CSAS Lecture Series | Reactive Viewing: Screens and Publics in 21st Century India

Film and television in India have engendered excessive responses from sections of the audience for well over half a century now. There are well-documented studies of such excesses in the domains of film star fandom and popular devotion alike. In the more recent past, screen images have been accused of causing violence and even death (of viewers either due to shock or suicide). Recent scholarship on print media expands the field of audience excesses by suggesting that newspapers and magazines are not far behind as triggers of violence. And none of this research is even referring to the minefield of social media outrage. Although it should not come as a surprise to researchers that contemporary publics do not easily fit into the Habsermasian conception of the public sphere, literature on old and new media continue to be framed by it. Furthermore, the spectatorial response that constitutes screen publics in our time is not satisfactorily explained by concepts such as darsan, corpothetics and the active audience. I examine the evolving texts and contexts of film star fandom to argue that forms of engagement characteristic of fan activity offer insights into present day media publics—even those that have nothing do with either stars or the cinema.

S.V. Srinivas is a professor at the School of Liberal Studies, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. He has been associated with the Bengaluru-based Centre for the Study of the Culture and Society in various capacities since 1998 and is now one of its trustees. He held visiting positions at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (2004-05), Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science (2013-15) and the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad (2014). He was the ICCR Chair Professor of Indian Culture and Society at Georgetown University (2012-13). His research focuses on the intersections between popular culture and mass politics. He is currently working on Telugu and Tamil language blockbusters. He is the author of Megastar (Oxford University Press, 2009) and Politics as Performance (Permanent Black, 2013).