Odissi is one of the eight classical dance forms of India and comes from the temples of Odisha on the eastern coast. It is traditionally a dance-drama that tells stories of Hindu devotion, especially of Vaishnavism, through symbolic costume, expressive movement, hand gestures and music built on Odissi ragas and talas. Its foundations trace to the Natya Shastra, and dancing figures carved in Odisha temples from the 10th to 14th centuries show the same poses. Its dancers were long women temple performers called maharis, and a boys' tradition called gotipua developed athletic and acrobatic moves. British officials and missionaries suppressed it, but after independence it was revived and reconstructed, and it now includes experimental and fusion productions.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.