-Neera Misra
Introduction
VARIOUS forms of expressions since time immemorial connect man to man, and man to nature, sometimes also giving glimpses into their historical progress and interpersonal relationships. One form that has continued since ages is that of the folklore, which we find prevalent in almost all nations, reflecting their unique traditions and life experiences.
Folklores have played a key role in our understanding of the past and present. Folklores not only reflect the cultures and subcultures of any society, nation or civilization but also bind them to social beings of a shared culture and tradition. The oral traditions such as tales, stories interspersed with songs, proverbs and sometimes even jokes have been very rich in Indian society. They also include customs, the forms and rituals of celebrations of festivals, special days, etc.
This rich treasure which has enriched our society has seen many changes since ancient times, being adapted to new forms of communication beyond the traditional oral rural medium. The print gave rise to comics like Pañcatantra tales, Jātaka tales and Tenālīrām. The advent of the audio-visual media of communications like films, advertising and TV has tapped this source not just to create content to increase consumer base, but to disseminate information in order to increase outreach and tap the traditional systems to reach out to masses.
How has this transformation in films, advertising and TV adapted and affected the actual stories and songs? Has it played with the kern and core? Or has it revived and enriched the ancient to suit modern needs?
I propose to present how the audio-visual mass communications of film, TV and advertising have used folklore giving some examples of Indian and international media.
What is Folklore in Our Culture and in Some Other Cultures?
Folklore is generally the traditional beliefs, customs and stories of a community passed through generations by word of mouth. Folklore has been now categorized as “verbal folklore” of common sayings, expressions, stories and songs, and “customary folklore” which comprises of beliefs and ways of doing things. Then there is also a major subgenre “childlore” defined as “children’s folklore” and games, as the collection and interpretation of this fertile topic are peculiar to schoolyards and neighbourhood streets. Each of these genres and their subtypes is intended to organize and categorize the folklore artefacts; they provide a common vocabulary and consistent labelling for folklorists to communicate with each other.
This question arises because we find that the concepts of folklore in Western cultures seem historical, quite recent, whereas in the Indian context, loka-kathās and loka-gāthās appear to be integral to our system since ancient times. As per Western documentation, the term was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms. It is also believed that when Thoms first created this term, “folk” applied only to rural, frequently poor and illiterate peasants. In this context, it is also appropriate to consider the concept of “mass media” and “mass communication” as we know it today from Western definitions and new technological media of public outreach and information dissemination.
The Westerners or those influenced by them also term folklore as “a body of popular myths or beliefs relating to a particular place, activity, or group of people”. Why it is important to distinguish and differentiate between the perceptions about ancient and new Western concepts here is the fact that what may be a “myth or popular belief” for some may actually be a historical event, persevered and disseminated through ages. This will be clear in the part on folklore in films.
The Western Concepts and Developments
During the period of romantic nationalism in Europe began the process of
distinguishing folklore as an autonomous discipline. A critical role in this was played by Johann Gottfried von Herder, whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in the locale. When Napoleonic France invaded the German states, many fellow Germans adopted Herder’s approach that systematized the recorded folk traditions and used them for nation building. Other nations seeking political independence from their dominant neighbours like Finland, Estonia and Hungary saw merit in embracing this process for uniting population.
Nineteenth-century European scholars further developed folklore as a field of study comparing and contrasting tradition with the newly developing modernity. They focused on the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, considering them as residue and survivals of the past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The Brothers Grimm’s 1812 published work Kinder-und Hausmärchen is a well-known collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of that time.
The interest in stories, sayings and songs continued gradually aligning the “folkloristics” with literature and “mythology”, and studies continued both in Europe and North America. In Europe, folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogeneous peasant populations in their regions, the American folklorists, widened the scope to consider Native American cultures in their research, including the totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict are credited with this move. This distinction aligned American folkloristics with cultural anthropology and ethnology. They used the same techniques of data collection in their field research, but in Europe seemed aligned to humanities and the social sciences in America, where emerged a wealth of theoretical vantage points and research tools to the field of folkloristics.
