Mtv Brand Failure
Cultural Nationalism on MTV India Journal of Communication Inquiry
Jocelyn Cullity
The Global Desi: Cultural Nationalism on MTV India
The article examines how the introduction of satellite television into India during the 1990s has led to the emergence of a new form of cultural nationalism based on the active and self-conscious indigenization of global media. Using MTV India as an ethnographic case study, this process is demonstrated through analysis of the images themselves and by a consideration of what they mean to informants. It outlines a now-mythical historical narrative whereby a wired-in middle class forced the indigenization of programming on MTV India, programming that was initially aimed at a more abstract global audience. It then demonstrates the ways and reasons why this cultural nationalism depends, somewhat paradoxically, on its own global dimensions.
This article examines some effects of the introduction and expansion of satellite-based commercial television in India during the 1990s. Most of the existing scholarly work on Indian television has appeared relatively recently and focuses on how discourses of the Nation and issues of gender have been treated on the various channels run by the government broadcaster, Doordarshan (known commonly as DD). Especially notable are two booklength studies, Arvind Rajagopal’s Politics after Television (2001) and Purnima Mankekar’s Screening Culture, Viewing Politics (1999). In her epilogue, Mankekar detailed the arrival of satellite television in India and raised a number of questions for future research.
What does the Indianization of transnational satellite production imply when the meanings, symbols, and discursive practices relating to nationhood, national subjectivity, and national culture are themselves undergoing rapid transformation in conjunction with global capitalism? Whose experiences gain center stage in these new cultural productions? . . . What spaces do transnational texts create for
Jocelyn Cullity
The Global Desi: Cultural Nationalism on MTV India
The article examines how the introduction of satellite television into India during the 1990s has led to the emergence of a new form of cultural nationalism based on the active and self-conscious indigenization of global media. Using MTV India as an ethnographic case study, this process is demonstrated through analysis of the images themselves and by a consideration of what they mean to informants. It outlines a now-mythical historical narrative whereby a wired-in middle class forced the indigenization of programming on MTV India, programming that was initially aimed at a more abstract global audience. It then demonstrates the ways and reasons why this cultural nationalism depends, somewhat paradoxically, on its own global dimensions.
This article examines some effects of the introduction and expansion of satellite-based commercial television in India during the 1990s. Most of the existing scholarly work on Indian television has appeared relatively recently and focuses on how discourses of the Nation and issues of gender have been treated on the various channels run by the government broadcaster, Doordarshan (known commonly as DD). Especially notable are two booklength studies, Arvind Rajagopal’s Politics after Television (2001) and Purnima Mankekar’s Screening Culture, Viewing Politics (1999). In her epilogue, Mankekar detailed the arrival of satellite television in India and raised a number of questions for future research.
What does the Indianization of transnational satellite production imply when the meanings, symbols, and discursive practices relating to nationhood, national subjectivity, and national culture are themselves undergoing rapid transformation in conjunction with global capitalism? Whose experiences gain center stage in these new cultural productions? . . . What spaces do transnational texts create for
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