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Outside the Lettered City
Cinema, Modernity, and the Public Sphere in Late Colonial India
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Book Presentation:
• Traces how middle-class Indians responded to the rise of the cinema as a popular form of mass entertainment in early 20th century India
• Draws from case-studies on the film cultures of Bombay and Kolkata to demonstrate how discourses about the cinematic public dovetailed into discourses about a national public
• Uses four main examples (the mythological film; the Indian Cinematograph Committee (ICC) Report and interview transcripts; the figure of the "modern woman " and the female star of the 1920s and 1930s; and essays and criticism of elite and middlebrow Bengali film journals) to show how a series of early films shaped views of the nation, encouraged sociopolitical reform, and educated the populace
Outside the Lettered City traces how middle-class Indians responded to the rise of the cinema as a popular form of mass entertainment in early 20th century India, focusing on their preoccupation with the mass public made visible by the cinema and with the cinema's role as a public sphere and a mass medium of modernity. It draws on archival research to uncover aspirations and anxieties about the new medium, which opened up tantalizing possibilities for nationalist mobilization on the one hand, and troubling challenges to the cultural authority of Indian elites on the other. Using case-studies drawn from the film cultures of Bombay and Kolkata, it demonstrates how discourses about the cinematic public dovetailed into discourses about a national public, giving rise to considerable excitement about cinema's potential to democratize the public sphere beyond the limits of print-literate culture, as well as to deepening anxieties about cultural degeneration. The case-studies also reveal that early twentieth century discourses about the cinema contain traces of a formative tension in Indian public culture, between visions of a deliberative public and spectres of the unruly masses.
About the Author:
Manishita Dass, Lecturer, Royal Holloway, University of London Manishita Dass is Lecturer in World Cinema at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Press Reviews:
"This book-length study of the emergence of cinema as a mass public entertainment and the discursive relationship between different cinematic constituencies brings forth a rich and complex cinematic culture and will be a meaningful addition to the field." - BioScope
"Over and above the strength of its arguments, Outside the Lettered City is a shining example of comprehensive archival research that is optimized through approaches drawn from ethnography, anthropology, and cultural history." - Studies in South Asian Film & Media
"Dass' book is an important contribution to the field of South Asian cinema studies and provides meaningful ways of understanding third world cinema in a global context." - South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
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