ABSTRACT
The multiplex cinema is a site of major significance for anyone interested in understanding not only the operating logic of the media industries, but also the contemporary dynamics of urban development, public culture and social change. In the Indian case specifically, an account of the multiplex must be informed by India’s great cultural diversity, its colonial and socialist pasts, its dense and contested spatialities, its vibrant audio-visual culture, the strengths and contradictions of its mixed economy and its complex arrangements of civil and political society. At the present time, the story of the multiplex in India is also widely perceived as being part of a wider narrative through which India is variously described as ‘rising’, ‘shining’, ‘poised’ and ‘unbound’. Such epithets are mobilized in support of an unfolding regime of economic liberalisation, which began in earnest in 1991. During this era, successive Indian governments have relaxed stringent licensing laws that gave overwhelming control of the economy to the government. As a result, India has attracted significant inflows of foreign investment and is increasingly returning to its historically significant role in international trade. As part of this process, a new popular image of India is emerging in the pages of English-language news and business glossies as a dynamic, modernising, capitalist society amenable to incorporation into the global knowledge economy. This process of ‘re-branding’, while far from uncontested, has been enormously influential both internationally and within India itself.
