Week 2 - From Courtesans to Cinema: Understanding Heeramandi & the Gap

Welcome back to my blog! Today I’ll be discussing a couple useful sources that have helped me develop my project and my methodology.

For the first source, Pallabi Chakravorty’s “From Interculturalism to Historicism: Reflections on Classical Indian Dance” explores the changing cultural significance of Kathak, the classical dance featured in Heeramandi. She discusses the history of Kathak and that in colonial India, courtesans—primarily Muslim women trained in North Indian music and dance—once held high status but were later labeled “nautch dancers” by the British. The British-led “anti-nautch” movement further marginalized them, removing their ties to the arts. This source helps with my understanding of Kathak’s history in relation to courtesans.

For the second source, Thessa Mooij’s “The New Bollywood: No Heroines, No Villains” examines Bollywood’s defining features. She describes a typical Bollywood film as two and a half hours long with six to eight song-and-dance sequences. Similarly, Heeramandi has hour-long episodes featuring nine songs performed by the characters themselves. Mooij also classifies Bollywood as masala cinema, which blends Parsi plays, Urdu poetry, Victorian melodrama, and folk theater. Additionally, by including industry insights from lyricists and filmmakers, this source becomes more valuable for understanding Bollywood films and, by extension, series.

The last source is “The Aesthetics of Music Video: An Analysis of Madonna’s ‘Cherish’” by Carol Vernallis. This source has been very important in the development of my methodology. The goal of this paper is to analyze what elements of Madonna’s music video “draw the audience in,” and Vernallis begins by outlining what happens in the music video. She then analyzes many categories of the video such as flow, continuity, contour, form, motive, and more. This source serves as a guideline for my methodology and provides a structural framework. 

Regarding the gap in research, there are no peer reviewed sources about the show Heeramandi because it was released in May of  2024. Additionally, Heeramandi takes place in Heera Mandi, a district in modern day Pakistan, and there is very little research on the role of courtesans in Heera Mandi specifically, even though there are many popular sources surrounding the topic. My data will provide insight into the reality of what the role of courtesans was in Heera Mandi and how Heeramandi changes historical narratives.

Oral defense question of the week:

How did you evaluate the sources you collected to make sure they would be credible, valid, and reliable? Which sources did you discard and why?

As I gathered sources (and continue to do so), I checked if their methodologies align with both their research questions and my own. Following the AP Research rubric, I also prioritized sources with reliable methods and different perspectives. The main reason I’ve discarded sources is the evolution of my research question. I also excluded some sources that focus on specific Bollywood films with research questions unrelated to mine because they would not be suitable even for background information.