Popular Culture In A Globalised India

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.

This book explores India’s rich popular culture and provides illuminating insights into various aspects of the social, cultural, economic and political realities of contemporary globalised India. It 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.

The over-the-top musicals of Bollywood may be the most familiar aspect of Indian popular culture, but there are many more, all explored in this fascinating volume. Pop Culture India! Media, Arts, and Lifestyle follows the rise of modern India's pop culture world, especially since the 1980s, when relaxed censorship and economic liberalization led to an explosion in movies, music, mass media, consumerism, spiritual practices, and more. It is a captivating introduction to a diverse nation whose appetite for entertainment has led to some surprising twists and turns in recent history. How did a popular Indian television series spark a change in government and the rise of Hindu nationalism? Are some Bollywood film companies laundering money for organized crime, or even al Qaeda? What accounts for the overwhelming popularity of that quaint vestige of colonialism, cricket? The answers, and many more intriguing insights, await the reader in Pop Culture India!

Emphasizing the global nature of Indian and Chinese film, television, and digital media, Reorienting Global Communication: Indian and Chinese Media Beyond Borders provides a diverse mix of alternative perspectives that collectively shift the discussion of media globalization away from Hollywood and New York. Linked by a shared history of colonialism, state socialism, large diasporas, and recent market liberalization, India and China are poised to become twenty-first-century world powers. While both enjoy a rich ensemble of religious iconography, legends, and folk traditions, Indian and Chinese producers and consumers are today challenged to find modes of expression that are culturally authentic and commercially viable in an increasingly globalized media environment. Essays cover topics such as the influence of transnational Indian families on the narrative elements of Bollywood productions, the rise of made-in-China blockbusters, the development of pan-Asian cinema, and migrants' use of the Internet to maintain connections with their homelands. Contributors are Michael Curtin, Chua Beng Huat, Shanti Kumar, Chin-Chuan Lee, Madhavi Mallapragada, Divya C. McMillin, Sreya Mitra, Sujata Moorti, Zhongdang Pan, Aswin Punathambekar, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Hemant Shah, Lakshmi Srinivas, Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, and Yuezhi Zhao.

This book is a collection of incisive articles on the interactions between Indian Popular Cinema and the political and cultural ideologies of a new post-Global India.

Follows the rise of modern India's pop culture world, especially since the 1980s, when relaxed censorship and economic liberalization led to an explosion in movies, music, mass media, consumerism, spiritual practices, and more. It is a captivating introduction to a diverse nation whose appetite for entertainment has led to some surprising twists and turns in recent history.

East Asian pop culture can be seen as an integrated cultural economy emerging from the rise of Japanese and Korean pop culture as an influential force in the distribution and reception networks of Chinese language pop culture embedded in the ethnic Chinese diaspora. Taking Singapore as a locus of pan-Asian Chineseness, Chua Beng Huat provides detailed analysis of the fragmented reception process of transcultural audiences and the processes of audiences’ formation and exercise of consumer power and engagement with national politics. In an era where exercise of military power is increasingly restrained, pop culture has become an important component of soft power diplomacy and transcultural collaborations in a region that is still haunted by colonization and violence. The author notes that the aspirations behind national governments' efforts to use popular culture is limited by the fragmented nature of audiences who respond differently to the same products; by the danger of backlash from other members of the importing country's population that do not consume the popular culture products in question; and by the efforts of the primary consuming country, the People's Republic of China to shape products through co-production strategies and other indirect modes of intervention.