cinema halls urban rural life.pdf

Cinema halls, locality and urban life

Lakshmi SrinivasUniversity of Massachusetts, Boston, USA

A B S T R A C T Drawing on ethnographic field research in Bangalore, amulti-ethnic, multi-lingual city in South India, this article explores therelationship between cinema and the city and the significance of theurban setting for the cinema experience, for moviegoers and film businessinsiders. Contrary to received understandings of cinema as a universal andplaceless experience, interviews with audiences, filmmakers, distributorsand exhibitors reveal that locality is important for the framing andembedding of cinema, for the meanings associated with any particularfilm or genre. The article suggests that urban space-cultures which situatecinema are consequential for both the box office performance of the filmand the audiences experience.

K E Y W O R D S space and culture, urban entertainment, audiences,movie theaters, Indian cinema

How do urban space and culture shape the cinema experience for bothmoviegoers and the film business? I examined this question in Bangalore, amultiethnic city in South India that has become known as the sub -continents Silicon Valley (though the city is actually situated on a plateau).Starting in the 1950s, Bangalore became a center for government-fundedheavy industry, including aeronautics, machine tools, heavy machinery,metallurgy, and electronics. For decades it has been known as Indiaspremier science and technology city. The population grew rapidly in the1970s, and in the 1980s the real estate market boomed. In the 1990s, multinational corporations started moving in.

graphyCopyright The Author(s), 2010. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navhttp://eth.sagepub.com Vol 11(1): 189205[DOI: 10.1177/1466138109355213]

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Cinema in Bangalore is an important part of urban leisure and reflectsthe populations pluralism. Since linguistic, ethnic, regional, and classcultures have a spatial dimension, cinema is embedded in the spatial config-uration of the city. In 1998 I conducted a field study of moviegoing inBangalore that is anchored in the settings in which cinema is produced andconsumed. I examined the framing of cinema in urban space and the signifi-cance of locality for cinema. Filmmakers, exhibitors, and distributors whomI interviewed discussed the importance of the location of various theatersand of the audiences geographical distribution for a films release. Conver-sations with audiences revealed their expectations of theater spaces andtheir practices of distinguishing among theaters in the city.

Few studies have explored the relevance of locality to cinema or havelooked at movie theaters as social and cultural spaces within a broaderurban setting.1 Studies of Indian cinema have focused largely on the analysisand interpretation of individual films and genres, stars, directors, and fans,largely neglecting the social context of their exhibition and the history andinstitutions of film distribution.2 The few ethnographies on audiences andmovie-watching in India that are located in specific cities do not addressthe links between theaters and urban spaces in any depth.3 We do not havean understanding of contemporary cinema as it is shaped by the places inwhich the movie experience is elaborated.4

Locating a plural cinema

The cosmopolitan city of Bangalore is home to a multiplicity of ethnocul-tural and linguistic groups. According to recent estimates Bangalore is thethird most populous city in India and the fastest growing urban agglomera-tion. The area has long attracted migrants from neighboring regions and fromother parts of India. In 2001 slightly more than one-third of the citys popu-lation of about five million spoke Kannada, the local language, while Tamilspeakers formed close to a quarter of the population. Smaller, yet substantialminorities spoke Telugu and Urdu. The citys residents include a number ofother groups: Gujerathis, Punjabis, Marwaris, Marathis, Bengalis, andspeakers of Malayalam, Tulu, and Konkani. Many Bangaloreans are multi-lingual. The population is also diverse in religious affiliation. A variety ofHindu groups make up 79 percent of the population while Muslims comprise13 percent, both roughly the same as the national average.5 The city hassmaller numbers of Christians, Jains, Parsis, Sikhs, and Anglo-Indians.6

In India, the film business is decentralized. Hindi-language films madein Bombay, or Bollywood, are best known and most widely viewed bothin India and internationally. However, regional cinema continues toflourish. Many states have their own film businesses that produce popular

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entertainment for the masses in regional languages.7 The South Indian statesof Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka (where Bangaloreis located) all have film industries that make full-length feature films in thelanguage of each state. B movies, martial arts films made in Hong Kong(S.V. Srinivas, 2003), and adult films contribute to the diversity of cinemaofferings.

Bangalores linguistic and cultural pluralism shapes the cinema marketand the film experience. A movie enthusiast turned filmmaker described thecity as a place where a person can watch [in] at least 3 to 4 languages andgo from one culture to another; world cultures, local cultures, you have somuch choice! A young cinematographer and filmmaker emphasized thechoices available to moviegoers: People are very diverse. My next doorneighbor may [say] . . . lets go see the Kannada film . . . his neighbor maysee Malayalam movies, then they start talking about Titanic. Finallysomeone says lets go see a Hindi film, [so] they go for a Hindi film!Films in English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam arereleased every week. Moviegoers in Bangalore may see every kind of fare.One movie enthusiast reported that at one point in his life he wouldroutinely watch three films a day: morning Kannada, then in the afternoonI watched Tamil or Hindi, and in the evening English (Hollywood). Sincetheatres are situated in specific urban spatial cultures, moviegoers decisionsabout what films to see are also decisions about how to experience the city.

