Thomas Blom Hansen
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691152950
- eISBN:
- 9781400842612
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691152950.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter looks at the new economy of diasporic imagination that hit South Africa after 1994. It begins by examining a range of narratives of roots tourism whereby thousands of South African ...
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This chapter looks at the new economy of diasporic imagination that hit South Africa after 1994. It begins by examining a range of narratives of roots tourism whereby thousands of South African Indians each year travel to India in search of the village of their ancestors and for shopping and/or spiritual purification. These journeys are often complex discoveries of both the real and the imaginary India, and are almost invariably linked to desires for purification and “proper” Indianness and “culture,” which, in their turn, are spawned by social mobility and ambition. The other side of this new fascination with India's past and its emerging power as a nation is an intense interest in Bollywood films and their songs, stars, and aesthetics.Less
This chapter looks at the new economy of diasporic imagination that hit South Africa after 1994. It begins by examining a range of narratives of roots tourism whereby thousands of South African Indians each year travel to India in search of the village of their ancestors and for shopping and/or spiritual purification. These journeys are often complex discoveries of both the real and the imaginary India, and are almost invariably linked to desires for purification and “proper” Indianness and “culture,” which, in their turn, are spawned by social mobility and ambition. The other side of this new fascination with India's past and its emerging power as a nation is an intense interest in Bollywood films and their songs, stars, and aesthetics.
Neelam Sidhar Wright
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748696345
- eISBN:
- 9781474412155
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696345.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
‘New Bollywood’ has arrived, but its postmodern impulse often leaves film scholars reluctant to theorise its aesthetics. How do we define the style of a contemporary Bollywood film? Are Bollywood ...
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‘New Bollywood’ has arrived, but its postmodern impulse often leaves film scholars reluctant to theorise its aesthetics. How do we define the style of a contemporary Bollywood film? Are Bollywood films just uninspired Hollywood rip-offs, or does their borrowing signal genuine innovation within the industry? Applying postmodern concepts and locating postmodern motifs in key commercial Hindi films, this book reveals how Indian cinema has changed in the twenty-first century. Equipping readers with an alternative method of reading contemporary Indian cinema, the book takes Indian film studies beyond the standard theme of diaspora, and exposes a new decade of aesthetic experimentation and textual appropriation in mainstream Bombay cinema. A bold celebration of contemporary Bollywood texts, this book radically redefines Indian film and persuasively argues for its seriousness as a field of cinematic studies.Less
‘New Bollywood’ has arrived, but its postmodern impulse often leaves film scholars reluctant to theorise its aesthetics. How do we define the style of a contemporary Bollywood film? Are Bollywood films just uninspired Hollywood rip-offs, or does their borrowing signal genuine innovation within the industry? Applying postmodern concepts and locating postmodern motifs in key commercial Hindi films, this book reveals how Indian cinema has changed in the twenty-first century. Equipping readers with an alternative method of reading contemporary Indian cinema, the book takes Indian film studies beyond the standard theme of diaspora, and exposes a new decade of aesthetic experimentation and textual appropriation in mainstream Bombay cinema. A bold celebration of contemporary Bollywood texts, this book radically redefines Indian film and persuasively argues for its seriousness as a field of cinematic studies.
Shalini Shankar
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195327359
- eISBN:
- 9780199870639
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327359.003.0018
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
This chapter identifies “Bollywood” films—feature‐length movies produced in Bombay (Mumbai), India—as a source of linguistic and cultural production in the South Asian diaspora. South Asian Americans ...
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This chapter identifies “Bollywood” films—feature‐length movies produced in Bombay (Mumbai), India—as a source of linguistic and cultural production in the South Asian diaspora. South Asian Americans (Desis), especially youth, engage with these Hindi language films with English subtitles on a number of levels. The chapter focuses on the circulation and consumption of Bollywood films in two locations in the South Asian diaspora: Silicon Valley, CA and Queens, NY. Ethnographic and sociolinguistic data of conversational exchanges, commentary during viewing, and personal narratives are presented to illustrate Bollywood's role in shaping linguistic processes of indexicality, bivalency, and identity. In these ways, the chapter analyzes how media and language use together shape style and identity in this Asian American community, as well as how this process varies between different locations of the South Asian diaspora.Less
This chapter identifies “Bollywood” films—feature‐length movies produced in Bombay (Mumbai), India—as a source of linguistic and cultural production in the South Asian diaspora. South Asian Americans (Desis), especially youth, engage with these Hindi language films with English subtitles on a number of levels. The chapter focuses on the circulation and consumption of Bollywood films in two locations in the South Asian diaspora: Silicon Valley, CA and Queens, NY. Ethnographic and sociolinguistic data of conversational exchanges, commentary during viewing, and personal narratives are presented to illustrate Bollywood's role in shaping linguistic processes of indexicality, bivalency, and identity. In these ways, the chapter analyzes how media and language use together shape style and identity in this Asian American community, as well as how this process varies between different locations of the South Asian diaspora.
