Provincializing Bollywood: Bhojpuri Cinema in the Comparative Media Crucible [Hardcover]

Situating it at the intersection of vernacular media production and the infrastructural-political reordering of provincial north India, the book shows that Bhojpuri media's characteristic 'disobedience' is marked by a libidinal excess - simultaneously scandalizing and moralizing - to address the inexact calculi of Bhojpuri speaking region's 'underdevelopment'.Provincializing Bollywoodargues that Bhojpuri cinema exemplifies the overflow of a provincial derivative form that defies its place in the given scheme of things. Situating it at the intersection of vernacular media production and the infrastructural-political reordering of provincial north India, the book shows that Bhojpuri media's characteristic 'disobedience' is marked by a libidinal excess - simultaneously scandalizing and moralizing - to address the inexact calculi of Bhojpuri speaking region's 'underdevelopment'. Bhojpuri media therefore demands that it is assessed not merely for its internal content but within the comparative media crucible, marked by interpenetrating forms and histories as diverse as those of ecological distress, musical traditions, gendered segregation, real estate, urban resettlements, and highway modernities. Foregrounding the libidinal excess, language politics, and curatorial informalities,Provincializing Bollywoodsynthesizes Bhojpuri media's spectacular public insubordination and its invocation of a shared debt, which is by no means regional in its provenance.IntroductionChapter 1 Reassembling Provincial North IndiaChapter 2 The Libidinal Dwellings of Bhojpuri MediaChapter 3 Language Politics in the Comparative Media CrucibleChapter 4 Otherwise: Suboptimal Transactions of the MeanwhileConclusionEpilogueBibliographyAkshaya Kumar,Assistant Professor, IIT IndoreAkshaya Kumar is assistant professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Indore. This brilliant book, boldly comparative and bristling with ideas on every pagelãz