The Cantonment and the City

Movie theaters serve as landmarks in Bangalore. People refer to theaterswhen giving directions: Im going to Jayanagar Nagar, near Nanda theater;a theater location may be prominently indicated on the map enclosed witha wedding invitation. Older residents take pride in the fact that the cityonce had the largest number of theaters per square mile anywhere in India.8

The citys identity has been shaped by its commercial entertainment.The most striking distinction9 that is significant for cinema and its public

culture is between two nodes in the central urban area. Residents refer tothe Cantonment in the northeast as Cantt or Town, or in terms of itscommercial districts, Commercial Street, Mahatma Gandhi Road (M.G.Road), and Brigade Road. The other node is the City in the western partof Bangalore, where the old market area or pettai is located. The Cityincludes the areas of Gandhinagar, City market, Krishnarajendra Market(K.R. Market), Avenue Road, and Kempegowda Road (K.G. Road). Estab-lished separately at different periods, the Cantonment and the City arerecognized as cultural spaces which have long organized urban life, leisure,and entertainment.10 The Cantonment began as a station for British troops

Srinivas Cinema halls, locality and urban life 191


in the early 1800s11 and was then settled by the British and by Tamil-speaking migrants from the Madras Presidency. When Winston Churchilllived in the Cantonment as a young army officer, he played polo, grew roses,and collected butterflies, as well as racking up an account at the BangaloreClub which remains unsettled. Officially designated a Civil and MilitaryStation in 1868, the Cantonment was an independent area under controlof the Government of India. In contrast, the old city was established as afortified settlement in the 16th century by Kempegowda and belonged tothe princely state of Mysore. It was a walled town within four main gatesand developed into a dense and vibrant area of mixed residential, commer-cial, manufacturing, and religious activities (Nair, 2008). Cubbon Park12

separated the Cantonment from the old city, and the British expressedconcern about the populations from these two sections mixing (Nair, 2008).

In 1949 these two cities were brought together under the administrationof the Bangalore City Corporation. Yet the cultural differences between thetwo sections persisted long after the formation of Karnataka as a linguis-tic state in 1956. While the Cantonment was the site for English-speakingelites and Tamil immigrants as well as Telugu and Urdu speakers, thelinguistic culture of the old city has been described as Kannada centered,with some Urdu. Here too there is linguistic and cultural plurality, as immigrants from the north and south brought a mix of languages andcultures.13

The Cantonment and the City form organizing nodes for the ways peopleexperience the city. The wider streets and spacious bungalows of theCantonment offered a different lifestyle from the Citys bustling market, itsnarrow lanes full of shops and stalls. Bangaloreans recognize the Canton-ment and the City as cultural zones. Residents of the city in the 1940s and1950s described the Cantonment as another world where they went to learnWestern ways such as how to use a knife and fork and try out their English-language skills on waiters who themselves were not fluent in English (Vishwanath, 2009). Bangaloreans who had grown up in what were considered more conservative, less cosmopolitan locales admitted to feelingintimidated and inferior to the more Westernized residents of the Canton-ment.14 The City was similarly alien for Cantonment residents. Manybelonging to the middle and upper-middle classes are prejudiced against theCity. Members of these classes, especially women, typically avoid the City,which they perceive as a crowded place where they have to be alert to avoidpickpockets and eve-teasers, the term used locally by residents andEnglish-language newspapers for men who sexually harass women on thestreets.



Locality and heterogeneity

Cinema is embedded in and shaped by the localities of the city. Part of theattraction of the Cantonment for older residents were theaters that screenedEnglish pictures. The Liberty (earlier Globe),15 Imperial, B.R.V., Plaza, andRex were among the first; the BluMoon, BluDiamond, and Symphony (allon M.G. Road and the Lido in Ulsoor) were later additions. The City wasalso known for its many cinema halls. K.G. Road was lined with talkies.A cinematographer who lived in the City for several years counted 5060theaters in the area. It was Asias number one road with so many theaters!Theaters such as Prabhat, States, Sagar, Kempegowda, Himalaya, Geeta,and Majestic screened Kannada and regional cinema. The Alankar,Kalpana, Menaka, Abhinay, Kapali, and Tribhuvan were added in the1950s and 1960s (Vishwanath, 2009).

