Tamil Cinema In The Twenty First Century

Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century explores the current state of Tamil cinema, one of India’s largest film industries. Since its inception a century ago, Tamil cinema has undergone major transformations, and today it stands as a foremost cultural institution that profoundly shapes Tamil culture and identity. This book investigates the structural, ideological, and societal cleavages that continue to be reproduced, new ideas, modes of representation and narratives that are being created, and the impact of new technologies on Tamil cinema. It advances a critical interdisciplinary approach that challenges the narratives of Tamil cinema to reveal the social forces at work.

Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century explores the current state of Tamil cinema, one of India’s largest film industries. Since its inception a century ago, Tamil cinema has undergone major transformations, and today it stands as a foremost cultural institution that profoundly shapes Tamil culture and identity. This book investigates the structural, ideological, and societal cleavages that continue to be reproduced, new ideas, modes of representation and narratives that are being created, and the impact of new technologies on Tamil cinema. It advances a critical interdisciplinary approach that challenges the narratives of Tamil cinema to reveal the social forces at work.

Based on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Onscreen/Offscreen is an exploration of the politics and being of filmic images. The book examines contestations inside and outside the Tamil film industry over the question "what is an image?" Answers to this question may be found in the ontological politics that take place on film sets, in theatre halls, and in the social fabric of everyday life in South India, from populist electoral politics and the gendering of social space to caste uplift and domination. Bridging and synthesizing linguistic anthropology, film studies, visual studies, and media anthropology, Onscreen/Offscreen rethinks key issues across a number of fields concerned with the semiotic constitution of social life, from the performativity and ontology of images to questions of spectatorship, realism, and presence. In doing so, it offers both a challenge to any approach that would separate image from social context and a new vision for linguistic anthropology beyond the question of "language."

Applying postmodern concepts and locating postmodern motifs in key commercial Hindi films, this innovative study reveals how Indian cinema has changed in the 21st century.

A stimulating and unusually wide-ranging collection of essays overviewing ways in which music functions in film soundtracks.

The Tamil Brahmans were a traditional, mainly rural, high-caste elite who have been transformed into a modern, urban, middle-class community since the late nineteenth century. Many Tamil Brahmans today are in professional and managerial occupations, such as engineering and information technology; most of them live in Chennai and other Tamilnadu towns, but others have migrated to the rest of India and overseas. This book, which is mainly based on the authors ethnographic research, describes and analyses this transformation. It is also a study of how and why the Tamil Brahmans privileged status within a hierarchical society has been perpetuated in the face of both a strong anti-Brahman movement in Tamilnadu, and a series of wider social, cultural, economic, political, and ideological changes that might have been expected to undermine their position completely. The major topics discussed include Brahman rural society, urban migration and urban ways of life, education and employment, the position of women, and religion and culture. The Tamil Brahmans class position, including the internal division into the upper- and lower-middle classes, and the process of class reproduction, are examined closely to analyze the congruence between Tamil Brahmanhood and middle classness, which as comparison with other Brahman and non-Brahman groups shows is highly unusual in contemporary India."

'A Must For [Anyone] Who Wants To Understand Tamil Nadu Politics' New Indian Express Tamil Nadu Is A State Very Different From The Rest Of India, Both Culturally And Historically. It Has Retained A Fundamentally Separate Identity For Itself In Language And Caste Structure, And This Is Most Evident In Its Politics. Cut-Outs, Caste And Cine Stars: The Word Of Tamil Politics Tells A Political Story That Has All The Elements Of A Blockbuster Film, Where Ironies And Larger-Than-Life Characters Abound: Periyar, A Kannada-Speaker, Who Introduced The Notions Of Tamil Self-Respect And Regional Pride, Yet Dismissed Tamil As 'A Barbaric Language'; The Matinee Idol Mgr, A Malayalee Born In Sri Lanka, Who Became Tamil Nadu'S Most Popular Mass Leader; The Dravidian Movement Which, By Its Own Ideology, Should Have Helped The Dalits But Has Instead Supported Only The Upwardly Mobile Middle Groups; And Parties That Rose To Power By Propagating Anti-Hindi And Anti-Brahmin Sentiments But Have Now Allied Themselves With The Bjp. It Is Fitting That This Reel-Like Scenario Is Presently Dominated By The Electoral Politics Of Karunanidhi And Jayalalithaa, One A Scriptwriter And The Other A Former Actress. Well-Known Writer And Journalist Vaasanthi Has Observed The Dramatis Personae In This Epic Drama At Close Quarters For A Decade. Now Updated With An Additional Chapter On The War Of Succession Cut-Outs, Caste And Cine Stars Offers An Objective And Insightful View Of A Political World That Is Both Fascinating And Perplexing.

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.