The terms folkloristics and folklore studies gained currency in the 1950s as a distinguishing academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artefacts themselves. In 1976 the American Folklife Preservation Act (P.L. 94-201) was passed by the US Congress. But folklore has not been limited to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and many other folklife fests around the country. It has gained much use and momentum in audio-visual media not just in Europe and America but in India too.
With the rapid advances in technology and modern systems of mass communications, we find a new-look approach to folklore. Folklore is no more a mere nostalgic bonhomie of communities narrating tales of common traditions, customs or shared past. Folklores are now a strong marketing tool and folk tales a great commodity for capturing the entertainment-hungry consumers. Globalization, the human tendency to connect with communities and the urge to showcase identities have all harnessed the intrinsic nature of “unity in diversity” of folkore to achieve their own goals. The prominence of capitalism, where profit lines matter, has added another dimension, and we then see the emergence of folklores in advertising, for mass communications to target consumers. Both print and electronic media have drawn from the wealth of folk tales and customs.
The Bhārata Angle
The story of folklore in the Indian context, or more specifically in relation to “Bhāratavarṣa”, is as old as the civilization and cultures of our nation.
Ancient systems of training the mind and imparting knowledge and values of life were slightly different from modern ideas of using folklore and folk tales, to a large extent, for impacting the human mind as consumers of goods and services. In ancient Bhārata, whether imparting knowledge or disseminating information, all used methods of “Śruti”, “Smr̥ti” and the first mass communication could be the gurukula system of educating. With no printing press, the manuscript was used and gurus made the students learn in a storytelling manner, teaching subjects of various sciences of life, but also weaving in stories of nature, of kings and queens, or rulers or even the significant events of past.
Our performing arts and visual arts all tell us tales of the past. Some popular forms like Paṭa-Citra-Kathā or even Pāṇḍavāṇī were our traditional audio-visual arts through which we have known so much about our epics or related tales. All dance forms were storytelling media. Kathak derives the name from “telling a kathā (story)”. In the Indian context, a long relationship between folk tales or folklore and audio-visual media has existed for very long. It was heightened during the medieval period when the travelling “baul singers” (kathāvācakas) kept the national ethos united through their skills in narration and singing.
One distinguishing factor from Western definitions is that we as a nation never really believed in “myths” and so our loka-kathās, loka-gāthās, loka- saṅgīta and loka-paramparās are all intertwined with and evolved from our “lived past”, our itihāsa, our traditions and life systems that were followed for generations. Thus the Vedic life of living in tune with, and in harmony with nature is quite visible in our moral tales. Our ancient Pañcatantra tales have travelled a long way into modern times and inspired the popular Amara Citra Kathā.
Genres of Folklore
Prime amongst the genres is the material culture, examples of which are folk art, vernacular architecture, textiles and modified mass-produced objects. In music, we have traditional songs based on customs, rituals, sung to folk tunes using traditional instruments.
In the narrative form, there are legendary personalities, events, fairy tales, folk tales, personal experience narratives. The verbal art jokes, proverbs and word games are also categorized under folklores. As per the common information platform Wikipedia,
Folklore is the expressive body of culture shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group from one region to another or from one generation to the next for folklore traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another either through verbal instruction or demonstration. — https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/folklore
It is well-documented that the term was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms. When Thoms first created this term, folk applied only to rural, frequently poor and illiterate peasants.
To understand the happy marriage that normally exists between folklore and audio-visual media, one has to know a little about the meaning, role and importance of mass communications in today’s market-oriented world of culture, politics and business. The days of kingly patronage have left us long back. Politics is as much public outreach as business is and culture happens to be a medium for both, to attract eyeballs and influence decisions.
