Soft-soaping India
Soft-soaping India

Author: K. Moti Gokulsing

Publisher: Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 9781858563213

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

At least one third of India's billion inhabitants regularly watch Indian soap operas, which have displaced popular cinema as the prime entertainment genre. And in the Indian diaspora on every Continent, Indian soap operas are a feature of life -- a source of pleasure, discussion and shared identity. This book characterizes the forms of these soap operas and relates how they have evolved. It explores how they have contributed to shaping the identity of modern India. Initially developed by the national telecast service, Doordoshan, specifically to convey messages about women's role, contraception and other family issues. Doordoshan also engaged viewers with serializations of the two great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabarata. But with the onset of cable TV, soap operas became primarily entertainment driven and progressively more sensational. The book traces the impact of these different strands of soap operas and considers their impact on India's dominant concerns: the search for national unity, identity, the changing role of women, and the ideology of consumerism. "Soft Soaping India" is the first book to study Indian televised soap operas in all its forms and will be essential reading for students of the media and sociologists interested in India and its diaspora. It will also be relevant to Women's Studies.

Popular Culture in a Globalised India
Popular Culture in a Globalised India

Author: K. Moti Gokulsing

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-01-13

Total Pages: 539

ISBN-13: 1134023065

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As India celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of its independence, much praise was lavished on its emergence as a major player on the global stage. Its economic transformation and geopolitical significance as a nuclear power are matched by its globally resonant cultural resources. This book explores India’s rich popular culture. Chapters provide illuminating insights into various aspects of the social, cultural, economic and political realities of contemporary globalised India. Structured thematically and drawing on a broad range of academic disciplines, the book deals with critical issues including: - Film, television and TV soaps - Folk theatre, Mahabharata-Ramayana ,myths, performance, ideology and religious nationalism - Music, dance and fashion - Comics, cartoons, photographs, posters and advertising - Cyberculture and the software industry - Indian feminisms - Sports and tourism - Food culture Offering comprehensive coverage of the emerging discipline of popular culture in India, this book is essential reading for courses on Indian popular culture and a useful resource for more general courses in the field of cultural studies, media studies, history, literary studies and communication studies.

Prime Time Soap Operas on Indian Television
Prime Time Soap Operas on Indian Television

Author: Shoma Munshi

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1000052249

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines the phenomenon of prime time soap operas on Indian television. An anthropological insight into social issues and practices of contemporary India through the television, this volume analyzes the production of soaps within India’s cultural fabric. It deconstructs themes and issues surrounding the "everyday" and the "middle class" through the fiction of the "popular". In its second edition, this still remains the only book to examine prime time soap operas on Indian television. Without in any way changing the central arguments of the first edition, it adds an essential introductory chapter tracking the tectonic shifts in the Indian "mediascape" over the past decade – including how the explosion of regional language channels and an era of multiple screens have changed soap viewing forever. Meticulously researched and persuasively argued, the book traces how prime time soaps in India still grab the maximum eyeballs and remain the biggest earners for TV channels. The book will be of interest to students of anthropology and sociology, media and cultural studies, visual culture studies, gender and family studies, and also Asian studies in general. It is also an important resource for media producers, both in content production and television channels, as well as for the general reader.

Digital Queer Cultures in India
Digital Queer Cultures in India

Author: Rohit K. Dasgupta

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-03-16

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1351800574

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The work argues that new media, social networking sites (SNS), both web and mobile, and related technologies do not exist in isolation, rather they are critically embedded within other social spaces. This book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of gender studies, especially men's and masculinity studies, queer and LGBT studies, media and cultural studies, particularly new media and digital culture, sexuality and identity, politics, sociology & social anthropology, and South Asian studies.

Bollywood and Globalization
Bollywood and Globalization

Author: David J. Schaefer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0415625238

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The field of Bollywood studies has remained predominantly critical, theoretical and historical in focus. This book brings together qualitative and quantitative approaches to tackle empirical questions focusing on the relationship between soft power, hybridity, cinematic texts, and audiences. Adopting a critical-transcultural framework that examines the complex power relations that are manifested through globalized production and consumption practices, the book approaches the study of popular Hindi cinema from three broad perspectives: transcultural production contexts, content trends, and audiences. It firstly outlines the theoretical issues relevant to the spread of popular Indian cinema and emergence of India’s growing soft power. The book goes on to report on a series of quantitative studies that examine the patterns of geographical, cultural, political, infrastructural, and artistic power dynamics at work within the highest-grossing popular Hindi films over a 61-year period since independence. Finally, an additional set of studies are presented that quantitatively examine Indian and North American audience consumption practices. The book illuminates issues related to the actualization and maintenance of cinematic soft power dynamics, highlighting Bollywood’s increasing integration into and subsumption by globalized practices that are fundamentally altering India’s cinematic landscape and, thus, its unique soft power potential. It is of interest to academics working in Film Studies, Globalisation Studies, and International Relations.

