POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION: EXOTICIZING DARJEELING IN SELECT POPULAR INDIAN CINEMA.

Abstract

Popular cinema has a wide reach and hence has an impactful cultural influence too. The visual appeal of cinema ensures that it plays a defining role in shaping how an audience perceives different places and cultures resulting in a version of collective imagination. When it comes to settings and location the appeal of lush green landscapes and snowcapped mountains of hill stations have always remained paramount in Indian popular cinema and Darjeeling remains one such destination evoking a feeling of cinematic romance. This small hill station is often associated with unending tea gardens, colonial buildings and the view of the eastern Himalayan range. To together they form a picturesque view which creates a picture-perfect image.In the past few decades Darjeeling has been the backdrop of many popular Bollywood films among which this paper will focus on Main Hoon Na and Barfi!. Both these films are set in Darjeeling and focus on the beauty of this region. However, the cinematic fascination presents an ideal which is far from the complex and harsher realities of this region. Hence this paper delves on the erasure of the challenges and struggles of the local community where the history, politics and even culture of the region remains unacknowledged. This romanticisation of Darjeeling has led to a reinforcing of stereotypes resulting in misrepresentation and distortion of a place which is in reality a place of conflict.