Bollyworld; Popular Indian Cinema Through A Transnational Lens

by Kaur, Raminder; Sinha, Ajay

• ISBN13: 9780761933212
• ISBN10: 0761933212
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-13
• Publisher: Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd

Summary

This volume brings together a group of international scholars to analyze the globalized networks of Indian cinema. It provides a critique of a common scholarly tendency in the field of popular cinema of defining Indian films in terms of their modernity and desire for nationhood. Bollyworld argues that Indian cinema cannot be understood in terms of this national paradigm, and must be more properly described as a field of visual and cultural production that interlinks sites as diverse as the cosmopolitan city of Bombay, the provincial region of Maharashtra, and countries such as Nigeria, Germany, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The twelve essays track the intra-national and trans-national movements of Bollywood cinema. Divided into three sections, the first discusses the technology and aesthetics of India's commercial cinema as it developed in the period that spans the silents from 1913 to the advent of the talkies in 1931. The second section studies these films as 'local', 'intertextual' manifestations of globalization and highlights the changes in post-liberalization cinema. Against the backdrop of economic liberalization, the institutionalization of multiculturalism and a strong voice of migrant Indian populations, the third section focuses on the overseas reception of Indian films.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	7	(2)
Acknowledgements	9	(2)
1. Bollyworld: An Introduction to Popular Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens	11	(24)
Raminder Kaur and Ajay J. Sinha
PART I TOPOGRAPHIES
2. Not Quite (Pearl) White: Fearless Nadia, Queen of the Stunts	35	(35)
Rosie Thomas
3. Figures of Locality and Tradition: Commercial Cinema and the Networks of Visual Print Capitalism in Maharashtra	70	(20)
Kajri Jain
4. Icons and-Events: Reinventing Visual Construction in Cinema in India	90	(28)
Gayatri Chatterjee
5. Reflected Readings in Available Light: Cameramen in the Shadows of Hindi Cinema	118	(25)
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
PART II TRANS-ACTIONS
6. Sexuality, Sensuality and Belonging: Representations of the 'Anglo-Indian' and the 'Western' Woman in Hindi Cinema	143	(20)
Geetanjali Gangoli
7. 'Fight Club': Aesthetics, Hybridisation and the Construction of Rogue Masculinities in Sholay and Deewaar	163	(23)
Koushik Banerjea
8. The Consumable Hero of Globalised India	186	(21)
Sudhanva Deshpande
PART III TRAVELS
9. The Scattered Homelands of the Migrant: Bollyworld through the Diasporic Lens	207	(32)
Christian Brosius
10. In Search of the Diasporic Self: Bollywood in South Africa	239	(22)
Thomas Blom Hansen
11. Belonging and Respect Notions vis-à-vis Modern East Indians: Hindi Movies in the Guyanese East Indian Diaspora	261	(23)
Narmala Halstead
12. Bandiri Music, Globalisation and Urban Experience in Nigeria	284	(25)
Brian Larkin
13. Cruising on the Vilayeti Bandwagon: Diasporic Representations and Reception of Popular Indian Movies	309	(21)
Raminder Kaur
About the Editors and Contributors	330	(3)
Index	333