Arjun Appudrai’s work focuses on the intersection of globalization and the culture concept. As globalization has radically pulled cultures apart from a specific locality, we as anthropologists must think of a new way to approach the study of culture. As Appadurai states; “...the landscapes of group identity—the ethnoscapes---around the world are no longer familiar anthropological objects, insofar as groups are no longer tightly territorialized, spatially bounded, historically unselfconscious or culturally homogeneous” (1996:48). The other half of globalization is the reinsertion of culture into new contexts. People, idea, images are re-inscribed into new environments and things become re-localized and made part of a new place and made sense of in a new ways. As such, Appaduari urges the reader to consider “…what is the nature of locality as a lived experience in a globalized, deterritorialized world” (pp.52).
Furthermore he argues that the imagination has now acquired a singular new power in social life, and now more persons in more parts of the world consider a wider set of possible lives than they did before. “More people throughout the world see their lives through the prisms of the possible lives offered by mass media in all their forms” (1996:54), as once imagination and fantasy was only evident in certain social situations in certain contexts, now more people are integrating fantasy into their social lives on a daily basis. He suggests that “…link between the imagination and social life…is increasingly a global and deterritorialized one” (1996:55).
Drawing from Appadurais theory I will investigate Jai Ho clip to shed light on the complexities of globalization, the delocalization of culture and how this affects the creation of imaginations for various individuals.
Official YouTube version of Jai Ho from the end of the Movie Slumdog millionaire
The video depicts an elaborate bollywood style dance scene lead by the main male and female protagonist to a song entitled Jai Ho (may victory be yours). The dance sequence is interjected with clips from the Slumdog Millionaire movie, however the song is continually played throughout. The video clip can be interpreted to accomplish a number of tasks as set forth by the director, first to promote the movie and second to provide a depiction of what the movie is about. It also provides the viewer with a sense of what the country is like, as a seemingly local, territory bound culture area. Thus simultaneously contributing to the viewers imagination of India and possible lives they can imagine as embodied by the characters.
However, upon further investigation what in fact is present by the clip hardly localized at all, but rather is the result of the global flows of information, materials, and ideologies. For example the entire game show the movie is based around, (Who wants to be a Millionaire?) stems from the original show in the US and is part of a larger global phenomenon of an interest in televised game shows dating back to the late 1930’s. Furthermore the dress of the individuals of the film can hardly be said to be “traditional” or bound to the locality of India. For example many of the characters are wearing jeans, a style that originated in United States as well, originally designed for manual labor they were made popular by American teens in the 1950’s. These global commodities or interests are combined and integrated into the locality of India in unique ways, for example the questions asked on the game show are based around Indian historical cultural facts, rooted in the specific locality of the country and Indian culture. Furthermore the main female protagonist wears jeans mixed with a more traditional east Indian sari sash over her head, and many of the background dancers are dressed in perhaps a more “western style” (sneakers, jeans, t-shirts ect…).
As such the director is fabricating an imagined experience of India to construct a movie of cinematic interest for global audience with the hope of gaining a commercial profit. While attempting to display a specific local culture to a global crowd one should note that what is being presented is hardly localized at all. As such, the video is layering concepts of both local culture and the forces of globalization and it is this tension between the two that Appadurai argues, drives cultural reproduction today (1996:63).
Appadurai, Arjun
1996 Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology. In Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Pp. 48-65. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
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