Consumer citizens and troubling desires: Reading Hindi cinema in Pakistan

This discussion draws upon interviews with Pakistani viewers of Hindi cinema and locates them within a context of a declining film industry in Pakistan. I examine the reception of Hindi films among Pakistani audiences, and explore the ways in which their cinematic narratives help infuse western influences with local traditions. In so doing, they also help produce forms of dress, music and lifestyles that have much to say about the fluidity of cultural forms in local contexts in Pakistan, a country that continues to be a land of contrasts. On the one hand, there is the jihadi culture and support for Osama bin Laden, and on the other, a local production of modernity influenced by consumerism, redefined sexuality and Shah Rukh Khan. I argue that Hindi films target potential consumers and create desires that trouble as much as they entice. Through a montage of cinematic narrative, cosmopolitan lifestyles, dazzling wardrobes and distilled glamour, Pakistanis participate in consumption patterns emerging in the country. At the same time, sexuality is in a state of flux. While conservative forces are trying to regulate their mobility and sexuality, young people are challenging traditions and received norms. Such a process renders Hindi cinema an important yet, to some viewers, troubling component of public culture in Pakistan. The emerging public culture identifies complex and dynamic processes that allow for new types of possibilities and arrangements as the lives and agency of individuals interweave with shared cinematic texts and the social structures within which they are played out.