Mass communication is big business and pursued academically for a successful career. Mass communication is the imparting or exchanging of information on a large scale to a wide range of people. It is a process in which a person, group of people, or an organization sends a message through a channel of communication to a large group of anonymous and heterogeneous people and organizations, which are either the general public or a segment of the general public. Channels of communication include broadcast television, radio, social media and print.
The aim of masscom, as mass communication is known in short, is that its content has to persuade or affect the behaviour, attitude, opinion, or emotion of the person or people receiving the information. Various types of mass communication used are advertising (to create desire and induce purchasing behaviour), journalism, such as news, for public opinion and public relations, which is intended to influence public opinion on a product or organization.
Folklore was the communications medium of the ancient and medieval periods and remains even today in our remote and traditional systems. The difference is just that earlier the tales were merely oral in nature, but new methods of dissemination via multimedia have led to adaptations of the oral narratives into this new technology. An important point to note is that the folk tales have great historical, moral and social relevance which they have carried through centuries.
Significance
One of the best-known explanations of folklore is found in Alan Dundes’ brief essay, “What Is Folklore?” Dundes disputes the notion that “folk” should be automatically identified with peasant or rural groups, or with people from the past. He argues that contemporary urban people also have folklore and suggests that rather than dying out, folklore is constantly being created and recreated to suit new situations (Dundes 1965: 2).
They have universal appeal as their themes are human, sensitive, are treaties that are ever contemporary and deal with daily normal emotions and experiences that affect all sections.
This makes them ready material for adaptations for mass contact – either to teach or to target consumers for business gain. Bollywood provided the
very kind of magical dreamscapes, good vs evil battles and happily-ever-after stories that almost every person is drawn to it.
Hindi Films Based on Folklore (India)
Paheli is a great story and is a great literary work. This is a folk tale that has come from our soil. The story has been told for ages and it is still not stale. It remains as fresh as ever in spite of the time gone by. That is the strength of the folk tale. Tell me what cinema can be as fresh as this story. Vijaydan Detha reinterpreted and retold the story as if to say: “I am re-retelling that story. I don’t think there is any contradiction or “wrong” in doing this. I am taking this lovely folk tale and narrating this story to a maximum number of people. I am also taking it to a wider audience because I have superstars like Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukerji and Amitabh Bachchan.”
Sohni Mahiwal is one of the four popular tragic romances of Punjab. The others are Sassi–Punnun, Mirza–Sahiba and Heer–Ranjha. Sohni Mahiwal is a love story which reverts the classical motif of hero and leader. The heroine Sohni, unhappily married to a man she despises, swims every night across the river using an earthenware pot to keep afloat in the water, to where her beloved Mehar herds buffaloes. One night her sister-in-law replaces the earthenware pot with a vessel of unbaked clay, which dissolves in water and she dies in the whirling waves of the river.
Sohni is one of the favourite folk tales both in Sindh and Punjab. Similar stories of Sindh are in Shah Jo Risalo, Umar–Marui, Sassi–Punnun, Lilan– Chanesar, Noori–Jam Tamachi, Sorath–Rai Diyach and Momal–Rano, commonly known as seven heroines.
Four Hindi film versions, named Sohni Mahiwal, have been made:
- 1933, starring Gauhar Karnataki, Master Chonkar, Shivrani and Master
- 1946, starring Ishwarlal and Begum
- 1958, starring Bharat Bhushan and
- 1984, starring Sunny Deol and Poonam
Heer Ranjha: There are several poetic narrations of this story, the most famous being “Heer” by Waris Shah written in 1766. It tells the story of the love of
Heer and her lover Ranjha. Heer Ranjha was written by Waris Shah. Some historians say that the story was the original work of Shah, written after he had fallen in love with a girl named Bhag Bhari. Others say that Heer and Ranjha were real personalities who lived under the Lodi dynasty and that Waris Shah later utilized these personalities for his story. Shah states that the story has a deeper meaning, referring to the unrelenting quest that man has towards God.
