A Selective Study in Post-Colonial Bengali Cinema - always yours

27|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2
method of cultural expansion. In Bengal, heroes like Dhiren Ganguly, Durgadas and P C Barua and
heroines like Kanan Debi and Chandrabati Debi (and later the likes of Uttam Kumar and Suchitra
Sen) became the insignia of popular entertainment provided by cinema and cinema moulded
popular culture through its commonly shared pool of narratives and commonly transmitted ideas.
Dhiren Ganguly Pramathesh Barua and Chandrabati Debi Durgadas Bandyopadhyay
Cinema, then, is a pivotal process of cultural standardization and is instrumental to the making of a
national language, a language consisting of certain symbols (stars) and stories and visuals and
music which build up a community. Cinema offers the language of cultural communication that
gives birth to a collective community that through the commonly shared narratives (and in the
Indian case music and lyrics as well) builds up its collective cognition, a commonly shared
imagination that shapes popular cultural expressions. Cinema gives birth to a nation. Bengali
cinema is one of the prime constituents of the national identity of the Indic Bengali people.
As an aside, one may wonder if the star system is as autocratic and undemocratic as a
communist party hierarchy, and the answer will be that there are certain concrete differences. In a
communist party (and all party inspired cultural organizations like IPTA etc), an individual who is a
boss becomes not a symbol, but a substitute of collective will (Trotsky's concept of substitutionism