Research in the Age of Reaction

ConTrust Research seminar „India as Method: Challenges and Perspectives in the Study of Media and Politics in Contemporary South Asia“

With S. V. Srinivas

The rapid transformation of films into media content in the 21st century is coeval with the proliferation of screens, and sites of engagement with moving images. Interestingly, the media ecology in which films are produced and consumed has thrust post-celluloid cinema into political battles whose scale is puzzling, considering the decline in theatrical viewing since the 1990s. In this talk I draw attention to ‘controversies’ surrounding films—specific sequences or lines, to be more precise—over the past decade or so to suggest that we are witnessing the emergence of a public that actively reacts to films and other texts. The reaction is occasionally violent, often performative and typically involves the discovery of coded messages hidden in texts. I argue that the reactive public is a useful point of entry into the discussion of the mediatization of everyday life and politics in India.

S.V. Srinivas is a Professor at the School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University, Bangalore. He works on the intersections between popular culture and mass politics in India. He is author of two books on film star politicians of South India: Megastar (Oxford University Press, 2009) and Politics as Performance (Permanent Black, 2013).