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Results 69201-69210 of 69214 (Search time: 0.043 seconds).
  • Article

  • Labyrinths behind the screen: Ownership and control in TV cable distribution

    • Authors: Vibodh Parthasarathi; Alam Srinivas (2022)

  • The anxieties of consolidation and concentration have been central to the study of the media business across the world. Debates on media ownership have either pointed at business models and regulatory conditions leading to market concentration or the increasing accumulation of interests by political actors in the media business. This paper delves into the simultaneity of such dynamics in India, as refracted in the business of TV distribution. Once merely a downstream segment of the visible and highly researched broadcasting segment, cable distribution has emerged as the prime commercial locus, technological driver, and regulatory site in India’s TV business. Our paper unearths the modes of expan-sion of leading cable distribution companies across various regions of India. We find ...
  • Article

  • Speaking through Manbhum films: between song, dance and peripheral video industries

    • Authors: Madhuja Mukherjee (2022)

  • This paper grows from the research conducted on the video indus-try located in Purulia District, West Bengal, India, namely ‘Manbhum videos’. ‘Manbhum’ signifies both place and idiom, and the videos are imagined and produced in relation as well as in opposition to its big Other(s), which include Bollywood, and reputable Bengali lan-guage cinema. Manbhum feature-lenghth videos, comprise dis-creet episodes, which are intercepted by songs and dances; working within popular narrative strategies and modes of address, some of these videos use unique voices, of both singers and dub-bing artists, to tell the story. Such application of music and voice do not only re-present specific conditions of production, but also inform us about the ways in which the actor’s ‘body’ and ‘voice’ may be use...
  • Article

  • Between popular and populist: Reading the shift of mobile theatre repertoire

    • Authors: Debajit Bora (2022)

  • Mobile theatre being the one and only regional fully commercial cultural industry in Assam (India) has significant representation of the Assamese culture. The theatre medium started as a socially responsible cultural forum later translated itself into a commercial enterprise. The 1990s repertoire of Mobile theatre can be seen as popular and it often resonates the regional-political events, while by the 20th century, it took an entirely commercial shift and created a ‘populist model’. This paper aims to understand this shift between these popular (political) and populist, through some of the classic theatre productions like Soraguri Sapori (1983) and Titanic (1996). While the first case study attempts to read the performance against the backdrop of Assam Movement and its subsequent...
  • Article

  • Pious, populist, political masculinities in Pakistan and India

    • Authors: Afiya Shehrbano Zia (2022)

  • This article makes a case for the inclusion of piety politics and populist masculinities in any analysis of the governance and international rela-tions between two South Asian rivals and nuclear neighbours; Muslim- majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. It offers a comparative case-study of the redeemed Sufi masculinity of the recently deposed Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, and the ascetic Hindutva one performed by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. The study finds that the nativist, capitalist and gender discriminatory regimes of both populist leaders depend on subduing any dissenting resistance offered by subaltern masculinist and feminist politics. The conclusion finds that military-pious-heteronormative masculinity serves to stabi-lize patriarchy in both ‘ma...
  • Article

  • Aunties are voices from the sky: Re-imagining resistance in bollywood

    • Authors: Prateek (2022)

  • This article explores the poetics and politics of the Indian aunty. I argue that the aunty in the movie The Lunchbox (2013) negotiates with the ancient Sanskrit tradition of akashvani (celestial voice). In the first part of the article, I track the aunty’s trajectory from a loan word in Hindi to a political statement. I then study the aunty through an analysis of Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox to demonstrate how the aunty figure rewrites Bollywood’s eroticizing gaze and challenges unpaid female domestic labor. Overall, I examine how the Indian aunty offers another idiom of resistance against the discourse of patriarchy.
  • Article

  • Problematizing the binaries: A study on food symbolism in Bhaskar Hazarika’s Aamis

    • Authors: Harsha Vincent (2022)

  • Food is an important means of signification in cinema and forms a vital part of its semiotics. The article attempts to analyse food symbolism in the Assamese movie, Aamis (2019), directed by Bhaskar Hazarika. In the film, Bhaskar Hazarika parallels the taboo associated with certain meat-eating traditions in Northeast India and the forbidden relationship between a married woman and a young man to create a unique aesthetic rich in food symbolism. In this way, the film tries to destabilise the age-old societal conven-tions and moral codes. The paper attempts to problematize the cultural imaginary of Aamis (2019) rooted in the vegetarian/non- vegetarian binary. It scrutinises how Bhaskar Hazarika’s attempt to create a subversive critique of societal norms and morality ends up in reite...
  • Article

  • A case of Holy cow: religion, politics and culture in assamese feature film Goru

    • Authors: Debajyoti Biswas (2022)

  • The bovine has been the cause of conflict in the Indian sub- continent for the past few centuries owing to religious and cultural sentiments associated with it. This apparent irreconcilable conflict is localised in the binary of religious mannerism espoused by the religious groups in northern India, which is known as India’s cow belt. Such contradictions have caused bitter riots and conflicts resulting in social unrest in mainland India with spiralling effects spilling over to other regions. Although this issue has become a determiner in controlling electoral politics in some Indian states that affected the rise in Hindutva politics, in the case of Assam both cow-politics and Hindutva sentiments have had little effect. This paper proposes to examine this hypothesis by analysing Hima...
  • Article

  • Real life fiction: genre and truth claims in popular call centre narratives

    • Authors: Anna Guttman (2022)

  • Chetan Bhagat’s blockbuster, was the first popular novel about business process outsourcing work – but not the last. Since 2007, several new authors, including Vikrant Shukla, Shruti Saxena, Anish Trivedi, Brinda Narayan and Makhudar Yadav have all launched careers in fiction writing by employing call centre narra-tives, and drawing specifically on their corporate work experience. Much like popular compilations of ‘true’ stories by Sudhindra Mokhasi, these ostensibly fictional texts perform a variety of func-tions: instructing prospective call centre employees on the indus-try, breaking down negative perceptions of call centre work and entertaining the reader with tales of youthful hijinks. Perhaps most importantly, however, popular texts interpolate a growing Indian middle class ...
  • Article

  • The new ‘new liberal Indian woman’: The glocalization of chick lit

    • Authors: Srijani Ghosh (2022)

  • Since the process of economic liberalization began in India in the 1990s, globalization opened channels for the circulation of Western popular literature and culture in India, which led to their localized adaptation. An illustrative example of this phenomenon is Indian chick lit, which features plots that have a lot in common with Western chick lit but are adapted to reflect urban Indian popular culture, complete with popular Indian stereotypes like the arranged marriage to make it more relatable to the target Indian audience. Through an analysis of Swati Kaushal’s Piece of Cake (2004) and Advaita Kala’s Almost Single (2009), this essay will illustrate how Indian chick lit represents a newer version of Rupal Oza’s post- liberalization ‘new liberal Indian woman’ and glocalizes the ...