> > 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 ============================================================================ #---------------------------------------------------# | I am. That's all. Had words been ever mine? | | 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. | #---------------------------------------------------# ---- To sign off SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]