Bollywood and Liberalization
Bollywood and Liberalization
Bollywood as a term has been roughly in vogue for the last four decades and is synonymous to the Hindi film industry of Mumbai, formerly Bombay. But not until recently the term Bollywood has become a global phenomenon with the hay days of the economic liberalization or globalization in India since 1991. But before we delve deep into Bollywood, it is imperative that we should throw light on the economic phenomena of globalization and its socio-cultural impact on India. Towards a definition of globalization: According to the Oxford dictionary, globalization is the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.
From the above definition of the term, it is difficult to draw its influence on a culture and its impact on a global scale. If we take the example of India, which in turn, is the world 's largest democracy and the largest potential market for its ever growing population, it should be borne in mind that
Firstly, Globalization implies free trade and mobility of goods, which has flooded the Indian market with innumerable foreign products,
Secondly, as the flood gates of foreign business opened to India, it exposed the indigenous business to the crude and highly demanding uneven market competition which resulted in the obliteration of a number of Indian companies. India was primarily a sellers ' market, but due to high population and a considerably huge market in comparison to the European ones with a few indigenous competitors, India turned into a consumers ' market.
According to Brian Longhearst, Globalization is a term that tries to capture the rapid social change that is occurring across a number of dimensions, including economy, politics, communications and culture....... where socio economic life cannot be firmly located in a particular place with clear boundaries. Hindi films, by the turn of the last decade of the previous century, have been an embodiment of these socio economic shifts. These shifts are in accord with the cultural shift that has been inflicted by the globalized order of things. Spectrum of the Indian market had changed overnight due to the flooding of a host of foreign products in the indigenous markets. If we consider the classical Marxist approach of the relation between an economy and its culture, economy of a state is its base and the culture that thrives there is the superstructure built on that base. So an economic implication on a nation inevitably influences the cultural practice of the societies of that nation who are exposed to that economic base.
In P. Joshi 's ‘Bollylite in America’, Bollywood has been meant for a 'culture industry that remains constitutively international in production and global in consumption. ' Popular for its Hollywood remakes and reformulation of popular Hollywood films, other regional language films (Tamil,
Telugu, Bengali, Bhojpuri, and Malayalam language) and even old films, the term Bollywood has come to represent both an acknowledgment of the debt the directors and technicians of the Hindi film industry owe to Hollywood for their creative ideas as well as a description which challenges the monopolistic hegemony of Hollywood across the globe. In this regard, Asish Rajadhyaksha presents a very interesting definition of Bollywood which enhances us to understand the industry in a better way than the usual consensus about Bollywood. According to him, Bollywoodization can be best understood as a
…..diffused cultural conglomeration involving range of distribution and consumption activities.
But this definition is prevalent only after it has incorporated the ethics and contradictory forces of globalization like privatization, and liberalization which changed the production and consumption of Mumbai films. The near universal legitimization of the term Bollywood (instead of Hindi cinema, Bombay cinema, Indian popular cinema, etc) is an index of larger social transformations taking place in India.
Changes in the Film Industry from 1991 It is imperative to throw light on the media sector of India and its subsequent effect of the liberalization policies. With the arrival of the satellite and international television channels in 1991 in India, the media scenario underwent a radical change in the entertainment arena as well as the financial policies of the same. Hong-Kong based Star TV, a subsidiary of News Corporation, and CNN started broadcasting into India using the ASIAST-1 satellite. This was followed by an unprecedented and dramatic expansion of cable television. The 'open skies policy ' under the new liberal economy suddenly exposed the Indian audience to a whole new set of cable channels from all around the world as well as from different regions of the country with their own regional languages. Hollywood films, whose views were limited to the availability of VHS cassettes and film halls, were now easily available on Star Movies and others. Therefore, the changes in the media landscape along with policy initiatives by the state precipitated a number of changes which in turn altered the Hindi film industry in the most dramatic fashion. However, 1998 saw a landmark decision which accredited Bollywood with the status of industry which facilitated the film industry to avail financial support from the government - film industry became eligible for infrastructural and credit supports which was previously available to other industries. In addition to this, the film industry enjoyed reduction in custom duties on cinematographic film, complete exemption on export profits, and tax incentives.
