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http://eth.sagepub.com Vol 11(1): 189–205[DOI: 10.1177/1466138109355213]

Cinema halls, locality and urban life

■ Lakshmi Srinivas
University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA

ABSTRACT ■ Drawing on ethnographic field research in Bangalore, a

multi-ethnic, multi-lingual city in South India, this article explores the
relationship between cinema and the city and the significance of the
urban setting for the cinema experience, for moviegoers and film business
insiders. Contrary to received understandings of cinema as a universal and
placeless experience, interviews with audiences, filmmakers, distributors
and exhibitors reveal that locality is important for the framing and
embedding of cinema, for the meanings associated with any particular
film or genre. The article suggests that urban space-cultures which situate
cinema are consequential for both the box office performance of the film
and the audiences’ experience.

K E Y W O R D S ■ space and culture, urban entertainment, audiences,

movie theaters, Indian cinema

How do urban space and culture shape the cinema experience for both
moviegoers and the film business? I examined this question in Bangalore, a
multiethnic city in South India that has become known as the sub-
continent’s ‘Silicon Valley’ (though the city is actually situated on a plateau).
Starting in the 1950s, Bangalore became a center for government-funded
heavy industry, including aeronautics, machine tools, heavy machinery,
metallurgy, and electronics. For decades it has been known as India’s
premier science and technology city. The population grew rapidly in the
1970s, and in the 1980s the real estate market boomed. In the 1990s,
multinational corporations started moving in.
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190 E t h n o g r a p h y 11(1)

Cinema in Bangalore is an important part of urban leisure and reflects

the population’s pluralism. Since linguistic, ethnic, regional, and class
cultures have a spatial dimension, cinema is embedded in the spatial config-
uration of the city. In 1998 I conducted a field study of moviegoing in
Bangalore that is anchored in the settings in which cinema is produced and
consumed. I examined the framing of cinema in urban space and the signifi-
cance of locality for cinema. Filmmakers, exhibitors, and distributors whom
I interviewed discussed the importance of the location of various theaters
and of the audience’s geographical distribution for a film’s release. Conver-
sations with audiences revealed their expectations of theater spaces and
their practices of distinguishing among theaters in the city.
Few studies have explored the relevance of locality to cinema or have
looked at movie theaters as social and cultural spaces within a broader
urban setting.1 Studies of Indian cinema have focused largely on the analysis
and interpretation of individual films and genres, stars, directors, and fans,
largely neglecting the social context of their exhibition and the history and
institutions of film distribution.2 The few ethnographies on audiences and
movie-watching in India that are located in specific cities do not address
the links between theaters and urban spaces in any depth.3 We do not have
an understanding of contemporary cinema as it is shaped by the places in
which the movie experience is elaborated.4

Locating a plural cinema

The ‘cosmopolitan’ city of Bangalore is home to a multiplicity of ethnocul-

tural and linguistic groups. According to recent estimates Bangalore is the
third most populous city in India and the fastest growing urban agglomera-
tion. The area has long attracted migrants from neighboring regions and from
other parts of India. In 2001 slightly more than one-third of the city’s popu-
lation of about five million spoke Kannada, the local language, while Tamil
speakers formed close to a quarter of the population. Smaller, yet substantial
minorities spoke Telugu and Urdu. The city’s residents include a number of
other groups: Gujerathis, Punjabis, Marwaris, Marathis, Bengalis, and
speakers of Malayalam, Tulu, and Konkani. Many Bangaloreans are multi-
lingual. The population is also diverse in religious affiliation. A variety of
Hindu groups make up 79 percent of the population while Muslims comprise
13 percent, both roughly the same as the national average.5 The city has
smaller numbers of Christians, Jains, Parsis, Sikhs, and Anglo-Indians.6
In India, the film business is decentralized. Hindi-language films made
in Bombay, or Bollywood, are best known and most widely viewed both
in India and internationally. However, regional cinema continues to
flourish. Many states have their own film businesses that produce popular
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Srinivas ■ Cinema halls, locality and urban life 191

entertainment for the masses in regional languages.7 The South Indian states
of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka (where Bangalore
is located) all have film industries that make full-length feature films in the
language of each state. B movies, martial arts films made in Hong Kong
(S.V. Srinivas, 2003), and adult films contribute to the diversity of cinema
offerings.
Bangalore’s linguistic and cultural pluralism shapes the cinema market
and the film experience. A movie enthusiast turned filmmaker described the
city as a place where ‘a person can watch [in] at least 3 to 4 languages and
go from one culture to another; world cultures, local cultures, you have so
much choice!’ A young cinematographer and filmmaker emphasized the
choices available to moviegoers: ‘People are very diverse. My next door
neighbor may [say] . . . let’s go see the Kannada film . . . his neighbor may
see Malayalam movies, then they start talking about “Titanic”. Finally
someone says “let’s go see a Hindi film”, [so] they go for a Hindi film!’
Films in English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam are
released every week. Moviegoers in Bangalore may see every kind of fare.
One movie enthusiast reported that at one point in his life he would
routinely watch three films a day: ‘morning Kannada, then in the afternoon
I watched Tamil or Hindi, and in the evening English (Hollywood)’. Since
theatres are situated in specific urban spatial cultures, moviegoers’ decisions
about what films to see are also decisions about how to experience the city.

