Schaefer, D. and Karan, K. (2009). Globalization, Popular Hindi Cinema, and Cinematic Public Spheres: Tracking the Impact of Transnationalism on Romance, Crime, Sexuality, and Violence. Paper presented at the the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre’s 18th Annual Conference “Media Democracy and Governance: Emerging Paradigms in the Digital Age,” New Delhi, India, July 13-16, 2009.

Although there has been a major increase in scholarly attention focusing on popular Hindi cinema in the past fifteen years, few studies provide systematic empirical evidence of the relationship between globalizational forces and the prevalence of violence, sexuality, crime and vice, and romance in these films. Drawing upon globalization theory, we content-analyze a systematic random sample of top-grossing Hindi films in the sixty year period since India’s Independence in 1947. The results provide evidence that both indigenous (glocalized) and exogenous (grobalized) structures were significantly associated with Hindi film violence, crime/vice, and romance. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2009 ICA annual conference in Chicago, IL.