Changes in the Exhibition and Promotional System
With the policy shifts owing to the liberalization process, single screen theatre halls were started being replaced with the multiplexes, especially in the metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi and Kolkata. With the sophisticated financial policies for films starting from its investment to its exhibition, the film industry became corporatized with
a. development of websites for promotional activities of Bollywood films as well as the studios and the big production houses,
b. aggressive marketing and promotional activities for film music, which was having a stiff competition with the newly found indie pop songs,
c. incessant and aggressive campaigns of the newly released films in radio, television and other forms of media like mobile phones,
d. increase in the ticket prices of the films in the multiplexes,
e. the stars of the Hindi films started appearing in interviews, television shows and press meetings more than ever before,
f. advertisements started endorsing the stars who became regular faces in the satellite television channels.
According to Ravi Sundaram, circulation of thousands of various media objects (both old and new) in the forms of print flyers, signage, mobile phones, music cassettes and CDs, created a ‘visual frenzy’ centered around Bollywood.
New Challenges for Bollywood
It is true that the film industry turned into a new global Bollywood with a lot of economic and financial facilities only after the economic liberalization, but for the same open market policies cinema in India and all across the world started facing stiff challenges from other forms of media, especially television. Bollywood faced enormous pressure in every sense to maintain and attract the audiences to the film theatre from the tele-visual extravaganza. Previously the narratives were surrounded with the poverty stricken community and how a working class hero struggles to defeat the corrupt rich villains. It also accommodated the familial and community ties which proved to be more essential and core to the existence of the individual. But now Bollywood films increasingly began to depict India 's shifting relationship with the world economy through images of a hybrid relation between the national and global - there was interestingly some conscious deletion on thematic grounds like 'jhoparpatti ' (slums) and struggling protagonist in poverty and community feeling more than the feeling of a responsible citizen.
The new filmmaker of Bollywood started adopting thematic structures and narrative devices which are in accord with a broader audience who are exposed to international cinema, international sitcoms and a feeling of becoming a new global Indian under the happy charm of globalization - both economically and culturally. These strategies adopted by Bollywood to incorporate expanding audience tastes and desires can be best described as taking global formats equipped with updated visual styles, while localizing, adapting, appropriating, and ‘Indianizing’ theme . In this case, a term becomes central to the point of discussion - Glocalization, which is an amalgamation of globalization and localization. Structures of the newly evolved Bollywood films can be labeled as glocalization.
Bollywood and the Glocal
The term glocalization was first coined by Robertson in his seminal essay, ‘Glocalization: time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity.’ In the essay, he rejects and nullifies the binaries between the global and the local, the centre and the periphery, universality and particularism as models to comprehend the phenomena of globalization. Considering these models to be inadequate, Robertson says that glocalization captures the dynamics of the local in the global and the global in the local.
The theory of glocalization holds true for a phenomena like Bollywood in the era of globalization. Let us read these characteristics:
a. As Robinson theorizes further, he proposes that the theory of glocalization as a way of accounting for both global and local, not as opposites but rather as ‘mutually formative, complementary competitors, feeding off each other as they struggle for influence’. Now, the polarization between the global and the local and the notion that the local undergoes a slow death under the immense pressure of the global orders does not hold true. In Bollywood films after globalization, we see a new sense of Indian nationalism has found its way - more than ground level patriotism of defeating the anti-nationalist villains, nationalism now is more of nostalgia for a motherland that the characters have left behind.
Therefore, this patriotic feeling is invested in the Non Residential Indian characters in today 's films. Almost all the films produced today have their protagonists settled abroad, but are Indian to the core, or even if they are Westernized, it often becomes the point of conflict in the film which finds its resolution in the national values and traditions of the native nation. An important term vehemently used in academics in this regard is 'Diaspora ', which means the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established homeland.
b. The very idea of glocalization has been attacked by many theorists for being apolitical in nature and being without any teeth or resistance to the sinister forces of globalization. The same dictum goes for Bollywood as it is an industry to cater to a wide audience ever more to generate profit. Going by this logic, there has been a deliberation by the Bollywood industry to shift its focus from one kind of target audience to the other kind - the target groups have shifted from the rural and urban lower, lower-middle and middle class to the necessarily urban upper and middleclass with special emphasis on the NRIs. But a simplistic critic of Bollywood will not be sufficient to understand the operatives and the cultural ramifications. Bollywood in the globalized context calls for an overall understanding of the global-local nexus and viewing glocalization as a mode of resistance as well as accommodation.