The Cantonment and the City

Movie theaters serve as landmarks in Bangalore. People refer to theaters

when giving directions: ‘I’m going to Jayanagar Nagar, near Nanda theater’;
a theater location may be prominently indicated on the map enclosed with
a wedding invitation. Older residents take pride in the fact that the city
once had the largest number of theaters per square mile anywhere in India.8
The city’s identity has been shaped by its commercial entertainment.
The most striking distinction9 that is significant for cinema and its public
culture is between two nodes in the central urban area. Residents refer to
the Cantonment in the northeast as ‘Cantt’ or ‘Town’, or in terms of its
commercial districts, Commercial Street, Mahatma Gandhi Road (M.G.
Road), and Brigade Road. The other node is the City in the western part
of Bangalore, where the old market area or pettai is located. The City
includes the areas of Gandhinagar, City market, Krishnarajendra Market
(K.R. Market), Avenue Road, and Kempegowda Road (K.G. Road). Estab-
lished separately at different periods, the Cantonment and the City are
recognized as cultural spaces which have long organized urban life, leisure,
and entertainment.10 The Cantonment began as a station for British troops
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192 E t h n o g r a p h y 11(1)

in the early 1800s11 and was then settled by the British and by Tamil-
speaking migrants from the Madras Presidency. When Winston Churchill
lived in the Cantonment as a young army officer, he played polo, grew roses,
and collected butterflies, as well as racking up an account at the Bangalore
Club which remains unsettled. Officially designated a Civil and Military
Station in 1868, the Cantonment was an independent area under control
of the Government of India. In contrast, the old city was established as a
‘fortified settlement’ in the 16th century by Kempegowda and belonged to
the princely state of Mysore. It was a walled town within four main gates
and developed into a dense and vibrant area of mixed residential, commer-
cial, manufacturing, and religious activities (Nair, 2008). Cubbon Park12
separated the Cantonment from the old city, and the British expressed
concern about the populations from these two sections mixing (Nair, 2008).
In 1949 these two cities were brought together under the administration
of the Bangalore City Corporation. Yet the cultural differences between the
two sections persisted long after the formation of Karnataka as a linguis-
tic state in 1956. While the Cantonment was the site for English-speaking
elites and Tamil immigrants as well as Telugu and Urdu speakers, the
linguistic culture of the old city has been described as ‘Kannada centered’,
with some Urdu. Here too there is linguistic and cultural plurality, as
immigrants from the north and south brought a mix of languages and
cultures.13
The Cantonment and the City form organizing nodes for the ways people
experience the city. The wider streets and spacious bungalows of the
Cantonment offered a different lifestyle from the City’s bustling market, its
narrow lanes full of shops and stalls. Bangaloreans recognize the Canton-
ment and the City as cultural zones. Residents of the city in the 1940s and
1950s described the Cantonment as another world where they went to learn
Western ways such as how to use a knife and fork and try out their English-
language skills on waiters who themselves were not fluent in English
(Vishwanath, 2009). Bangaloreans who had grown up in what were
considered more conservative, less cosmopolitan locales admitted to feeling
intimidated and inferior to the more Westernized residents of the Canton-
ment.14 The City was similarly alien for Cantonment residents. Many
belonging to the middle and upper-middle classes are prejudiced against the
City. Members of these classes, especially women, typically avoid the City,
which they perceive as a crowded place where they have to be alert to avoid
pickpockets and ‘eve-teasers’, the term used locally by residents and
English-language newspapers for men who sexually harass women on the
streets.
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Srinivas ■ Cinema halls, locality and urban life 193

