ABSTRACT
There’s a swift way to dismantle any notion that the oral episteme is somehow the offensive signal of a “lesser” way of knowing. Back in the 1990s, the author embarked on a project perhaps best described as a kind of visual anthropology. It was, to be sure, an entirely un-literary endeavor, such that the author would procure no status by aligning himself with the likes of Shakespeare, or Jane Austen, or even modernist art films. Spurred by the fact that the author himself was half-Indian, half-Anglo-American, he decided to focus on films that had been adapted from Hollywood. The author say “foremost” because India at its national birth was completely mindful that millions of its citizens were not literate and, so, the government made allowances to assist them in “reading” their newly independent nation. It’s easy—too easy, really—for those of the people ensconced in a culture that has naturalized writing to take that status for granted.
