Place, Emotion, and Regional Identity

约翰霍普金斯大学的阿南德·潘迪安博士将通过系统地考察印度商业电影中的场所使用来研究政治区域主义和身份认同问题。 印度拥有世界上最大的电影产业，其电影对公共文化产生了深远的影响。 印度商业电影刻意利用外景地来激起观众的情感反应。 该项目的重点是印度南部的泰米尔语地区电影，电影制片人自1970年代末以来一直在寻求将文化特征作为地区习俗和当地文化实践的产物。 然而，在20世纪90年代，地方主义开始屈服于更广泛的文化全球化潮流，电影摄制组旅行数千英里，在遥远的欧洲，亚洲和非洲地区拍摄场景。 考虑到这种空间转移，该项目将探讨当代南印度电影制片人为什么以及如何通过他们的空间想象力与观众的情感联系起来，以及这些策略对地区，国家和国际身份的影响。该研究将通过对南印度电影制片人和电影制作实践的深入民族志研究来进行：社会世界和日常实践，通过这些电影空间被制造和充满感情。研究方法将包括访谈，档案研究，与工作电影单位的参与观察，和文本分析。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于对媒体生产和媒体在文化认同中所扮演的角色进行社会科学的理解。该项目还将有助于公众更深入地了解三种现象：推动当代全球化的文化力量;媒体对世界各地日常生活的强大情感影响;以及普通经验本身通过电影和电视等技术进行调解的方式。

Dr. Anand Pandian, of Johns Hopkins University, will investigate questions of political regionalism and identity through a systematic examination of the use of place in Indian commercial cinema. India has the largest film industry in the world, and its films have had a profound impact on public culture. Indian commercial films make deliberate use of location to provoke affective responses among projected audiences. The project focuses on the Tamil-language regional cinema of south India, where filmmakers have sought since the late 1970s to project cultural identity as an artifact of regional custom and local cultural practice. However, in the 1990s, localism began to yield to broader currents of cultural globalization, with film crews traveling thousands of miles to shoot scenes in far-flung European, Asian, and African localities. With this spatial shift in mind, the project examines why and how filmmakers in contemporary south India connect with the emotions of their audiences by working on their spatial imaginations and what consequences these tactics have regional, national, and international identity.The research will be carried out through an intensive ethnographic study of filmmakers and film production practices in south India: the social worlds and daily practices through which filmic spaces are manufactured and charged with feeling. Research methods will include interviews, archival research, participant observation with working film units, and text analysis. The research is important because it will contribute to social scientific understanding of media production and the role that media plays in cultural identity. The project also will contribute to a deeper public understanding of three phenomena: the cultural forces propelling contemporary globalization; the powerful emotional effects that media have upon everyday life throughout the world; and the means by which ordinary experience has itself become mediated by technologies like cinema and television.