Locality and heterogeneity

Cinema is embedded in and shaped by the localities of the city. Part of the
attraction of the Cantonment for older residents were theaters that screened
‘English pictures’. The Liberty (earlier Globe),15 Imperial, B.R.V., Plaza, and
Rex were among the first; the BluMoon, BluDiamond, and Symphony (all
on M.G. Road and the Lido in Ulsoor) were later additions. The City was
also known for its many cinema halls. K.G. Road was lined with ‘talkies’.
A cinematographer who lived in the City for several years counted 50–60
theaters in the area. ‘It was Asia’s number one road with so many theaters!’
Theaters such as Prabhat, States, Sagar, Kempegowda, Himalaya, Geeta,
and Majestic screened Kannada and regional cinema. The Alankar,
Kalpana, Menaka, Abhinay, Kapali, and Tribhuvan were added in the
1950s and 1960s (Vishwanath, 2009).
A cinematographer saw the drawing power of movies in the Cantonment
as having to do as much with the attractiveness of the area to moviegoers
as with the film. ‘People will say “we’ve come all the way to M.G. Road”
– They won’t want to go back without seeing a movie, so they will go to
James Bond.’ A young man in his 20s whose tastes were eclectic and
spanned Bollywood, Hollywood, Kannada, and Tamil movies goes to watch
movies in the Cantonment because ‘M.G. Road is fun at night’. A school
teacher in a boys’ school in the Cantonment reported that when she asked
her 10th standard class to write an essay about what they did on weekends,
one student responded, ‘I hang around outside Rex or Plaza [theaters] or
on Commercial Street looking at beautiful girls.’
With its high-rise, glass-fronted buildings, trendy boutiques, department
stores, five-star hotels, and restaurants, the Cantonment is a place to spend
time with family and friends and people-watch. Cafes, ice-cream parlors,
and small eateries provide spaces for socializing for groups of middle-class
high school and college students, young professionals, and families. People
stroll on the elevated walkway and sit on the benches; they buy snacks from
the street vendors and window-shop. Markers of the city’s colonial past are
everywhere: a statue of Queen Victoria remains at the Cubbon Park end of
M.G. Road, a spot for street vendors to gather and a favorite perch for
pigeons. M.G. Road was originally opposite the military parade grounds,
an open space that still exists in the heart of the commercial area. The
British Council library used to be housed above Koshy’s store and restau-
rant (earlier Parade Café)16 on St Mark’s Road, named after the church.
Higginbotham’s bookstore is an institution on M.G. Road, as was the now-
demolished Victoria Hotel. Brigade Road which leads off from M.G. Road
has more shops, restaurants, bakeries, pubs, clubs, and movie theaters.
The City is where the old fort and temple, the old market area, a major
railway station, and the interstate bus terminus are located. A lot of old
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194 E t h n o g r a p h y 11(1)

Bangalore families originally settled in the areas of the old city, such as
Chickpet, Doddapet, and Chamarajpet, and then gradually moved out to
the newer residential suburbs. The City, Gandhinagar, Kempegowda Road
(K.G. Road), and the area known as ‘Majestic’ (perhaps named after the
Majestic theater) are a dense mix of residential and commercial structures
and activities. This area is recognized as a prime locale for regional and
Hindi cinema.
Many of the theaters in Gandhinagar and the K.G. Road area are directly
on the street. Footpath vendors sell savory snacks, sweets, tender coconut,
and even cigarettes from ‘concessions’ outside the theater. Theaters are in
the midst of shops for selling luggage, textiles, and saris, as well as small
eateries and hotels. Burma Bazaar was located in the City, as were
‘smugglers’ markets’. Outside the Abhinay theater on K.G. Road footpath
stalls attract passers-by and moviegoers waiting for the theater to open its
doors. A range of goods is spread out on the pavement: clothing, plastic-
ware for the household, personal items such as wallets, caps, and handbags
with names of movie stars on them, and footwear. Movie stars and
cricketers look out from posters propped up against a low wall. People
throng the pavement. Vendors call out to passers-by and browsers. They
are quick to follow a person’s gaze and pull out items that catch their
attention. Picking up a violently colored poster of the megastar a vendor
asks me, ‘Madam, you want Shah Rukh Khan?’
Moviegoers have their favorite hang-outs in the City. Food is proffered
by diners and cafeterias, idli-vadai joints and darshinis,17 and stores and
roadside stalls. Sukh Sagar and the Kamat hotel are well-known eateries.
People-watching is a favorite pastime. For some men, referred to locally as
‘roadside romeos’, the streets and crowds outside movie theaters provide
opportunities to make ‘indecent comments’, brush up against women, or
even pinch or grope them.
Since Bangalore has long been known for its many movie theaters, its
cricket grounds, race course, and clubs, residents of rural areas and smaller
cities and towns would come to the big city for an outing. Those who visited
Bangalore on business would make a point of taking in a ‘picture’ or two,
going to the races, and patronizing a restaurant or hotel. Theaters in the
City near the interstate bus stand and railway station facilitated movie-
going; travelers could stay in the many inexpensive little hotels or ‘lodges’.
For rural visitors, Majestic and the City area were the place to visit. For
middle-class residents of smaller towns in the region, the ‘English pictures’
screened in the Cantonment were most attractive. For about four decades
starting in the 1940s an English teacher living in Mysore, 130 kilometers
to the southwest, would visit Bangalore several times a year to catch up
with friends, attend cricket matches, and watch an English-language movie
in the Cantonment. Mysore had only one movie theater, Gayathri, that
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Srinivas ■ Cinema halls, locality and urban life 195

screened Hollywood movies (personal communication, M. Bhaktavatsala);

