Brought to Life by the Voice : Playback Singing and Cultural Politics in South India.
Material type:
TextSeries: South Asia Across the Disciplines SeriesPublisher: Berkeley : University of California Press, 2021Copyright date: �2021Edition: 1st edDescription: 1 online resource (262 pages)Content type: text Media type: computer Carrier type: online resourceISBN: 9780520976399Genre/Form: Electronic books.Additional physical formats: Print version:: Brought to Life by the VoiceDDC classification: 781.54209548 Online resources: Click to View Summary: To produce the song sequences that are central to Indian popular cinema, singers' voices are first recorded in the studio and then played back on the set to be lip-synced and danced to by actors and actresses as the visuals are filmed. Since the 1950s, playback singers have become revered celebrities in their own right. Brought to Life by the Voice explores the distinctive aesthetics and affective power generated by this division of labor between onscreen body and offscreen voice in South Indian Tamil cinema. In Amanda Weidman's historical and ethnographic account, playback is not just a cinematic technique, but a powerful and ubiquitous element of aural public culture that has shaped the complex dynamics of postcolonial gendered subjectivity, politicized ethnolinguistic identity, and neoliberal transformation in South India.
To produce the song sequences that are central to Indian popular cinema, singers' voices are first recorded in the studio and then played back on the set to be lip-synced and danced to by actors and actresses as the visuals are filmed. Since the 1950s, playback singers have become revered celebrities in their own right. Brought to Life by the Voice explores the distinctive aesthetics and affective power generated by this division of labor between onscreen body and offscreen voice in South Indian Tamil cinema. In Amanda Weidman's historical and ethnographic account, playback is not just a cinematic technique, but a powerful and ubiquitous element of aural public culture that has shaped the complex dynamics of postcolonial gendered subjectivity, politicized ethnolinguistic identity, and neoliberal transformation in South India.
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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2023. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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