Remote Control
Remote Control

Author: Shoma Munshi

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2012-12-15

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 8184757557

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What do the TV shows we’re watching tell us about ourselves? Television is the single most powerful and dynamic agent of change in India today. It is also the country’s most popular and accessible form of entertainment. Remote Control examines three kinds of programming—24x7 news, soap operas and reality shows—that have changed Indian television forever, and analyzes how these three genres, while drawing on different sources, are hybridized, indigenized and manage to ultimately project a distinctively Indian identity. Shoma Munshi’s book shows us how everyday reality in India in the twenty-first century shapes television; and how television, in turn, shapes us.

Bollywood Travels
Bollywood Travels

Author: Rajinder Dudrah

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-23

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1136451307

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Using an interdisciplinary framework, this book offers a fresh perspective on the issues of diaspora culture and border crossings in the films, popular cultures, and media and entertainment industries from the popular Hindi cinema of India. It analyses and discusses a range of key contemporary films in detail, such as Veer Zaara, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, and Dostana. The book uses the notion of travel analytically in and through the cinema to comment on films that have dealt with Indo-Pak border crossings, representations of diaspora, and gender and sexuality in new ways. It engages with common sense assumptions about everyday South Asian and diasporic South Asian cultures and representations as expressed in Bollywood cinema in order to look at these issues further. Moving towards an innovative exploration beyond the films, this book charts the circuits and routes of Bollywood as South Asian club cultures in the diaspora, and Hindi cinema entertainment shows around the world, as well as its impact on social media websites. Bollywood Travels is an original and thought provoking contribution to studies on Asian Culture and Society, Sociology, World Cinema, and Film, Media and Cultural Studies.

Religion and Technology in India
Religion and Technology in India

Author: Knut A. Jacobsen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1351204777

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Religion tends to flourish when technological developments create new possibilities for communication and representation, and simultaneously change as a consequence of these developments. This book explores intersections between religion and technology in India, at the present and in the colonial past, and how various forms of techno-religious intersections transform and open up for new religious practices, discourses, communities, and institutions. With focus on Indian contexts and religions, it discusses various empirical and theoretical aspects of how technological innovations create, alter, and negotiate religious spaces, practices and authorities. The book provides rich and multifaceted empirical examples of different ways in which technological practices relate to meanings, ideas, and practices of religions. The techno-religious intersections generate several questions about authority and power, the politics and poetics of identity, community and place, and how religious agency, information, and experience are mediated, commodified, and adjusted to new demands of societies. The chapters explore the Hindu, Jain, and Sikh traditions in relation to new technological developments and media, such as photography, new means of visualization, TV serials, mobile phones, and online communication. The book will be of interest to academics studying modern and contemporary India and South Asia, and especially the role of religion and technology.

Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas
Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas

Author: K. Moti Gokulsing

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-17

Total Pages: 741

ISBN-13: 113677291X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

India is the largest film producing country in the world and its output has a global reach. After years of marginalisation by academics in the Western world, Indian cinemas have moved from the periphery to the centre of the world cinema in a comparatively short space of time. Bringing together contributions from leading scholars in the field, this Handbook looks at the complex reasons for this remarkable journey. Combining a historical and thematic approach, the Handbook discusses how Indian cinemas need to be understood in their historical unfolding as well as their complex relationships to social, economic, cultural, political, ideological, aesthetic, technical and institutional discourses. The thematic section provides an up-to-date critical narrative on diverse topics such as audience, censorship, film distribution, film industry, diaspora, sexuality, film music and nationalism. The Handbook provides a comprehensive and cutting edge survey of Indian cinemas, discussing Popular, Parallel/New Wave and Regional cinemas as well as the spectacular rise of Bollywood. It is an invaluable resource for students and academics of South Asian Studies, Film Studies and Cultural Studies.

Mass Communication in India, Fifth Edition
Mass Communication in India, Fifth Edition

Author: Keval J. Kumar

Publisher: Jaico Publishing House

Published: 2020-12-10

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 8172243731

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Third Completely Revised and Updated EditionMass Communication in India is a result of the author s in-depth study and understanding of the media. The book deals with a general introduction to Communication Theory, Advertising, Television, Effects of Media and Development. In short, the book is designed to give the student of Mass Communication a general and comprehensive view of the modern and traditional media in India. It meets the objective of being a text book as well as a book that gives an overview of mass communication in India.