Performance, performativity and melodrama as dramatic substance in Hindi film song sequences

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-147
Author(s):  
Anna Morcom
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
New Method ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Key Nodes ◽  
Hindi Film

Abstract In this article, I explore the dramatic substance of Hindi film songs through an approach based in performance studies, which presents performance as the very stuff of social life, social identities and social power. Given this, the enactment of song sequences in the Hindi film narrative cannot be dramatically benign, or just excess, or just pleasure (however intense). I describe how song sequences perform and thereby manifest and reify love and romance in the film narrative. Using work on public spectacle and power by Foucault and the public sphere by Vasudevan, I further analyse how they connect the public, emotions of love, and social or familial struggle in various ways, embodying key nodes of melodrama. I then reflect, in these terms, on the recent curtailment of performed songs in Hindi films. I thereby present a new method for analysing the dramatic agency of screened or background songs in films.

scholarly journals Progressive Social Movements and the Internet

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Power ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Public Sphere

Because of the field’s foundational concerns with both social power and media, communication scholars have long been at the center of scholarly thought at the intersection of social change and technology. Early critical scholarship in communication named media technologies as central in the creation and maintenance of dominant political ideologies and as a balm against dissent among the masses. This work detailed the marginalization of groups who faced restricted access to mass media creation and exclusion from representational discourse and images, alongside the connections of mass media institutions to political and cultural elites. Yet scholars also highlighted the ways collectives use media technologies for resistance inside their communities and as interventions in the public sphere. Following the advent of the World Wide Web in the late 1980s, and the granting of public access to the Internet in 1991, communication scholars faced a medium that seemed to buck the one-way and gatekeeping norms of others. There was much optimism about the democratic potentials of this new technology. With the integration of Internet technology into everyday life, and its central role in shaping politics and culture in the 21st century, scholars face new questions about its role in dissent and collective efforts for social change. The Internet requires us to reconsider definitions of the public sphere and civil society, document the potentials and limitations of access to and creation of resistant and revolutionary media, and observe and predict the rapidly changing infrastructures and corresponding uses of technology—including the temporality of online messaging alongside the increasingly transnational reach of social movement organizing. Optimism remains, but it has been tempered by the realities of the Internet’s limitations as an activist tool and warnings of the Internet-enabled evolution of state suppression and surveillance of social movements. Across the body of critical work on these topics particular characteristics of the Internet, including its rapidly evolving infrastructures and individualized nature, have led scholars to explore new conceptualizations of collective action and power in a digital media landscape.

Urbanitŕ e resisitenza

2009 ◽  
pp. 126-139
Author(s):  
Marco Cremaschi
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
The Public ◽  
Living Together ◽  
Housing Planning ◽  
The Public Sphere

- The research on public space is characterized by four different concepts: first, the equivalence between public space and public sphere, directly impinging upon politics; second, the history and construction of social identities, where memory plays a central role; third, the encounter with strangers that should educate to tolerance; fourth, the practice of living together, at the foundation both of urbanity and civil respect. The first three concepts state that public space is eroded, due to the privatization of the public sphere. The last one criticizes this belief, and suggests instead investigating the field of practices that combine resistance to urban change, and the experimentation of new forms of urbanity.Key words: public space, urbanity, planning, social practices, cities, inclusion.Parole chiave: housing, planning, abitare, pratiche sociali, istituzionalizzazione, cornici cognitive.

Iranian Women from Private Sphere to Public Sphere, With Focus on Parliament

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 401-414
Author(s):  
Elaheh Koolaee
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Iranian Women ◽  
The Public ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
Governmental Institutions ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractWomen in Iran have gained unprecedented experiences in the course of their fight for democracy and human rights. In the Pahlavi era, the modernisation model was based on Western patterns. With the Islamic Revolution, a new generation of Iranian women emerged in social arenas. Ayatollah Khomeini always emphasised women's prominent and important role in social life. His views shed light on potentials for women's rights, but the obstacle of old cultural and historical attitudes have made these ideas difficult to actualise. The weakness of civil organisations, including women's political and non-political organisations, has seriously affected the outcomes. Although a reformist government and the reinforcement of governmental institutions concerned with women's affairs can play a part in improving the situation of women, women's civil society organisations can assume responsibilities at social levels in order to complement the role of the representatives. The author discusses the process of women's entrance in the public sphere and efforts by the 6th parliament to protect their rights.

scholarly journals Religia w przestrzeni życia publicznego w regionach Europy Środkowej

Politeja ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 14 (1(46)) ◽  
pp. 103-139
Author(s):  
Emilia Moddelmog-Anweiler
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Religion In Public Life

Religion in the public life in the regions of Central Europe. Features of the Central European model For post‑communist states, which experienced programmative secularization of society, and are currently building civil society, the Western models of determining the place and role of religion in public sphere seem to be inadequate and simplistic. On the one hand, freedom of religion in this region symbolizes success of a new democratic order. On the other, the rapid pace of social, cultural and political changes causes dilemmas regarding the place of religion in public life, where religion is part of cultural, national and social identities. People are stretched between the freedom to be religious publicly, return to traditional religion and freedom of other choices. It therefore seems that, despite religious diversity and the presence of specific historical circumstances in individual countries, these societies share the perspective of determining the place of religion in the public sphere today, which is the basis of the specific features of religion in public life. The article presents an ovierview of observations and interpretations of characteristics of social practice to the presence of religion in the public sphere, which were distinquished on the basis of qualitative research conducted in Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine.

