1st Edition
Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century Caste, Gender and Technology
Tamil Cinema in the Twenty-First Century explores the current state of Tamil cinema, one of India’s largest film industries. Since its inception a century ago, Tamil cinema has undergone major transformations, and today it stands as a foremost cultural institution that profoundly shapes Tamil culture and identity. This book investigates the structural, ideological, and societal cleavages that continue to be reproduced, new ideas, modes of representation and narratives that are being created, and the impact of new technologies on Tamil cinema. It advances a critical interdisciplinary approach that challenges the narratives of Tamil cinema to reveal the social forces at work.
List of Figures. List of Contributors. Acknowledgements. Foreword: A Refreshing look at Tamil Cinema by S. Theodore Baskaran. Introduction. Caste. 1 Contested Narratives: Filmic Representations of North Chennai in Contemporary Tamil Cinema - Karthikeyan Damodaran and Hugo Gorringe. 2 Conscripts of Cinema: The Dangerous and Deviant Third Wave - Dickens Leonard. 3 Being Dalit, Being Tamil: The Politics of Kabali and Kaala -Karthick Ram Manoharan. Gender. 4 When Madhi Dances like Dhanush: Gender Representations in Irudhi Suttru Shakila Zamboulingame. 5 White is the New Brown: Constructing Amy Jackson as a desirable object in Tamil Cinema - Meenaatchi Saverimuttu. 6 Misogyny: A Content Analysis of Break-up Songs in Tamil Cinema Premalatha Karupia. 7 Religiously middle class: Ammaṉ films and the new middle class in contemporary Tamil Nadu - Lisa Blake. 8 Redefining the Mass-Hero: The Rise of the Engineer Hero in Contemporary Tamil cinema - Vasugi Kailasam. Technology. 9 A Rumble in the Movie Halls: Cinema in the 'orphaned state' -Maya Ranganathan. 10 Will the real Kollywood fan please stand up? Tamil film fandom in the new millennium - Roos Gerritsen. 11 Post millennial Tamil cinema: Transitional generation and the traces of continuity Eswaran Swarnavel. 12 Tamil Platform Cinema - Vijay Devadas and Selvaraj Velayutham.
Biography
Selvaraj Velayutham is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Macquarie University, Australia.
Vijay Devadas is Associate Professor in the School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand.
