media, information, the contemporary

Tag: Cinema


  • From Popular to Viral: The HAHK-DDLJ Media Swirl

    This is the third research note from Abhija Ghosh, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme. In mid 2014, a range of online film news content focused on two big blockbuster family romances of the nineties, Hum Aapke Hain Koun and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, marking twenty years since their…

  • Item Numbers and Loudness

    This is the third research note from Silpa Mukherjee, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme. MORTY ROSENFIELD WAS SO STONED on Euphoria, a hot new synthetic drug, that he danced faster than a speeding cursor on a computer screen. It was 3 o’ clock one morning last July at…

  • Starlets as Item Girls #OBSCENITYDEBATES

    This is the second research note from Silpa Mukherjee, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme. Dances have remained an integral part of our culture, life and films for all times. But for a long time one has failed to see any worthwhile dance in our films. I remember those…

  • Streaming Nostalgia: Listening to Nineties Film Music Online

    This is the second research note from Abhija Ghosh, one of the short-term social media research fellows at The Sarai Programme. The reactivation of nineties Hindi cinema in public memory through several media processes, despite its reputation of being the culturally bad object, consistently critiqued for its aesthetic values, repetitive genre conventions and maudlin romantic…

  • Lovely* Interfaces: The Many Lives of the Item Number in Social and Digital Media

    In this post, Silpa Mukherjee, one of the researchers who received the Social Media Research grant for 2015, introduces her proposed work.

    The item number [2] in Bombay cinema is an ensemble form navigating between the circuits of B cinema and the allure of the mainstream. As a dance form and practice, the item number has been shaped by a wide range of intersecting influences: 1990s B cinema, the fashion and modelling industry, music video culture and the 24*7 music television format introduced in globalised India. I propose to trace the life of the item number through social and digital media and the affective landscape transmitted through multiple interfaces.

  • Afterlife of the Nineties Romantic Film Song in the Virtual Public Sphere

    In this post, Abhija Ghosh, one of the researchers who received the Social Media Research grant for 2015, introduces her proposed work.

    In this project, I am interested in observing the popularity of nineties romantic cinema and music across several internet media streams such as video sharing platforms, online radio music channels, nineties fan sites and lists in order to map the registers of popular memory, affect and pleasure that mark an emerging cultural afterlife of this decade of Hindi cinema. Social media fan pages like All About 90s evoke cultural associations with the decade by regularly alluding to nineties media forms such as cassettes, video tapes and their object lives, or television broadcasts and their aesthetic convention, however it is the nineties romantic film song that seems to occupy a special space of nostalgia in the collective memory of such internet communities.

  • The Medium is the Message? Gossip and Hybrid Televisuality of Malayalee House

    In McLuhan’s view the emergent televisuality of the time was marked by an intricate structural relationship between the new forms of media such as television and their function as social carriers of messages. In this post I look at ‘gossip’ as a formal constituent of Malayalee House and as an integral part of the cultural and social content contained therein… The incessant repetition and replicability of the information as it is relayed across digital social media also in many ways resembles the circuits of gossip… I argue that the use of gossip as a framing device in Malayalee House is analogous to the ways social media operates in assembling scattered bits of information…

  • Santosh Pandit Hate Groups and Memes: Online Ethnography of Social Media

    In the interaction with members of hate groups, what became evident was that memes served multiple purposes, depending more on the viewer’s prior knowledge of the person/event spoofed.At the same time, no one identified the term “meme” or “meming” (a relatively new term for many of my respondents) in our conversations. On the other hand, they described the act of meming as an extension of their everyday Facebook activity where it featured as what they called padam (picture) with “dialogues”… The intensity of circulation of these memes was such that even the fan’s groups widely shared memes brought out by the hate groups…

  • sarai - the many lives of Indian cinema - poster

    The Many Lives of Indian Cinema Conference – Recordings – Day 03

    Day 01, January 09, 2014 | Day 02, January 10, 2014 | Day 03, January 11, 2014   Detailing Technology A Difficult Geography: Bombay Cinema’s Move to Colour Ranjani Mazumdar, School of Arts and Aesthetics Jawaharlal Nehu University Recording not available. “No Blue”: On the Colour of Sensation in Tamil Cinema Anand Pandian, Johns Hopkins…

  • sarai - the many lives of Indian cinema - poster

    The Many Lives of Indian Cinema Conference – Recordings – Day 02

    Day 01, January 09, 2014 | Day 02, January 10, 2014 | Day 03, January 11, 2014   Histories: Cities I Early Film-going as Heterotopic Mobility: Urban Journeys, Public Space and Cinema Theatres in Chennai Stephen Putnam Hughes, School of Oriental and African Studies, London Download: OGG and MP3. Cinema in the Colonial City: Early…