many of the movies that came to Bangalore would not make it to smaller
cities and towns.
Bangalore’s cultures are spatially differentiated, and urban geography
plays a role in the cinematic experience. A distributor remarked that
theaters were pretty much ‘reserved by language’, as there were theaters
specifically ‘for Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada’ films. A cinematographer
highlighted the areas territorialized by Kannada films:
Kannada films will run only in Kannada-speaking areas. We don’t have
alternative theaters in the same area. The majority of Kannada speakers are
not in east Bangalore. There is also no Kannada theater in north Bangalore.
The south and west are the major money-pulling areas for Kannada. In
Rajajinagar, there’s only Navarang and another B-grade theatre far away.
Language functions as a proxy for ethnicity and class, as films and movie-
goers organize themselves by linguistic genre. Theaters in certain sections
of the city are known for screening particular types of films that are believed
to correspond with a certain class and ethnocultural type of moviegoer. To
the question of why Kannada movies are not screened in other theaters, for
example the Lido in the Cantonment, a distributor replied, ‘What is the
audience in that area? See, we have tried, people have tried, but what is the
use of showing if you don’t get audience?’
Hollywood is also embedded in local spaces. When I asked the manager
of the Nartaki theater in Majestic why the James Bond movie was not
screened in his theater, he referred to the territorialization of Hollywood: a
movie that was screened at the Rex in the Cantonment could not be
screened at Nartaki as per agreement with local distributors and ‘MGM
people’. I asked, ‘If you put James Bond here, it won’t run?’ He responded
that he had not tried, because they would not allow it. A Hollywood picture
that was screened in the Cantonment could not also be shown in the City.
The Hollywood movies that are screened in the Majestic or City area are
either B films, old and scratched prints, or dubbed into Hindi.18
In the Cantonment, theaters that screen Hollywood movies in English
attract large numbers of the educated and Westernized middle class. In the
City, theaters that screen regional Kannada, Tamil, or Telugu-language
films draw the non-Westernized, non-English-speaking population, includ-
ing the lower socioeconomic classes. Since the distance between theaters
in the Cantonment and the City is not more than a few kilometers and
30–40 minutes by autorickshaw or car in peak traffic times, the audience
and the terrain of different types of cinema are highly local and spatially
organized.19 This spatial aspect of moviegoing, which has endured for the
past 70-odd years,20 is frequently overlooked in analyses that focus on a
distant mass culture industry and its universalizing effects.
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196 E t h n o g r a p h y 11(1)

The correspondence between ‘catchment areas’ and certain parts of the

city finds visual expression in the posters and billboards that publicize the
films. Outside the Galaxy or the Plaza, posters and billboards featuring
Hollywood movies are standardized and machine-printed; the same posters
are distributed around the world. Posters and billboards for Hindi and
regional language films are painted by local artists and have a different look
and feel.21 Theaters in Majestic screening a new release sport a full-blown
local aesthetic. Painted billboards are decorated with flower garlands, tinsel,
crepe paper, and colored lights. Plywood ‘cut-outs’ 30–70 feet tall featur-
ing images from the films are erected on the theater façade.22 Hollywood
movies are not advertised in this way, although those released in theaters
in the Majestic area may be indigenized. A version of Jumanji dubbed into
Hindi had a locally painted billboard with the figure of Robin Williams and
a rhino emerging above the painted billboard.
Cultural distinctions are evident in print media as well. English-language
newsmagazines such as India Today routinely have articles on the Bombay
film industry but less often feature regional cinema. English-language news-
papers in Bangalore have daily and weekly write-ups about Hollywood and
Bollywood movies and stars, but less space is devoted to locally made
Kannada cinema. It is easy to miss regional films if you do not read Kannada
and Tamil newspapers or magazines which are available in Majestic and in
other areas of Kannada concentration. The arrangement of urban and
cultural space sets up a class and cultural division across which news does
not filter. Even if regional films are reviewed in English papers, they are
invisible to the Westernized elite and the consumers of Hollywood and the
occasional high-profile Bollywood film.
Many of my respondents in the upper-middle classes, those with a
‘convent school’ education signifying Westernization, were extremely
knowledgeable about Hollywood movies but unaware of happenings in the
world of regional film, even of a raging controversy over a Kannada movie
that was being fought out in court. Students in an elite school who partic-
ipate in a Westernized global culture were excited about a Valentine’s Day
dance with American rock music and a student production of a Shakespeare
play. They were not acquainted with Kannada cinema. Movie stars too are
enmeshed in the city’s cultural niches. Shivarajkumar, a Kannada film super-
star, remarked that while he could not walk around in Majestic for fear of
being mobbed by fans, this problem did not arise in M.G. Road and in the
Cantonment, as few would recognize him there.
Class mobility in the city is associated with perceived ‘cosmopolitanism’
and movement away from the local. Hollywood blockbusters23 and high-
budget Bollywood films draw a broad spectrum of the moviegoing public
and large numbers of the middle classes. Visual and aural cues point to the
cultural and class background of viewers. Wearing Western clothing, eating
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Srinivas ■ Cinema halls, locality and urban life 197

