Here is the lecture content:

"Let's move to our reading for today. So this week is kind of
interestingly set up. The reading you did was came out in 2009 and the
film you watched came out in 2011. So what I'm trying to what I will try to
do in this lecture and the next lecture is to kind of combine these two
together. The reading for today is is about marriage and. It is not just about
marriage. It's trying to make a broader comment by way of talking about
marriage. We will get to the broader comment and looking at marriage.
But before we do that, I want you to go back in the semester a little bit,
let's say 12 weeks or 10 weeks and kind of imagine where we started, the
film we started with and how we progressed. And as we have progressed
in the semester, the texture of films that we have seen has really changed.
And I should say not just the texture but the politics of the films that we
have seen has has really changed as well. So in that sense, this particular
reading by Jotsuna Kapoor for today is speaking to that change in texture,
that change in politics. Jotsna Kapoor is telling us that the way marriage is
now, now being post 1995 to let's say 2008 when she was probably
writing this article in in these 12 years. In these 1213 years, the films that
came out and the way they talked about marriage kind of took marriage
from the domain of a family affair to. The domain of a consumerist
neoliberal subjectivity. So what I'm going to do is try to explain this. Kapoor
is saying that traditionally in India, marriage was about families. It was it
was a simpler affair. It was still grand, but it was grand at a small scale. So
imagine this if I have, let's say, 20 friends and. Of of those 20, I call 5 my
really dear friends. So any given weekend, if I have a party and I invite all
five of them of my really dear friends, it's it's a small party. But if I do a
really grand party, I invite all 20 of my friends and give them gifts. And this,
that and the other right. So from being a small intimate affair where five
friends was invited were invited, now weddings become this grand affair,
where 20 friends and friends of those twenty friends are invited, etc. So it
kind of takes marriage outside of its intimacy of being an intimate affair
between families, still big but intimate, and takes it to a different level. That
different level is what Kapoor is interested in. She's suggesting that that
different level, the underlining of marriage as central to cinema, to cinema
from let's say 1995 to 2010 or 2009. There was a reason for that. And that
reason is a turn that India has taken. And that turn is signified by India's
kind of. Explosive economic growth in that time period, that explosive
economic growth translated to the Indian person becoming a consumer
and finding marriage as the site or vetting as the site where consumption
could be taken to different levels. So till before 1995. Most weddings, a
majority of weddings in India were arranged by relatives and friends of
friends. And people knew a person who would be a caterer and they
would come in and they would throw a party and food would be cooked on
site. Those sort of things post 1995 or somewhere around there, a
wedding became weddings became this huge economic affair. Where you
would you would have designers designing clothing and you would have
specialty wedding caterers and you would have flowers flown in from
Thailand. I've actually been to a wedding where flowers were flown in
from Thailand to to Mumbai just for the decoration. Imagine the
environmental cost, just growing flowers for those sort of things and then
having them flown in and then throwing them away and all of that. But
people are interested in that because. People can be consumers at that
level, so you're able to do those sort of things. The wedding is the site
where those, those huge contributions can be made to feeling good about
oneself and to feeling like you are. You have made it. You have this sort of
money where some major designer is designing your clothing and some
major cook is flying in pastries from Italy for your wedding and that sort of
thing. But what does that mean, right? So what does that meant for
cinema? It is meant that for a lot of films and you have seen some of them.
