Active viewing: An Ethnography of the Indian film audience

Abstract

Audiences of popular Hindi cinema1 present a strategic site for study of the active audience as they adopt a viewing style that is participatory and interactive. In cinema theaters viewers applaud and whistle loudly, sing along with the soundtrack, shout out comments and throw coins at the screen. Viewers transform the meaning of the film and shape the collective experience of viewing. Plural audiences encounter varying interpretations of the film arising from a diversity of world views and from life‐worlds different from their own. Rather than homogenising viewers, mass produced Hindi films appear to differentiate them. The intersubjectivity of the viewing experience becomes an achievement, rather than a taken‐for‐granted. The film is seen to become a resource both for the formation of community and for the generation of conflict and the theater, a public forum and arena for situated culture wars.

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