Now available in paper back edition, this collection of essays aims to create a sharper awareness of popular Indian films as a possible source for an alternative, non-formal frame of political and social analysis. The emphasis is not on film theory or the aesthetics of popular cinema, but on the larger politics of culture as it is epitomized in popular films. It self-consciously disengages itself from conventional film theory and regular models of cultural studies to rethink cinema as a form of shared tacit political knowledge. For Ashish Nandy, the metaphor for Indian popular cinema is the urban slum; he argues that popular cinema is the slum’s point of view of Indian politics and society. Ziauddin Sardar’s and Rajni Bakshi’s essays are highly personalized narratives that they to capture the crises of Indian public life as reflected in the generational and stylistic changes in popular cinema. The other essays focus on what films say about the means available for ordinary citizens to intervene in Indian politics and urban life: the way the receiver of audio-visual messages creatively reshapes them for his or her own purposes the distinctive relationship of Tamil films with politics; and the absence in Indian cinema of any genuine outsider, either in the form of an alienated hero or a villain. This book is essential reading for social scientists and all those interested in the series study of films.
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