Journal article
‘Familiar but foreign at the same time’: hegemonic pull and push in first Indian Netflix original series Sacred Games
Contemporary South Asia, Vol.33(3), pp.370-383
07/03/2025
DOI: 10.1080/09584935.2025.2494617
Abstract
Sacred Games, the first Indian Netflix Original Series, has been hailed in Indian and Western popular press as a testimony that Indian directors, producers, actors, and casters can create ‘quality’ televisual contents when not constrained by hegemonic programming and production practices of their national television industry. In this discourse, Netflix and other such digital content delivery platforms are portrayed as having liberated these media professionals from the constraints of their national cultural hegemony by letting them pursue freely their hitherto repressed creative aspirations. In this article, we problematize this celebratory/liberatory discourse and argue that the very notion of ‘quality’ television represents a transnational cultural hegemony, which Netflix and other digital content delivery platforms sustain and perpetuate through international crime drama series like Sacred Games. Treating the series as a site for examining this cultural hegemonic pull and push, we chart the familiar-foreign dialectical tensions as they unfold in its first season. The content creators navigated multiple intersections – global/national, national/local, Hindu/Muslim, and gender and the attendant tensions around empowerment. This means that content creators, especially from the Global South, often operate at ideological crossroads, navigating multiple and multilayered hegemonic pulls and pushes – local, national and transnational.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- ‘Familiar but foreign at the same time’: hegemonic pull and push in first Indian Netflix original series Sacred Games
- Creators
- Mir Ashfaquzzaman - University of IowaSujatha Sosale - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Contemporary South Asia, Vol.33(3), pp.370-383
- DOI
- 10.1080/09584935.2025.2494617
- ISSN
- 0958-4935
- eISSN
- 1469-364X
- Publisher
- ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD; ABINGDON
- Language
- English
- Electronic publication date
- 05/12/2025
- Date published
- 07/03/2025
- Academic Unit
- International Programs; School of Journalism and Mass Communication
- Record Identifier
- 9984823076402771
Metrics
6 Record Views