Through the Realist Defile
U\Madan Gopal Singh
Madam Gopal Singh studied English literature in Delhi University and now teaches in Satyavati College of the same university. He is a continuing student of semiotics and film theory and is completing his doctoral dissertation inJawaharlalNehru University on 'History as Signification: A Semiobgical Study of Four Indian Film Texts'.
He has worked withfilmmakers like Kumar Shahani, Mani Kaul and Saeed Mirza. He has especially contributed to films like Khayal Gatha, Qasba, Ahmaq and Hosh in the capacity of a singer. With
MX Raina in the theatre he has worked on the musical score and the chorus.
He also writes on the cinema for newspapers and journals, including, more recently, Cinemaya. He is in the editorial collective of the Journal of Arts and Ideas. His articles have been published in the Journal including, among others, 'Technique as Ideology'(No. 1), reprinted in Indian Cinema Superbazar, ed. Arum Vasudev and Phillippe Lenglet (Vikas, Delhi, 1983), and 'On "Solaaris" and Tarkovsky' (No. 5).
I
In the beginning I want to name a few persons — I say Ritwik Ghatak, I say Mani Kaul, I say Kumar Shahani, I say Anup Singh, and I might also say Kamal Swaroop.
I also name a few cities. Maybe a city, just a city. I would say Bombay, I would probably include Ajmer, but I would not like to name a few other cities, like Delhi, Calcutta, Madras. I might include Chanderi, though.
Having said this, I would also recognize the difficulty of carrying on a discourse built entirely on the fact of meaning. I have to necessarily speak of the predication in which these things are involved, positively or negatively.
Then there are also a few other names, some words, some concepts, some hypotheses —- like Luminosity, Dignity — especially Dignity — Resources, Internationalism, Tragedy. Having said this, I want to go back, to a quotation by Jacques Lacan, which I shall read out:
So much is it (elision) to the fore that the characteristics in which it is coordinated, namely the absence of horizon, the enclosure of that which is contemplated in the waking state, and also the character of emergence, of contrast, of stain, of its images. The intensification of their colours, that, in the final resort, are positioned in the dream, is