Susmita rethinks the idea of a discursive public sphere in the context of Indian popular

cinema and tracks the transformation of this sphere in post independent India. She
argues that in India, until the arrival of television cinema is the public sphere rather
than a medium which evokes or reflects a public sphere. Cinema becomes the public
sphere by loosing its frames. The image, unlike, painting has no frames. It is a slice of
reality. Hence normal life could flow into it and inhabits its world. Ideology is the
objective of cineamtic narratives. This does not mean that cinema creates an illusory
world. It sets the pace of life and provides it with rules for individuation. According to
Susmita myths are true but cinema should be true.
The Indian cinema grew up with the Indian freedom movement which emphasised the
moral transformation of the individual who, infused with the values of modenity,
would demand politcal power for her full development. Cinema took care of the
intimate sphere of this transformation leaving the political sphere to the Indian
National Congress.
In popular Indian cinema actors matter more than charactors they play or the
directors. Actors rise to the status of stars with large fan following. Stars lead strictly
pivate lives which are accessible to the fans only through gossips. The individual
viewer who enters frameless image is socialised in the publicness of the closely
guarded private lives of stars. In this sense cinema redraws the distinction between
private and the public.

Susmita marks a crucial transformation in the nature of this Indian cinematic public.
With the growing proximity between Cinema and advertiement and the advent of
television, cinema looses its status as a public sphere and becomes an object of
consumption. The proliferation of mutiplex theatres and DVDs have shifted the center
of power from the film to the viewer. The stars have left their intimately private
abodes and now attend public events, adevrtise products and appear in TV shows. The
film has become an advertisement for fashion products, life styles and for its own
lelemts like songs. The focus shifts from emotions to bodies and from ideology to the
objects of consumption. Instead of drawing the world into the cinema, now cinema
goes into the world ands finds its place among the objects of consumption. In the
earlier era ,the public sphere of cinema drew the individual into the intimate world
and hence the viewer would normally keep his fanhood a secret. The spectator was
nave and embarrased. Once this intimate sphere is destituted and the public world
becomes a world of consumption the individual is far freer to publically acknowledge
his alignment with cinema.

The space vacated by the frameless cinema is taken up by what susmita calls the
civilsational terror industry. A ferociously private or anonymous life of the suicide
bomber disappaers in a public spectable it creates. In news Tv clippings of this spectcle
instead guding the viewr through new modes of individuation merely satifies his
addiction for the visual. ANNA
The present paper explores the various ideas that Habermas explores in his
conceptualization of the public sphere in the context of the Indian popular cinema.

It is the contention of this paper that the cinema in India is the public sphere
Cinema interestingly loses its frames once the viewer encounters it and the latter
makes it a continuation of her life and her journey. The public sphere which the
cinema creates interestingly is not one of debates and discourses over ideology
though ideology is very systematically the objective of its narratives, but rather styles,
attitudes, values and other such attributes which help the individual attain a
semblance of respectability as a social being in the public sphere. The crucial factor of
cinema being the public sphere rather than as something that invokes the public
sphere emanates from its characteristic of losing its frames. Cinem BEING THE PUBLIC
SPHERE LOOSING ITS FRAMES
. Cinema, in a way sets the pace of our societies. This it does by its framelessness, its
scale of display and the range of its dimensions. Cinema and pace of life
Myths are truths while cinema should be true.
but where the cinema becomes anti politics is in the way it renounces any ambition of
becoming the State and instead focusses on the individual.
The Congress led Freedom Movement was the largest mass movements of the modern
world. The reformed individual, infused with values of modernity was now supposed
to demand political power for her fuller development. Political agency was seen as
facilitating for a holistic development of personality.
cinema took on the intimate sphere while the Congress took upon the political sphere.

.
1
The cinema in India is similar to the monarchical power of Europe. It is public for no
one is excluded from its viewing but film stars and directors and producers of cinema
are hopelessly private people guarding themselves away from public eye
People who take cinema seriously are thus supposed to be nave.
Cinema is not reflective of the public sphere, it is the public sphere.

1
Habermas, op cit 1. Pp 10-12
Popular cinema is marked out by the stars; fans recall films by its star cast and not by its
directors. Directors place frames, stars work inside them and it is only natural that
recalling cinema by its stars is the natural way to be. Directors and actors
The power of cinema is to generate a new sense of life, a kind of a Book to live by its
rules. A new book. Not transcdental.
Transformation:

Such a shift in power from the film to the viewers has curtailed the cinemas power to
be an overarching reality and hence of being the public sphere itself;
. With the prominace of viewers cienam looses it status as public sphere. It now
becomes an object of consumption. Close link betwwen cineam and advertisement
films. From spectles to advt
The focus on bodies rather than on emotions, the focus on consumption instead of
ideology has strangely brought cinema into the world of objects where it is far freer
for an individual to publicly acknowledge her alignment with the medium.

. Viewer no longer has to make a secrte wish to be filmic. Films star looses their privacy
appear on Tv, advt films. Instead of absrbing world into the cinema the later is released
into the world. The world begins to look like cinema.
The space vacated by frameless cinema is now attempted to be taken over by the
civilizational terror industry.
; it is evident that cinema stood in lieu of institutions which could carry the
modernization project in the Indian society. The rise of terror as a visual spectacle and
the decline of cinema as a routinized object of consumption show that technologically
cinema seems to have exhausted its visual capabilities.
TV and cinema
Unlike the cinema which is finite, the television is continuous. It has no beginning, or
middle or end. It runs just as well in the background. It is invisible because it goes on
in the background and satisfies fully the addiction of viewers to the visual culture. In it
being always on, the television is today frameless.