This book is a genealogical study of the intersections between popular cinema, popular religion, and politics in South India. Focusing on the mythological and devotional genres, it argues that cinema's mediation of religion presents us with an opportunity to explore the affective dimensions of citizenship.
The predominance of the 'religious' genres was unique to early Indian cinema. Both in the silent cinema period and well into the late 1940s, these genres were extremely popular with audiences. The films participated in elaborating the discourse of nationalism, albeit by positing a glorious Hindu past. However, they also participated in the project of social reform and regeneration. Despite this, their popularity produced anxiety among the elite that the Indian masses would remain mere devotees and never fully attain the status of free citizens.
While the mythologicals and devotional films declined in Hindi cinema in the 1950s, in Telugu (and Tamil too) they remained popular well into the later decades of the last century. The political success of the film star Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao (also referred to as N.T. Rama Rao or NTR), well-known for his portrayal of gods and kings, posed afresh the problem of cinema's mesmerizing power that seemed to persuade viewers of the divinity of film stars. In later decades, the figure of another kind of viewer haunted the discourses around cinema, that of the female viewer who got possessed in the film theatre during screenings of goddess films.
t gives me great pleasure that 1 can finally place on record my deep gratitude towards the many people and institutions who have helped, supported, and sustained me over the many years it took to complete this book.
First, this book is based on my PhD thesis, and I would like to thank my dissertation committee members at the Department of Anthropology in Columbia University-Nicholas Dirks, Partha Chatterjee, and David Scott-and my external readers Sudipta Kaviraj and William Mazzarella. Their generous and insightful engagement with my thesis laid the foundation for this work. Two fellowships that I received at that time the SSRC-IDRF grant and the Columbia University Travelling Grant-allowed me to do much of the fieldwork for this project. My thanks are also due to the staff at the National Film Archives of India, Pune; the Tamil Nadu State Archives, Chennai; the libraries at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bengaluru; and Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies, Hyderabad.
My sincere thanks to my colleagues in the Department of Cultural Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad-firstly to M. Madhava Prasad for his exemplary scholarship and warmth and generosity, and to K. Satyanarayana, Satish Poduval, and M. Parthasarathi, whose intellectual camaraderie and friendship make the department a nurturing and hospitable place.
I also deeply appreciate the warm friendship of other colleagues at the university, B.S. Sherin, Asma Rasheed, Madhumeeta Sinha, Sri Vani, Maya Pandit, and H. Nikhila.
A goddess film that does not move the female audience into a trance, one that does not induce possession among at least some of them ought to be considered a failure.
-Kodi Ramakrishna, film director
There was no question of God not being elected.... The cinema has stood the traditional relationship of myth and fact on its head. Myth has become fact. The film star who plays God has become God.
-Chidananda Dasgupta, film critic
he genesis of this book lies in a couple of puzzles that have engaged me for a long time-one is the figure of the possessed female spectator, which became a subject of discussion with the popularity of goddess films in the 1990s; and the second is the role of mythological cinema in the political success of the film star N.T. Rama Rao (NTR) in the 1980s. odering over these puzzles has led me to consider the history of genres in Telugu cinema, as well as the practices of film-making and viewership. It pushed me to reflect upon the links between religion, cinema, and politics, which subsequently opened up the terrain of the affective in politics, and helped in understanding cinema's centrality in shaping the affective dimension of citizenship.
In the early 1990s, I had just joined university, and had found a proper name for all the incoherent ideas and the sense of injustice and outrage that I had felt, thought about, discussed, and debated intensely, that name was feminism, and among the new set of friends, teachers, and activists that I met, the question of women's agency was a major concern. In the mid-1990s, when the film Ammoru turned out to be a major success, I initially refused to watch the film. In fact, I was actually in deep despair about its popularity, worrying about how easily women seemed to participate in their own subordination. To my secular feminist sensibilities, the film sounded entirely predictable an ultra-faithful pativrata, an avenging goddess, lots of weeping and screaming, and melodrama at its worst. In any case, the genre had confirmed its low-budget B movie status a while ago. However, then there were stories about Ammori's special effects, about its success, and the thronging women viewers, many of whom were supposedly getting possessed in theatres. This posed a series of questions-how to understand the appeal of the film? How to approach the question of religion, with- out simply seeing it as an instrument for women's oppression? Was the goddess figure somehow empowering for women? How do we understand empowerment itself? Was there more to this genre that needed closer attention? How to study religion in cinema? These were some of the initial questions that confronted me.
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