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Copyright by Vijay Parthasarathy 2017 The Dissertation Committee for Vijay Parthasarathy Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Birth of the Cool: Global Flows and the Growth of English Language Stand-up Comedy in Mumbai Committee: Shanti Kumar, Supervisor Joe Straubhaar Wenhong Chen Kathleen Tyner Radhika Parameswaran Birth of the Cool: Global Flows and the Growth of English Language Stand-up Comedy in Mumbai by Vijay Parthasarathy Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2017 Dedication For Vanisha and Zadie. Acknowledgements I understand now what it means to birth a dissertation, and I appreciate my mother's labor pains so much more. My father has grown more ebullient since retirement; his curiosity about my work burns bright. I wish to express my deepest thanks to my parents for having let me rebel — mostly sensibly — every single day of my life. I owe much to my advisor, Shanti Kumar, whose intellectual imprint runs riot through every page of this work. Our conversations regarding 'cool cultures' over Skype were remarkably productive (thank you, modernity); he kept me focused on the details and gave me the freedom to explore the big picture. He kept a loose rein on things, offered praise and criticism when apt without striking me over the head with either. I'd recommend him as a mentor. Joe Straubhaar is another committee member whom I cannot praise highly enough. Over the years, we've discussed the contributions of Bourdieu over a drink; watched Jerry Seinfeld perform live on campus; compared the mechanisms of globalization in Brazil and India, but it is his warmth and generosity I will remember above all and hope to emulate. Wenhong Chen and Radhika Parameswaran made transformative contributions; the sharpness of their interventions and swift grasp of my material sometimes had me swinging between respect for them and despair at my own blindness. Kathleen Tyner, meanwhile, has watched me evolve from a naive young researcher to reasonably sophisticated scholar. I benefited from her nurturing and the life perspective she offers as a fellow former journalist. v I'd like to express my gratitude to my very cool interlocutors in Mumbai: comics like Gursimran Khamba, Abish Mathew, Aditi Mittal, Tanmay Bhat, Rohan Joshi, Ashish Shakya, Sorabh Pant; audience subjects (who sometimes turned-producers) like Tunali Mukherjee, Kalki Koechlin, Arpana Gvalani, Suprateek Chatterjee, Sucharita Tyagi, Saurabh Kanwar, Anisha Sharma and Riday Thakur; show runners like Charlotte Ward and Tom Course. Without them, there would be no stand-up scene worth writing about. Their participation in my project has given my media ethnography a richer texture. Comrades — how Marxist that sounds! — keep you afloat when the going gets tough. Akshay Kesavan might be my mother's sister-in-law's nephew, but to me, he'll always be the sibling I never had. Jayesh Parmar (who knows better than most how to stay cool under pressure), your friendship has kept me grounded, your cars kept me mobile. Bharath Chandrasekaran, Sirsha Chatterjee, Laura Dixon, Roopsha Samanta, Narendra Kamat, Kanika Ghai, Ryan Wallace, Nicole Templeman, Vikrant Singh and Arturo Nevarez made my life so much easier in different ways; they've all taught me how to negotiate life abroad as a grown-up. Conversations with Mohan Gawde are as satisfying as his vada pavs; he deserves special thanks for keeping me well-fed as the defense approached. During research visits back home, I spent time introspecting and reclaiming my teenage years through conversations with Milind Rao and Pranab Das. This happened in part because we lost a friend from our childhood, Abhijit Kolekar, in 2008. His death came as a shock; it binds those of us still living. vi The length of my project meant that I dealt with three RTF graduate coordinators, Stephanie Crouch, Charmarie Burke, Mona Syed. Each of them has been a gem, efficient, friendly and kind. Finally, I wish to thank the love of my life, Vanisha Lakhina, neuroscientist, wife and mother extraordinaire, who has supported me through this journey in every manner conceivable. I hope to make you proud every day for the remainder of our lives, but first things first: as soon as I return to Princeton, I'll get to those diaper changes and laundry loads. I dedicate this work to Vanisha — and to our daughter, Zadie 'Zizou' Iyengar, who, when the time comes, will inevitably roll her eyes at me and observe that I, her father, know nothing about what it means to be 'cool.' vii Birth of the Cool: Global Flows and the Growth of English Language Stand-up Comedy in Mumbai Vijay Parthasarathy, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2017 Supervisor: Shanti Kumar "Birth of the Cool: Global Flows and the Rise of English Language Stand-up Comedy in Mumbai" investigates how English language stand-up is rearticulating the meaning of 'cool' in Mumbai. The dissertation aims to study how this global format, tweaked to simultaneously suit and challenge local bourgeois tastes, has transitioned from subcultural phenomenon to mainstream entertainment product. I examine the Hindi film and television industry's role in bringing stand-up to prominence and how this relationship has grown into a symbiotic one. I situate all of this in the context of Westernization, increased access to the Internet and other competing media, and draw attention to an intertextual field that is continuously negotiating modernity. I do a close analysis of online satirical videos such as 'All India Bakchod Knockout' and 'Rape: It's Your Fault' to demonstrate how stand-up culture becomes 'cool' and earns significant mainstream media attention; and how it uses this cachet to propagate a forward-thinking, progressive agenda. I link expressions of modernity to a circuit of 'cool,' whose constituent elements interact in a highly articulated manner to make meanings, both permanent and temporary, in different moments. I record the viii tensions between present and past, the global and the local, and use media ethnography and textual analysis techniques to capture the rich texture of Mumbai's English language stand-up comedy scene, which is distinct from Hindi and regional language comedy performances. In India, English language stand-up comedy has grown in relevance by heavily engaging with contemporary cultural politics and discursively defining the parameters of 'cool.' But this has masked the reluctance to make similar interventions in electoral politics. I argue that stand-up has chosen to evolve thus because morally compelling social issues such as women's rights and the elimination of corruption generate less controversy than the polarizing act of confronting political parties with the power to regulate the scene. My study contributes to different debates and bodies of scholarship, ranging from globalization and performance culture to gender studies and cultural anthropology, by showing how producers, consumers and regulators of Mumbai's English language stand-up scene come together to ultimately re-imagine Indian modernity. ix Table of Contents List of Figures ....................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1. Introduction ............................................................................................1 1.1 Argument ...............................................................................................4 1.2 Justification of the study ........................................................................8 1.3 Literature review and theoretical framework .......................................13 1.3.1 The globalization debate .............................................................14 1.3.2 Media ethnographies and the transformation of identity ............20 1.3.3 Stand-up and the rearticulation of cultural politics .....................28 1.4 Research Framework ...........................................................................32 1.5 Methodology ........................................................................................40 1.6 Chapter Outline ....................................................................................47 Chapter 2. Mumbai's Stand-up Scene ....................................................................52 2.1 Stand-up and a culture of outrage ........................................................52 2.2 The anatomy of a joke..........................................................................55 2.3 Locating Mumbai's comedy scene ......................................................61 2.4 A note on 'middle class mentality' ......................................................68 2.5 A dynamic new Internet culture ...........................................................75 2.6 The rise of All India Bakchod ..............................................................81 2.7 The stand-up scene and a 'circuit of cool' ............................................86 2.8 A spirit of co-operation ........................................................................95 2.9 A night of research: Mumbai's culture of 'cool' .................................104 2.10 Conclusion .........................................................................................114 Chapter 3. Bollywood, Stand-up Comedy and a Culture of 'Cool' ......................117 3.1 Bollywood