Abstract
In this study, we learn how audiences make sense of a non-dominant text that is conveying a non-Western story about the Global War on Terror (GWOT). The audiences affective narratives affirm Deuze’s argument that media is not separate from our lived experience; we live in media rather than with media. This study was conducted on an urban campus in the Pacific North-West, with film audiences of over fifty Saudi Arabian, Baharanian, Iranian, Iraqi, Yemeni, and other Arab and non-Arab Muslims. Multiple screenings of Hindi language film, My Name is Khan, shows that it speaks to a global, transcultural, primarily Muslim audience that has lived in the pall of a world changed by 9/11. As audiences, they weave an oppositional narrative of security, multiculturalism and Muslim identity. While their visas define them as students, their experience as simply Arab or Muslim women and men situates them, in a wider articulation of their transnational identity. Key words: Media, audience, ethnography, qualitative research for media, Muslims, Islam, Indian cinema, transnational, Bollywood.
Highlights
Scholars believe that current discourses of multiculturalism, as doctrine for modern urban life, (Madood, 2013) are co-opted by forces of neoliberalism
This study proposes to understand how a blockbuster Bollywood text, with its aggressively marketed glitz and melodies, is able to speak to a global transcultural audience that has lived in the shadow of a world changed by the communal and hate infused events following the attack of 9/11 in New York City
This study offers to audience studies an understanding of how global, transnational audiences view a Hindi language film
Summary
Scholars believe that current discourses of multiculturalism, as doctrine for modern urban life, (Madood, 2013) are co-opted by forces of neoliberalism. Their studies pave the way for shifting the attention from textual television and film critique to that of active audiences who construct their everyday lives and identities in opposition and negotiation with media artifacts For this purpose, a qualitative, in-depth interview approach was employed in order to understand the relationship between shifting borders of media and text, and of audience and actors, during a political climate that silences them and presumably other marginalized populations in the United States (Kaufer and Al-Malki, 2009). Absorbing the socio-political context and regional imperatives, Culture Industries in South Asia have turned post 9/11 film into richly textured stories These storied media artifacts fall neatly under the overarching rubric of GWOT discourse, in the absence of which the narratives and the experiences they try to capture would make no sense. He remained the highest paid actor in 2017, earning over $38 million (Wikipedia, 2017)
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