According to many scholars, firstly, the new Bollywood has become a site of reconfiguration of locality and local subjects in the newly evolved cultural dimension under the economic liberalization.
Secondly it served as an accounting for the new cultural trends and forms emerging at the intersections of the global and the local.
Thirdly, it is also a mode of countering the frequently expressed fear of homogenization which becomes a part and parcel of the global flows of labor, culture or capitals.
Lastly, Bollywood has become a recognition of the fact that when new ideas, objects, audio-visuals, spacial dimensions, social crisis, practices and performances are transplanted to another space, they bear the marks of history as well as undergo a process of cultural, political and ideological transcreations. In cinema, with the continuous production of global images of Indian residents, these different images, ideas and meanings attain faith and dependence on the highly varied local spaces.
Fashion, Location, Music, Choreography and Language - the Global Desi Bollywood
Global Fashion, Local Sensibilities
Not until the year of economic liberalization, India started being recognized as one of the most important fashion destinations of the world. Dresses were always being designed by the fashion designers for the Bollywood stars, but only recently have clothes become signed artifacts, and Bollywood styles and fashions become themselves separately marketable. Since liberalization, international fashion magazines like Verve, Vogue, and Elle publish Indian editions feature glossy photographs of Bollywood stars and models with various merchandising objects and designer dresses. The newly emerging fashion designers like Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Manish Malhotra, Wendell Rodricks, Ritu Kumar, Ritu Beri and many others had started participating in the most important international fashion shows at Berlin, Venice, New York and Rome became huge names in Bollywood. 1990s, especially the later part of the decade saw a shift in the way film costumes and clothes were being designed and produced. Indian viewers were no more secluded into Doordarshan anymore, and hence the satellite television network threw a plethora of glitz, glamour and notions of beauty was undergoing a rapid change among the masses. Therefore, filmmakers started believing that emphasis on fashion is imperative in a successful marketing of Bollywood film. According Wilkinson-Weber, who has done extensive investigation into Indian fashion, notes
Indian styles in film have themselves been subject to a fashion reinterpretation, contemporary designers have incorporated both their own designs, and designer label clothes from international markets into the looks they create for their actors.
It is interesting to note that earlier in Hindi films of the 70s till the late 80s, there used to be a vamp, the ‘fallen’ woman, who would lead an immoral life and was supposed to be a violation of the traditional beliefs of India. These vamps personified the urban and modern tastes of society and ‘the temptations and corruptions of anti-Indianess where being Indian meant identifying with, and committing to, constructions of tradition and virtue. This is the woman who would wear revealing dresses, and almost all the designer dresses with innovative fashion statements including fashion accessories and make ups were invested on this character. But with liberalization the tradition was ‘won’ by the fashion world, we see that there is no necessity of these vamps who would exhibit the fashionable dresses. Instead of the vamps, the new Bollywood heroines became the site of the sensual body to exhibit a host of fashion materials. These materials are not only limited to Western flamboyant designs, but also includes expensive traditional wears like lehngaas and sarees. India embraced the global trends and reinvented its traditional culture with the irresistible waves of globalization and soon Bollywood became more cosmopolitan than the other regional language films. Western clothing was no more a sign of anti-Indianness and was no longer marginalized by the audience.
