Caribbean Bollywood mashup: Digital practices and transcultural meaning making in Trinidad

Abstract

Digital memes have become a widespread form of engagement with media texts in popular cultures. This paper focuses on image macros that incorporate Bollywood film content and establish transcultural references in the Caribbean context. Mashup serves as a conceptual framework to capture the manifold practices of recombining and re-contextualising media content in memes, related meaning making processes as well as interactions on social networking sites. By sharing, tagging and liking memes, young women in Trinidad negotiate their own positioning in relation to imagined as well as familiar audience groups. Embedded in experiences of a multi-ethnic and media-saturated society, these digital practices thus serve to navigate multiple belongings and identity choices. Moving beyond diasporic identity formations, Bollywood is an integral part of transcultural meaning making in this context.