Here is the lecture content:

"The first reading talks about what it means to be Indian in a
globalizing India. Or for a globalizing India. The second reading talks about
how audience reads film. And not how any audience reads any film, but
how a diaspora audience views film that was made in the 1990s. This is
very relevant for us because we are talking about film in the 1990s. And if
you recall I said in the previous lecture a lot of these films, so films like
Hum Aapke Hain Koun and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, which are two
films that you have seen, Pardes that we have talked about, and a fourth
film that the reading talks about, which is Hum Saath Saath Hain, another
film that the same director who did, who made Hum Aapke Hain Koun also
made. So these films were made with a foreign audience or I should say a
diasporic audience in mind. So the goal that the author, that Banaji is giving
us or for herself is to kind of figure out if our interpretation of how an
audience is seeing film actually matches the audiences interpretation of
that film. So if I am saying that DDLJ, or if Patricia Oberoi, let's say is
saying and I am saying too if DDLJ is in some ways a pressing of a
patriarchy, is the audience reading it like that too? Is the audience believing
me when I say it's kind of, it's kind of very patriarchical because this is
really about proper exchange of a woman from her father to her husband
without a lot of agency from her. So are the audience seeing that too?
Before we get to that question, though, and this is, I really have to say that
this is a very significant question that I hope you explore with your own
interactions with all of these films. How have you read them before you
read the reading? Read the films before you did the readings about these
films. And if you are part of of the larger South Asian diaspora, how did you
read these films if you had seen them before, before and after you did the
reading? So did the reading kind of influence the way you normally would
have seen this film? Maybe it didn't, maybe it did, but it's something really
interesting to explore. So. Before we explore that, let us just kind of look at
the idea of the diaspora. Who is the diaspora? What is the diaspora?
Anyone who is living in, or I should say any community of people who are
from a particular region of the world, living in a different region of the world
can be called a diaspora. So a South Asian diaspora in the United States is
anyone who is from South Asia, so India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri
Lanka, etcetera, who is living in some part in the United States is broadly
defined as the diaspora. It is also anyone who is from South Asia, living in
the United Kingdom, in in Africa, in any other part of the world. But as a
community or as a large-esque community. So if that is the diaspora, we
also have to kind of figure out How does does the diaspora work in
particular communities and what made the diaspora possible? I touched on
this a little bit in the previous lecture after 1965 when immigration laws
were kind of changed in the United States. That particular change led to the
increase of the South Asian diaspora in the United States. A lot more
people came from India to work in the United States to get education in the
United States and became part of the economy, became part of the life of
United States, so that is kind of what the diaspora is. But we have to keep
in mind, I cannot press this enough, that when you say the South Asian
diaspora in the United States particularly, you have to recognize that it is
not one conglomerate, right? When we are, if we are talking about India,
we are talking about excessive, a lot of very beautiful, lovely diversity. That
diversity communicates or transfers to the diaspora as well. It is not as if
people from the same part of India are coming here, right? People from all
over India are coming here and living. In India, their diversity is maintained
in very different ways than it is the United States. That's something for us to
keep in mind. Or England for that matter. Or anywhere else in the world.
Uh, so diaspora's diverse just in ways of language and culture and other
things that define culture. So it's not one block or similar in a lot of ways. It's
very diverse. It's very different from each other. The other thing to be very
careful when we are talking about the South Asian diaspora, especially in
the United States, is it kind of is continually talked about as a model
minority. South Asians and Asians in general living in the United States are
talked about as if they were the model minority, which essentially means
they are rich, they're educated, they occupy very white collared positions,
they are able to go to very good schools etc etc. I want us to recognize the
pitfalls in that categorization. So if the diaspora is diverse in its culture, the
diaspora is also very diverse in class. Not everyone who is part of the
minority is rich. In fact, you will recall our reading, Banaji actually talks
about a person who says not everyone who is Indian is rich, not everyone
who is from South Asia is rich. There's a lot of diversity within that group.
