Breaking Western Filmmaking Models: An Unexplored Indian Frame of Film Communication—Evidence From Telugu Cinema

Abstract

The present study primarily intends to document how textbooks and reference textbooks on film studies written by Western and diaspora authors either belittled Indian cinema as masala genre or glorified the moniker Bollywood as a signifier of pan-Indianness, overlooking the significant contributions of the Telugu film industry, which is the twin brother of the Hindi film industry both in genesis and growth (since 1931) and even today runs neck to neck with Hindi cinema in the production of films and film remakes. The study argues that Indian cinema has never been examined at the modernist (foundation) level of its structural perspectives comprising innovations of production, cultural flows in the delineation of regional variations, and fine arts including aesthetics consisting of six arts and genres that are native, distinct, and unique. Drawing its support from de-Westernizing media studies, the article posits that lack of familiarity with the Indian cultural and linguistic traditions, together with its complex structure and semiotics rooted in religious classics, which are portrayed more effectively in Telugu cinema than in Hindi cinema, is the reason for the failure of Western academia to negotiate the complex meaning processes of these filmic communications.