Changing Winds
Oman TV, Indian (Ocean) Films and Media Piracy in the 1980s
In: Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationSearch for other papers by Samhita Sunya in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
By exploring the case of Oman TV’s broadcasting of Indian films in the 1970s and 1980s, I uncover the gulf between historiographies of national cinema and television that are framed by histories of production, on the one hand, and accounts of (new) media distribution that are framed by neoliberal contexts of globalization since the late 1990s, on the other. From archival sources, including Indian government documents and trade journals, three intriguing patterns emerge: (1) In lists of countries to which Indian films were being exported in the 1980s, the importer is mentioned, specifically and uniquely, as ‘Oman TV’ instead of ‘Oman’. (2) By the 1980s, Oman TV was a crucial conduit through which Indian films were readily and easily available to audiences in Pakistan, among other locations across the Middle East and South Asia, regardless of national import/export policies. (3) Weekly broadcasts of Indian films on Oman TV fueled demand for both VHS tapes of Indian films and the local exhibition of Indian films in cinema halls. Together, these strands reveal a key moment of infrastructure development in the Gulf, a period of burgeoning labor migrations and major shifts in transregional media distribution and viewing practices.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Akhtar, Rafique (1982). Pakistan Year Book. Lahore: East and West Publishing Company.
-
Anderson, Lindsay (1969). How I Make My Films—Satyajit Ray, Interviewed by Lindsay Anderson, Whose Film ‘If’, Won the Cannes Prize This Year. Film World 5: 80–82.
-
Armbrust, Walter (2008). The Ubiquitous Nonpresence of India. In Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti (eds.), Global Bollywood, Travels of Hindi Song and Dance, pp. 200–220. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
-
Askari, Kaveh and Samhita Sunya (eds.) (2020). Special Issue: South by South/West Asia: Transregional Histories of Middle East-South Asia Cinema. Film History 32 (3): 1–9.
-
Asian Recorder (1974). Afghanistan. Asian Recorder 20: 11785.
-
Athique, Adrian (2008). The Global Dynamics of Indian Media Piracy: Export Markets, Playback Media and the Informal Economy. Media, Culture & Society 30 (5): 699–717.
-
Bhatia, V.P. (1980). Indian Films as Threat to ‘Pakistan Ideology’. Organiser 32 (3): 13–14.
-
Business Year (2014). TBY Talks to Ahmed bin Essa Al Zadjali, CEO of Muscat Press & Publishing House, SAOC, on the Success of the Times of Oman. Business Year: https://www.thebusinessyear.com/oman-2014/get-with-the-times/interview. Accessed 1 May 2020.
-
Cooley, Claire (2019). Bachchan Superman—Hindi Cinema in Egypt, 1985–1991. Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 59. Online: https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc59.2019/Cooley-Bachchan/ Accessed 3 January 2020.
-
Dharap, B.V. (1978). Indian Films 1977/78. Pune: National Film Archive of India.
-
Eckstein, Lars and Anja Schwarz (2014). Introduction. In Lars Eckstein and Anja Schwarz (eds.). Postcolonial Piracy: Media Distribution and Cultural Production in the Global South, pp. 1–26. London: Bloomsbury.
-
Economic Weekly (1959). Weekly Notes, 1959. Economic Weekly 11: 596.
-
Eleftheriotis, Dimitris and Dina Iordanova (eds.) (2006). Special Issue: Indian Cinema Abroad: Historiography of Transnational Cinematic Exchanges. South Asian Popular Culture 4 (2): 79–82.
-
Fair, Laura (2018). Reel Pleasures: Cinema Audiences and Entrepreneurs in 20th Century Urban Tanzania. Athens: Ohio University Press.
-
Gurata, Ahmet (2010). The Road to Vagrancy: Translation and Reception of Indian Cinema in Turkey. BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 1: 67–90.
-
India Working Group on National Film Policy (1980). Report of the Working Group on National Film Policy. Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.
-
Indian Department of Commerce (1963). Senegal, Upper Volta, and Ivory Coast: A Report on Economic and Commercial Conditions. Delhi: Government of India.
-
Kasim, Serene (2017). Things We Did Growing Up in Oman. Medium (15 August 2017): https://medium.com/@serene105/things-we-did-growing-up-in-oman-494558f086cd. Accessed 1 October 2019.
-
Khan, I.M. (1957). Scope for Pakistani Films in the Middle East. Pakistan Review 5: 43–44.
-
Lok Sabha Debates (1963). New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat.
-
Lok Sabha Secretariat (1968). Written Answers, 1968. In Lok Sabha Debates, pp. 207–210. Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat.
