Deities and Devotees: Cinema, Religion, and Politics in South India

by Uma Maheswari Bhrugubanda

Overview

How have cinema and popular religion shaped each other? Is the display of devotion in a cinema hall the same as devotion in a temple? How do we understand cinema’s compelling power to mesmerize people? Unlike Hindi cinema, mythological and devotional films remained popular genres in Telugu (and Tamil too) until quite recently. The political success of film star N.T. Rama Rao, well-known for his portrayal of gods and kings, posed afresh the problem of cinema’s power to enthral. To what extent viewers were persuaded of his divinity became a matter of debate. In later decades, the figure of another kind of viewer haunted the discourses around cinema, that of the female viewer who got possessed during screenings of goddess films. Using questions around viewership as the focal point, this book studies the intersections between popular cinema, religion, and politics in South India. The first full-length study of Telugu mythological and devotional films, it combines an account of the history and politics of these genres with an anthropology of film-making and viewership practices. It argues that cinema and other audio-visual technologies lead to the re-orientation of sensibilities and the cultivation of new sensory modes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199093274
Publisher:	OUP India
Publication date:	09/18/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	268
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Uma Maheswari Bhrugubanda, Assistant Professor, EFL University, Hyderabad, has studied at the University of Hyderabad and Columbia University. She has Masters' degrees in English and Anthropology and a PhD in Socio-cultural Anthropology. Her recent publications include Vegetarians Only: Stories of Telugu Muslims (Orient Blackswan, 2016) which is a translation of stories by the Telugu writer Skybaaba. She edited this book along with Dr. A. Suneetha. She is also a co-author of the book, Towards a World of Equals: A Bilingual Textbook on Gender. (Hyderabad: Telugu Akademi, 2015)
Her academic articles and reviews have appeared in Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, Critical Quarterly and Contributions to Indian Sociology. She has been teaching in EFL University, Hyderabad since 2006 and has taught courses on cultural theory, feminist and gender studies, religion and secularism.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Cinema and Religion-New Genres, New Publics, and New Subjectivities

Part I: History and Politics of Telugu Mythological and Devotional Films

1. From Representing Gods to Representing the Telugu People: NTR, Mythologicals, and Populism
2. Exemplary Saints and Citizens: Negotiating History and Religious Difference in the Saint Film
3. The Good Wife and the Goddess: Scripting Roles for the Female Citizen through Devotional Films

Part II: Anthropology of Film-Making and Viewing

4. Embodied Engagements: Viewership Practices and the Habitus of Telugu Cinema
5. Performing Dieties and Devotees: Debating Film-Making Practices

Conclusion
Producing the "Reality" of Religion: New Ecologies of Media

Filmography
Bibliography
Index
About the Author