Jamie Sexton (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625338
- eISBN:
- 9780748671038
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625338.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book is part of a series which aims to explore the area of ‘screen music’. Volume topics include multimedia music, music and television, Hollywood film music, and the music of Bollywood cinema. ...
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This book is part of a series which aims to explore the area of ‘screen music’. Volume topics include multimedia music, music and television, Hollywood film music, and the music of Bollywood cinema. Music and other sound effects were central to a whole host of media forms throughout the twentieth century, either as background, accompaniment, or main driving force. Such interactions will continue to mutate in new directions with the widespread growth of digital technologies. Despite the expansion of research into the use of music and sound in film, the investigation of sonic interactions with other media forms has been a largely under-researched area. This book provides a study of how music and other sounds play a central part in our understandings and uses of a variety of communications media. It focuses on four areas of sound and music within broader multimedia forms — music videos, video game music, performance and presentation, and production and consumption — and addresses the centrality of such aural concerns within our everyday experiences.Less
This book is part of a series which aims to explore the area of ‘screen music’. Volume topics include multimedia music, music and television, Hollywood film music, and the music of Bollywood cinema. Music and other sound effects were central to a whole host of media forms throughout the twentieth century, either as background, accompaniment, or main driving force. Such interactions will continue to mutate in new directions with the widespread growth of digital technologies. Despite the expansion of research into the use of music and sound in film, the investigation of sonic interactions with other media forms has been a largely under-researched area. This book provides a study of how music and other sounds play a central part in our understandings and uses of a variety of communications media. It focuses on four areas of sound and music within broader multimedia forms — music videos, video game music, performance and presentation, and production and consumption — and addresses the centrality of such aural concerns within our everyday experiences.
Jerod Ra'Del Hollyfield
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474429948
- eISBN:
- 9781474453561
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474429948.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book examines postcolonial filmmakers adapting Victorian literature in Hollywood to contend with both the legacy of British imperialism and the influence of globalized media entities. Since ...
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This book examines postcolonial filmmakers adapting Victorian literature in Hollywood to contend with both the legacy of British imperialism and the influence of globalized media entities. Since decolonization, postcolonial writers and filmmakers have re-appropriated and adapted texts of the Victorian era as a way to 'write back' to the imperial centre. At the same time, the rise of international co-productions and multinational media corporations have called into question the effectiveness of postcolonial rewritings of canonical texts as a resistance strategy. With case studies of films like Gunga Din, Dracula 2000, The Portrait of a Lady, Vanity Fair and Slumdog Millionaire, this book argues that many postcolonial filmmakers have extended resistance beyond revisionary adaptation, opting to interrogate Hollywood's genre conventions and production methods to address how globalization has affected and continues to influence their homelands.Less
This book examines postcolonial filmmakers adapting Victorian literature in Hollywood to contend with both the legacy of British imperialism and the influence of globalized media entities. Since decolonization, postcolonial writers and filmmakers have re-appropriated and adapted texts of the Victorian era as a way to 'write back' to the imperial centre. At the same time, the rise of international co-productions and multinational media corporations have called into question the effectiveness of postcolonial rewritings of canonical texts as a resistance strategy. With case studies of films like Gunga Din, Dracula 2000, The Portrait of a Lady, Vanity Fair and Slumdog Millionaire, this book argues that many postcolonial filmmakers have extended resistance beyond revisionary adaptation, opting to interrogate Hollywood's genre conventions and production methods to address how globalization has affected and continues to influence their homelands.
Anustup Basu
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748641024
- eISBN:
- 9780748651245
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641024.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
It is perhaps pertinent that this book ends with a critical reading of Mahesh Manjrekar's Vaastav (Reality, 2000). The dark, stifling atmosphere of the film belongs precisely to that underbelly of ...
