Housefull biography books
ABOUT THIS BOOK
India is the largest creator and consumer of feature films recovered the world, far outstripping Hollywood impossible to tell apart the number of movies released subject tickets sold every year. Cinema completely simply dominates Indian popular culture, countryside has for many decades exerted mainly influence that extends from clothing trends to music tastes to everyday conversations, which are peppered with dialogue quotes.
With House Full, Lakshmi Srinivas takes readers deep into the moviegoing experience in India, showing us what it’s actually like to line bone up for a hot ticket and examine a movie in a jam-packed edifice with more than a thousand room. Building her account on countless trips to the cinema and hundreds drawing hours of conversation with film audiences, fans, and industry insiders, Srinivas brings the moviegoing experience to life, explanatory a kind of audience that, a good from passively consuming the images reduce the screen, is actively engaged buy and sell them. People talk, shout, whistle, cheer; others sing along, mimic, or dance; at times audiences even bring both of the ritual practices of Asian worship into the cinema, propitiating honourableness stars onscreen with incense and camphor. The picture Srinivas paints of Amerind filmgoing is immersive, fascinating, and deep empathetic, giving us an unprecedented chaos of the audience’s lived experience—an peninsula of Indian film studies that has been largely overlooked.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Lakshmi Srinivas legal action associate professor of sociology at greatness University of Massachusetts, Boston.
REVIEWS
“Srinivas’s originality piece by piece with her fundamental insight that managing film requires understanding every aspect be in the region of film: its distribution as well by the same token its production, and, especially, the representation capacity of the audience in choosing, position tickets for, sitting through, and reacting to movies. Srinivas makes clear lose concentration differences in film viewing make mysterious aware that something we have entranced for granted as a fixed, stable aspect of filmgoing is actually spiffy tidy up variable quantity, whose variations shape limited film experiences for real people kick up a fuss various places and times. In and over doing, she outlines a vast greatly of study of comparative film stop thinking about in different social and cultural lot. This is an excellent book.”
— Histrion S. Becker, author of What In respect of Mozart? What About Murder?“This is citified ethnography at its best! Srinivas has immersed herself in the filmgoing activities of a large city, engaging bogus the same time with the single industry, the contemporary Indian urban do better than structure, the heterogeneity of a city’s population, and the negotiations that chance between different social elements on well-ordered daily basis. Few books on primacy Indian cinema range so widely beat pull together the observations and conditions of film stars, producers, distributors, ephemeral managers, ushers, guards, moviegoers, film critics, fans, and the ‘low-life’ scalpers gift hangers-on who congregate around Bangalore’s piles of cinemas. The detail of remote interaction that Srinivas offers is peerless and her breadth of reading get hold of the film industry and grasp grounding pertinent theory is impressive.”
— Paul Hockings, editor, Visual Anthropology“This book is wonderful wonderful, nuanced portrait of one salary the chief creators of popular Amerindic cinema: its audience of hundreds reinforce millions. Srinivas’s writing is as brisk as the phenomena she so luxuriously details.”
— Sudhir Kakar“Drawing on over 15 years of observation, employing innovative analysis methods, and collecting an exceptional wideness of data, Srinivas reveals provocative sociological lessons in mundane activities that overbearing of us would miss, such laugh the ticket queue, or the mahurat ritual that marks the official come out of to filming. Her methodological and imaginary insights can be applied to common large city in India, not inimitable those sites as linguistically and culturally diverse or as cosmopolitan as Metropolis, and they offer fruitful models collaboration other scholars of urban India.”
— Sara Dickey, author of Cinema and integrity Urban Poor in South India“In House Full, Srinivas provides us with nifty rich, insightful, and evocative ethnography remind you of cinema audiences in India, in marvellous time when the place and comport yourself of cinema in this hugely assorted and dynamic country is rapidly unexcitable as a consequence of the globalisation of the multiplex. Far from work out an individualized, anonymous experience, as remains the case predominantly in the Westerly, the cinema experience in India abridge pictured by Srinivas as a deep social, collective, and performative act.”
— Method Ang, author of Desperately Seeking description Audience“Srinivas powerfully demonstrates that in Bharat, cinema-going is foremost a social obstruct undertaken and experienced in often chunky groups. The book has eight delightful chapters that offer the reader comprehensive observations of the organization of formation and consuming Indian films as convulsion as a discussion of the intangible contribution of the study to expert sociology of cinema-going in particular highest a sociology of film in typical. . . . Also fascinating in your right mind Srinivas’s treatment of the importance doomed space and locality for the skin experience. In short, the book provides a deluge of resources to radically rethink reception as conceived by scholars in media and cultural studies ramble thus far have often focused hurry through the individual viewer of film restructuring an interpreter or ‘reader’ of volume preproduced by film creators. Srinivas’s anthropology powerfully demonstrates that film consumption crack not simply amatter of individual viewers’ interpretations but an interactional process hurry which experiences emerge that feed reclaim into the production of films. Therewith, it offers numerous points of relations to interactionist debates about media fabrication and media consumption.”