food that does not reflect south Indian cuisine, speaking fluent English or
Hindi – all mark a more ‘cosmopolitan’ and middle-class identity that looks
outward. At theaters in the Cantonment large numbers of young men and
women wear jeans and name-brand athletic shoes and sunglasses. Students
carry backpacks; young women are clad in short skirts and have short ‘bob-
cut’ hair; working women and college students wear north Indian outfits,
churidar khameez or salwar.
Even with the homogenizing effects of modernization, some groups of
moviegoers dress in ways that express their regional, ethnic, and religious
identities. Going to the movies means dressing up, and women are often
seen in silk saris. Women belonging to different regional and ethnic groups
wear their saris differently, and the type of sari itself can be distinctive.
Traditional clothing and jewelry are noticeable and can serve as markers
of ethnicity. Except among highly Westernized and secularized groups,
religious identities are also visible. Married Hindu women wear their
mangalyam,24 which can be read as a marker of regional and, for those in
the know, caste identity (which is otherwise less visible).25 Older Brahmin
men may be seen with caste marks or sacred ash on their foreheads. Muslim
women wear burqas; many Muslim men wear cloth caps. Sikh men are in
turbans. Women in more traditional clothing may wear their hair in plaits.
Another contributing factor to the heterogeneity of the audience are multi-
generational family groups, which include members of the extended family,
elderly parents, and young infants. Cultural diversity in the audience is aural
as well as visual. At theaters screening Bollywood movies and Hollywood
action adventures you can overhear conversations not only in English and
Hindi but also in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Konkani, Tulu,
Gujerathi, Marathi, Punjabi, Urdu, and Bengali as well as dialects of these
languages.26
Diversity in the audience is to some extent organized by the type of film
and the location of the theater. Regional cinema draws a subset of the
audience present at theaters screening Hollywood and Bollywood block-
busters. Regional cinema and Kannada films draw large numbers of men
belonging to the lower socioeconomic classes. They wear sandals or
chappals, simple pants, and a shirt. The women I saw at screenings for
Kannada films in the Majestic area wore saris, ‘half-saris’ and salwar
khameez, and many had strands of jasmine and orange kanakambaram
flowers in their oiled and plaited hair. Habitués of Kannada cinema are
typically less diverse linguistically. Hindi, Punjabi, Gujerati and fluent
English are rarely heard at theaters screening Kannada films.
The mix of men and women in the audience and the composition of
groups also vary by the film, as well as the location and reputation of the
theater. Theaters in Majestic screening regional movies and B movies drew
greater numbers of men. Many of the women present were accompanied
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198 E t h n o g r a p h y 11(1)

by their husbands, fathers and other family members. I did not see the
mixed-sex groups of young college and high school students that were part
of the landscape outside theaters in the Cantonment. Some Kannada movies
appeared to cater exclusively to young men belonging to the lower classes.
For the Kannada films A and Om, both directed by Upendra, a popular
young director who had a growing following among male audiences, I
noticed not more than a handful of women among nearly 1000 viewers,
and not a single woman had come there without a male relative or family
member. However, movies made by other directors such as Nagathihalli
Chandrashekar and Nagabharana and films starring Ramesh draw a more
mixed audience, with large numbers of women and members of the middle
classes. For the Kannada film Megha Bantu Megha starring Ramesh, there
were lots of women in the audience; for the matinee, many had come to
the theater with their women friends and family members.
Kannada film business insiders were very conscious of the class of
audience that films attracted. When explaining to me the logic of screening
Hollywood movies in the Cantonment, an exhibitor of Kannada and
regional cinema said, ‘Class is a separate class!’, distinguishing the audience
by social class and category or audience type as well as rank of films that
appealed to audiences of a particular social class. Some bemoaned the fact
that Kannada films typically did not draw the educated middle classes but
had marginalized themselves over the years by appealing to the lower end
of the socioeconomic spectrum. Filmmakers observed that once they had
lost the middle classes, their audience was exclusively made up of ‘revenue
site owners’,27 ‘slum dwellers’, and ‘poor people’. A series of mediocre films
that provided cheap thrills to mass audiences alienated the middle classes
who moved away to Hindi cinema and Hollywood movies.
When a Kannada film does attract a broader multiethnic and middle-
class audience, it is a phenomenon. America! America!, a film about Indians
who have emigrated to the United States, reached out beyond the cultural
and class boundaries that typically limited Kannada films. A Kannada film-
maker commented that it was ‘Vishesha! [unusual]. Different class of people
came to see, they could identify with the film. America! America! was not
like regular movies.’ The film also reached different ethnic groups; this was
the ‘first time we have seen Sardarjis, Marwaris in the theater for Kannada
films’.
Theater spaces express the class of audience a theater attracts and the
rank or ‘class’ of a particular film. For anxious filmmakers, exhibitors, and
distributors, theater parking lots28 yield clues about the audience. While the
parking lots of the Galaxy, Rex, and Lido are packed with cars and ‘two-
wheelers’ – motorcycles, scooters, and mopeds, the parking lots of theaters
in the City throng with people rather than vehicles, and when vehicles are
present ‘two-wheelers’ outnumber cars. At the Nartaki and the Majestic
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Srinivas ■ Cinema halls, locality and urban life 199

