3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

Cinema enjoys extraordinary prominence in India, where in a given year the output of films in Bombay—to say nothing of other Indian film centers—far surpasses the number produced by all American studios combined. While many of India’s most successful films have been derided by critics in Europe and North America, this course takes them seriously both as an artistic form and as a historical tool, treating the films, together with their consumption and circulation, as a critical window into the social history of India. We will begin our investigation in the silent era to demonstrate how, even though the majority of early films are lost, reception histories can reveal much about the communities that viewed them. Moving into the Golden Age of Hindi cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, we will consider how the popularity of these films in Pakistan, Iran, West Africa, and the Soviet Union was tied to India’s global aspirations and self-representation. This course closes with an examination of the current era of Indian cinema and the extent to which its production values, moral and political claims, and viewership (especially in the diaspora) have responded to, and perhaps emboldened, domestic shifts toward economic liberalization and rightwing politics. Focusing more on the social spaces around Indian cinema than on specific films, this course touches on such topics as the segregation of cinemas, the politics of tiered seating, and the rise of multiplexes and (il)legal streaming. Our interrogation of these spaces will reveal how these films can expose social attitudes, even on matters like caste, class, religion, language, and race that they may address only obliquely. More than this, however, this course proposes that Indian cinema, as a primary means of social interaction, entertainment, and information for millions, is not only a historical record but a historical force in its own right.