Analog Star

Obsolete technology lends itself to nostalgia in a way little else does. The attachment is twofold: to the outdated device itself, but also to the media consumption it enabled and the memories formed around it. The ‘physical’—a film camera, a DVD, an iPod—is inseparable from the metaphysical, the immaterial—how a song made you feel, or the time a film moved you deeply. Video Culture in India: The Analog Era by Ishita Tiwary, thus, has an inherently emotional quality to it. The book is a portrait of the brief but thrilling video revolution in India in the 1980s—it looks at the many infrastructures that allowed video technology to flourish, and the formal and aesthetic innovations it produced.

The author presents a historical analysis of this period—of the rise and fall of video and VCR production, distribution, and consumption—through four expansive case studies that form the central narrative of this book. She looks at the wedding video and its rise to prominence in the ’80s, explaining the links to wedding rituals and Bollywood aesthetics that inform the shooting and editing style. So, while we all may have memories of the video guy at Indian weddings following all the important characters—with the annoying yellow spotlight on the bride’s face at all times—Tiwary goes deeper and establishes the story behind how these trends came to be.

Next, she crafts a biography of Hiba Films, started by Nari Hira, who owned the popular gossip magazine Stardust. Through the story of Hiba, Tiwary tackles ‘video films’, and looks at the straight-to-video erotic films of the time that acted as subversions to the aesthetic formulations of Bollywood (or ‘Bombay Cinema’). The salacious affairs, the Madh Island bungalows, the close-up sequences. She posits video as a medium of intimacy, evident in the cinematography techniques and how they differed from celluloid methods. The ’80s, with the steady growth of video and VCR consumption in India among the financially privileged classes, saw an exodus of these rich people from theatres. The VCR, which allowed access to media inside one’s home, became a symbol of elitism as the upper classes embraced the medium. Alongside the broader themes in the book, Tiwari also draws an ethnographic sketch of this period of activity: The series of media infrastructures around the video—video parlours, government regulation, censorship patterns, legal and extra-legal distribution models—are all tackled at great length.

At this point, it’s perhaps also necessary to point out that this book is an academic work: it looks at previous research and published material around media studies and theorises frequently. This, of course, can feel challenging, even alienating, to the casual reader not quite accustomed to the density of information, footnoting, and academic rigour required in this style of writing. Admittedly, some of the heavy theory stuff whooshed past this reviewer, but Tiwary is a strong writer with clear and concise prose, and the exciting subject material itself counterbalances any concerns around accessibility.

The third primary section of Video Culture in India is particularly relevant to our times. It focuses on the ‘video event’ with the video magazine Newstrack, which was available to subscribers and at video libraries, at its centre. The magazine—or, to explain in modern terms, a video show that looks at, say, current affairs or film news—is a precursor to contemporary TV news and broadcast media. Newstrack, produced by India Today magazine, would do long-form rundowns of news events of the time, telling stories in ways that perhaps the government of the time didn’t quite want. It was eventually absorbed into state-run broadcast news, but Tiwary discusses the disruptive work they did in their early years, explaining the production and reportage approach on their tapes about the demolition of the Babri Masjid and their coverage of the anti-Mandal protests, the latter being criticised for its editorial bent.

And concluding her deep dives is the story of religion and how it intersected with the rise of video. For this, she looks at Rajneesh—or Osho—through the resources available as well as by spending time at three ashrams across two cities. Tiwary points out Rajneesh’s—and Rajneeshes’—embrace of modern technology and how that helped spread the message of the cult globally and enabled him to provide ‘darshan’ for his followers through video pravachanas—akin to sermons—where viewers could not only hear his words but also connect to the visual presence of their leader.

Video Culture in India spends much of its time outlining the technological and aesthetic disruption that video afforded in the ’80s, and the many factors that led to its obsolescence, but it also connects this period of uncertain analogue interventions to the modern digital era. How these developments—good and bad and everything in between—formed the nucleus of what was to come later, from broadcast television to the early days of the internet to whatever mess we’re in today. The theme of nostalgia, while never quite explicitly at the forefront here, can of course be experienced by the reader. For those of a certain vintage—millennials and older—this book is an elucidation, and deconstruction, of a time we may have lived through. For others, the tenor of the nostalgia may take the shape of longing, of yearning for a second-hand past that can be re-lived through the book.

About The Author

Akhil Sood