'Relationships which have no name': Family and sexuality in 1970s popular film

Abstract

This essay argues that popular film of the 1970s opened up a space for representing new kinds of social relationships specifically by means of its use of melodramatic formulas. Against a dominant periodization of the decade which emphasizes rupture, I argue that over the course of the long 1970s we see a process of repetition and resignification whereby formulas such as the 'lost-and-found' plot and the love triangle were re-presented and their constitutive elements rearranged in order to generate alternatives to conventional kinship and romantic paradigms. Discussing several films from this decade, including Sangam, Yaadon ki Baaraat, Deewaar, Sholay, Amar Akbar Anthony and Silsila, I show how Hindi cinema in the 1970s was engaged in considering how to represent human relationships outside of social sanction or conventionally accepted kinship terms, thus offering a new paradigm from which to read popular film at large. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.