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Palgrave Macmillan

Romance and Power in the Hollywood Eastern

  • Book
  • © 2020

Overview

Authors:
  1. Nalini Natarajan

    1. English Department, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, San Juan, USA

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  • Extends the term the "Eastern" to cover a large geographical swath of films, in counterpoint to the Western
  • Illustrates the bias against the Global East and South across large-budget Hollywood films over time
  • Provides a clear understanding of how romance and covert power work together in film to put forward problematic representations

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Nalini Natarajan
    Pages 1-11

  3. The Western and the Eastern

    • Nalini Natarajan
    Pages 13-33

  4. Treasure and Thugs: The East as Mystery and Disorder

    • Nalini Natarajan
    Pages 35-69

  5. The Eastern Desert and the Lone Hero

    • Nalini Natarajan
    Pages 71-103

  6. The Colonial Gaze, Modernism, and the Trauma of the Tropics

    • Nalini Natarajan
    Pages 105-143

  7. The East and Love in the Time of Decolonization

    • Nalini Natarajan
    Pages 145-159

  8. Conclusion

    • Nalini Natarajan
    Pages 161-173

  9. Correction to: Romance and Power in the Hollywood Eastern

    • Nalini Natarajan
    Pages C1-C1

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 175-204
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Keywords

About this book

This book develops the idea of the "Eastern" as an analytically significant genre of film. Positioned in counterpoint to the Western, the famed cowboy genre of the American frontier, the “Eastern” encompasses films that depict the eastern and southern frontiers of Euro-American expansion. Examining six films in particular—Gunga Din (1939), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Heat and Dust (1983), A Passage to India (1984), Indochine (1992), and The English Patient (1996)—the author explores the duality of the "Eastern" as both aggressive and seductive, depicting conquest and romance at the same time. In juxtaposing these two elements, the book seeks to reveal the double process by which the “Eastern” both diminishes the "East" and Global South and reinforces ignorance about these regions’ histories and complexity, thereby setting the stage for ever-escalating political aggression. 

Reviews

"This book is a timely intervention that explores how generic conventions from the Western and notions of romance have been used in canonical Euro-American cinema to shore up a Eurocentric view of the non-Western world. Films from Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to Indochine (1992) are unpacked to reveal the politics of gender, race, geography, and romance at play in mainstream images built on colonial legacies."

--Michael W. Thomas, co-editor of Cine-Ethiopia: The History and Politics of Film in the Horn of Africa (2018), SOAS University of London, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  • English Department, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, San Juan, USA

    Nalini Natarajan

About the author

Nalini Natarajan is Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. She is the author of six books, including The Atlantic Gandhi: The Mahatma Overseas (2012) and The Unsafe Sex: The Female Binary and Public Violence against Women (2016). 

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