Final Project Idea:
For my end of semester project, I will be doing a digital exhibit looking deep into the British Raj or rule of India to see how it influenced Indian culture on things like the practice of a Sati (suttee). To do this, the exhibit will be using films directed by Deepa Mehta best known for her trilogy Fire (1996), Earth (1999), and Water (2005). Mehta used these as a social commentary about how India changed in many ways from arraigned marriage reform to LGBTQ+ rights. One of her most recent films, Funny Boy, came out in 2020 as she continues the discussion of social and political struggles though Indian history.
The Technical Side:
In this project there will be references to the movie being reflected on, and also documents and images referenced within those movies. The goal of this digital exhibit is to understand and contextualize the changes still happening in the subcontinent of India today. There will be a focus on films of Mehta listed above and more plus the legal documents that are referenced in the movies to get a full understanding.
On a basic level this will mostly just be looking at movies and documents, but on a more digitally technical side, there will also be a network analysis done to visually show how these films touch on various issues but all come back to the Raj. These legal acts that began changing so much of Indian life. To be clear, not all these changes were negative. There was the Age of Consent Act and similar acts that both British and Indian women could agree on, but those few will be seen in the analysis as not outweighing the negative. I think it will appeal to this group because visuals can help the connection and also the dramatic size difference (or lackthereof) can show the importance of the idea based on that size.
My Target Audience(s):
I talk a bit about this in my last post, but I have two major groups in mind for this site. The first is middle aged fathers or uncles who are interested in the pollical and social changes throughout India during the British Raj. These people will be able to work at their own pace, due to the nature of the topics, with a small amount of technology to hinder them. The goal with this group is connect political and social changes from the 1800 to things today in a personal way.
The second group is secondary educated women. This group will connect with this site in two ways. One the fact that they are more comfortable with seeing films as a political and social commentary so this can be more of a conversation starter for research or methodology of a project. These people can discuss women’s and LGBTQ+ rights in a timeline with the legal documents behind it all. This group is more accustomed to heavier topics, so I believe that won’t be an issue but the site still allows them to search at their own pace. Some of these documents included do mention each other or are within a large legal collection, so the group may want to further explore those connections. They may also like the network analysis to see the importance of each idea and base a new research question out of that.