NEW KINGS OF THE WORLD (HB)

There is a vast cultural
movement emerging from the Global South and sweeping all before it. India?s
Shah Rukh Khan, after all, is the most popular actor in the world. Bollywood,
Turkish soap operas called dizi, K-pop and other aspects of Eastern pop culture
are international in their range and allure and the biggest challenger yet to
America?s monopoly since the end of World War II. Bestselling author Fatima
Bhutto?s new book is about these new kings of popular entertainment in the
twenty-first century. Carefully packaging not always secular modernity with
traditional values in urbanized settings, they have created a new global mass
culture that can be easily consumed, especially by the many millions coming
late to the modern world and still negotiating its overwhelming challenges.
Though this is a book primarily focused on India, it also explores the
cultural industries of two other countries at the forefront of the challenge
to American soft power: Turkey and South Korea. Plummeting American prestige,
the belated rediscovery that local cultures are valuable in and of themselves
and the rise of classes with different tastes and backgrounds emerging out of
the turbulence and migration of globalization have marginalized the old guard
of ?Westoxified? elites and created a vast new landscape of cultural power.
Indian, Turkish and even Korean mass culture offer a much better fit for this
majority?s self-image and aspirations of sovereignty and dignity. Fatima
Bhutto brings her thesis alive through exclusive interviews with Shah Rukh
Khan, a behind-the-scenes-account of Magnificent Century, Turkey?s biggest TV
show, watched by upwards of 200 million people across 43 countries and her
travels to South Korea to see how K-Pop transformed the world of popular
music and ?Gangnam Style? became the first YouTube video to be viewed one
billion times. Edgy, insightful and entertaining, New Kings of the World is
an eye-opening look at the rise and rise of Eastern pop culture.