Niche cinema: Negotiating cultural identities of the new Indian middle classes

Abstract

Abstract Niche has become a key word in Indian media and Hindi film industry discourses ever since economic liberalization led to a rapid escalation in the consumption power of the urban, affluent, English-educated middle classes. Like any other leisure industry sector, the entertainment industry sought to reap the benefits of this trend by making films that would appeal to this section of the population, thus redefining the term ‘masses’, which has been conventionally used to describe Hindi popular cinema spectators. This article analyses how the industry has tailored its narrative content and modes of address in order to articulate the shifting identity markers of the urban middle classes. How do Hindi film narratives and their ancillary texts make their prioritization obvious? A further segmentation of the target audience is taking place through the industry’s increasing focus on young people. Industry and media discourses have used the term ‘youth’ to indicate a generation of consuming classes with a high level of disposable income. Their cinematic representations connect them to global – particularly western – identities but, at the same time, distinguish their construction of a national identity that is informed by and inflected with foreign cultural influences but not entirely dominated by them. Citing interviews conducted with industry executives, the article looks at how the Hindi film industry is imagining its intended audiences and structuring their identities through negotiations between local and global. The aim of the article is to explore the processes of signification through which the industry is articulating that imagination.