From Socialist Screens to Global-Popular: Unearthing Alternative Genealogies

In recent years, there has been a growing acknowledgment among cultural critics and media scholars of the unexpected power wielded by popular culture originating from the Global South. This media output, increasingly consumed worldwide, has emerged as a formidable force, often challenging the dominance of Hollywood and other entertainment giants of the Global North. Scholars attribute the origins of these new global media flows to the advancements in technology and the onset of globalization of entertainment industries in the late 1980s and 1990s, Bishnupriya Ghosh and Bhaskar Sarkar have theorized this cultural phenomenon as indicative of a distinct "global-popular" modality: its influence is undeniable, yet its political implications remain ambiguous.

However, can we construct longer genealogies to challenge our understanding of global media circuits, their origins, continuities, ruptures, and the politics and ideologies embedded within the global-popular today?

Stemming from Salazkina's recently published book Romancing Yesenia: How a Mexican Melodrama Shaped Global Popular Culture (University of California Press, 2024), the talk will address this question by drawing out the history of commercial melodramatic media from India, Egypt, and Latin America on socialist film screens during the 1950s-1990s.