In this article, I argue for the necessity of studying the portrayal of technological infrastructures in popular cinema. Cinema provided a venue within which the potentialities of technological infrastructures could be codified, challenged and (irregularly) absorbed into everyday practice—a process that was especially fraught in postcolonial societies like India. I combine an analysis of the changes in Indian telecommunications policy in the 1990s with close readings of the telephone’s portrayal in two South Indian comedy films, Hello Pakkiram (1990) and Money (1993). These films imagined the telephone as a technology which undergirded a “middle-class” ethos which valued financial security above explicit moral commitment, in contrast to the explicit heroism of the “mass films” that shaped an earlier era of South Indian cinema. I conclude by reaffirming the necessity of thinking through mediations of technological infrastructures to gain more nuanced critical purchase on their place in our everyday lives.

在本文中，我认为有必要研究流行电影中技术基础设施的刻画。电影院提供了一个场所，在该场所中，技术基础设施的潜力可以被整理，挑战和（不定期地）融入到日常实践中，这一过程在印度这样的后殖民社会尤为困扰。我结合了对1990年代印度电信政策变化的分析，并仔细阅读了南印度两部喜剧电影《Hello Pakkiram（1990）》和《Money》中电话的刻画。（1993）。这些电影将电话想象成一种支持“中产阶级”精神的技术，这种精神认为金融安全高于明显的道德承诺，这与塑造南印度电影院较早时代的“大众电影”的明显英雄主义形成鲜明对比。最后，我重申有必要通过技术基础设施的调解来思考，以在他们的日常生活中获得更细微的批判性购买。