Bollywood Space and its Hybridity
Globalization, in other words, is a world economic integration, hastened by global treaties and transnational organizations such as WTO. This economic network has facilitated the functioning of a market-driven and advertiser supported consumption in an unprecedented scale. Immigration facilities, cheap air tickets and facilitation of infrastructural support for Bollywood in foreign lands allowed easy mobility in travel and tourism among the bourgeoning Indian middleclass as well as the Indian film crews. Not only the shooting became easy in foreign locations, it served a two-fold function to satisfy the desires of the two broad ranges of Bollywood audience – the first and the most lucrative film business is done in foreign lands, therefore the NRIs became the prime target for the films so that they can relate themselves with the known landscapes with Indian oneness on the screen; the second, now less important, being the Indian audience whose desire and longing for a picture perfect and almost an ‘ideal state’ could be fulfilled on the screen with the exotic spaces of desire they can seldom visit. Moreover, the Indian government does not put any major tax on profits generated in foreign currencies which an Indian can bring home. This was a huge advantage for Bollywood for overseas business. The popular location shootings at Kashmir, Ooty and Shimla soon changed to the Swiss Alps, London and New York.
In Karan Johar’s multi star-cast film, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum, one might notice that in a single song sequence Shahrukh Khan and Kajol were in Delhi, Switzerland, Cairo, and London. But shifts in cinematic locations have the tendency to create a sense of placelessness, even homelessness and alienation. While audiences recognize the allure of foreign locations, they also feel some loss and dissolution of long-held identities associated with spaces. But although there are these shifts in location, it does not delude its audience as the meanings of narratives remain irreducibly fixed to local meanings with local stories constantly revisited and even reinvented. These foreign locations, whether it is Mahesh Manjrekar’s Kaante, Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna or Kal Ho Na Ho, Rakesh Roshan’s Kaho Na Pyar Hain or Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hain or Don, Bollywood films are always domesticated with Bollywood stars who speak in Hindi in foreign lands or for that matter we can hardly see any native of the foreign land making an entry in the actual story line. The international settings do not confer the fact that the local crisis or the local cultures will find its way in the Bollywood narratives unlike Hollywood. On the contrary, these foreign spaces will be necessarily Indianized and beautiful exotic locations become a part of the world the globalized Indians inhabit. No matter wherever the place might be, Bollywood will be always telling a story about an Indian girl and a boy and an Indian family with their entire traditional ramifications held intact. Bollywood responds to both global and local imperatives by exporting Indianness to exoticized backdrops.
Music
Hindi cinema is known for its music, not as an integral part of the narrative or the story line, but as a separate entity. According to noted filmmaker, Shyam Benegal:
For Indian films, for their very sustenance, songs are very important. But that is because for any kind of Indian entertainment, particularly community entertainment, music and songs were essential features. But songs in an Indian film does not make it a musical. In India film, songs interrupt, sometimes they are part of a story…they are interludes.
Hindi film songs were dominated by mushaira, ghazal, and qawali traditions with emphasis on Indian Classical Music. Songs were composed in the traditional Indian technique - based on ragas and tunes which were accorded to the Urdu lyric poems and traditional Hindi language. One thing should be noted here is that unlike the West, which thrives on a history of rich visual culture, Indian tradition thrives on an aural culture and therefore songs become an integral part of any representation. Globalized Bollywood adheres to the primacy of song and dance per se, and also to the function of the musical parts within the film as spaces of displaying sexual fantasies and a situation of eroticized communication. But the way in which the Hindi film music is composed now (based on chords rather than ragas as was the case previously) and packaged has undergone a huge change – instead of the classical base, most of the music has shifted to groovy hip-hops and incorporated various forms of popular and rock arrangements. The reason seems to be very interesting, as Bollywood film music industry faced a big challenge in the 1990s with the advent of the newly found Indie popular music with the likes of bands like Silk Route and Euphoria, and individual stars like Lucky Ali, Kay Kay and a host of talented artists. As mentioned earlier, globalization has made Bollywood more corporatized and aggressive marketing strategies became its key areas to achieve financial success. These independent artists were appropriated by Bollywood - firstly to crush the competition and obliterate the threat of an unprecedented challenge put forward by the indie pop culture, but also to enrich film music with the inputs of these new trends and innovation of a music industry nurtured outside the film world.
