GS F242 Cultural Studies

BITS Pilani Dr. Muhammed Afzal P

Pilani Campus
 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

Visual Culture: Film Poster

 Visual Culture

• Visual culture is concerned with visual events in which

information, meaning, or pleasure is sought by the
consumer in an interface with visual technology.
• Visual technology mean any form of apparatus designed
either to be looked at or to enhance natural vision, from oil
painting to television and the Internet.

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 The Film Poster

• Film posters are frozen images of narrative cinema whose

primary object is to arouse the curiosity of potential
spectators, to persuade them to enter the movie
theatre
• As a publicity icon, the poster is meant to convey the
theme, the genre, the locations, the emotional contour
and the primary star cast of the film

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The Poster of Don (1978)

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• In the days of Amitabh Bahchan’s stardom, film posters
were the most important vehicle for film publicity along with
official theatrical trailers and printed advertisements in
newspapers and magazines.
• A major component of visual culture, the film poster added
tremendous signage to street life and created a parallel
discourse for the marketing of films
• In the poster of Don, Bachchan is reproduced thrice. The
three avatars convey action, dramatic interiority and
seductive charm

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• A combination of the hand painted poster and the “cut and
paste” form.
• For the hand painted poster, the artist painted the poster
design on canvas on the basis of stills provided by the
producer. The “cut and paste” method on the other hand
was a combination of photographic cut outs and painted
embellishments. In both versions, a master copy was
prepared by hand, shot on camera and then the
photographed image was used for mass printing.

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• The cultural iconography of the poster always relies on both
cinematic and extra cinematic discourses to evoke a form
where industrial practice, spatial and cultural value,
historical circumstances, questions of stardom and
melodrama come together
• Posters directly highlight changes in the film industry,
making certain tensions more visible. These tensions
include conflicts between stars, between the creative vision
of directors and the publicity drive of producers

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Zanjeer (Bachchan as an
action hero)

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Anger and action
Iconography of anger

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The Poster as the Preview

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Sholay (Flames)-India’s first 70 mm film

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The title and the cinemascope
logo

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• The shape of the title and the orange colour created a
sense of continuity even as each poster design tried to
address different constituencies of spectators
• Equal space for Bachchan and Dharmendra
• We get a sense of the star cast, a sense that it is an action
film and since the protagonists are dressed in jeans, we
can assume the film is located in the city.
• The marketing strategy for Sholay was unique because the
“village” where most of the film is located hardly makes an
appearance in any of the posters

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Village at the bottom

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Extra-cinematic information

• The poster shows Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri,

who got married in the summer of 1973 after they had been
signed up for Sholay, in a composition that draws on the
posed portraiture style tradition of wedding photography.
The poster is obviously mobilizing off-screen narratives
about the newly married star couple
• The photographs of the married couple widely circulating in
the print media got woven into the publicity mechanism of
Sholay and were reproduced here as the enigmatic couple
enveloped by orange flames

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• Film stars are personas constituted by both on screen and
off screen narrative
• How do we have access to the off screen narrative?
• This contrast between the two worlds is made available in
sources outside of film as in newspapers, film magazines,
in conversations between fans, television, and now
increasingly the internet
• Jaya who plays a widow in the film is never shown as one
in any of the posters, perhaps to keep the romance theme
alive.

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Multi-star vision, invisible
women

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The absent female actors in
the poster

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Bachchan foregrounded

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Multi-starrer, two male stars in
prominence

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Male stars

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Elaborate layout of action, helicopter, a
ship, cannons, and men on horseback

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Action is more important

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• This kind of poster draws our attention to two things.
• First, the 1970s magnified the scale of action in cinema to a
level that involved large production crews since action
sequences, like dance sequences, require skilled stunt men
and women.
• Secondly, action came to be recognized by the industry as
one of the most marketable and spectacular aspects of a
film, displayed here through a depiction of technology as
spectacle.

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• The absence of the women in some of these posters of
Sholay and Ram Balram foreground the prevailing industry
discourse that female stars don’t help in the sale of films
and that box office receipts always rely on the male stars.
• Many of the multi-star posters display these anxieties of the
film industry, creating the visual arc through which
Bachchan’s superstar persona is refracted.

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• the actor is reproduced thrice in the frame. We see him in
action right in the centre. We see Helen on the left as she
pours a drink for the actor. Finally, the typical Bachchan
face is profiled on the right.

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Physiognomy of the face in the
poster campaign of Deewar
• Bachchan’s face is not only iconic in these images, but also
expresses a deep interiority
• to over-paint the image to make it more expressive of
emotions
• The importance of the face in relaying the angry man image

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Double the Star Power

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• Both posters display the actor’s star status as
supreme and invincible.
• The female protagonist Zeenat Aman is placed
on the bottom right corner, while Bachchan’s
charged and kinetic movement occupies the
centre.
• In these two posters, the actor overwhelms the
frame – through action and through his
expressive face.

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• Bachchan’s doubling here signifies a singularity of stardom,
brushing past the multi-star form towards a greater
consolidation of the iconic image. It is indeed interesting
that both Don and The Great Gambler foreground
Bachchan’s superstar status by marginalizing every other
character.

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A collage of faces
(cool, aloof, defiant)

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The many faces: Towards the
spectator

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excess of narrative details
(distributor’s logic)

“Masala film”

Entertainment
value

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 “coolie” dress, red-railway
workers

Blue shirted
dockworker

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Ensemble of romance and
action-Kala Patthar

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Superstar status, anguish

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Namak Halaal (The Loyal One, Prakash Mehra, 1982)-A Star
Vehicle Production

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The cassette boom, no painted embellishments

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• the complex encounter between stardom, industry, film
circulation and politics
• The colorful brushstroke reproductions on cheap paper
retain a value that will always be different from that of
cinema
• film posters continue to remind us of the wide array of
economic, cultural and geographical transactions that make
cinema what it is today

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