Indian Film Stars: New Critical Perspectives
Indian Film Stars offers original insights and important reappraisals of film stardom in India from the early talkie era of the 1930s to the contemporary period of global blockbusters. The collection represents a substantial intervention to our understanding of the development of film star cultures in India during the 20th and 21st centuries.
The contributors seek to inspire and inform further inquiries into the histories of film stardom-the industrial construction and promotion of star personalities, the actual labouring and imagined lifestyles of professional stars, the stars' relationship to specific aesthetic cinematic conventions (such as frontality and song-dance) and production technologies (such as the play-back system and post-synchronization), and audiences' investment in and devotion to specific star bodies-across the country's multiple centres of film production and across the overlapping (and increasingly international) zones of the films' distribution and reception. The star images, star bodies and star careers discussed are examined in relation to a wide range of issues, including the negotiation and contestation of tradition and modernity, the embodiment and articulation of both Indian and non-Indian values and vogues; the representation of gender and sexuality, of race and ethnicity, and of cosmopolitan mobility and transnational migration; innovations and conventions in performance style; the construction and transformation of public persona; the star's association with film studios and the mainstream media; the star's relationship with historical, political and cultural change and memory; and the star's meaning and value for specific (including marginalised) sectors of the audience.

1131462798
Indian Film Stars: New Critical Perspectives
Indian Film Stars offers original insights and important reappraisals of film stardom in India from the early talkie era of the 1930s to the contemporary period of global blockbusters. The collection represents a substantial intervention to our understanding of the development of film star cultures in India during the 20th and 21st centuries.
The contributors seek to inspire and inform further inquiries into the histories of film stardom-the industrial construction and promotion of star personalities, the actual labouring and imagined lifestyles of professional stars, the stars' relationship to specific aesthetic cinematic conventions (such as frontality and song-dance) and production technologies (such as the play-back system and post-synchronization), and audiences' investment in and devotion to specific star bodies-across the country's multiple centres of film production and across the overlapping (and increasingly international) zones of the films' distribution and reception. The star images, star bodies and star careers discussed are examined in relation to a wide range of issues, including the negotiation and contestation of tradition and modernity, the embodiment and articulation of both Indian and non-Indian values and vogues; the representation of gender and sexuality, of race and ethnicity, and of cosmopolitan mobility and transnational migration; innovations and conventions in performance style; the construction and transformation of public persona; the star's association with film studios and the mainstream media; the star's relationship with historical, political and cultural change and memory; and the star's meaning and value for specific (including marginalised) sectors of the audience.

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Indian Film Stars: New Critical Perspectives

Indian Film Stars: New Critical Perspectives

by Michael Lawrence
Indian Film Stars: New Critical Perspectives

Indian Film Stars: New Critical Perspectives

by Michael Lawrence

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Overview

Indian Film Stars offers original insights and important reappraisals of film stardom in India from the early talkie era of the 1930s to the contemporary period of global blockbusters. The collection represents a substantial intervention to our understanding of the development of film star cultures in India during the 20th and 21st centuries.
The contributors seek to inspire and inform further inquiries into the histories of film stardom-the industrial construction and promotion of star personalities, the actual labouring and imagined lifestyles of professional stars, the stars' relationship to specific aesthetic cinematic conventions (such as frontality and song-dance) and production technologies (such as the play-back system and post-synchronization), and audiences' investment in and devotion to specific star bodies-across the country's multiple centres of film production and across the overlapping (and increasingly international) zones of the films' distribution and reception. The star images, star bodies and star careers discussed are examined in relation to a wide range of issues, including the negotiation and contestation of tradition and modernity, the embodiment and articulation of both Indian and non-Indian values and vogues; the representation of gender and sexuality, of race and ethnicity, and of cosmopolitan mobility and transnational migration; innovations and conventions in performance style; the construction and transformation of public persona; the star's association with film studios and the mainstream media; the star's relationship with historical, political and cultural change and memory; and the star's meaning and value for specific (including marginalised) sectors of the audience.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781844578559
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 05/28/2020
Pages: 264
Product dimensions: 7.63(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Michael Lawrence is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. He is the author of Sabu (BFI Publishing, 2014) and the co-editor, with Laura McMahon, of Animal Life and the Moving Image (BFI Publishing, 2015), and, with Karen Lury, of The Zoo and Screen Media: Images of Exhibition and Encounter (2016) and, with Rachel Tavenor, of Global Humanitarianism and Media Culture (2019).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Contributors xi

Acknowledgements xv

Introduction Michael Lawrence 1

1 Shanta Apte and the unexpected Anupama Kapse 15

2 Confessions of Indian cinema's first woman superstar: Kanan Devi's memoirs, film history and digital archives Ranita Chatterjee 31

3 Star's 'dust': Miss Kumari and the fossilized memory of the 'first Malayalam female star' Darshana Sreedhar Mini 45

4 In the wink of an eye: The comedic universe of Johnny Walker Radha Dayal 59

5 Dharmendra Singh Deol: Masculinity and the late-Nehruvian hero in Hindi cinema Anustup Basu 73

6 Rajkumar and the Kannada-language film M. K. Raghavendra 87

7 The feudal lord reincarnate: Mohanlal and the politics of Malayali masculinity Meena T. Pillai 99

8 From Gandhi to Jinnah: National dilemmas in the stardom of Rattan Kumar Salma Siddique 109

9 From Son of India to teen king: Sajid Khan and transnational stardom Meenasarani Linde Murugan 125

10 Harbhajan Maan: The transnational migrant success story of Punjabi cinema Harjant S. Gill 137

11 Helen: The Chin Chin Chu girl Sudesh Mishra 151

12 'She's everything that's unpardonable': Hema Malini, dream girl on a motorbike Rosie Thomas 163

13 Sridevi, queen of farce; Comedy, performance and star persona in popular Hindi cinema Nandana Bose 181

14 The irresistible badness of Salman Khan Shohini Ghosh 193

15 Shah Rukh Khan starring as Shah Rukh Khan: Performance style, audience expectation and self-parody Charlie Henniker 205

16 The curious case of Katrina Kaif: NRI stardom and ethnicity in Bollywood Midath Hayder 219

Index 232

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