The concept of vernacular modernism was introduced by Miriam Hansen in her influential essay, 'The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism' (1999a). Hansen uses the term to describe the capacity of classical narrative cinema to mediate and articulate experiences of modernity in ways that are both globally accessible and locally interpretable. Hansen argues that Hollywood cinema functions as a vernacular form: a shared, translatable medium through which diverse audiences could engage with the sensory, temporal, and social dislocations of modern life. She interprets it as a global vernacular – a cultural form that negotiates the contradictions of modernity and modernisation. Hansen also applies the concept of vernacular modernism to the study of non-Western cinemas, arguing that modernity itself is not a monolithic or Western-centred phenomenon, but one that is mediated and negotiated through transnational cultural forms like cinema.