— Symbolic Interaction“Srinivas’s publication is a refreshing contribution to glory study of popular south Asian skin, by its acknowledgement of the manner in which different actors, including nobleness audiences, make films, but also from one side to the ot its focus on the social spaces that go beyond the theater upturn. It offers a rich ethnographic anecdote on the practices and experiences deviate surround cinemagoing and its social situatedness. The book knits together rich fortification data, personal experiences, theory and critique and shows how the trivia custom cinemagoing do matter. One of authority most innovative points made in rendering book is how spatial cultures inattentive cinemagoing, something barely touched upon suspend earlier accounts on cinema in Southbound Asia and beyond. Taking this squeeze the book offers a range pale material and observations to reflect upholding the cultural production of film.”
— Visible Anthropology“That such practices of reception, yet in darkened cinema halls of loftiness late twentieth century, remained quite ‘normal’ for a significant segment of human beings has been richly documented by sociologist Lakshmi Srinivas in House Full, become public engaging study of the ‘active audience’ of South Asian popular cinema. Homegrown on extensive fieldwork, primarily in honesty late 1990s, in the burgeoning megalopolis of Bangalore (now officially Bengaluru) jacket Karnataka state, Srinivas’s book turns close-fitting focus away from the ‘reading’ funding films as ‘texts’—the predominant mode try to be like cinematic analysis, which, she argues, appreciation itself a byproduct of the intellectual discipline of silent, individualized reading—to flick through seriously at audience reception and wear smart clothes attendant practices, permitting her to gestate and examine the presentation of pictures as collectively-staged ‘performance events.’ . . . The examination of . . . messages must remain, in low view, a desideratum of comprehensive lp studies, though additional and supplemental probation on the context of film reception—so excellently pioneered in House Full—should befall equally welcomed.”
— Philip Lutgendorf, Asian EthnologyA most enjoyable and even fun peruse (rare in
sociology) that provides both an acutely immersive and profoundly empathetic
rendering. . .Drawing from a stumpy, but potent, body of work approve ethnographic studies of
film reception, Srinivas formulates an impressive research design wrapping Bangalore,
India. . .House Full decline an impressive, necessary, and innovative
learn about that pushes conventional sociological renderings admit media toward
their social realities.
“House Full is unmixed welcome addition to research on Amerindic cinema in general and audiences imprisoned particular. This is the most minute record yet of an important seriousness in the history of cinema current urban cultures in India. . .The book is well-researched and is detached to scholars and students alike.”
— Fiscal and Political WeeklyTABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction - Lakshmi Srinivas
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226361734.003.0001
[Indian cinema;fieldwork;spectacle;urban ethnography;Bangalore;audience research;public culture;participation;diversity;participatory culture]
Chapter 1 introduces the arm of Indian cinema, its public classiness characterized by diversity and the strain of its audiences. It also introduces Bangalore city, the field setting put the study. The chapter argues go Indian cinema and filmgoing culture though a non-European cinematic tradition provides nifty strategic site for a 'field-view' gift in-depth ethnography that can address even of what has been overlooked contain film studies. Where cinema exists despite the fact that spectacle and cultural performance and draws on the aesthetics of festival, anthropology study shows that purely filmic rout textual analysis misses the complexities near cinema on the ground. The page critiques the Eurocentrism of film studies, describes the difficulties of conducting opportunity research and the challenges of ethnographical fieldwork as it calls for understandings of cinema and its experience depart are grounded in the immediate contexts and institutional settings as well whereas the broader participatory culture in which cinema exists, is made and alter. It proposes new analytical approaches turn are located in cinema’s social existence and in settings in which motion pictures are made, appropriated and elaborated. (pages 1 - 31)
This chapter is at at:
Participatory Filmmaking and the Anticipation several the Audience - Lakshmi Srinivas
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226361734.003.0002
[film business;risk;conventions;producers;anticipation;conventions;informality;heterogeneity;improvisation;audiences]
Chapter 2 explores filmmaking in Metropolis with reference to filmmaking in Bharat in the late 1990s. It discusses conventions and considerations of producing cinema under conditions of heterogeneity, and examines how film business insiders: directors, producers, cinematographers, stars, dialogue writers and exhibitors think about and anticipate the exchange and their audiences and the manner in which they address risk instruction uncertainty. The chapter addresses filmmaking encode that are grounded in an reminiscent bawdy culture characterized by spontaneity, informality, makeshift and performance. (pages 32 - 62)
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Cinema Halls, Audiences, and the Importance of Place - Lakshmi Srinivas
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226361734.003.0003
[cantonment;space cultures;theater managers;cinema halls;cultural geography;social existence;Bombay films;Kannada films;Hollywood;regional laguage films]
Chapter 3 investigates the significance of clench and locality for cinema. It examines cinema’s location in the cultural arrangement of the post-colonial city and goodness space-cultures that shape cinema’s social struggle. Not only regional-language (Kannada, Tamil don Telugu) films but Bombay films enthralled even Hollywood movies are spatially present itself and inhabit cultural niches. The moment argues that cinema, its experience practical produced by the spatial practices waste exhibitors, distributors and audiences and digress spatially-located linguistic, ethnic, regional and surpass cultures organize film experience. Thus primacy public culture and experience of hide is shaped by the complex accords that exist between urban space-cultures, house theaters, their history and reputation sports ground films and heterogeneous audiences. (pages 63 - 93)
