This work breaks new ground in the understanding of South Indian cinema and politics. Through incisive analysis and original concepts it illustrates the private, public and cinematic personas of MGR and Rajinikanth. It challenges the popular and scholarly myths surrounding them and shows the constant negotiation of their on-screen and off-screen identities. The book revisits the entire political history of post-Independent Tamil Nadu through its cinema,and presents a refreshing psycho-political and cultural map of contemporary South India. This absorbing volume will be an important read for scholars, teachers and students of film studies, culture and media studies, and politics, especially those interested in South India.

This work breaks new ground in the understanding of South Indian cinema and politics. Through incisive analysis and original concepts it illustrates the private, public and cinematic personas of MGR and Rajinikanth. It challenges the popular and scholarly myths surrounding them and shows the constant negotiation of their on-screen and off-screen identities. The book revisits the entire political history of post-Independent Tamil Nadu through its cinema,and presents a refreshing psycho-political and cultural map of contemporary South India. This absorbing volume will be an important read for scholars, teachers and students of film studies, culture and media studies, and politics, especially those interested in South India.

Hitherto, the academic study of Indian cinema has focused primarily on Bollywood, despite the fact that the Tamil film industry, based in southern India, has overtaken Bollywood in terms of annual output. This book examines critically the cultural and cinematic representations in Tamil cinema. It outlines its history and distinctive characteristics, and proceeds to consider a number of important themes such as gender, religion, class, caste, fandom, cinematic genre, the politics of identity and diaspora. Throughout, the book cogently links the analysis to wider social, political and cultural phenomena in Tamil and Indian society. Overall, it is an exciting and original contribution to an under-studied field, also facilitating a fresh consideration of the existing body of scholarship on Indian cinema.

This book is one of the comprehensive studies about the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where all the Chief Ministers since 1967 have been former actors. By problematising the popular misconception that Bollywood is a synecdoche of Indian cinema, this book explores the cultural history of South India through the prism of films.

This book considers the popular cinema of North India (Bollywood) and how it recasts literary classics. It addresses the socio-political implications of popular reinterpretations of elite culture, exploring gender issues and the perceived sexism of popular films and how that plays out when literature is reworked into film.

This study of the Indian cinema is concerned particularly with cinema-goers in Madurai, a city in Tamil Nadu, South India. Sara Dickey reviews the history of Tamil film, explains the structure of the industry, and presents the perspective of the filmmakers. However, the core of the book is an analysis of the films themselves and the place they have in the lives of poor people, who organize fan clubs, discuss the films and the actors, and in various ways relate these fantasy worlds to their own lives. Dickey argues that the effect of these films is ultimately conservative, for they glorify poverty while holding out the hope of a better future. Her rich ethnography makes an interesting contribution to the study of film in India and, more generally, to the understanding of popular culture in an Indian city.