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It is perhaps pertinent that this book ends with a critical reading of Mahesh Manjrekar's Vaastav (Reality, 2000). The dark, stifling atmosphere of the film belongs precisely to that underbelly of the city that is denied the heady exhale of the geo-televisual as informatic. Yet it is a world that is irresistibly besieged by the overall diagram of desire and value of which geo-televisual informatics is an advertising component. This book has been the story of the ideological and political underpinnings of the ways in which the Hindi film adjusted to a new dispensation of media, capital and political Hinduism roughly between 1991 and 2004. It has thus examined the emergence of a ‘Bollywood’ style in an environment of what it calls informatic or advertised modernisation. While doing so, the book has attempted to provide a lens for understanding not just the ‘Bollywood’ phenomenon, but why exactly economic liberalisation can actually bolster traditional, anti-modern authorities in third world situations instead of eroding them.Less
It is perhaps pertinent that this book ends with a critical reading of Mahesh Manjrekar's Vaastav (Reality, 2000). The dark, stifling atmosphere of the film belongs precisely to that underbelly of the city that is denied the heady exhale of the geo-televisual as informatic. Yet it is a world that is irresistibly besieged by the overall diagram of desire and value of which geo-televisual informatics is an advertising component. This book has been the story of the ideological and political underpinnings of the ways in which the Hindi film adjusted to a new dispensation of media, capital and political Hinduism roughly between 1991 and 2004. It has thus examined the emergence of a ‘Bollywood’ style in an environment of what it calls informatic or advertised modernisation. While doing so, the book has attempted to provide a lens for understanding not just the ‘Bollywood’ phenomenon, but why exactly economic liberalisation can actually bolster traditional, anti-modern authorities in third world situations instead of eroding them.
Iain Robert Smith
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462340
- eISBN:
- 9781626746787
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462340.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
While the recent blockbuster Krrish (2006) was initially promoted as “India’s First Super Hero,” the film is actually part of a long history of attempts to engage with the superhero genre in Indian ...
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While the recent blockbuster Krrish (2006) was initially promoted as “India’s First Super Hero,” the film is actually part of a long history of attempts to engage with the superhero genre in Indian cinema. Utilising Yuri Lotman’s model of cultural exchange, this chapter traces five distinct stages in this history from the early use of imported characters in titles such as Return of Mr. Superman (1960) through to the transnational influence of contemporary Indian superheroes such as Krrish and Ra.One (2011). Moving beyond simplistic formulations that see Indian superheroes as purely imitative of Western models, this chapter instead positions the Indian superhero as part of a transnational dialogue that has a number of implications for our understanding of globalization more broadly.Less
While the recent blockbuster Krrish (2006) was initially promoted as “India’s First Super Hero,” the film is actually part of a long history of attempts to engage with the superhero genre in Indian cinema. Utilising Yuri Lotman’s model of cultural exchange, this chapter traces five distinct stages in this history from the early use of imported characters in titles such as Return of Mr. Superman (1960) through to the transnational influence of contemporary Indian superheroes such as Krrish and Ra.One (2011). Moving beyond simplistic formulations that see Indian superheroes as purely imitative of Western models, this chapter instead positions the Indian superhero as part of a transnational dialogue that has a number of implications for our understanding of globalization more broadly.
Carol Margaret Davison (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781784992699
- eISBN:
- 9781526124050
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992699.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The gothic and death is the first ever published study to investigate how the multifarious strands of the Gothic and the concepts of death, dying, mourning, and memorialization – what the Editor ...
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The gothic and death is the first ever published study to investigate how the multifarious strands of the Gothic and the concepts of death, dying, mourning, and memorialization – what the Editor broadly refers to as “the Death Question” – have intersected and been configured cross-culturally to diverse ends from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. Drawing on recent scholarship in Gothic Studies, film theory, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Thanatology Studies, to which fields it seeks to make a valuable contribution, this interdisciplinary collection of fifteen essays by international scholars considers the Gothic’s engagement, by way of its unique necropolitics and necropoetics, with death’s challenges to all systems of meaning, and its relationship to the culturally contingent concepts of memento mori, subjectivity, spectrality, and corporeal transcendence. Attentive to our defamiliarization with death since the advent of enlightened modernity and the death-related anxieties engendered by that transition, The gothic and death combines detailed attention to socio-historical and cultural contexts with rigorous close readings of artistic, literary, televisual, and cinematic works. This surprisingly underexplored area of enquiry is considered by way of such popular and uncanny figures as corpses, ghosts, zombies, and vampires, and across various cultural and literary forms as Graveyard Poetry, Romantic poetry, Victorian literature, nineteenth-century Italian and Russian literature, Anglo-American film and television, contemporary Young Adult fiction, Bollywood film noir, and new media technologies that complicate our ideas of mourning, haunting, and the “afterlife” of the self.Less
The gothic and death is the first ever published study to investigate how the multifarious strands of the Gothic and the concepts of death, dying, mourning, and memorialization – what the Editor broadly refers to as “the Death Question” – have intersected and been configured cross-culturally to diverse ends from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. Drawing on recent scholarship in Gothic Studies, film theory, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Thanatology Studies, to which fields it seeks to make a valuable contribution, this interdisciplinary collection of fifteen essays by international scholars considers the Gothic’s engagement, by way of its unique necropolitics and necropoetics, with death’s challenges to all systems of meaning, and its relationship to the culturally contingent concepts of memento mori, subjectivity, spectrality, and corporeal transcendence. Attentive to our defamiliarization with death since the advent of enlightened modernity and the death-related anxieties engendered by that transition, The gothic and death combines detailed attention to socio-historical and cultural contexts with rigorous close readings of artistic, literary, televisual, and cinematic works. This surprisingly underexplored area of enquiry is considered by way of such popular and uncanny figures as corpses, ghosts, zombies, and vampires, and across various cultural and literary forms as Graveyard Poetry, Romantic poetry, Victorian literature, nineteenth-century Italian and Russian literature, Anglo-American film and television, contemporary Young Adult fiction, Bollywood film noir, and new media technologies that complicate our ideas of mourning, haunting, and the “afterlife” of the self.
