First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: A Comparative Analysis of Guru Dutt‘’s Pyaasa and Imtiaz Ali‘’s Rockstar

Abstract

The paper in hand attempts to draw a comparison of Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa (1957) and Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar(2011) vis-à-vis their respective socio-economic and political reality. The focus will be on appropriation of the creative prowess of the two artists situated in two different periods, their respective resistance and the ultimate fall. An attempt will also be made to compare and contrast the nature and manner of their fall and its relationship with the larger socio-economic and political reality. The tragic fall of the poet in Pyaasa will be analysed as symptomatic of the collapse of the euphoria built by the nationalist leaders around the idea of India as an ideal modern republic. The marginalisation of the poet as the ‘other’ and the subsequent appropriation and commodification of that otherness will be studied in contrast to the rhetoric loftiness of Nehruvian socialism. The disintegration and reification of the artist in Rockstar vis-à-vis the rhetoric of universal emancipation promoted by global capitalism will also form the crux of the paper. The fall of the artist in this film will be studied as symbolic of the dismantling of the dreams of neoliberal India exposing the darker side of the hype built around the notion of emergence of India at the global stage.