Local Consumption of Global Popular Culture: Indian Popular Films and Zahedani Spectators

Indian popular films, as a global popular culture, are consumed vastly in Iranian society. This is not a new phenomenon and can be traced back to the 1330s. But there has been no investigation about the way these films are consumed and how the spectators communicate with them .The present research employs the approach of cultural studies, explaining and interpreting the readings of Indian popular film among Zahedani spectators. In doing so, we have used a qualitative- synthetic method. This method includes: 1) interpreting the social, ideological and technical codes of Indian popular films, 2) analyzing the sociocultural contexts of spectators, and 3) explaining the reading of spectators. The findings of this research indicate that Indian popular films, as a global popular culture, create some structures and power relations in the world of narrative, which naturalize and are influenced by structures and power relations in the Indian social world. Whenever, due to globalizing processes, global popular culture is consumed locally, its discursive formation will change according to the discursive identity of local consumers and their concerns. The texts of global popular culture can provide a context in which local consumers are able to transcend the framework of space and time and overcome their social, cultural and political limitations.