Jennifer Cole and Lynn M. Thomas (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226113524
- eISBN:
- 9780226113555
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226113555.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
In recent years, scholarly interest in love has flourished. Historians have addressed the rise of romantic love and marriage in Europe and the United States, while anthropologists have explored the ...
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In recent years, scholarly interest in love has flourished. Historians have addressed the rise of romantic love and marriage in Europe and the United States, while anthropologists have explored the ways globalization has reshaped local ideas about those same topics. Yet, love in Africa has been peculiarly ignored, resulting in a serious lack of understanding about this vital element of social life—a glaring omission given the intense focus on sexuality in Africa in the wake of HIV/AIDS. This book seeks both to understand this failure to consider love and to begin to correct it. In a substantive introduction and eight essays that examine a variety of countries and range in time from the 1930s to the present, the contributors collectively argue for the importance of paying attention to the many different cultural and historical strands that constitute love in Africa. Covering such diverse topics as the reception of Bollywood movies in 1950s Zanzibar, the effects of a Mexican telenovela on young people's ideas about courtship in Niger, the models of romance promoted by South African and Kenyan magazines, and the complex relationship between love and money in Madagascar and South Africa, this book is a vivid and compelling look at love's role in African society.Less
In recent years, scholarly interest in love has flourished. Historians have addressed the rise of romantic love and marriage in Europe and the United States, while anthropologists have explored the ways globalization has reshaped local ideas about those same topics. Yet, love in Africa has been peculiarly ignored, resulting in a serious lack of understanding about this vital element of social life—a glaring omission given the intense focus on sexuality in Africa in the wake of HIV/AIDS. This book seeks both to understand this failure to consider love and to begin to correct it. In a substantive introduction and eight essays that examine a variety of countries and range in time from the 1930s to the present, the contributors collectively argue for the importance of paying attention to the many different cultural and historical strands that constitute love in Africa. Covering such diverse topics as the reception of Bollywood movies in 1950s Zanzibar, the effects of a Mexican telenovela on young people's ideas about courtship in Niger, the models of romance promoted by South African and Kenyan magazines, and the complex relationship between love and money in Madagascar and South Africa, this book is a vivid and compelling look at love's role in African society.
Aswin Punathambekar
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814771891
- eISBN:
- 9780814771907
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814771891.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book analyzes the transformation of the national film industry in Bombay into a transnational and multimedia cultural enterprise, which has come to be known as Bollywood. Combining ethnographic, ...
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This book analyzes the transformation of the national film industry in Bombay into a transnational and multimedia cultural enterprise, which has come to be known as Bollywood. Combining ethnographic, institutional, and textual analyses, the book explores how relations between state institutions, the Indian diaspora, circuits of capital, and new media technologies and industries have reconfigured the Bombay-based industry's geographic reach. Providing in-depth accounts of the workings of media companies and media professionals, the book is a timely analysis of how a media industry in the postcolonial world has come to claim the global as its scale of operations. Based on extensive field research in India and the United States, this book offers empirically rich and theoretically informed analyses of how the imaginations and practices of industry professionals give shape to the media worlds we inhabit and engage with. Moving beyond a focus on a single medium, the book develops a comparative and integrated approach that examines four different but interrelated media industries—film, television, marketing, and digital media. The book's transnational approach to understanding the formation of Bollywood is an innovative intervention into current debates on media industries, production cultures, and cultural globalization.Less
This book analyzes the transformation of the national film industry in Bombay into a transnational and multimedia cultural enterprise, which has come to be known as Bollywood. Combining ethnographic, institutional, and textual analyses, the book explores how relations between state institutions, the Indian diaspora, circuits of capital, and new media technologies and industries have reconfigured the Bombay-based industry's geographic reach. Providing in-depth accounts of the workings of media companies and media professionals, the book is a timely analysis of how a media industry in the postcolonial world has come to claim the global as its scale of operations. Based on extensive field research in India and the United States, this book offers empirically rich and theoretically informed analyses of how the imaginations and practices of industry professionals give shape to the media worlds we inhabit and engage with. Moving beyond a focus on a single medium, the book develops a comparative and integrated approach that examines four different but interrelated media industries—film, television, marketing, and digital media. The book's transnational approach to understanding the formation of Bollywood is an innovative intervention into current debates on media industries, production cultures, and cultural globalization.