Laila Majnu: Laila Majnu is a love story between Qais ibn Al-Mulawah and Layla that took place in the seventh-century Arabia. The poet Nizami Ganjavi also wrote a popular poem praising their love story in the twelfth century who also wrote Khosrow and Shirin. It is the third of his five long narrative poems, Panj Ganj (The Five Treasures). Lord Byron called it “the Romeo and Juliet of the East”.
Mirch is a 2010 Indian drama film written and directed by Vinay Shukla. The film featured Konkona Sen Sharma and Raima Sen in pivotal roles. The film began filming in Bikaner, Rajasthan.The subject of the film is gender equality and women’s sexuality. It revolves around four short stories on issues of women emancipation, based on a story from the Pañcatantra which travels in its various versions to modern times. Konkona Sen Sharma and Raima Sen star in two of these short stories.
Padmavat: Though many films based on legends and folklore have been made in our country, few have drawn the kind of attention and controversy as Padmāvāti. Films have been made since the early 1940s, but the growing up of, or the growing outreach and impact of various mass media, especially the social media, have brought cinema to our finger tips. We no more book advance tickets, stand in queues and go to see a film for entertainment or as a family outing. This is the age of personal choices, advance information, social discussions and informed decisions about everything. So why not films. Thus, a filmmaker must satisfy the public about correctness of his storyline if he has used a legendary character to tell his tale and make money out of it. The controversy arose on the authenticity of the events shown and to counter that a whole new dimension given doubting the very existence of Padmāvatī. Even the descendants of Padmāvatī were unable to convince the sceptics about her historical reality. Politics overpowered all explanations
and the historical legend documented in her own family is still fighting a bitter battle with the invading tribes’ latter-day narrators of a tale which was created around her beauty and conquest of Chittor. What comes out here is the significance of folklore in constructing or deconstructing a past, which is real to some but not to others unconnected with it. This will not prevent further films based on folklore or traditions, but surely better historical research will also add to the wealth of folklore.
Songs Clips Based on Folklore
It is not just tales, but even customary and ritualistic songs and traditional music have found space in audio-visual media. Some famous renderings of the superstar of this century, Amitabh Bachchan’s own voice are still very popular. Kabhie-Kabhie film’s raṅga barase or khāike pāna banāraśavālā or even where he becomes a female – jiskī bīwī moṭī…, etc. are all derivatives from folk songs and music. Recent examples are nimbūṛā song (Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam), Gujarati Kāṭhiāwāḍī bhūmaro (Mission China), Kashmir folk song, gendā phūla (Dilli 6), Chattisgarhi dādariyā folk song, juganī juganī, etc. and many more.
Folklore in Western Films
Some examples of Western films based on folklore or folk tales are worth mentioning here. Disney’s Animated Shorts are based on fairytales: Babes in the Woods (1932), The Pied Piper (1933), The Wise Little Hen (1934), The Tortoise and the Hare (1935) and Dumb Bell of the Yukon (1946).
Some Disney feature films based on fairy tales that became very famous are Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959) and The Little Mermaid (1989).
Duck tales in the movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990) and Beauty and the Beast (1991).
Other international folklore in films can be seen in films like El Cid (1961) inspired by a Spanish folk tale. El Cid tells the epic story of a man who fights to restore his honour after being banished from Spain. El Cid was the honorary title of Rodrigo Díaz de Bivar (or Vivar), Spain’s national hero and great military leader. During his lifetime, Díaz fought for and against both
Christian kings and Muslim rulers in Spain. The Moors gave him the name El Cid (from an Arabic word meaning “lord”) in recognition of his skills on the battlefield. He gained a reputation for defeating superior opponents against overwhelming odds, inspiring many stories, poems and legends.
