ABSTRACT
So, now (at least in my imagination), you are returning to Before Literature with visions of plaster deities and daisies dancing in your head—and in anticipation, perhaps, of some sort of debriefing. In accounting for this scene from Hanuman Vijay!, we definitely need to make space for the way its technical primitiveness shapes some of that shoddiness to which Clement Greenberg refers. This is especially the case given our present-day, digitally influenced eyes. Nothing makes a movie appear outdated or substandard quite like the conspicuous archaism of its mechanics. On the other hand, more sophisticated technical elements don’t rule out or negate the possibility of oral inflection. (Remember my earlier citing of the Hollywood blockbuster Titanic? And let’s not forget so many of the comic-book franchise movies that are popular these days.) The thing is, I saw Hanuman Vijay! in the company of my grandmother, who prayed whenever that monkey-god appeared on the screen and vocally offered mantras when he accomplished some great feat. I was fascinated by her response—and had we been in a major theater in my hometown of Montreal, no doubt I would have also been highly embarrassed.
