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A few months ago, popular Film Scholar Professor Ira Bhaskar delivered a talk on “Popular Cinema and National Imagination.” In this talk, she addressed the question of the representation of National Idioms through the lens of Indian cinema. While her effort was well-intended, eventually the talk was generic and superficial owing to her lack of engagement with films that can actually be considered commercial cinema patronised by the audience, and hence her conception of “Popular Cinema” was left for her own discretion. The talk conveyed in broader strokes, making broad generalizations which could well be challenged and problematised. My observation from the talk was that Professor Ira Bhaskar tended to arm-twist the narrative to suit her political opinions, without caring for the dynamics that cinematic narratives can offer.

This article was originally framed as a series of questions framed at Professor Ira Bhaskar’s talk on Popular Cinema and Nationalist Imagination.