Onscreen/Offscreen

__Onscreen/Offscreen__ is an ethnographic study of the ontological politics of cinema in South India. "Based on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Onscreen/Offscreen is an exploration of the politics and being of filmic images. The book examines contestations inside and outside the Tamil film industry over the question "what is an image?" Answers to this question may be found in the ontological politics that take place on film sets, in theatre halls, and in the social fabric of everyday life in South India, from populist electoral politics and the gendering of social space to caste uplift and domination. Bridging and synthesizing linguistic anthropology, film studies, visual studies, and media anthropology, Onscreen/Offscreen rethinks key issues across a number of fields concerned with the semiotic constitution of social life, from the performativity and ontology of images to questions of spectatorship, realism, and presence. In doing so, it offers both a challenge to any approach that would separate image from social context and a new vision for linguistic anthropology beyond the question of "language.""-- Provided by publisher Contents 7 Illustrations 9 Acknowledgments 11 Note on Transliteration, Quotation, Names, and Transcripts 17 Introduction: Ontological Politics of the Image 19 PART ONE Presence/Representation 45 Chapter One. The Hero’s Mass 45 Chapter Two. The Heroine’s Stigma 84 PART TWO Representation/Presence 131 Chapter Three. The Politics of Parody 131 Chapter Four. The Politics of the Real 164 Conclusions: Ends and Openings 212 Notes 229 References 341 Index 377