So for example hamap Ke Hai Kaun and Dilwale Dulhaniya le Jayenge and
and to some degree Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gam. They are films where
weddings became. The central goal, the central theme around which
everyone else was doing something. So the first comment that that Kapoor
made makes and that I have discussed is wedding has become a site for
kind of forming the consumer, forming a neoliberal consumer, a neoliberal
consumer or a neoliberal subject is someone who. Whose success is
defined by how much production they can do and how much they can buy,
right? So in that sense, we are all kind of neoliberal subjects. Whether we
are in India or or in the United States, we are all defined to some extent by
how much we can buy and how much we can get. So. So Kapoor is saying
that this turn. In film, in marriage and in wedding becoming central to film,
is is a reflection of the Indian citizen becoming a neoliberal subject. It is a
rejection of the GHANDHIAN and the nehruian politics that we kind of saw
in films like like a car to some extent, in films like Amara, Akbar, Anthony,
where where the idea was nation building, where the idea was doing
things for the community and for the society and for the nation to now
becoming a different kind of contributor to a nation. Now you're
contributing to the nation as a consumer. You are buying things, you're
having these elaborate wedding ceremonies that are reflected in your
cinema that kind of that kind of reflect how successful you are, how good
of a citizen you are. So that is the first point that that the neoliberal subject
is kind of tied to India's economic turn and that is reflected in cinema. The
second thing she says in in the article is how the new liberal subject, how
the subject that is defined by consumerism can pick tradition, right. So you
do not have to be traditional, whatever that means. Although if we look at
films like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi GAM, they
define tradition for us in a particular way. They define tradition of us for us
as. Celebration of patriarchy as a celebration of underlining indianness,
whatever that might mean. This particular the the new idea, the new
definition is of being close to your citizenship, of being close to being a
good Indian is not necessarily defined by tradition, but you can pick what
kinds of tradition you like. And wedding somehow has been one that so
many people like. So in a way you can you can look at consumerism, you
can look at being a neoliberal subject, but you can embrace tradition by
embracing the idea of a huge wedding, of a huge traditional wedding
where you are celebrating. Extremely patriarchal rituals, and you are
underlining the celebration of those patriarchal rituals. They're going hand
in hand with that tradition, but you're doing that as a consumer. You're
doing that as someone who has access to these huge resources and and is
able to, is willing to celebrate, celebrate their traditionalism, or is able to
pick from the traditionalism what works for them. So that is the second
point. That tradition and patriarchy kind of have gone hand in hand in this
new, in this new definition of what it means to be a successful citizen. And
how wedding is kind of situated in it. The wedding is kind of Indiana, the
center of following tradition and following patriarchy because so many of
the rituals that are associated with weddings, specifically Hindu weddings,
are steeped in patriarchy. They are totally steeped in patriarchy. We are
talking of literal giving away of human beings from from father to husband.
And it's a very literal kind of it's a transaction. And that is really celebrated.
Other forms of patriarchy are also really celebrated in these weddings. And
the third thing that that Kapoor says is, is how this tradition and this
underlining of tradition in this big consumerist sense has also has also
reinforced the idea of Hinduism. In in Bollywood, so, so much of cinema
has celebrated this the the Hindu wedding ceremony, the the Hindu way of
doing things. So it is also kind of Indiana a way. Speaking to some sort of
hegemony, almost of of Hindu culture of Hindu ideas, however, they are
defined by Bollywood, right? Because because we can very, I hope that we
understand that Hindu culture and Hindu ideas are not defined things. We
cannot define these. They are really fluid and they mean different things to
different people and we really need to understand that. So these are the
three major points. That Kapoor makes in her article that India has kind of
developed this new relationship with neoliberalism that Indians, a lot of
Indians have become neoliberal subjects and they are underlining their
neoliberalism by participating in large weddings. These large weddings
kind of started at the turn of 1995 with the opening of the Indian economy
and the Indian consumer becoming very, very rich. The second point she
makes is within these, within these weddings, they are a way of kind of
picking your tradition, picking what you want to pick out of it, or picking
what you want to take from this, let's say whatever is available for you
from tradition to take. Lots of people take weddings and kind of make it
part of their their new subjectivity, and that also celebrates patriarchy in
certain ways. And the Third Point she makes is religion is underlined in in
this, in this new project, so new project being the neoliberal project and
and religion being mostly Hinduism is kind of celebrated in this, in this
thing, in this enterprise. So the bottom line of this article as far as I could
tell is these three points are very relevant for us to know. But the thing that
is most relevant for us to know as far as this article and this week is
concerned is this turn. This move towards a celebration of being a
consumer also came about with a celebration of being an individual in early
film. In most early Hindi film, we saw that the individual as an enterprise
didn't exist. The individual needed to be sacrificed for the good of society
or family or a brother or a husband or something, right? Or the state for
that matter. Now we see that being an individual is kind of celebrated. You
are you are told that this is your wedding. You do what you want, you do
the celebration. You are the most important thing that that you can do on
on this day. And you underline that being the most important thing by
buying a dress, by setting up a venue, by whatever flowers, this, that and
the other, all of that is at the end of the day, defined by how much money
you have, right? So. And and and that is, I think the most important
message to take from this article is, it is in some ways this particular
reading is kind of pointing us towards the coming of the individual as a
thing in Hindi cinema. And if the individual is coming as a thing in Hindi
cinema, we can say with some sort of confidence that that is happening at
a wider level as well, that is that is maybe happening on ground as well.
Not to the extent that it is possibly happening on screen, but it is possible
that the individual as a celebration, it is me I want to do. What I want to do
is not something that is bad anymore. It is something that can be
celebrated. It is something that can be gotten behind."

Using only the lecture content, answer the following questions in 150 words:
1. How does Kapur utilize the spectacle of the Indian (primarily Hindu) wedding to explain Bollywood and globalization?
2. How has new branding and wedding industry supported patriarchy?