Neelam Sidhar Wright
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748696345
- eISBN:
- 9781474412155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696345.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book examines changes in Bollywood's film production during the twenty-first century, and particularly after its economic liberalisation, giving rise to a ‘New Bollywood’. It shows how the ...
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This book examines changes in Bollywood's film production during the twenty-first century, and particularly after its economic liberalisation, giving rise to a ‘New Bollywood’. It shows how the Indian cinema has acquired evidently postmodern qualities and explains what postmodernism means in the context of Bollywood cinema. It also considers what postmodernism tells us about the change and function of Bollywood film language after the twenty-first century. The book describes Bollywood's ‘postmodern turn’ as a form of transformation that reworks or revisits previous aesthetic trends in order to produce a radically different aesthetic. ‘New Bollywood’ refers to contemporary films characterised by a strong postmodern aesthetic style which was not as present in the 1990s. This introductory chapter discusses the meaning of ‘contemporary Bollywood’, postmodernism as a means of reading and interpreting films, and the structure of the book.Less
This book examines changes in Bollywood's film production during the twenty-first century, and particularly after its economic liberalisation, giving rise to a ‘New Bollywood’. It shows how the Indian cinema has acquired evidently postmodern qualities and explains what postmodernism means in the context of Bollywood cinema. It also considers what postmodernism tells us about the change and function of Bollywood film language after the twenty-first century. The book describes Bollywood's ‘postmodern turn’ as a form of transformation that reworks or revisits previous aesthetic trends in order to produce a radically different aesthetic. ‘New Bollywood’ refers to contemporary films characterised by a strong postmodern aesthetic style which was not as present in the 1990s. This introductory chapter discusses the meaning of ‘contemporary Bollywood’, postmodernism as a means of reading and interpreting films, and the structure of the book.
Neelam Sidhar Wright
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748696345
- eISBN:
- 9781474412155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696345.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines examples of postmodern aesthetics in contemporary Bollywood cinema by looking more specifically at a particular kind of filmmaking that has emerged prolifically over recent ...
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This chapter examines examples of postmodern aesthetics in contemporary Bollywood cinema by looking more specifically at a particular kind of filmmaking that has emerged prolifically over recent years: the Bollywood remake. Drawing upon various theoretical work on textual adaptation — including issues of textual fidelity that continue to plague the Bollywood remake's critical reception — the chapter considers how remaking has emerged as a platform for innovation and creative translation in Bollywood. It also explores how the diverse methods of remaking that Bollywood employs (intertextuality, cross-cultural borrowing, aesthetic and narrative appropriation, pastiche and parody) allow it to experiment with and innovate in its filmmaking practices. The chapter discusses and compares Bollywood remakes produced within the post-millennium decade in order to highlight a new phenomenon of remaking that is symptomatic of the recent impact of postmodernism, globalisation, modernisation and internationalisation in Indian cinema.Less
This chapter examines examples of postmodern aesthetics in contemporary Bollywood cinema by looking more specifically at a particular kind of filmmaking that has emerged prolifically over recent years: the Bollywood remake. Drawing upon various theoretical work on textual adaptation — including issues of textual fidelity that continue to plague the Bollywood remake's critical reception — the chapter considers how remaking has emerged as a platform for innovation and creative translation in Bollywood. It also explores how the diverse methods of remaking that Bollywood employs (intertextuality, cross-cultural borrowing, aesthetic and narrative appropriation, pastiche and parody) allow it to experiment with and innovate in its filmmaking practices. The chapter discusses and compares Bollywood remakes produced within the post-millennium decade in order to highlight a new phenomenon of remaking that is symptomatic of the recent impact of postmodernism, globalisation, modernisation and internationalisation in Indian cinema.
Neelam Sidhar Wright
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748696345
- eISBN:
- 9781474412155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696345.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book has highlighted some of the fundamental changes that have occurred in Bollywood cinema after its economic liberalisation at the turn of the twenty-first century. Through an analysis of ...
