We are cool now...in Hamara India: Bikinis, bike races and dancing bodies in the 'age of globalization'

This dissertation studies dances and dancing bodies in popular Indian visual culture, to analyze the interaction between these productive bodies on the one hand, and macro processes of economic liberalization and ideological change in Indian politics, media systems and social-cultural life on the other. The study performs a close analysis of local-global styles of dancing and moving to understand how bodies reflect and produce larger processes of cultural change, and by comparing moving, reflective bodies in India today with older dance forms, traditions, post-colonial ideologies, political and psychological issues of nationalism and identity, global trends in beauty and bodies, economic and political structures of the visual culture industry in India, and other processes of globalization. In an attempt to understand how moving bodies produce emerging cultural ideologies, including those that re-define femininity and masculinity, this analysis includes a special look at historical strategies of patriarchal control and resistance in India that are unique to the country's culture, and political-social institutions. This includes an analysis of the exercise of patriarchal structures in the country including histories of nationalism and changing gender roles, the acts of compliance, resistance and indeed production enacted by bodies that constantly re-constitute themselves, ideologies that define the political-erotics of bodies, artistic/performative traditions in India, and emergent body movements and lifestyles that create possibilities for difference. The study also looks briefly at relationships and interactions between the country and its diasporic populations. It utilizes semiotic analyses of dancing bodies in filmic texts, including dances from Bollywood, diasporic cinema and music television, material from films, advertising and music videos, as well as analysis of live dances. The study suggests a theorization of the place and function of dance and dancing bodies in creating change, in re-defining gender, national and diasporic identity, in producing filmic pleasure for audiences, and in shaping, reflecting and creating ideological change for populations in flux.