Language
Globalized Bollywood has also witnessed a metamorphosis in the arena of spoken language. Usage of English has become more obvious than Hindi colloquial itself. Since independence the influence of Persian and Urdu was prominent in Hindi films. But globalization turned the spoken language into a hybrid one – a mix of Hindi and English. This trend was even reflected in the titles of the films which released after the 90s. This hybrid language has become the most common trend among the urban youth which has been infested to and by the plethora of glocal culture in satellite television channels which runs 24*7 in every household in India. Madhav Prasad in his essay ‘This thing called Bollywood’ finds out that the nationalist ideology of India was held together historically by a metalanguage which could properly articulate one nationalist sentiment. Prasad argues that in a globalized India, English provides the ideological coordinates of the new world of Bollywood films. According to him, English phrases and proverbs are liberally used to construct a web of discourse which the characters inhabit.
Choreography
An overlooked arena in Bollywood is the field of choreography. Through the ages, Bollywood choreography has gained considerable amount of sophistication and respect. This has also its influence drawn from the satellite television programs on dance competitions like Boogie Woogie and international and national music videos in channels belonging to a multinational corporation who gained their access in India only after globalization. Choreography in Hindi films, which was taken just as a time pass and was taken in the least serious way by the viewers, suddenly became a spectacle with huge investments and taking highly skilled artists and chorographers as item numbers. Another change that had taken place in globalized Bollywood films is a matter of a far more serious and economic concern – the accompanying dancers in Hindi films used to belong to the groups of junior artists, most of whom were from lower middle-class and slum areas. But suddenly this changed with Subhash Ghai’s Taal, which introduced the famous dancer Shyamak Davar and his group which replacing the former setting of junior artists as dancers. Accompanying dancers in contemporary Bollywood evolved from junior artists to highly skilled and upper class professional dancers, courtesy to a number of modern dancing schools. This has further evolved to foreign dance troops who come as packages with other facilities when a Bollywood film is shot abroad. Since the early 1990s, there has been an explosion in the number of foreign women dancers who are used as extras for the song and dance sequences in films (Mumbai film industry’s demand for foreign dancers has brought a large number of women from Eastern Europe and Russia). Since 1960, Hindi films’ nationalism through the role of women represented Western women as primarily ‘immoral and sexually accessible to the Indian male’ and as embodiment of unbridled sexuality. The trend is still continuing today and the value judgment of women based on their sexuality and chastity is immensely significant for the audience. Indian viewers recognize the influx of these foreign women into the song and dance sequences and equate their presence with overt sexualization of film choreography. As V.Lal puts it in his essay ‘The Impossibility of the Outsider in Modern Hindi film’, over sexualization of song and dance may create a cultural threat and anxiety, but such tensions are appeased with a logic that the ‘foreign’ backup dancers can be ‘sexy’ but the ‘Indian’ heroines and heroes have to maintain the decorum of modesty and tradition. Globalization has made song sequences a site of absolute and flawless pleasure, but seldom have we talked about the particular class of junior artists, who are perished under the new liberalization aesthetics. However, maintaining the tradition-modernity and sober-obscene construct of the Bollywood notions in accord with its audience has become a conventional practice with the Indian heroines gearing up in both Western and traditional attires and participating in the same choreography with the ‘other’ cultural representations through the white women (both blonde and brunette) who wear revealing dresses and symbolize sexual ecstasy. It is of course a niche created by the globalized Bollywood according to G. Gangoly in his essay ‘Sexuality, Sensuality, and Belonging: Representations of the Anglo-Indian and the Western Women in Hindi Cinema’. It is a curious fact that the integration of MTVization, especially the beach party reality shows like Grind and due to new trends in advertisements with star endorsements has further eased the tension of this stance of traditional sanctity in contemporary Bollywood films. Heroines are more global than ever, sexually more liberated than the previous years and the women characters are gaining more independence in terms of economic and social structure as the space of unfolding of the narrative is mostly New York, London or any other first world city. We see the evolution of super stars like Katrina Kaif, whose very presence reminds us that our women of desire in cinema is an Indian who exhibit and combine the beauties and characteristics of a white woman too.
