old prints) of other artists who worked for the popular market.

K. Madhavan, shown in Figure 02 near the end of his life, was born in 1906 in Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram), the second son of Kesavan Asari and Kaliammal. His family name was Vayalil Veedu. His great-grandfather, Ananthapadmanabhan Asari, was an accomplished ivory craftsman. His father worked in wood and ivory.  Madhavan's elder brother, Narayanan Asari, was also a skilled ivory craftsman famed for his St. George figures. His mother’s family, the Thazhasherri Veedu,  were one of the families of the renowned Palkulangara guild of ivory craftsmen. A maternal uncle, Padmanabhan Asari,  was head of ivory carving at the Trivandrum School of Arts and Crafts, where Madhavan studied. The artistic traditions of his family and community were patronized by the royal family of Travancore. According to Sharat Sunder Rajeev, a descendant of this community, the intensive artistic training from both his paternal and maternal relatives bequeathed to Madhavan the knowledge of the nuances of representing Gods and Goddesses and a keen eye for detail.

In 1929, he shifted to Madras where, like many artists of this period (and particularly Malayali artists), he found work with drama companies as an actor, singer and backdrop painter. He was introduced to drama backdrop (purdah) painting by Kannaiah of the Kannaiah Company, a leading theatrical outfit at that time. He is also reputed to have studied painting with Devarajulu, a friend of Hussain Bux, who was a well known artist in both Tamilnadu and Kerala. He is said to have worked for other drama companies as well, including K.S.K Nadar, and T.K. Bros. In this way, he shared an early orientation to all his painted work with other significant painters of South India, including the Kovilpatti group (Inglis, 1999). Here, as in Bengal and elsewhere in India, the connections between printed images and popular theatre are “not only metaphorical and referential but also historically demonstrable” (Pinney, 2004, 34-35).

His "break" seems to have come in the film industry, where he pioneered the production of huge painted banners that announced the opening of popular films. Preminda Jacob credits him as a “master artist of the first generation of banner painters” (Jacob, 2009, 26). By the 1940's he was painting sets and banners for several studios, including Gemini (K. Jain, 2007, 152). He was responsible for painting the banners for S.S. Vasan's Chandralekha (1948) which were deemed a landmark in the film publicity industry. As a teaser, an empty banner was first put up, which was then followed in stages by details of the production house and the film (Ramanathan, 2010). S.S. Vasan, the Gemini Studios founder, called Madhavan "the Father of Movie Banners."²

Even more persuasive are the sentiments of the late banner painter Laksmipathy of the Mohan Arts banner company in this excerpt from a 1990 interview with Preminda Jacob. Of the great “genius” artist, Laksmipathy said, “All of us learned by watching him. He provided the inspiration through which many developed. He was the person who introduced us to the technique of using several colours to create effects. Seeing him we were all astonished. We thought, aa-da-da we could have done it this way!” (quoted in Jacob, 2009, 44-45). The pivotal role of Madhavan in this field was confirmed by Jacob’s interviews at ten other banner companies.

Multiformity and Repute in the Work of a 20th century Artist

Stephen Inglis

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