theaters where Kannada films are screened, a small strip of concrete could
serve as parking space, but not a single vehicle is parked there. Viewers,
mostly men belonging to the lower classes, congregate in groups staring at
the posters and decorations and cheering for the star. Concessions also point
to both the culture of the theater and the class of the audience. Bangalore’s
older residents remember popcorn and ‘nut-bars’ (chikki) as part of the
experience of moviegoing in the Cantonment in the 1950s (Vishwanath,
2009). Moviegoers associate the Cantonment theaters with popcorn and ice
cream, soft drinks, coffee and samosas were available at some theaters.
Viewers would make it a point to have a ‘softie’ ice cream from the stand
outside the Plaza. Outside the Plaza the popcorn stand was also on the
pavement. Just before the movie, individual bags of popcorn would be filled
and carried into the theater on trays to be sold during the intermission. I
noticed sandwiches and hamburger look-alikes at some Cantonment
theaters which reflected the broader culture of the film and the Westernized
audience. In comparison, concessions at theaters in Majestic and Gandhi-
nagar are sparse. One moviegoer reflecting on cinema halls in the 1980s
remembered that concessions at Majestic theaters were ‘nothing to talk
about’; there might be ‘stale popcorn’ and in some theaters concessions were
practically non-existent, ‘not even soft drinks!’ At some theaters in Majestic
there were biscuits from local bakeries, chips and tired-looking pastries
smeared with brightly colored icing. I have been to theaters in the area
where tea or coffee was available during the intermission. But ‘concessions’
were frequently outside the theater in the Majestic too and moviegoers
would snack on the foods at pavement stalls and small eateries. A viewer
remembered sugarcane juice as part of the movie outing in the Majestic and
also bonda kadalaikai (spiced peanuts) and chintamani (green masala coated
peanuts). Moviegoers frequently purchase snacks on the street outside the
theater, such fried lentils, and indigenous sweets such as laddus and jalebis.
After the show, the floor was frequently littered with peanut shells.
A film’s box office performance rests on a combination of tangibles and
intangibles that are outside the film itself, but frame it for the audience.
Moviegoers’ decision to see a film is often based on the theater it is screened
in, its locality, and the audience that patronizes the theater. People typically
frequent theaters they are accustomed to in parts of the city they are
comfortable with. When I asked an upper-middle-class professional woman
in her 30s whether she was interested in seeing Titanic, her immediate
response was ‘where is it showing?’ In 1998 Titanic was being screened in
two theaters, the Sangam in the City near the bus-stand and the Galaxy on
Residency Road in the Cantonment. The woman said she would prefer ‘the
Galaxy in Town’ as it was ‘easier’ for her and her family to see it there. As
Hollywood movies are screened mainly in the Cantonment, moviegoers
who seek out these films may become accustomed to the area. In interviews
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200 E t h n o g r a p h y 11(1)

middle-class moviegoers confirmed this rather narrow range of theaters they

frequented: ‘We usually end up going to a few theaters: Rex, very often,
then Plaza, also Galaxy, very rarely go to City-side, Majestic and all that.’
Only an art film, a film made by a ‘quality’ filmmaker, or a Bollywood film
that has received unusually good reviews will draw this audience into
theaters in the City or anywhere outside the Cantonment. Audiences are
also likely to choose theaters that are close to where they live or which they
can reach easily.
Middle-class audiences shun films that they associate with lower-class
audiences or are being screened in a part of the city or a theater they do
not want to go to. A moviegoer disparagingly referred to a ‘sidey hall’,
meaning both seedy and sleazy, where the boisterous audience made
‘catcalls’ and screamed and whistled when the heroine appeared on screen.
A director identified class prejudice as the main reason behind the middle
classes abandoning Kannada cinema:
People don’t want to see Kannada movies because they think ‘Oh, all these
dirty people will be in the theater.’ The same people will be in Ishq [Hindi
film]. And the same people will go to see Titanic. But people will see Titanic
because it’s Hollywood.
A film that proves successful at drawing a certain class of viewer may
dictate the type of theater the star’s subsequent films are released in. After
the Kannada film America! America! proved a success with middle-class
and upper-middle-class viewers, the star Ramesh’s subsequent films were
released in higher-class theaters with ‘car parks’, a calculation based on the
film’s appeal of America! America! to middle-class moviegoers. A distributor
explained:
And if a Ramesh film now releases, they put it in theaters where the parking
space is good. Each actor will have his own kind of theater where the
audience comes there. There are certain theaters where the parking space are
bad. And if your film releases there, however good the film, the audience,
car-parking audience, won’t come there. Your film flops! . . . Tutta-Mutta
[Mother-Wife] is coming in Kalpana [theater] because Kalpana’s parking is
good. Like if you have States [theater] parking is no good, so you’ll have a
tough time.
Filmmakers and distributors are very selective about the theaters in which
their films are released. Distributors find that they have few choices because
the location and history of the theater shape audience expectations and the
movie experience. As one Bangalore distributor put it, ‘the reputation of
the theater also builds up reputation of the picture shown. People will think
“Oh, the picture coming to Santosh? It must be a big movie!” See, that link
is there. That is why we want a good theater.’
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Srinivas ■ Cinema halls, locality and urban life 201