A cinematographer saw the drawing power of movies in the Cantonmentas having to do as much with the attractiveness of the area to moviegoersas with the film. People will say weve come all the way to M.G. Road They wont want to go back without seeing a movie, so they will go toJames Bond. A young man in his 20s whose tastes were eclectic andspanned Bollywood, Hollywood, Kannada, and Tamil movies goes to watchmovies in the Cantonment because M.G. Road is fun at night. A schoolteacher in a boys school in the Cantonment reported that when she askedher 10th standard class to write an essay about what they did on weekends,one student responded, I hang around outside Rex or Plaza [theaters] oron Commercial Street looking at beautiful girls.

With its high-rise, glass-fronted buildings, trendy boutiques, departmentstores, five-star hotels, and restaurants, the Cantonment is a place to spendtime with family and friends and people-watch. Cafes, ice-cream parlors,and small eateries provide spaces for socializing for groups of middle-classhigh school and college students, young professionals, and families. Peoplestroll on the elevated walkway and sit on the benches; they buy snacks fromthe street vendors and window-shop. Markers of the citys colonial past areeverywhere: a statue of Queen Victoria remains at the Cubbon Park end ofM.G. Road, a spot for street vendors to gather and a favorite perch forpigeons. M.G. Road was originally opposite the military parade grounds,an open space that still exists in the heart of the commercial area. TheBritish Council library used to be housed above Koshys store and restau-rant (earlier Parade Caf)16 on St Marks Road, named after the church.Higginbothams bookstore is an institution on M.G. Road, as was the now-demolished Victoria Hotel. Brigade Road which leads off from M.G. Roadhas more shops, restaurants, bakeries, pubs, clubs, and movie theaters.

The City is where the old fort and temple, the old market area, a majorrailway station, and the interstate bus terminus are located. A lot of old



Bangalore families originally settled in the areas of the old city, such asChickpet, Doddapet, and Chamarajpet, and then gradually moved out tothe newer residential suburbs. The City, Gandhinagar, Kempegowda Road(K.G. Road), and the area known as Majestic (perhaps named after theMajestic theater) are a dense mix of residential and commercial structuresand activities. This area is recognized as a prime locale for regional andHindi cinema.

Many of the theaters in Gandhinagar and the K.G. Road area are directlyon the street. Footpath vendors sell savory snacks, sweets, tender coconut,and even cigarettes from concessions outside the theater. Theaters are inthe midst of shops for selling luggage, textiles, and saris, as well as smalleateries and hotels. Burma Bazaar was located in the City, as were smugglers markets. Outside the Abhinay theater on K.G. Road footpathstalls attract passers-by and moviegoers waiting for the theater to open itsdoors. A range of goods is spread out on the pavement: clothing, plastic -ware for the household, personal items such as wallets, caps, and handbagswith names of movie stars on them, and footwear. Movie stars and cricketers look out from posters propped up against a low wall. Peoplethrong the pavement. Vendors call out to passers-by and browsers. Theyare quick to follow a persons gaze and pull out items that catch their attention. Picking up a violently colored poster of the megastar a vendorasks me, Madam, you want Shah Rukh Khan?

Moviegoers have their favorite hang-outs in the City. Food is profferedby diners and cafeterias, idli-vadai joints and darshinis,17 and stores androadside stalls. Sukh Sagar and the Kamat hotel are well-known eateries.People-watching is a favorite pastime. For some men, referred to locally asroadside romeos, the streets and crowds outside movie theaters provideopportunities to make indecent comments, brush up against women, oreven pinch or grope them.

Since Bangalore has long been known for its many movie theaters, itscricket grounds, race course, and clubs, residents of rural areas and smallercities and towns would come to the big city for an outing. Those who visitedBangalore on business would make a point of taking in a picture or two,going to the races, and patronizing a restaurant or hotel. Theaters in theCity near the interstate bus stand and railway station facilitated movie -going; travelers could stay in the many inexpensive little hotels or lodges.For rural visitors, Majestic and the City area were the place to visit. Formiddle-class residents of smaller towns in the region, the English picturesscreened in the Cantonment were most attractive. For about four decadesstarting in the 1940s an English teacher living in Mysore, 130 kilometersto the southwest, would visit Bangalore several times a year to catch upwith friends, attend cricket matches, and watch an English-language moviein the Cantonment. Mysore had only one movie theater, Gayathri, that



screened Hollywood movies (personal communication, M. Bhaktavatsala);many of the movies that came to Bangalore would not make it to smallercities and towns.

Bangalores cultures are spatially differentiated, and urban geographyplays a role in the cinematic experience. A distributor remarked thattheaters were pretty much reserved by language, as there were theatersspecifically for Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada films. A cinematographerhighlighted the areas territorialized by Kannada films:

Kannada films will run only in Kannada-speaking areas. We dont have alternative theaters in the same area. The majority of Kannada speakers arenot in east Bangalore. There is also no Kannada theater in north Bangalore.The south and west are the major money-pulling areas for Kannada. In Rajajinagar, theres only Navarang and another B-grade theatre far away.