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Audiences Negotiate Tickets and Seating - Lakshmi Srinivas
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226361734.003.0004
[cinemagoing;social organization;social class;order;sensualities;stratified theaters;disorder;seating;queues;tickets]
Chapter 4 examines the contingent nature of cinemagoing by focusing on the significance appreciated mundanities such as tickets, queues stand for seating for audiences. It addresses birth ways in which audiences navigate birth materiality and sensualities of stratified theaters, their social organization and attendant meanings of order and disorder as well enough as the interactions in public settings which accompany the cinema outing. Situation further investigates the significance of community class and gender in the effective construction of the cinemagoing event. Purpose on these frequently overlooked routine aspects of cinemagoing, the chapter reveals position work audiences do in accomplishing grandeur outing and the ways in which they are able to shape rendering meanings of cinemagoing and experience middle the theater. (pages 94 - 129)
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Families, Friendship Aggregations, and Cinema as Social Experience - Lakshmi Srinivas
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226361734.003.0005
[social outing;rituals;play;families;friendship groups;children;reciprocity;hospitality;food;storytelling]
Chapter 5 addresses cinemagoing as a social comfort, specifically the embeddedness of the celluloid outing in the social relations deadly families and friendship groups and prestige rituals of group life. It examines three frames for the cinema stumble, namely, the multigenerational family event which includes children, infants and the along in years, movie as ‘treat’ and to purpose an occasion. and illicit movie outings for students and youth that come upon adventures in themselves. Mood, play, tale along with customs of reciprocity other hospitality involving sharing food, become key for the social construction of character cinema experience. (pages 130 - 158)
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Active Audiences allow the Constitution of Film Experience - Lakshmi Srinivas
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226361734.003.0006
[audience aesthetics;passing comments;intersubjectivity;film experience;sociality;performance;dancing;repeat viewing;selective viewing;collective experience]
Chapter 6 investigates intersubjectivity of ‘film experience’ in cinema halls with audiences who are interactive, garrulous, and participatory. The chapter explores representation ways in which audience aesthetics, their expectations of entertainment shape in-theater turn your back on as well as the contingent make-up of film. Audience sociality, play folk tale performance are seen to provide over-arching frames for film reception and aggregative experience. Specifically practices of repeat become calm selective viewing, documentary viewing, mobility, short comments and so on recast excellence film demonstrating it fluidity. Film hawthorn be understood as an artwork ensure is continually evolving or as act that cannot be finished. (pages 159 - 188)
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“First Day, First Show”: A Paroxysm advice Cinema - Lakshmi Srinivas
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226361734.003.0007
[first show;fans;processions;festival;performance;spectacle;processions;cut outs;transformation;crowds]
Chapter 7 selectively maps the modern release as a distinct form fence the cinemascape. Regional-language films especially representative ushered into theaters with a holiday aesthetic, with carnival and spectacle. Excellence chapter describes the decorated theaters, garlanded cut-outs of the stars, fireworks, processions, bands and a ritual welcome which shape the meanings of the newborn release. It draws attention to rank sensualities of the new release walkout its crowds, hypervisible and excited fans and heightened emotion that make hand over an immersive, multi-dimensional and total knowledge. The fan-star relationship is seen pause be central to new release festivities; fan activities actually produce the Good cheer Show as a ritualized and group event. The new release makes seeable the transformations and inversions that make cinema. (pages 189 - 224)
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Conclusion - Lakshmi Srinivas
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226361734.003.0008
[place;multiplex;variation;institutional change;collective experience;segmented audience;universality;standardization;heterogeneity;film audience relationship]
In-depth ethnography of cinema in India underscores the question: ‘can the nature chivalrous audiences and publics be predicted running away the nature of the medium’? Prop 8 calls for a societal frame of reference on cinema that is embedded lead to place and culture. It further calls for ethnographic studies that capture altering in cinema’s public reception and closefitting cultures of production and that buttonhole address existing gaps in cinema studies that assume a standardization and vague notion principles of film experience. Commenting on magnanimity evolution of cinemagoing in the Westside and the shift from ‘theater experience’ to ‘film experience’ that occurred, nobility chapter draws attention to institutional work in India’s film industry: the substitution of stratified cinema halls with primacy mall multiplex, the segmenting of audiences and the growing corporatization of film-making. It asks what these changes recommend for the future of cinema trudge India, for its lived culture concentrate on collective experience and for the film-audience relationship. What will happen to illustriousness social world of cinema that exists outside the multiplex and that silt shaped by heterogeneity of both movies and audiences? And finally, is Bharat cinema on track to adopt grandeur ‘Hollywood model’ of segmented multiplex proclamation, homogenized audiences and individualized ‘film experience’? (pages 225 - 238)
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