Theater spaces are saturated with value. If a film does well in a partic-
ular theater, the market value of the theater goes up. Distributors in other
parts of the state are willing to pay large sums of money for the film and
the producer can sell the film to the highest bidder. A manager introduced
the concept of ‘theater merit’ when discussing the relative strengths of
different theaters. According to the manager, certain theaters have a good
reputation and character which is linked to their history in terms of the
movies screened there, the audiences that frequent the theater, and its
location. Merit is also acquired through famous patrons; if popular stars
visit the theater, its merit increases.
Since locality is vested with so much meaning, distributors and producers
come into conflict over territory. Filmmakers and distributors compete for
particular theaters. Given the glut of films, a film’s viability is linked to the
particular site of its screening. A theater manager informed me with some
pride that his theater was so popular that directors fight to get it for their
films. One director had created a commotion in the Film Chamber of
Commerce demanding that his film be screened in that theater and no other.
A distributor who deals in both Hindi and Kannada films referred to
‘clashes’ over theaters but focused on how accommodations are arrived at.
Another manager recounted an incident where he had been threatened at
knife-point by thugs he identified as fans of a certain star who demanded
that the star’s recent film be screened in his theater, which would have
required the manager to dislodge the film that was currently being screened.
That particular films are viable only in a handful of theaters heightens
the significance of theaters and their location for the box office while
exacerbating competitive pressures. In conversations with distributors and
producers I learnt that at times films are falsely advertised in the newspapers
as being screened at certain theaters when actually the film has long been
replaced by another. The hope is that out-of-town distributors will either
see the advertisement in a Bangalore newspaper or learn of it and start
bidding for the film. Such practices create confusion for audiences who may
show up at a theater for a particular film, finding it has long gone.

Conclusion

Contrary to received understandings of cinema as a universal and placeless

experience, ethnographic research demonstrates that cinema is shaped by
the broader urban context. Both the spaces of film exhibition and audience
practices of moviegoing are relevant for understanding how cinema is inter-
twined with urban life.
The public culture of cinema in Bangalore highlights the heterogeneity of
films and audiences and the significance of locality in organizing this activity.
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202 E t h n o g r a p h y 11(1)

Cinema is framed by the social and cultural ecology of the city. A film’s success
at the box office depends on how successfully it can tap into a particular
culturally defined space. The failure of a distributor to secure a particular
theater for a film’s release may mean the failure of the film itself, underlining
the centrality of locality in constructing the popular media market.
Far from the standardized and interchangeable spaces of the multiplex
which promote a placeless movie experience, Bangalore’s cinema halls are
cultural niches, sites of cultural and linguistic expression rich in meaning
for exhibitors, distributors, filmmakers, and audiences. Cinema halls
acquire a certain profile or character based on their location, on the public
life which surrounds and frames them, the audiences that patronize them,
and the films that have been screened there in the past. For audiences, deci-
sions about which film to see are also decisions about which theaters and
areas of the city to visit. The cinema experience is about navigating the city
and its cultures. Aesthetics and taste with regard to cinema as well as film
types and linguistic genres acquire a geographical dimension.
Since 2000, mall multiplexes have sprung up all over Bangalore and are
reshaping both the experience of cinema and the urban landscape. Given
the transformation in the public culture of cinema brought about by the
proliferation of multiplexes, an examination of movie theaters and the
cinema experience before the advent of these standardized spaces is all the
more important to understanding the relationship between cinema and
urban spaces.

Notes

1 Jancovich et al. (2003) is an exception.

2 Hughes (1996) examines cinema institutions and audiences from a histor-
ical perspective.
3 See Derne (2000) and Dickey (1993).
4 For this emerging area of inquiry see Larkin (1999), L. Srinivas (2010),
S.V. Srinivas (2003), Vasudevan (2003).
5 S. Srinivas (2001: 5) notes that while it is possible to identify residential
clusters of religious or linguistic groups (the Cantonment has a large
number of Christian households and the old fort has a concentration of
Muslim households), it is ‘difficult to distinguish areas in Bangalore purely
on the basis of religion or caste’.
6 Anglo-Indians are of mixed Indian and British ancestry.
7 Regional cinema is produced close to where it is consumed; filmmakers,
directors, producers, and stars are local heroes. Regional film businesses
may receive some tax exemption from the state government or a fixed
amount of subsidy (personal communication, M. Bhaktavatsala).
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Srinivas ■ Cinema halls, locality and urban life 203

