The active audience: spectatorship, social relations and the experience of cinema in India

Abstract

Mainstream audiences of popular Indian cinema adopt a participatory and interactive style of viewing. In cinema theaters viewers frequently cheer and whistle, shout out to characters on-screen, throw coins at the screen in appreciative display and sing along with the soundtrack. Audience members are known to criticize a film or protest about viewing conditions by ripping up upholstered seating with razor blades and knives. The overtly participatory and interactive style of Indian audiences makes possible an empirically grounded examination of cinematic reception, a phenomenon which has eluded study in Western societies. We know little today of the process of engagement with a mass cultural product, especially as it occurs in public settings. Based on observation in cinema theaters and interviews, this article examines the processes through which audiences shape the effects of popular cinema on themselves. Cinema is seen to be a collective achievement arising out of a series of negotiated interactions between those categorized as its producers and others who are viewed as consumers.