The Other Superhero Movie

I am crazy busy this week as I pack for a rather last-minute move, conveniently timed to coincide with the first week of my 4-week summer session (2 classes, each meeting 2 1/2 hours, 4 days a week, one in the morning, one in the evening). But I wanted to mention Henry Jenkins’ thorough and thoughtful discussion of Krrish, a Bollywood production being billed as India’s first superhero movie. ALthough the formula will sound familiar to Western movie-goers, Jenkins notes that Krrish is a distinctly Indian twist on the superhero pattern:

Much like the western Superman who has been read as an embodiment of national myths and ideals, there is much which speaks to the specifically Indian origins of this particular story.

For one thing, the early signs that young Krishna may have superpowers come when he turns out to be a protégé at sketching and then confounds the teachers at his local school with a spectacular performance on his I.Q. exam. The American counterpart would have led off with his strength, his speed, or maybe even his X-ray vision but having a superior intellect has rarely been a prerequisite for becoming a superpower in the western sense of the term. Throughout the film, in fact, the other characters consistently cite his “talents” but rarely his “powers” as if he were destined to become an extremely gifted knowledge worker (and indeed, it turns out that the ethics of knowledge work for hire are at the center of this epic saga.)

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Westerners are going to be tempted to read the film as a symptom of cultural imperialism — taking a strongly western genre and trying to sell it back to the American market. But that’s too simple — especially given all of the ways I’ve identified above that the superhero genre gets reworked to speak to specifically Asian values and concerns and the ways it gets mixed with other genre elements which are more closely associated with the Bollywood tradition.

Krrish isn’t playing anywhere even close to Las Vegas (despite a growing Indian population here, I might add) so I’ll have to take Jenkins at his word, but it sounds like a Superman Returns/Krrish double-feature would be a great way to spend an afternoon. [Via BoingBoing]