FINGERPRINTING POPULAR CULTURE (OIP)

Cinema in India has always been a play of middleclass sensibilities and fantasy life. And this middle class now seems to have come into its own. From the time of Indira Gandhi the political agendas of political parties and leaders have been increasingly shaped by middleclass consciousness and popular cinema has become for this class both an ideological phalanx and a major vehicle of selfexpression. The mediaexposed public in turn has become more accessible through the mythic structures and largerthanlife figures of popular cinema. The medium has become a new more powerful language of public discourse. This book like its companion volume The Secret Politics of our Desires 1998 is a product of this awareness. It uses Indian popular cinema to reexamine the relationships among society politics and culture. The six essays in it mostly by contributors from outside the world of film studies and film criticism span topics such as showmanship and stylization of images the human characterization of abstract concepts such as good and evil the openended episodic and fragmented nature of the narrative cemented together through devices such as family history and filial love and the reemergence of Hindustani as a secular language of film. The essays also cover popular cinemas fear of using comedy when dealing with the legitimacy and authority of the state the ideal femininity conjured by Lata Mangeshkars voice and the debts to Hollywood and the carnivalesque that shape Guru Dutts comedies.