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This book has highlighted some of the fundamental changes that have occurred in Bollywood cinema after its economic liberalisation at the turn of the twenty-first century. Through an analysis of various film texts, it has demonstrated how Bollywood, as well as being global and transnational, has reached a postmodern stage that has provided new ways of reading Indian cinema. It has also examined the Bollywood remake, arguing that remaking was contemporary Bollywood's most significant and effective means of achieving creative innovation. Furthermore, it has described some of the devices at the core of New Bollywood's unique cinematic language, such as figural excess and hyperrealism, which enable the cinema to operate differently as an art form and film language. The book concludes by offering a redefinition of contemporary Bollywood cinema, proposing the value of postmodernism as a new alternative method for studying, teaching and articulating Bollywood in the West. It also reflects on Bollywood's future prospects.Less
This book has highlighted some of the fundamental changes that have occurred in Bollywood cinema after its economic liberalisation at the turn of the twenty-first century. Through an analysis of various film texts, it has demonstrated how Bollywood, as well as being global and transnational, has reached a postmodern stage that has provided new ways of reading Indian cinema. It has also examined the Bollywood remake, arguing that remaking was contemporary Bollywood's most significant and effective means of achieving creative innovation. Furthermore, it has described some of the devices at the core of New Bollywood's unique cinematic language, such as figural excess and hyperrealism, which enable the cinema to operate differently as an art form and film language. The book concludes by offering a redefinition of contemporary Bollywood cinema, proposing the value of postmodernism as a new alternative method for studying, teaching and articulating Bollywood in the West. It also reflects on Bollywood's future prospects.
Gregory D. Booth
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195327632
- eISBN:
- 9780199852055
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327632.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Beginning in the 1930s, men, and a handful of women, came from India's many communities — Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others — to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in ...
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Beginning in the 1930s, men, and a handful of women, came from India's many communities — Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others — to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in the words of some, “the original fusion music”. They worked as composers, arrangers, assistants, and studio performers in one of the most distinctive popular music and popular film cultures on the planet. Today, the songs played by Mumbai's studio musicians are known throughout India and the Indian diaspora under the popular name “Bollywood,” but the musicians themselves remain, in their own words, “behind the curtain” — the anonymous and unseen performers of one of the world's most celebrated popular music genres. This book offers an account of the Bollywood film-music industry from the perspective of the musicians who both experienced and shaped its history. In an insider's look at the process of musical production from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, before the advent of digital recording technologies, the author explains who these unknown musicians were and how they came to join the film-music industry. On the basis of a set of first-hand accounts from the musicians themselves, he reveals how the day-to-day circumstances of technology and finance shaped both the songs and the careers of their creators and performers. The author also unfolds the technological, cultural, and industrial developments that led to the enormous studio orchestras of the 1960s–90s, as well as the factors which ultimately led to their demise in contemporary India.Less
Beginning in the 1930s, men, and a handful of women, came from India's many communities — Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others — to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in the words of some, “the original fusion music”. They worked as composers, arrangers, assistants, and studio performers in one of the most distinctive popular music and popular film cultures on the planet. Today, the songs played by Mumbai's studio musicians are known throughout India and the Indian diaspora under the popular name “Bollywood,” but the musicians themselves remain, in their own words, “behind the curtain” — the anonymous and unseen performers of one of the world's most celebrated popular music genres. This book offers an account of the Bollywood film-music industry from the perspective of the musicians who both experienced and shaped its history. In an insider's look at the process of musical production from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, before the advent of digital recording technologies, the author explains who these unknown musicians were and how they came to join the film-music industry. On the basis of a set of first-hand accounts from the musicians themselves, he reveals how the day-to-day circumstances of technology and finance shaped both the songs and the careers of their creators and performers. The author also unfolds the technological, cultural, and industrial developments that led to the enormous studio orchestras of the 1960s–90s, as well as the factors which ultimately led to their demise in contemporary India.
Pallabi Chakravorty
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- February 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199477760
- eISBN:
- 9780199091102
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199477760.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
How is cosmopolitan modernity performed in a liberalizing India? From the spectacular celebrity culture of dance television reality shows and Bollywood films to dance-making in the movie and TV ...
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How is cosmopolitan modernity performed in a liberalizing India? From the spectacular celebrity culture of dance television reality shows and Bollywood films to dance-making in the movie and TV studios, dance halls, rehearsals, and auditions in obscure corners of Mumbai and Kolkata, this book explores the voices, aspirations, and dance practices of a new generation of dancers and choreographers. As the old system of dance pedagogy is broken down by the growth of media, migration, and a deepening democracy, the concept of ‘remix’ has replaced it. It explains, in a word, both the new practices of bodily knowledge transmission and the new aesthetics of Indian dance. This book situates Bollywood dance and dance reality shows at the centre of the changing visual culture in India, and illuminates new and original intersections of ideas from the fields of anthropology, dance studies, philosophy, media studies, gender studies, and postcolonial theory. It tells the story of the transformation of Indian dance by drawing from the deep wells of theories from these fields, but also from the vantage point of intimate ethnographic eyes.Less
How is cosmopolitan modernity performed in a liberalizing India? From the spectacular celebrity culture of dance television reality shows and Bollywood films to dance-making in the movie and TV studios, dance halls, rehearsals, and auditions in obscure corners of Mumbai and Kolkata, this book explores the voices, aspirations, and dance practices of a new generation of dancers and choreographers. As the old system of dance pedagogy is broken down by the growth of media, migration, and a deepening democracy, the concept of ‘remix’ has replaced it. It explains, in a word, both the new practices of bodily knowledge transmission and the new aesthetics of Indian dance. This book situates Bollywood dance and dance reality shows at the centre of the changing visual culture in India, and illuminates new and original intersections of ideas from the fields of anthropology, dance studies, philosophy, media studies, gender studies, and postcolonial theory. It tells the story of the transformation of Indian dance by drawing from the deep wells of theories from these fields, but also from the vantage point of intimate ethnographic eyes.
