Page 194 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

Conclusion >> 181

and now, transnational audience. Moving past a film-centric approach,
the case studies of television and dot-com companies’ relations with the
film industry that I have presented here invite us to consider to how vari-
ous “new media” have historically reconfigured the cultural geography of
Bombay cinema and Bombay’s status as a media capital. Considering the
case of Radio Ceylon, which broadcast a range of film-based programs that
reached audiences across the Indian subcontinent, South Africa, and even
some cities in east Africa, encourages us to ponder how other technological
and institutional developments influenced the circulation of films and film
music, transforming the Bombay film industry’s spatial coordinates and
engendering new sites and forms of consumption. This does not necessar-
ily mean that we think only about continuities from the 1950s to the pres-
ent. Rather, my goal here has been to open up a space for more grounded
explorations of the interwoven histories of different media technologies and
institutions and in the process, expand our understanding of the histories
and patterns of media convergence.
In developing these and other arguments, I have so far taken a primarily
industry-centric approach. As I explained at the outset, media scholarship
in the Indian context and indeed global media studies at large, has tended to
focus on questions of form, representation, and to an extent, audience recep-
tion. Thus in the broadest sense this book aims to make a timely contribu-
tion to an emerging body of scholarship on the media industries and how the
imaginations and practices of media industry professionals give shape to the
media worlds we inhabit and engage with. There is, however, another closely
related perspective from which one could map and analyze Bollywood’s cul-
tural geography: fandom and participatory culture. In the final section of
this book I want to position this vibrant yet largely neglected realm of trans-
national media culture as a vital site for understanding not just how Bolly-
wood is in the world today, but perhaps more importantly, how the world is
in Bollywood.

From Piracy to Media Consultancy and Everything in Between

Part of the difficulty involved in charting the terrain of participatory culture
surrounding Bollywood, especially in an era of networked audiences and
publics, stems from the sheer range of sites and modes of participation one
encounters. So the two stories I start with here are not intended to be repre-
sentative of fan activity but rather to serve to highlight some of the questions
regarding cinema, new media, and state and industry discourses of legality,
citizenship, and audience practices that arise.