[Reader-list] In Praise of Parochial Blockbusters: Community, Change and Cliché in Trans-local Action Cinema (Golden Jubilee Lecture by Meaghan Morris)

[Praveen Rai]

Centre for the Study of Developing Societies

invites you to a Golden Jubilee Lecture



*In Praise of Parochial Blockbusters: *

*Community, Change and Cliché in Trans-local Action Cinema*

by* Meaghan Morris*



*Ravi Vasudevan* will Chair

Thursday, 27 March 2014, 6.30 pm

CSDS Seminar Hall,

29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054





Film scholars oriented towards criticism of national and independent
cinemas have been unsettled in recent decades by the emergence across
several film-making centres of action blockbusters with nakedly global
ambitions. Taking up the generic forms of the Hollywood blockbuster, these
films use them to address deeply local, cultural and cinematic issues while
reaching wider audiences who are free to ignore those issues entirely. In
this talk I will reflect on the transformative power of cinematic clichés
in blockbusters by Chinese and Korean filmmakers who deal with national
traumas by making "parochial" transnational films.



*Meaghan Morris *is Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the
University of Sydney, Australia, and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of
Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She works on history in
popular culture, especially on popular thinking about social and historical
change. Her books include *Too Soon, Too Late: History in Popular
Culture*(1998); *Hong
Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema* (co-ed.
2005); *Identity Anecdotes: Translation and Media Culture* (2006) and
*Creativity
and Academic Activism: Instituting Cultural Studies* (co-ed. 2012). A
former Chair of the International Association for Cultural Studies, Prof.
Morris is currently Chair of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society.



*Ravi Vasudevan* is Professor at Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies.


Praveen Rai
Academic Secretary
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road
Delhi - 110054
Phone: 91-11-23942199
Fax: 91-11-23943450
www.csds.in