Studies in Aesthetic Delight (Parmananda) in Hindi Film Adaptations

Abstract

Film adaptations of literary works act as a foreground for contested discussions on evolving parameters to defining and approximating them as adaptations. Film theorists handy with technological aspects of filmmaking examine them from specifications of the cinematic art. Literary theorists take up available treatises from semiotics, psychology or art and dissect a film from subject-centered approaches. As film adaptations strive for a formal identity in the wake of multitude of perceptions, this paper looks at the adaptations in Bollywood from the Hindu concept of rasa. The paper contends that stages of action, characterization, motivations and above all the holy gaze of the audience all contribute to the building up of one prominent sentiment in a performance, the relish of which is experienced as a blissful state (parmananda) by the spectator