> > Can anyone help? I'm trying to compile a list of films or TV programmes
> > (fiction or non-fiction, but preferably post-1970) which incorporate or
> > discuss popular images of genetics. I'm looking in particular for
> > popular "behavioural genetics" stories--"bad seed" or "evil genes" themes.
 
 Indian commercial cinema has exploited this theme for a very long
time. It has, much to the chagrin of serious film-makers and watchers,
continuously, over the past few decades, presented to very large audiences
all over our large country, themes that collectively reinforce feudalistic
and fascistic traits in Indian society. One way of doing that has been
to use 'blood' and 'birth' as indicators of 'worth' and stories
are build around how the 'worthless' either meets societal justice and
perishes or survives using loopholes in the norms of the land.The following
themes have been recurrently used:
1)Brothers, separated at birth, finding each other back through means
that have got something to do with their 'common blood'---though, the films
labour to show, they have grown up under totally different circumstances.
2)Marriages being resisted because one of the partners, in spite of being
rich and eligible, comes from a 'low' background.
3)Propensity to commit crime is justified by low birth.
 
  None of these are unusual themes in any way but what makes them
different is the popularity they achieve among almost all sections of the
population.They are popular not only in the Indian subcontinent, but are
regularly beamed to the Gulf and maybe to Hong-Kong, Malayasia etc as
well.They are generally laced with song and dance sequences that
more often than not, have nothing to do with the general flow of the film
and doses of absurdity, sex and violence that again are very un realistic
in nature.A psychoanalytic enquiry into the reasons for their
popularity can be found in Sudhir Kakar's 'Intimate Relations', published
by Penguin, India.
 
If you have access to
any of these films, I suppose these would fit your bill very well.
 ===========================================================================
  SUMIT BASU
  Research Student (Ph.d.)                   'J'Block,Apartment-3,
  Department of Mechanical Engineering         Indian Institute of Science,
  Indian Institute of Science                  Bangalore- 560 012.
  Bangalore-560 012.                           Ph: 91-80-3092429
  Ph: 91-80-3092598
 ============================================================================
 
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         | As I look beyond, from one horizon to next,       |
         | To have life, not words, suffuse my every pore,   |
         | I have wetted my sightless eyes with the night.   |
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