Worksheet: Film Screening—Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children
Worksheet: Film Screening - Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children
The journey of watching Midnight’s Children (2012), directed by Deepa Mehta and based on Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel, was not just a film experience for me it was an intellectual and emotional exploration of identity, history, and language. Guided by the pre-viewing, while-watching, and post-watching activities from our class, I found myself reflecting deeply on what it means to belong to a nation shaped by colonial pasts and hybrid cultures.
1. Pre-Viewing: Questions that Stayed with Me
🔰Before the film, we discussed three powerful questions:
- Who narrates history the victors or the marginalized? I realized history is often written by those in power, but personal stories can challenge and rewrite those narratives.
- What makes a nation? It’s not just borders or governance; it’s also shared memories, cultural intersections, and even disagreements.
- Can language be colonized or decolonized? English in India still carries colonial baggage, but we have also made it our own.
We also read key postcolonial concepts Bhabha’s idea of hybridity, Chatterjee’s critique of Eurocentric nationhood, and Rushdie’s idea of “chutnification of English.” These ideas became my lens for the film.
2. While-Watching: My Observations
🔹Opening Scene
The film begins with Saleem’s voice, blending his life story with the story of India’s birth. It immediately struck me personal identity and national identity are inseparable here.
🔹The Birth Switch
When Saleem and Shiva are switched at birth, their identities biological, social, and political become hybridized. This scene perfectly symbolizes postcolonial dislocation and the randomness of fate.
🔹The Narrator’s Voice
Saleem’s narration feels unreliable, almost playful. Rushdie’s metafiction made me question not just his story, but the nature of historical truth itself.
🔹The Emergency Period
The portrayal of the Emergency was unsettling it made me question whether the democracy we inherited after independence truly delivered freedom.
🔹The Language Blend
English, Hindi, and Urdu flow in and out of each other throughout the film. This linguistic mix reflects India’s postcolonial reality we’ve turned the colonizer’s tongue into something distinctly ours.
3. Post-Watching: Connecting with Themes
🔸Hybridity and Identity
Saleem and Shiva embody what Bhabha calls the “Third Space.” Their identities are fluid and evolving, and the film shows hybridity as a space of possibility, not confusion.
🔸Narrating the Nation
The film reimagines India’s history through a deeply personal lens. By juxtaposing historical events like Partition and the Emergency with Saleem’s personal journey, it challenges the idea of a coherent, linear national identity.
🔸Chutnification of English
Rushdie’s language spicy, playful, and mixed subverts “standard” English. When I tried translating some of these chutnified lines into plain English, the charm and cultural flavor vanished. This made me realize how language can be a tool of reclamation.
4. My Reflection
Belonging to a postcolonial nation that speaks the colonizer’s language is complex. English connects us across regions but also reminds us of a painful history. Watching Midnight’s Children made me feel that fractured identities are not weak they are resilient, layered, and rich with meaning.
In a way, like Saleem, I carry pieces of many histories, cultures, and languages within me. Belonging is not about being pure; it’s about embracing all the contradictions.
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