8 Grant Road in Bombay was also known for its movie halls; see Vishwanath
(2009).
9 Nair (2008); S. Srinivas (2001).
10 While movie theaters are located in many parts of Bangalore and its
surroundings, I focus on the concentration of theaters in the Cantonment
and the City.
11 Nair (2008).
12 Named after Sir Mark Cubbon, an officer in the British East India
Company who became the Commissioner of Mysore state and moved the
capital from Mysore to Bangalore.
13 Nair (2008). For the past four centuries the area has been home to
Marathis, Tamil, and Telugu speakers as well as local Kannada speakers;
see S. Srinivas (2001).
14 Janaki Nair refers to the possible ‘sense of superiority that attached to
living with colonial rulers, inseparable from their way of life, [which]
persisted among the inhabitants of the Cantonment’ (2008: 24).
15 Vishwanath (2009).
16 Vishwanath (2009).
17 Idlis are a kind of steamed rice cake often paired with a fried lentil savory at
cafes and small eateries. Darshinis are Bangalore’s version of fast food where
patrons stop for a quick meal or snack and may eat standing at small tables.
18 Sangam theater in the City, known for screening Hollywood films, is an
exception.
19 While the Cantonment and City are associated with particular kind of
cinema culture and a concentration of certain types of films, both regional
films and Bombay cinema can be found in other localities and suburbs and
in pockets in the Cantonment and City. For example, the Ajantha theater
in Ulsoor and the Lavanya theater near the Shivajinagar bus stand are
known for Tamil movies. Outside the City, regional films are also screened
in other localities such as Malleswaram, Rajajinagar, and R.T. Nagar.
20 See Hughes (1996) on the silent film exhibition in Madras in 1928.
21 On occasion, Hollywood film posters are copied for the marquee. Pierce
Brosnan as James Bond on the marquee of the Plaza on M.G. Road had
fleshy pink cheeks and a high color, a local artistic rendition of the
Hollywood poster.
22 Cut-out culture shares ground with political culture, especially in the neigh-
boring state of Tamil Nadu where giant figures of politicians loom over the
streets and transform the cityscape; see Jacob (1998).
23 Action adventures, dramas such as Air Force One, blockbusters such as
Titanic, and James Bond films are widely viewed across class categories.
24 A necklace symbolizing marital status. The design and symbols on it
indicate the region, caste and sub-sect of the wearer and her husband.
25 Some locals claim they can identify a person’s caste by their looks.
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204 E t h n o g r a p h y 11(1)

26 Many Bangaloreans can carry on conversations in two or three languages

simultaneously, for example, Kannada with family and English and Hindi
with friends.
27 Revenue sites are plots of land which are inexpensive as they fall outside
the urban metropolitan jurisdiction and (temporarily) lack urban services
such as piped water and paved roads. The phrase in the context here refers
to the lower socio-economic classes (R. Srinivas in conversation).
28 Theater parking lots are keenly observed by film producers. Of the audience
for the Kannada film America! America!, the director observed that ‘car-
owners’ flocked to the film, a sign that the film was reaching a middle-class
audience that Kannada films typically do not reach.

References

Derne, S. (2000) Movies, Masculinity and Modernity: An Ethnography of Men’s

Filmgoing in India. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Dickey, S. (1993) Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hughes, S. (1996) ‘Is There Anyone Out There? Exhibition and the Formation
of Silent Film Audiences in South India’, unpublished PhD dissertation,
University of Chicago.
Jacob, P. (1998) ‘Media Spectacles: The Production and Reception of Tamil
Cinema Advertisements’, Visual Anthropology 11(4): 287–322.
Jancovich, M., S. Stubbings and L. Faire (2003) The Place of the Audience:
Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption. London: BFI Publishing.
Larkin, B. (1999) ‘Cinema Theatres and Moral Space in Northern Nigeria’,
ISIM Newsletter 3 (July), 13.
Nair, J. (2008) The Promise of the Metropolis. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
Srinivas, L. (2010) ‘Cinema in the City: Tangible Forms, Transformations and
the Punctuation of Everyday Life’, Visual Anthropology 32(1): 1–12.
Srinivas, S. (2001) Landscapes of Urban Memory: The Sacred and the Civic in
India’s High-Tech City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Srinivas, S.V. (2003) ‘Hong Kong Action Film in the Indian B Circuit’, in A.
Rajadhyaksha and K. Soyoung (eds) Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 4, no. 1,
pp. 40–62. London: Routledge.
Vasudevan, R. (2003) ‘Cinema in Urban Space’, available online at: [http://
www.india-seminar.com/2003/525/525%20ravi%20vasudevan.htm].
Vishwanath, P. (2009) ‘The Heydays of Bangalore’s Movie Halls’, Citizen
Matters, Bangalore, 19 September.
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Srinivas ■ Cinema halls, locality and urban life 205

■ LAKSHMI SRINIVAS is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the

University of Massachusetts, Boston. She received her PhD at the
University of California, Los Angeles. She is interested in cinema
and media, popular Indian cinema, audiences, cultural production
and consumption, performance, as well as urban sociology,
globalization, and ethnographic methods. Srinivas’s work explores
the lived experience of cinema through field studies of
moviegoing. She has published articles on cinema audiences and
film experience in Media, Culture and Society, Visual
Anthropology, and South Asian Popular Culture. Address:
Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts,
100 Morrissey Blvd, Boston, MA 02125, USA. [email:
Lakshmi.Srinivas@umb.edu] ■