My research centered on Madurai, a city of about a million people in Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. Despite the great variability in the lives of Madurai's poor residents, numerous shared social and cultural understandings are brought to bear when individuals respond to cinema. Here I concentrate on the issues most pertinent to filmwatching, including the forms of identity, social relations, and cultural practices most prevalent in daily life, and describe my fieldwork and the neighborhoods in which I worked.

Social life in urban South India

The division of forms and practices made in this description of social life is essentially an artificial one, in that these forms and practices normally interact with one another and may even be indistinguishable in behavior and experience. It is used here for ease of explication, especially for the sake of readers unfamiliar with South Asia. The lives and experiences of Madurai's residents are exceedingly diverse, and while that complexity cannot be approximated in a brief overview, I attempt to note where cultural practices are either more or less shared across such social distinctions as class, caste, and gender. Most of what is described here is characteristic of life in other South Indian cities as well, but where not, these exceptions are also noted.

Class and power

Of all the forms of identity in urban South India, socioeconomic class is one of the most salient. Poor Madurai residents speak often, with much resignation, of the difficulties of being poor.