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FILM AND POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENTS OF SOUTH INDIA: URBAN SPECTACLE, POPULAR CULTURE, THIRD WORLD INDUSTRY |
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by |
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Preminda Susana Jacob Doctor of Philosophy in Art History University of California, Los Angeles, 1994 Professor Donald A. Preziosi, Chair |
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ABSTRACT |
| This dissertation focuses on the production, reception and imagery of spectacular, hand-painted film and political advertisements displayed predominantly along main roads and cinema theater entrances in the city of Madras, in the southern state of Tamilnadu, India. The advertisements, sometimes as large as seventy feet in height, attract attention by their sheer size, photo-realist imagery, vivid colors and hybrid content. Whereas, indigenous educated elites and international academics have chosen to ignore these works or dismiss them as a 'virtual obliteration' of India's artistic heritage, the author argues that these objects and practices arise from, and address, the paradoxes of emergent, specifically post-colonial, societies and that scholars should turn sustained and critical attention upon such manifestations of Third World popular visual culture. Analyses of this study are based on ethnographic field research on the production and reception of the advertisements and extensive photographic documentation of the images. Field data includes three types of interviews: nineteen interviews were conducted with the artists, twelve with their financiers and one hundred interviews, in a questionnaire format, with the film-going public in Madras. Research establishes that among this artist community there exists a philosophy of art that pragmatically integrates theories about creativity, standards of craftsmanship and investment of labor. Their negotiation of art and commerce is different from that of 'high culture' practitioners who commonly perceive the relation as a dichotomy. By studying the film and political advertisements together, it became clear that in this social context, religious practices, political ideology and the reception of popular visual imagery are often part of the same cultural process. This perspective aided in comprehending the pivotal role of the advertisements in disseminating and regenerating the ideology of local political parties. Close analysis of the syncretism in content and style of particular advertisements revealed an inventiveness of popular cultural forms, their capacity for creative adaptation to changing social, political and economic conditions, their ability to survive while other, more traditional, less adaptive cultural practices are gradually eroded. |