Language functions as a proxy for ethnicity and class, as films and movie-goers organize themselves by linguistic genre. Theaters in certain sectionsof the city are known for screening particular types of films that are believedto correspond with a certain class and ethnocultural type of moviegoer. Tothe question of why Kannada movies are not screened in other theaters, forexample the Lido in the Cantonment, a distributor replied, What is theaudience in that area? See, we have tried, people have tried, but what is theuse of showing if you dont get audience?

Hollywood is also embedded in local spaces. When I asked the managerof the Nartaki theater in Majestic why the James Bond movie was notscreened in his theater, he referred to the territorialization of Hollywood: amovie that was screened at the Rex in the Cantonment could not bescreened at Nartaki as per agreement with local distributors and MGMpeople. I asked, If you put James Bond here, it wont run? He respondedthat he had not tried, because they would not allow it. A Hollywood picturethat was screened in the Cantonment could not also be shown in the City.The Hollywood movies that are screened in the Majestic or City area areeither B films, old and scratched prints, or dubbed into Hindi.18

In the Cantonment, theaters that screen Hollywood movies in Englishattract large numbers of the educated and Westernized middle class. In theCity, theaters that screen regional Kannada, Tamil, or Telugu-languagefilms draw the non-Westernized, non-English-speaking population, includ-ing the lower socioeconomic classes. Since the distance between theatersin the Cantonment and the City is not more than a few kilometers and3040 minutes by autorickshaw or car in peak traffic times, the audienceand the terrain of different types of cinema are highly local and spatiallyorganized.19 This spatial aspect of moviegoing, which has endured for thepast 70-odd years,20 is frequently overlooked in analyses that focus on adistant mass culture industry and its universalizing effects.



The correspondence between catchment areas and certain parts of thecity finds visual expression in the posters and billboards that publicize thefilms. Outside the Galaxy or the Plaza, posters and billboards featuringHollywood movies are standardized and machine-printed; the same postersare distributed around the world. Posters and billboards for Hindi andregional language films are painted by local artists and have a different lookand feel.21 Theaters in Majestic screening a new release sport a full-blownlocal aesthetic. Painted billboards are decorated with flower garlands, tinsel,crepe paper, and colored lights. Plywood cut-outs 3070 feet tall featur-ing images from the films are erected on the theater faade.22 Hollywoodmovies are not advertised in this way, although those released in theatersin the Majestic area may be indigenized. A version of Jumanji dubbed intoHindi had a locally painted billboard with the figure of Robin Williams anda rhino emerging above the painted billboard.

Cultural distinctions are evident in print media as well. English-languagenewsmagazines such as India Today routinely have articles on the Bombayfilm industry but less often feature regional cinema. English-language news-papers in Bangalore have daily and weekly write-ups about Hollywood andBollywood movies and stars, but less space is devoted to locally madeKannada cinema. It is easy to miss regional films if you do not read Kannadaand Tamil newspapers or magazines which are available in Majestic and inother areas of Kannada concentration. The arrangement of urban andcultural space sets up a class and cultural division across which news doesnot filter. Even if regional films are reviewed in English papers, they areinvisible to the Westernized elite and the consumers of Hollywood and theoccasional high-profile Bollywood film.

Many of my respondents in the upper-middle classes, those with aconvent school education signifying Westernization, were extremelyknowledgeable about Hollywood movies but unaware of happenings in theworld of regional film, even of a raging controversy over a Kannada moviethat was being fought out in court. Students in an elite school who partic-ipate in a Westernized global culture were excited about a Valentines Daydance with American rock music and a student production of a Shakespeareplay. They were not acquainted with Kannada cinema. Movie stars too areenmeshed in the citys cultural niches. Shivarajkumar, a Kannada film super-star, remarked that while he could not walk around in Majestic for fear ofbeing mobbed by fans, this problem did not arise in M.G. Road and in theCantonment, as few would recognize him there.

Class mobility in the city is associated with perceived cosmopolitanismand movement away from the local. Hollywood blockbusters23 and high-budget Bollywood films draw a broad spectrum of the moviegoing publicand large numbers of the middle classes. Visual and aural cues point to thecultural and class background of viewers. Wearing Western clothing, eating



food that does not reflect south Indian cuisine, speaking fluent English orHindi all mark a more cosmopolitan and middle-class identity that looksoutward. At theaters in the Cantonment large numbers of young men andwomen wear jeans and name-brand athletic shoes and sunglasses. Studentscarry backpacks; young women are clad in short skirts and have short bob-cut hair; working women and college students wear north Indian outfits,churidar khameez or salwar.

