Television, Participatory Culture, and Politics: The Case of "Indian Idol"

November 6, 2009
04:00PM - 06:00PM, Room 1636 School of Social Work Building, 1080 South University Ave.

Host Department: Center for South Asian Studies (CSAS)

CSAS Speaker Series Lecture by Aswin Punathambekar, Department of Communication Studies, University of Michigan

Further Information

This talk focuses on events surrounding the third season of Indian Idol in order to assess the changing relationship between television, everyday life, and public political discourse in contemporary India. In the summer of 2007, media coverage of Indian Idol focused on how people in northeast India cast aside decades-old separatist identities to mobilize support for Amit Paul, a finalist from the region. While some fans set up websites and blogs to rally support, others formed a fan club and roped in businessmen to distribute pre-paid mobile phone cards and manage 24-hour telephone centers for voting. Furthermore, with politicians getting involved and a state government appointing Amit Paul a “brand ambassador of peace and communal harmony,” this moment of fan expression soon took on an explicitly political character.

Situating this media phenomenon in relation to the changing landscape of Indian television and the socio-historical context of ethno-national politics in Northeast India, the talk explores how reality television and its plebiscitary logics have enabled new modes of cultural and political expression. Aswin argues that participatory cultures surrounding television create possibilities for the renewal of everyday forms of interaction in public settings that may have been forgotten, subdued, or made impossible under certain political circumstances.

Aswin Punathambekar teaches in the U-M Department of Communication Studies. His research and teaching revolve around globalization of cultural industries, inter-media relations, media history, and public culture with a focus on South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. He is co-editor of Global Bollywood (NYU Press, 2008) and is current writing a book about the globalization of Indian film and television (Looking L.A., Talking Bombay: Globalization and the making of Bollywood). He blogs about these and other topics at Bollyspace 2.0 (http://bollyspace.wordpress.com).

Contact Information: csas@umich.edu