MicroSD-ing “Mewati Videos”: Circulation and Regulation of a Subaltern-Popular Media Culture

The contributors to this volume theorize Asian video cultures in the context of social movements, market economies, and local popular cultures to complicate notions of the Asian experience of global media. Whether discussing video platforms in Japan and Indonesia, K-pop reception videos, amateur music videos circulated via microSD cards in India, or the censorship of Bollywood films in Nigeria, the essays trace the myriad ways Asian video reshapes media politics and aesthetic practices. While many influential commentators overlook, denounce, and trivialize Asian video, the contributors here show how it belongs to the shifting core of contemporary global media, thereby moving conversations about Asian media beyond static East-West imaginaries, residual Cold War mentalities, triumphalist declarations about resurgent Asias, and budding jingoisms. In so doing, they write Asia’s vibrant media practices into the mainstream of global media and cultural theories while challenging and complicating hegemonic ideas about the global as well as digital media.

Contributors. Conerly Casey, Jenny Chio, Michelle Cho, Kay Dickinson, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Feng-Mei Heberer, Tzu-hui Celina Hung, Rahul Mukherjee, Joshua Neves, Bhaskar Sarkar, Nishant Shah, Abhigyan Singh, SV Srinivas, Marc Steinberg, Chia-chi Wu, Patricia Zimmerma