Construction of Nation and a National Hero in Joymoti

Abstract

This research work looks at the cinematic construction and internalisation of national identities by national populace, taking the case of Assamese film Joymoti under study. Films have a distinctive presence within every society and play a significant role in creating new constructs and modifying the existing ones. Researcher cited some instances of cinematic nation construction in Russian, Italian and African film. She further referred some existing literature on Danish films with banal national references. Reflection of socio-political conscious of Assamese society and nation in the Assamese cinemas of early age has also been discussed with this regard. It has been observed that these films advocated the construction of a free nation as an organic outcome of the society that they are associated with, where social equity is a primary facet. The researcher further elaborated Berger and Luckmann’s three fundamental processes in the construction of any social phenomena: externalisation, objectivation and internalisation. Here, the construction of national identities in films have been analysed taking the first Assamese Film Joymoti as case study, keeping this three stage process at backdrop. The researcher observed the journey of Joymoti’s legend, from a myth primarily popular in the eastern part of the state that got objectivised with written texts in the form of a novel establishing her to be the epitome of national valour. Further with the film by Jyotiprasad Agarwala, the divide of illiteracy has been addressed and Joymoti’s myth got internalised by Assamese populace.