Neelima Shukla-Bhatt
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199976416
- eISBN:
- 9780199396467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199976416.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
This chapter considers the circulation of the songs, narratives, and image of the saint-poet through modern media as forming inspirational popular culture. Briefly engaging with different views of ...
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This chapter considers the circulation of the songs, narratives, and image of the saint-poet through modern media as forming inspirational popular culture. Briefly engaging with different views of popular culture in scholarly debates, it points out that in the wide circulation of Narasinha's songs and hagiography through mass media and their association with business, they have aspects of popular culture. Yet they form a site of popular culture where socially important meanings have been articulated by its producers and consumers (who in the case of YouTube, are also its co-producers). Focusing specifically on a 1940 Hindi film made at Gandhi's suggestion, a 1991 Gujarati television serial, and several popular clips on YouTube, this chapter shows that these products of mass media serve as sites for creating socially relevant meanings for producers, actors, and viewers from diverse backgrounds. They form platforms for pluralistic conversations.Less
This chapter considers the circulation of the songs, narratives, and image of the saint-poet through modern media as forming inspirational popular culture. Briefly engaging with different views of popular culture in scholarly debates, it points out that in the wide circulation of Narasinha's songs and hagiography through mass media and their association with business, they have aspects of popular culture. Yet they form a site of popular culture where socially important meanings have been articulated by its producers and consumers (who in the case of YouTube, are also its co-producers). Focusing specifically on a 1940 Hindi film made at Gandhi's suggestion, a 1991 Gujarati television serial, and several popular clips on YouTube, this chapter shows that these products of mass media serve as sites for creating socially relevant meanings for producers, actors, and viewers from diverse backgrounds. They form platforms for pluralistic conversations.
Uma Maheswari Bhrugubanda
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780199487356
- eISBN:
- 9780199093281
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199487356.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
If cinema has the power to possess people, persuade, or mesmerize them, how do we understand that compelling power? Is the display of devotion in the cinema hall the same as devotion in a temple? How ...
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If cinema has the power to possess people, persuade, or mesmerize them, how do we understand that compelling power? Is the display of devotion in the cinema hall the same as devotion in a temple? How have cinema and popular religion shaped each other? Through engaging with these questions, this book presents a genealogical study of the intersections between cinema, religion, and politics in South India. The first full-length study of the Telugu mythological and devotional films, this book combines a history of these genres with an anthropology of film-making and viewership practices. In the decades from the 1940s to the 2000s, it examines film texts, as well as methods of film-making and publicity, modes of film criticism as well as practices of viewership. The book draws on film and media theory to foreground the specificity of new technologies and the new kind of publics they create. Anthropological theories of religion, secularism, embodiment, and affect are combined with political theories of citizenship to complicate our understanding of the overlapping formations of film spectators, citizens, and devotees. It argues that the cinema offers a unique opportunity to explore the affective dimensions of citizenship and the formation of citizen–devotees.Less
If cinema has the power to possess people, persuade, or mesmerize them, how do we understand that compelling power? Is the display of devotion in the cinema hall the same as devotion in a temple? How have cinema and popular religion shaped each other? Through engaging with these questions, this book presents a genealogical study of the intersections between cinema, religion, and politics in South India. The first full-length study of the Telugu mythological and devotional films, this book combines a history of these genres with an anthropology of film-making and viewership practices. In the decades from the 1940s to the 2000s, it examines film texts, as well as methods of film-making and publicity, modes of film criticism as well as practices of viewership. The book draws on film and media theory to foreground the specificity of new technologies and the new kind of publics they create. Anthropological theories of religion, secularism, embodiment, and affect are combined with political theories of citizenship to complicate our understanding of the overlapping formations of film spectators, citizens, and devotees. It argues that the cinema offers a unique opportunity to explore the affective dimensions of citizenship and the formation of citizen–devotees.