scholarly journals Islamic Moral Comedy? The Representation of Islam in Malaysian Comedy Films Syurga Cinta (Paradise of Love, 2009) and Ustaz, Mu Tunggu Aku Datang! (Ustaz, I’m Coming! 2013)

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-138
Author(s):  
Suria Hani A.Rahman ◽  
Rosidayu Sabran ◽  
Rosninawati Hussin
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
The Public ◽  
True Love ◽  
Islamic Principle ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article examines how Islam is being represented in Malaysian comedy films: Syurga Cinta/Paradise of Love (Ahmad Idham, 2009) and Ustaz, Mu Tunggu Aku Datang!/Ustaz, I’m Coming! (Pierre Andre, 2013). As one of a popular genre in film, comedy and its comical narratives has the ability to critique social, cultural and political conditions within the specific context of Malaysia. Using film narrative analysis, this study identifies that both films revolve around a similar plot of a male quest for haram (forbidden) obsessions, such as fortune or women, and a return to morality (i.e. humility and true love). As these comedies attempt to illuminate the intersection between religion and comical narrative, the way they feature the main characters are not simply as sinful or immoral. Rather, they are portrayed as misguided, but equally amusing in dealing with misfortune and wrongfulness. This article found that the central element of both films lies in its incongruity between the traditional Islamic principle and trajectories which against morality. Besides the call for morality, this article also argues that Malaysian comedy is also shaped in response to the Islamisation of the public sphere, thus, underlines the ‘re-imagine social life’ within the Malay (sian)-Muslim context.

The Watchdog Still Barks

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Knobel
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Action ◽  
News Media ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Free Press ◽  
The Public ◽  
Internet Age ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter discusses the erosion of the newspaper business and presents arguments as to why the free press is important, even in the Internet age. It also details the research behind this volume, and argues that no other function of a free press is as important as its ability to monitor the work of the government. The presence of a vibrant press to monitor government is not just important on the micro level but is essential to the proper functioning of our democracy. In fact, the work of the news media is valued because it helps empower the “public sphere,” meaning a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Here, the public sphere is not just a virtual or imagined place to discuss public affairs, but it is also a mechanism to enable citizens to influence social action.

The Public Sphere and Comparative Historical Research

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-290
Author(s):  
Andreas Koller
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Historical Social Science

In state-of-the-field surveys of historical sociology and of historical social science at large, the study of the public sphere is missing. The rise of historical social science has not led to an established tradition of comparative historical research on the public sphere. This article gives an introduction to this topic and to this special issue, seeking to clarify the definition of the object of study and its stakes and providing an overview of analytic and historical dimensions relevant to the comparative historical study of the public sphere. The article argues that this search for an integrative framework is a necessary condition for well-defined comparative historical research, for incorporating the fragmented research from numerous disciplines, and thus for improving our understanding of the historical formation and the transformations of this central sphere of social life.

scholarly journals On Education & the Common Good

1994 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
John Covaleskie
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Do So

This response to Coulson's recent EPAA piece, "Human Life, Human Organizations, and Education," argues that Coulson is wrong about "human nature," social life, and the effects of unregulated capitalist markets. On these grounds, it is argued that his call to remove education from the public sphere should be rejected. The point is that education is certainly beneficial to individuals who receive it, but to think of education as purely a private and personal good properly distributed through the market is seriously to misconstrue the meaning of education. We should not care to be the sort of people who do so.

scholarly journals HAK DAN AKTIVITAS POLITIK WANITA PERSPEKTIF ABŪ AL-A‘LĀ AL-MAUDŪDĪ

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-211
Author(s):  
Putri Adelia
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Women's Role ◽  
Muslim Scholars ◽  
At Home

There is an assumption that develops in society that according to religion women have no place in social life and women's role is limited only in the domestic sphere. The implication is that women are not allowed to take roles in the public sphere, such as being educated as equals to men, working outside the home, even taking part in political territory. One of the modern-day Muslim scholars who interpreted the verse as a limitation on women leaving the house was Abū al-A‘lā al-Maudūdī. The author is interested in further examining his interpretation because it is classified into modern commentators but some interpretations related to women seem to be gender biased. This paper will discuss al-Maudūdī's interpretation of the QS. Al-Aḥzāb: 33 this verse is said to be the initial foothold regarding perceptions of restrictions on the movement of women in the public sphere resulting from an understanding of the results of the interpretation of orders for women to always remain at home. Then examine how this interpretation affects women's political activities.

Social Media and the Public Sphere in China

2017 ◽  
pp. 410-425
Author(s):  
Zhou Shan ◽  
Lu Tang
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Train Derailment ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter seeks to answer the question of whether microblog can function as a promising form of public sphere. Utilizing a combined framework of public sphere based on the theories of Mouffe (1995) and Dahlgren (2005), it examines the political discussion and interrogation on Sina Weibo, China's leading microblog site, concerning the Wenzhou high-speed train derailment accident in July of 2011 through a critical discourse analysis. Its results suggest that Weibo enables the creation of new social imaginary and genre of discourse as well as the construction of new social identities.

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