Robin Hood (2010), though based on a popular English folk tale, has also been made by Hindi film producers. Robin Hood is a heroic outlaw in English folklore who, according to legend, was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. Traditionally depicted dressed in Lincoln green, he is said to rob from the rich and give to the poor. Alongside his band of Merry Men in Sherwood Forest and against the Sheriff of Nottingham, he became a popular folk figure in the Late Middle Ages and continues to be widely represented in literature, film and television
A contemporary production Braveheart drew a good response. Mel Gibson’s film is a full-throated, red-blooded battle epic about William Wallace, the legendary Scots warrior who led his nation into battle against the English in the years around 1300. It is an ambitious film, big on simple emotions like love, patriotism and treachery, and avoids the travelogue style of so many historical swashbucklers: Its locations look green, wet, vast, muddy and rugged. Not much is known about Wallace, known as “Braveheart”, except that according to an old epic poem, he unified the clans of Scotland and won famous battles against the English before being captured, tortured and executed as a traitor.
Then we have Pans Labyrinth, which is one of the greatest of all fantasy films, even though it is anchored so firmly in the reality of war. On first viewing, it is challenging to comprehend a movie that on the one hand provides fauns and fairies, and on the other hand, creates an inhuman sadist in the uniform of Franco’s fascists. The fauns and fantasies are seen only by the 11-year-old heroine, but that does not mean she is “only dreaming;” they are as real as the fascist captain who murders on the flimsiest excuse. The coexistence of these two worlds is one of the scariest elements of the film; they both impose sets of rules that can get an 11-year-old killed.
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2016) is about a martial arts master (Michelle Yeoh) who assembles a band of fighters to protect a legendary sword from a warlord (Jason Scott Lee) and his clan. Based on the fifth
and final book from the Crane-Iron Series, this sequel to 2000’s martial arts phenomenon Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon follows a new adventure on the hunt for a legendary sword.
Films are considered mainly entertainment and less of influencers. Advertisements are a subtle marketing tool to sell a product or service by influencing a mind, creating desires and perceptions. To draw attention, or in advertising language “catch the eyeballs” of consumers, companies use popular tales to tell their story. Some very popular advertisement was by the Madhya Pradesh Tourism, Fevicol, Cyclist, Punjabi, ICICI Bank – Kashmiri, CPIM Election advertisements, TVC 2016 – Boul Polli Geet, Bangla, Amul Manthan – Rajasthani.
Conclusion
The relationship between folklore and audio-visual media is here to stay and grow. As more global firms eye the Indian market, they need to connect with the core emotional streak of this population. It is our storehouse of folk traditions, customs, rituals and legends that bind us as a nation. To achieve this, one of the methods is to weave their advertising around such themes. Choṭā Bhīma is now more famous than Richie Rich or Dennis the Menace or Little Dot. The West looks at India and sees a treasure trove of folklore, fables and characters for cartoon films.
Similarly, the Internet has not just connected us globally, but become an open space of information and knowledge that was not easily accessible to all via printed material. Thus, the immense interest in ancient history has aroused the knowledge-hungry population to acquire deeper insights into various aspects of Bhārata. This exposes them to our folklore and folk tales and gives new ideas for films.
In the world of movies and current communication methods of multimedia, the lines between folklore, fairy tale, mythology, history and fantasy have been blurred for quite some time. If history is twisted, historical events and personalities degraded, we rightfully raise our voice (Padmāvatī!), but legends and tales of common universal social value (Pañcatantra, Parīyoṅ kī Kahānī, etc.) sure need to get a fillip through audio-video mass communications. It has popularized much of our traditional stories in a contemporary format.
Every coin has two sides and we do also sometimes learn to roll the coins. So let us accept the flip-flop, sieve the decorations of “creative liberty” and enjoy the continuity of our cultural folklores and folk tales surviving with greater outreach and mass appeal.
Let it roll on with new additions and benefits to us from their tricks of the trade – mass communicators wished to use folk tales, folk music for enhancing business, but ended up increasing their universal acceptance and appeal and ensuring their longevity. Good for all.