Even with the homogenizing effects of modernization, some groups ofmoviegoers dress in ways that express their regional, ethnic, and religiousidentities. Going to the movies means dressing up, and women are oftenseen in silk saris. Women belonging to different regional and ethnic groupswear their saris differently, and the type of sari itself can be distinctive.Traditional clothing and jewelry are noticeable and can serve as markersof ethnicity. Except among highly Westernized and secularized groups, religious identities are also visible. Married Hindu women wear theirmangalyam,24 which can be read as a marker of regional and, for those inthe know, caste identity (which is otherwise less visible).25 Older Brahminmen may be seen with caste marks or sacred ash on their foreheads. Muslimwomen wear burqas; many Muslim men wear cloth caps. Sikh men are inturbans. Women in more traditional clothing may wear their hair in plaits.Another contributing factor to the heterogeneity of the audience are multi-generational family groups, which include members of the extended family,elderly parents, and young infants. Cultural diversity in the audience is auralas well as visual. At theaters screening Bollywood movies and Hollywoodaction adventures you can overhear conversations not only in English andHindi but also in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Konkani, Tulu,Gujerathi, Marathi, Punjabi, Urdu, and Bengali as well as dialects of theselanguages.26

Diversity in the audience is to some extent organized by the type of filmand the location of the theater. Regional cinema draws a subset of theaudience present at theaters screening Hollywood and Bollywood block-busters. Regional cinema and Kannada films draw large numbers of menbelonging to the lower socioeconomic classes. They wear sandals orchappals, simple pants, and a shirt. The women I saw at screenings forKannada films in the Majestic area wore saris, half-saris and salwarkhameez, and many had strands of jasmine and orange kanakambaramflowers in their oiled and plaited hair. Habitus of Kannada cinema are typically less diverse linguistically. Hindi, Punjabi, Gujerati and fluentEnglish are rarely heard at theaters screening Kannada films.

The mix of men and women in the audience and the composition ofgroups also vary by the film, as well as the location and reputation of thetheater. Theaters in Majestic screening regional movies and B movies drewgreater numbers of men. Many of the women present were accompanied



by their husbands, fathers and other family members. I did not see themixed-sex groups of young college and high school students that were partof the landscape outside theaters in the Cantonment. Some Kannada moviesappeared to cater exclusively to young men belonging to the lower classes.For the Kannada films A and Om, both directed by Upendra, a popularyoung director who had a growing following among male audiences, Inoticed not more than a handful of women among nearly 1000 viewers,and not a single woman had come there without a male relative or familymember. However, movies made by other directors such as NagathihalliChandrashekar and Nagabharana and films starring Ramesh draw a moremixed audience, with large numbers of women and members of the middleclasses. For the Kannada film Megha Bantu Megha starring Ramesh, therewere lots of women in the audience; for the matinee, many had come tothe theater with their women friends and family members.

Kannada film business insiders were very conscious of the class ofaudience that films attracted. When explaining to me the logic of screeningHollywood movies in the Cantonment, an exhibitor of Kannada andregional cinema said, Class is a separate class!, distinguishing the audienceby social class and category or audience type as well as rank of films thatappealed to audiences of a particular social class. Some bemoaned the factthat Kannada films typically did not draw the educated middle classes buthad marginalized themselves over the years by appealing to the lower endof the socioeconomic spectrum. Filmmakers observed that once they hadlost the middle classes, their audience was exclusively made up of revenuesite owners,27 slum dwellers, and poor people. A series of mediocre filmsthat provided cheap thrills to mass audiences alienated the middle classeswho moved away to Hindi cinema and Hollywood movies.

When a Kannada film does attract a broader multiethnic and middle-class audience, it is a phenomenon. America! America!, a film about Indianswho have emigrated to the United States, reached out beyond the culturaland class boundaries that typically limited Kannada films. A Kannada film-maker commented that it was Vishesha! [unusual]. Different class of peoplecame to see, they could identify with the film. America! America! was notlike regular movies. The film also reached different ethnic groups; this wasthe first time we have seen Sardarjis, Marwaris in the theater for Kannadafilms.