-
Mathew, Johan (2018). Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism Across the Arabian Sea. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Mini, Darshana Sreedhar (2020). Transnational Journeys of Malayalam Soft-Porn: Obscenity, Censorship and Mediations of Desire. PhD dissertation, University of Southern California.
-
Naficy, Hamid (2011). A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 2: The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978. Durham: Duke University Press.
-
Onley, James (2005). Britain’s Informal Empire in the Gulf, 1820–1971. Journal of Social Affairs 22(87): 29–45.
-
Oommen, G.Z. (2016). South Asia–Gulf Migratory Corridor: Emerging Patterns, Prospects and Challenges. Migration and Development 5: 394–412.
-
Parks, Lisa and Nicole Starosielski (eds.) (2015). Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
-
Parveze, Rana N. (2010). First to Face the Challenges (23 February 2010). Times of Oman, 157.
-
Prasad, M. Madhava (2003). This Thing Called Bollywood. India Seminar 525: https://www.india-seminar.com/2003/525/525%20madhava%20prasad.htm. Accessed 1 October 2018.
-
Radhakrishnan, Ratheesh (2016). The ‘Worlds’ of the Region. Positions: Asia Critique 24 (3): 693–719.
-
Rahman, Harisur (2020). From Partition to Hegemony: Bangladesh and Bangladeshi Films in the South Asian Context. In Consuming Cultural Hegemony, pp. 29–59. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Rajadhyaksha, Ashish (2009). Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
-
Rekabtalaei, Golbarg (2019). Iranian Cosmopolitanism: A Cinematic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Royal Television Society Journal (1975). Society News. Royal Television Society Journal 15: 405.
-
Shipchandler, T. (1982). Arabs—Hindi Film Crazy! Film World 9.
-
Siddique, Salma (2019). Archive Filmaria: Cinema, Curation, and Contagion. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 39 (1): 196–211.
-
Srinivasan, K. (2018). The Arabic Origin of an Iconic Song in Raj Kapoor’s Awara. Film Companion (30 October 2018): https://www.filmcompanion.in/raj-kapoor-awara-carbon-copy-umm-kulthum-widad-ghar-aaya-mera-pardesi/.
-
Takriti, Abdel Razzaq (2013). Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman, 1965–1976. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Taneja, R. (1983). The Arab Itch for Hindi film. Link 26: 36–37.
-
Times of India (1978). 100 Movies Fetch Rs. 17 Lakhs at Film Market. Times of India: 6.
-
Times of India (1979). Antennae Antics of Pakistanis (26 October 1979). Times of India, 9.
-
Times of India (1982). NFDC Centres to Boost Film Exports (9 January 1982). Times of India, 13.
-
Times of Oman (1979). The Indian Community Get It Together. Times of Oman (8 February 1979), 13.
-
Times of Oman (1981a). Entertainment Packed in Original SONY Blue-Yellow Pack. Times of Oman (25 June 1981), 4.
-
Times of Oman (1981b). Esquire: The Legal Name in Home Entertainment for Indian Films on Video Cassettes. Times of Oman (31 July 1981), 4.
-
Vimercati, Giovanni (2019). Thief of Baghdad: Arabs in World Cinema. The Brooklyn Rail: https://brooklynrail.org/2019/06/artseen/Thief-of-Baghdad-Arabs-in-World-Cinema. Accessed 3 January 2020.
-
Z., S. (1984). The Indian Influence. Surya 8: 64.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 622 | 138 | 56 |
| Full Text Views | 31 | 4 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 79 | 8 | 0 |
Changing Winds
Oman TV, Indian (Ocean) Films and Media Piracy in the 1980s
In: Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationSearch for other papers by Samhita Sunya in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
By exploring the case of Oman TV’s broadcasting of Indian films in the 1970s and 1980s, I uncover the gulf between historiographies of national cinema and television that are framed by histories of production, on the one hand, and accounts of (new) media distribution that are framed by neoliberal contexts of globalization since the late 1990s, on the other. From archival sources, including Indian government documents and trade journals, three intriguing patterns emerge: (1) In lists of countries to which Indian films were being exported in the 1980s, the importer is mentioned, specifically and uniquely, as ‘Oman TV’ instead of ‘Oman’. (2) By the 1980s, Oman TV was a crucial conduit through which Indian films were readily and easily available to audiences in Pakistan, among other locations across the Middle East and South Asia, regardless of national import/export policies. (3) Weekly broadcasts of Indian films on Oman TV fueled demand for both VHS tapes of Indian films and the local exhibition of Indian films in cinema halls. Together, these strands reveal a key moment of infrastructure development in the Gulf, a period of burgeoning labor migrations and major shifts in transregional media distribution and viewing practices.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 622 | 138 | 56 |
| Full Text Views | 31 | 4 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 79 | 8 | 0 |