Priya Joshi
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231169615
- eISBN:
- 9780231539074
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231169615.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book analyzes the role of popular blockbuster films made by Bollywood in the making, unmaking and remaking of modern India. It explains that Bollywood films are India’s most popular ...
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This book analyzes the role of popular blockbuster films made by Bollywood in the making, unmaking and remaking of modern India. It explains that Bollywood films are India’s most popular entertainment and one of its most powerful social forces. It argues that Bollywood’s blockbusters contest ideas about state formation, capture the nation’s dispersed anxieties and fabricate public fantasies of what constitutes “India.” The book provides an interdisciplinary account of popular cinema as a space that filters politics and modernity for its viewers. It covers themes such as crime and punishment, family and individuality, vigilante and community, and shows how these capture the diffuse aspirations of an evolving nation. It reveals the cinema’s social impact across decades that saw the decline of studios, the rise of the multi-star genre, and the arrival of corporate capital and new media platforms. It includes studies of iconic and less familiar films, including Awara (1951), Ab Dilli Dur Nahin (1957), Deewaar (1975), Sholay (1975), Dil Se (1998), A Wednesday (2008), and 3 Idiots (2009). Overall it conveys the pleasures and politics of Bollywood blockbusters.Less
This book analyzes the role of popular blockbuster films made by Bollywood in the making, unmaking and remaking of modern India. It explains that Bollywood films are India’s most popular entertainment and one of its most powerful social forces. It argues that Bollywood’s blockbusters contest ideas about state formation, capture the nation’s dispersed anxieties and fabricate public fantasies of what constitutes “India.” The book provides an interdisciplinary account of popular cinema as a space that filters politics and modernity for its viewers. It covers themes such as crime and punishment, family and individuality, vigilante and community, and shows how these capture the diffuse aspirations of an evolving nation. It reveals the cinema’s social impact across decades that saw the decline of studios, the rise of the multi-star genre, and the arrival of corporate capital and new media platforms. It includes studies of iconic and less familiar films, including Awara (1951), Ab Dilli Dur Nahin (1957), Deewaar (1975), Sholay (1975), Dil Se (1998), A Wednesday (2008), and 3 Idiots (2009). Overall it conveys the pleasures and politics of Bollywood blockbusters.
Gregory D. Booth
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195327632
- eISBN:
- 9780199852055
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327632.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter examines the changing structures of the film industry in Mumbai, India. It proposes a historical model in which overlapping cultural and industrial systems resulted in changes in ...
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This chapter examines the changing structures of the film industry in Mumbai, India. It proposes a historical model in which overlapping cultural and industrial systems resulted in changes in film-music production and the exploitation of music for maximum profit. It suggests that the gradual and seamless process of change in the Mumbai film industry consists of three rough historical periods. These include Studio Period from 1935 to 1950, Old Bollywood from 1950 to 1998 and New Bollywood from 1998 to the present.Less
This chapter examines the changing structures of the film industry in Mumbai, India. It proposes a historical model in which overlapping cultural and industrial systems resulted in changes in film-music production and the exploitation of music for maximum profit. It suggests that the gradual and seamless process of change in the Mumbai film industry consists of three rough historical periods. These include Studio Period from 1935 to 1950, Old Bollywood from 1950 to 1998 and New Bollywood from 1998 to the present.
Jerod Ra'Del Hollyfield
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474429948
- eISBN:
- 9781474453561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474429948.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Mira Nair has built her career on films that contribute to the Indian identity in diaspora and attest to the prominence of Indian filmmakers in international cinema. For a filmmaker so concerned with ...