Theater spaces express the class of audience a theater attracts and therank or class of a particular film. For anxious filmmakers, exhibitors, anddistributors, theater parking lots28 yield clues about the audience. While theparking lots of the Galaxy, Rex, and Lido are packed with cars and two-wheelers motorcycles, scooters, and mopeds, the parking lots of theatersin the City throng with people rather than vehicles, and when vehicles arepresent two-wheelers outnumber cars. At the Nartaki and the Majestic



theaters where Kannada films are screened, a small strip of concrete couldserve as parking space, but not a single vehicle is parked there. Viewers,mostly men belonging to the lower classes, congregate in groups staring atthe posters and decorations and cheering for the star. Concessions also pointto both the culture of the theater and the class of the audience. Bangaloresolder residents remember popcorn and nut-bars (chikki) as part of theexperience of moviegoing in the Cantonment in the 1950s (Vishwanath,2009). Moviegoers associate the Cantonment theaters with popcorn and icecream, soft drinks, coffee and samosas were available at some theaters.Viewers would make it a point to have a softie ice cream from the standoutside the Plaza. Outside the Plaza the popcorn stand was also on thepavement. Just before the movie, individual bags of popcorn would be filledand carried into the theater on trays to be sold during the intermission. Inoticed sandwiches and hamburger look-alikes at some Cantonmenttheaters which reflected the broader culture of the film and the Westernizedaudience. In comparison, concessions at theaters in Majestic and Gandhi-nagar are sparse. One moviegoer reflecting on cinema halls in the 1980sremembered that concessions at Majestic theaters were nothing to talkabout; there might be stale popcorn and in some theaters concessions werepractically non-existent, not even soft drinks! At some theaters in Majesticthere were biscuits from local bakeries, chips and tired-looking pastriessmeared with brightly colored icing. I have been to theaters in the areawhere tea or coffee was available during the intermission. But concessionswere frequently outside the theater in the Majestic too and moviegoerswould snack on the foods at pavement stalls and small eateries. A viewerremembered sugarcane juice as part of the movie outing in the Majestic andalso bonda kadalaikai (spiced peanuts) and chintamani (green masala coatedpeanuts). Moviegoers frequently purchase snacks on the street outside thetheater, such fried lentils, and indigenous sweets such as laddus and jalebis.After the show, the floor was frequently littered with peanut shells.

A films box office performance rests on a combination of tangibles andintangibles that are outside the film itself, but frame it for the audience.Moviegoers decision to see a film is often based on the theater it is screenedin, its locality, and the audience that patronizes the theater. People typicallyfrequent theaters they are accustomed to in parts of the city they arecomfortable with. When I asked an upper-middle-class professional womanin her 30s whether she was interested in seeing Titanic, her immediateresponse was where is it showing? In 1998 Titanic was being screened intwo theaters, the Sangam in the City near the bus-stand and the Galaxy onResidency Road in the Cantonment. The woman said she would prefer theGalaxy in Town as it was easier for her and her family to see it there. AsHollywood movies are screened mainly in the Cantonment, moviegoerswho seek out these films may become accustomed to the area. In interviews



middle-class moviegoers confirmed this rather narrow range of theaters theyfrequented: We usually end up going to a few theaters: Rex, very often,then Plaza, also Galaxy, very rarely go to City-side, Majestic and all that.Only an art film, a film made by a quality filmmaker, or a Bollywood filmthat has received unusually good reviews will draw this audience intotheaters in the City or anywhere outside the Cantonment. Audiences arealso likely to choose theaters that are close to where they live or which theycan reach easily.

Middle-class audiences shun films that they associate with lower-classaudiences or are being screened in a part of the city or a theater they donot want to go to. A moviegoer disparagingly referred to a sidey hall,meaning both seedy and sleazy, where the boisterous audience madecatcalls and screamed and whistled when the heroine appeared on screen.A director identified class prejudice as the main reason behind the middleclasses abandoning Kannada cinema:

People dont want to see Kannada movies because they think Oh, all thesedirty people will be in the theater. The same people will be in Ishq [Hindifilm]. And the same people will go to see Titanic. But people will see Titanicbecause its Hollywood.

A film that proves successful at drawing a certain class of viewer maydictate the type of theater the stars subsequent films are released in. Afterthe Kannada film America! America! proved a success with middle-classand upper-middle-class viewers, the star Rameshs subsequent films werereleased in higher-class theaters with car parks, a calculation based on thefilms appeal of America! America! to middle-class moviegoers. A distributorexplained:

And if a Ramesh film now releases, they put it in theaters where the parkingspace is good. Each actor will have his own kind of theater where theaudience comes there. There are certain theaters where the parking space arebad. And if your film releases there, however good the film, the audience,car-parking audience, wont come there. Your film flops! . . . Tutta-Mutta[Mother-Wife] is coming in Kalpana [theater] because Kalpanas parking isgood. Like if you have States [theater] parking is no good, so youll have atough time.

Filmmakers and distributors are very selective about the theaters in whichtheir films are released. Distributors find that they have few choices becausethe location and history of the theater shape audience expectations and themovie experience. As one Bangalore distributor put it, the reputation ofthe theater also builds up reputation of the picture shown. People will thinkOh, the picture coming to Santosh? It must be a big movie! See, that linkis there. That is why we want a good theater.



