The "Baimaan" or "Betrayed Vision" of Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding

Abstract

Non-resident Indian filmmakers display a peculiar relationship when it comes to presenting and representing India to the West. In Mira Nair's film, which is presented as an exotic continent and progressively becomes in Barthesian terms, "the political center of the world [which] we see here (as) all flattened, made smooth and grandly colored like an old-fashioned photograph" (see Barthes, 1972: 94). By insisting on exoticizing her subject, Nair completely denies any identification of her subject with its nativised history. Situating her wedding in India's capital city of New Delhi, and housing it within an upper class Punjabi joint-family tradition, supplies her with the necessary alibis for creating a highly embroidered product which is exempt from really undertaking any serious examination of all the cultural and familial tensions that erupt during the preparation of such an important event.