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Mira Nair has built her career on films that contribute to the Indian identity in diaspora and attest to the prominence of Indian filmmakers in international cinema. For a filmmaker so concerned with the relationships between American and Indian heritage, Nair’s adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1847-1848 novel Vanity Fair (2004) appears as an outlier. However, this chapter argues that Nair’s film maintains overarching fidelity to the source text’s plot as a strategy to imbue the narrative with an Indian perspective. Nair subtly rewrites the text by eliminating the novel’s omniscient narrator and his complicity with the imperial project in favor of her own postcolonial Indian position through her use of cinematic style and the camera’s point-of-view capabilities. In asserting India’s physical presence in her adaptation, Nair also incorporates elements of Bollywood cinema into the production, including an item number dance sequence that brings Hollywood and Bollywood convention in dialogue. As a result, Nair embeds images into the narrative that directly challenge the power of the British Empire and its agents as well as Hollywood’s continuing influence over Indian cinema.Less
Mira Nair has built her career on films that contribute to the Indian identity in diaspora and attest to the prominence of Indian filmmakers in international cinema. For a filmmaker so concerned with the relationships between American and Indian heritage, Nair’s adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1847-1848 novel Vanity Fair (2004) appears as an outlier. However, this chapter argues that Nair’s film maintains overarching fidelity to the source text’s plot as a strategy to imbue the narrative with an Indian perspective. Nair subtly rewrites the text by eliminating the novel’s omniscient narrator and his complicity with the imperial project in favor of her own postcolonial Indian position through her use of cinematic style and the camera’s point-of-view capabilities. In asserting India’s physical presence in her adaptation, Nair also incorporates elements of Bollywood cinema into the production, including an item number dance sequence that brings Hollywood and Bollywood convention in dialogue. As a result, Nair embeds images into the narrative that directly challenge the power of the British Empire and its agents as well as Hollywood’s continuing influence over Indian cinema.
Jerod Ra'Del Hollyfield
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474429948
- eISBN:
- 9781474453561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474429948.003.0009
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This concluding chapter discusses Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire as both an adaptation of Oliver Twistand—along with Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of The English Patient (1996)—the ...
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This concluding chapter discusses Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire as both an adaptation of Oliver Twistand—along with Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of The English Patient (1996)—the most famous example of a postcolonial novel reabsorbed into a global imperial context. Excising Vikas Swarup’s subversive rewriting of Oliver Twist in his source text, Q&A, Boyle’s film streamlines the narrative into Hollywood genres accented with Bollywood conventions while presenting India as a nation of others, far removed from the ramifications of British imperialism and benefiting from the structures of the globalized world such as the transnational quiz show that fuels its lead’s rise from the slums. Through examinations of Swarup’s novel and Boyle’s film, this chapter demonstrates the importance of interfidelity to the adaptation process, especially as Hollywood and other national film industries operate under an ever evolving globalized business model that controls representations of postcolonial nations.Less
This concluding chapter discusses Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire as both an adaptation of Oliver Twistand—along with Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of The English Patient (1996)—the most famous example of a postcolonial novel reabsorbed into a global imperial context. Excising Vikas Swarup’s subversive rewriting of Oliver Twist in his source text, Q&A, Boyle’s film streamlines the narrative into Hollywood genres accented with Bollywood conventions while presenting India as a nation of others, far removed from the ramifications of British imperialism and benefiting from the structures of the globalized world such as the transnational quiz show that fuels its lead’s rise from the slums. Through examinations of Swarup’s novel and Boyle’s film, this chapter demonstrates the importance of interfidelity to the adaptation process, especially as Hollywood and other national film industries operate under an ever evolving globalized business model that controls representations of postcolonial nations.
Neelam Sidhar Wright
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748696345
- eISBN:
- 9781474412155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696345.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter focuses on pedagogic practices and newer approaches to contemporary Bollywood cinema. It begins with a discussion of Satyajit Ray's views on popular Indian cinema and the reasons for ...
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This chapter focuses on pedagogic practices and newer approaches to contemporary Bollywood cinema. It begins with a discussion of Satyajit Ray's views on popular Indian cinema and the reasons for Indian cinema's cursory appearance in film studies courses. It then considers student responses to studying popular Indian films, the current status of Indian film education and academia's alleged failure to do much good for popular Indian cinema. It also examines postmodern practices in contemporary Bollywood cinema and outlines new directions in Indian film research. The chapter argues that many of the academic approaches towards, and much critical journalistic writing on, Bollywood have worked against Bollywood's interests in securing international appeal.Less
This chapter focuses on pedagogic practices and newer approaches to contemporary Bollywood cinema. It begins with a discussion of Satyajit Ray's views on popular Indian cinema and the reasons for Indian cinema's cursory appearance in film studies courses. It then considers student responses to studying popular Indian films, the current status of Indian film education and academia's alleged failure to do much good for popular Indian cinema. It also examines postmodern practices in contemporary Bollywood cinema and outlines new directions in Indian film research. The chapter argues that many of the academic approaches towards, and much critical journalistic writing on, Bollywood have worked against Bollywood's interests in securing international appeal.