Theater spaces are saturated with value. If a film does well in a partic-ular theater, the market value of the theater goes up. Distributors in otherparts of the state are willing to pay large sums of money for the film andthe producer can sell the film to the highest bidder. A manager introducedthe concept of theater merit when discussing the relative strengths ofdifferent theaters. According to the manager, certain theaters have a goodreputation and character which is linked to their history in terms of themovies screened there, the audiences that frequent the theater, and itslocation. Merit is also acquired through famous patrons; if popular starsvisit the theater, its merit increases.

Since locality is vested with so much meaning, distributors and producerscome into conflict over territory. Filmmakers and distributors compete forparticular theaters. Given the glut of films, a films viability is linked to theparticular site of its screening. A theater manager informed me with somepride that his theater was so popular that directors fight to get it for theirfilms. One director had created a commotion in the Film Chamber ofCommerce demanding that his film be screened in that theater and no other.A distributor who deals in both Hindi and Kannada films referred toclashes over theaters but focused on how accommodations are arrived at.Another manager recounted an incident where he had been threatened atknife-point by thugs he identified as fans of a certain star who demandedthat the stars recent film be screened in his theater, which would haverequired the manager to dislodge the film that was currently being screened.

That particular films are viable only in a handful of theaters heightensthe significance of theaters and their location for the box office while exacerbating competitive pressures. In conversations with distributors andproducers I learnt that at times films are falsely advertised in the news papersas being screened at certain theaters when actually the film has long beenreplaced by another. The hope is that out-of-town distributors will eithersee the advertisement in a Bangalore newspaper or learn of it and startbidding for the film. Such practices create confusion for audiences who mayshow up at a theater for a particular film, finding it has long gone.

Conclusion

Contrary to received understandings of cinema as a universal and placelessexperience, ethnographic research demonstrates that cinema is shaped bythe broader urban context. Both the spaces of film exhibition and audiencepractices of moviegoing are relevant for understanding how cinema is inter-twined with urban life.

The public culture of cinema in Bangalore highlights the heterogeneity offilms and audiences and the significance of locality in organizing this activity.



Cinema is framed by the social and cultural ecology of the city. A films successat the box office depends on how successfully it can tap into a particularculturally defined space. The failure of a distributor to secure a particulartheater for a films release may mean the failure of the film itself, underliningthe centrality of locality in constructing the popular media market.

Far from the standardized and interchangeable spaces of the multiplexwhich promote a placeless movie experience, Bangalores cinema halls arecultural niches, sites of cultural and linguistic expression rich in meaningfor exhibitors, distributors, filmmakers, and audiences. Cinema hallsacquire a certain profile or character based on their location, on the publiclife which surrounds and frames them, the audiences that patronize them,and the films that have been screened there in the past. For audiences, deci-sions about which film to see are also decisions about which theaters andareas of the city to visit. The cinema experience is about navigating the cityand its cultures. Aesthetics and taste with regard to cinema as well as filmtypes and linguistic genres acquire a geographical dimension.

Since 2000, mall multiplexes have sprung up all over Bangalore and arereshaping both the experience of cinema and the urban landscape. Giventhe transformation in the public culture of cinema brought about by theproliferation of multiplexes, an examination of movie theaters and thecinema experience before the advent of these standardized spaces is all themore important to understanding the relationship between cinema andurban spaces.

Notes

1 Jancovich et al. (2003) is an exception.2 Hughes (1996) examines cinema institutions and audiences from a histor-

ical perspective.3 See Derne (2000) and Dickey (1993).4 For this emerging area of inquiry see Larkin (1999), L. Srinivas (2010),

S.V. Srinivas (2003), Vasudevan (2003).5 S. Srinivas (2001: 5) notes that while it is possible to identify residential

clusters of religious or linguistic groups (the Cantonment has a largenumber of Christian households and the old fort has a concentration ofMuslim households), it is difficult to distinguish areas in Bangalore purelyon the basis of religion or caste.

6 Anglo-Indians are of mixed Indian and British ancestry.7 Regional cinema is produced close to where it is consumed; filmmakers,

directors, producers, and stars are local heroes. Regional film businessesmay receive some tax exemption from the state government or a fixedamount of subsidy (personal communication, M. Bhaktavatsala).



8 Grant Road in Bombay was also known for its movie halls; see Vishwanath(2009).

9 Nair (2008); S. Srinivas (2001).10 While movie theaters are located in many parts of Bangalore and its

surroundings, I focus on the concentration of theaters in the Cantonmentand the City.

11 Nair (2008).12 Named after Sir Mark Cubbon, an officer in the British East India

Company who became the Commissioner of Mysore state and moved thecapital from Mysore to Bangalore.