And the model minority categorization, the model minority label is a very
complicated because not only does it mean that everyone in the diaspora is
supposed to be this model individual, it also means that the South Asian
community or the South Asian diaspora is pitted against people who other
people who are minorities and it involves a further minoritized nation of
other communities, because they are supposed to be like this, this random
definition of model minority. And when they're not, that is supposed to be
even worse for them. Because look, this minority is model. They are doing
all of these amazing things and you are not. And that's not how we have to
or we should look at human beings around us. So those are very important
distinctions for us to keep in mind and important things for us to follow as
we go. So things I have done so far in this lecture is to tell you what a
diaspora is, to tell you where it is, and to kind of tell you a little bit about the
one specific categorization of the South Asian diaspora that is the model
minority who lives in the United States and the pitfalls of that
categorization. So now let's get to what our author is trying to do in this
particular reading. She's saying that we have to look at audience when we
are trying to figure out how film is interpreted. We saw this in a previous
reading as well. If you will recall the week two, the reading from week two
Dutra talks about encompassing or including audience in discussions of
film. So Banaji's project is to include audience in discussion of film. But in
doing so, what does she want to do? She wants to specifically look at how
South Asian diasporic audience in the United Kingdom interpret film from
the 1990s. Unfortunately, this was an entire book and I could only make
you read 10 pages. We do not get her entire argument and her entire
discussion of her conclusions, right? How is it that South Asian diaspora
audience in the United Kingdom views film. But we get 2 examples that she
gives us, and she gives us those examples and some details and they're
both from researchers that she talks about. So the first research she talks
about is Durney who interacted with audience in a North Indian town and
tried to figure out how male north Indian audience were interpreting film.
The very interesting conclusion of that study was the audience recognized
that this was, this film was not reality, but the audience also pressed- so
this is again a male audience in a North Indian town. So we are very, very,
we're being very specific here, but they were very happy with the with with
parts of film that pressed on male patriarchy. That served their purpose as
male patriarchs, as masculine individuals in a North Indian city. Those
things worked. Other things that were, that probably didn't work were
categorized as fantasy, right? So things that work for me as a male,
masculine, patriarch are good things in the film. Things that don't work for
me are not good things in the film. So go figure. Umm, the second reading
she talks about. The second research she talks about is Poornima
Mankekar's. One of my favorite authors who did a very similar study of
audience and how they interact with mythological drama on television and
her study was with a female audience. And she concluded that this
interaction and interpretation of this interaction, or interpretation of what is
happening on screen is very contextual. It depends on who these women
are, and who these women are defines how they interact with what is on
TV. Which takes us to to Banaji, our authors conclusion about how about
how South Asia diaspora audience interact with film. She says they interact
with film much like Mankekar's audience interact with film. It's very
contextual, so if a particular sort of representation works for someone, it is
possible that they buy into it. If it doesn't work for them, it is possible that
they are challenged by it, but it doesn't come even close to them buying it,
right? So the way diaspora interacts with film depends on who the diaspora
is. Or what part of the diaspora we are talking about. It is not as if everyone
within the diaspora buys the film, buys the idea of Indianness of our hero in
Diwali Dulhani Le Jayenge, Raj. Not everyone buys it. People who buy it
are from a particular context and therefore they buy it, which is very
important for us to kind of know because it tells us that there's a lot of
diversity in diaspora, and it tells us how audience interact with film is very
strongly dependent on who the audience is. This is not to say that film does
not have overriding message that it wants to give. It is also not to say that
that message is lost on large parts of the population and everyone is
interpreting that message in different ways. It is to say though that the
audience's context and individual audience members' context will come into
interaction with With the message of the film depending on on their context,
right? So the audience will decide what they buy and what they do not buy
from the film"
Using only the lecture content, answer the following questions in a 200 word paragraph:
1. How did you interact with DDLJ?
2. Banaji tells that we interact with film from our own perspectives. Does reading schoalrly analysis about a film change our perspective?