13 Nair (2008). For the past four centuries the area has been home toMarathis, Tamil, and Telugu speakers as well as local Kannada speakers;see S. Srinivas (2001).

14 Janaki Nair refers to the possible sense of superiority that attached toliving with colonial rulers, inseparable from their way of life, [which]persisted among the inhabitants of the Cantonment (2008: 24).

15 Vishwanath (2009).16 Vishwanath (2009).17 Idlis are a kind of steamed rice cake often paired with a fried lentil savory at

cafes and small eateries. Darshinis are Bangalores version of fast food wherepatrons stop for a quick meal or snack and may eat standing at small tables.

18 Sangam theater in the City, known for screening Hollywood films, is anexception.

19 While the Cantonment and City are associated with particular kind ofcinema culture and a concentration of certain types of films, both regionalfilms and Bombay cinema can be found in other localities and suburbs andin pockets in the Cantonment and City. For example, the Ajantha theaterin Ulsoor and the Lavanya theater near the Shivajinagar bus stand areknown for Tamil movies. Outside the City, regional films are also screenedin other localities such as Malleswaram, Rajajinagar, and R.T. Nagar.

20 See Hughes (1996) on the silent film exhibition in Madras in 1928.21 On occasion, Hollywood film posters are copied for the marquee. Pierce

Brosnan as James Bond on the marquee of the Plaza on M.G. Road hadfleshy pink cheeks and a high color, a local artistic rendition of theHollywood poster.

22 Cut-out culture shares ground with political culture, especially in the neigh-boring state of Tamil Nadu where giant figures of politicians loom over thestreets and transform the cityscape; see Jacob (1998).

23 Action adventures, dramas such as Air Force One, blockbusters such asTitanic, and James Bond films are widely viewed across class categories.

24 A necklace symbolizing marital status. The design and symbols on itindicate the region, caste and sub-sect of the wearer and her husband.

25 Some locals claim they can identify a persons caste by their looks.



26 Many Bangaloreans can carry on conversations in two or three languagessimultaneously, for example, Kannada with family and English and Hindiwith friends.

27 Revenue sites are plots of land which are inexpensive as they fall outsidethe urban metropolitan jurisdiction and (temporarily) lack urban servicessuch as piped water and paved roads. The phrase in the context here refersto the lower socio-economic classes (R. Srinivas in conversation).

28 Theater parking lots are keenly observed by film producers. Of the audiencefor the Kannada film America! America!, the director observed that car-owners flocked to the film, a sign that the film was reaching a middle-classaudience that Kannada films typically do not reach.

References

Derne, S. (2000) Movies, Masculinity and Modernity: An Ethnography of MensFilmgoing in India. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Dickey, S. (1993) Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Hughes, S. (1996) Is There Anyone Out There? Exhibition and the Formationof Silent Film Audiences in South India, unpublished PhD dissertation,University of Chicago.

Jacob, P. (1998) Media Spectacles: The Production and Reception of TamilCinema Advertisements, Visual Anthropology 11(4): 287322.

Jancovich, M., S. Stubbings and L. Faire (2003) The Place of the Audience:Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption. London: BFI Publishing.

Larkin, B. (1999) Cinema Theatres and Moral Space in Northern Nigeria,ISIM Newsletter 3 (July), 13.

Nair, J. (2008) The Promise of the Metropolis. New Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress.

Srinivas, L. (2010) Cinema in the City: Tangible Forms, Transformations andthe Punctuation of Everyday Life, Visual Anthropology 32(1): 112.

Srinivas, S. (2001) Landscapes of Urban Memory: The Sacred and the Civic inIndias High-Tech City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Srinivas, S.V. (2003) Hong Kong Action Film in the Indian B Circuit, in A.Rajadhyaksha and K. Soyoung (eds) Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 4, no. 1,pp. 4062. London: Routledge.

Vasudevan, R. (2003) Cinema in Urban Space, available online at: [http://www.india-seminar.com/2003/525/525%20ravi%20vasudevan.htm].

Vishwanath, P. (2009) The Heydays of Bangalores Movie Halls, CitizenMatters, Bangalore, 19 September.



LAKSHMI SRINIVAS is Assistant Professor of Sociology at theUniversity of Massachusetts, Boston. She received her PhD at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles. She is interested in cinemaand media, popular Indian cinema, audiences, cultural productionand consumption, performance, as well as urban sociology,globalization, and ethnographic methods. Srinivass work exploresthe lived experience of cinema through field studies ofmoviegoing. She has published articles on cinema audiences andfilm experience in Media, Culture and Society, VisualAnthropology, and South Asian Popular Culture. Address:Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts,100 Morrissey Blvd, Boston, MA 02125, USA. [email:[email protected]]



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