Globalization has embraced Bollywood cinema not to impose the global cultures in the Indian terrain neither to challenge the cultural archetypes, nor to question the nationalist feelings into jeopardy. On the contrary, the national image and the desire of the nation as an emerging global power under the umbrella of the United States is reconfigured and consolidated in a new way. Bollywood through its films have invested a vision of portraying itself to the world as a global superpower, not from the military point of view, but as a highly skilled and updated human resource tank whose representations are manifested through the protagonists and their friends inside, and mostly outside the country. But this is not the only agenda that Bollywood has – the cultural ramifications and re-endorsements of the familial emotions along with the Non-residential Indian community feelings are of prime importance. As Bourden points out, with the changes in media production, consumption, and exhibition, ‘locality is produced as one 's sense of difference from the global, but the new locality is no longer a spontaneous expression of given, long-held local traditions. Glocalization has helped Bollywood not only to link the spaces far and broad stretching to different continents, but also to invent the localities which are hybrid in nature, but national in culture. An Indian audience in contemporary times aspires to be a global citizen, and Bollywood becomes a key cultural impetus through which global is constructed locally just as the local is constructed globally.
3. OBJECTIVE
i. To understand the cultural ramifications of the terms 'globalization ' and what we understand as 'Bollywood ' in particular reference to Mumbai (previously Bombay) film industry.
ii. To understand the various impacts of globalization on Hindi films not resulting in mutation of the Hindi film cultural but a new coexistence of hybridity.
iii. To trace the impact of the new 'glocal ' or hybrid culture on various aspects of Hindi popular cinema challenged by the ever changing Indian media under globalization.
4. SUMMARY
With the new market liberalization policies, Indian media scenario underwent a rapid change in the way it reached to its audience. Waves of change in the Indian media industry penetrated into the Hindi film industry as well. This marked a departure of the Hindi popular cinema from the way it operated in the eighties and deliberately changed the way its ways both as an industry and as a commercial product as well. Hindi popular cinema, preferably termed as Bollywood, under the new global ethics became international in production and global in consumption, at the sometime maintaining and reiterating facets of what we may call Indian culture (mostly limited to the upper caste Hindu North Indian culture). This may be termed as 'glocalization ' which means global ideas with local stories. The new Bollywood also came with the over-arching presence of the NRIs who gained importance in the new Bollywood of globalization. With the overseas business and opportunity of this certainly influenced and changed the way in which Hindi popular incorporated locations, songs, choreography and a number merchandizing items starting from fashion, accessories to other commercial products.
5. GLOSSARY:
globalization: the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale
glocalization: the practice of conducting business according to both local and global considerations.
Marxist approach: The political and economic philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in which the concept of class struggle plays a central role in understanding society 's allegedly inevitable development from bourgeois oppression under capitalism to a socialist and ultimately classless society.
privatization: The process of removing (something) from government control and place it in private control or ownership.
open skies policy: An open sky policy is an international agreement wherein two or more nations agree to allow unrestricted over flight and landing rights to one another. It is an international agreement. It helps foster friendship and trust between countries.
particularism: Exclusive adherence to, dedication to, or interest in one 's own group, party, sect, or nation.
WTO: World Trade Organization
Diaspora: The dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland
homogenization: It is defined as a state-led policy aimed at cultural standardization and the overlap between state and culture.
discourse: A speech or a written communication on a particular topic in an authoritative way.
archetypes: (in Jungian theory) a primitive mental image inherited from the earliest human ancestors, and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious
REFERENCES:
Ashish RAJADHYAKSHA, The ‘Bollywoodization’ of the Indian cinema: cultural nationalism in a global arena ' from Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 4, Number 1, 2003
Ruben Gowricharan, Bollywood in Diaspora, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands, 2004
Sharmistha Acharya, BOLLYWOOD AND GLOBALIZATION, San Francisco State university, 2007
Shakuntala Rao, THE GLOBALIZATION OF BOLLYWOOD: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF NON-ELITE AUDIENCES IN INDIA, State University of New York, Department of Communication, Routledge, 2007.
Bollywood and Globalization, Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora, edited by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta and Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande, 2011.
LINKS:
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/conversi/ISA.pdf
http://openarchive.cbs.dk/bitstream/handle/10398/7796/Creative%20Encounters%20Working%20Papers%2026.pdf?sequence=1
QUIZ:
i. Around what year did Bollywood underwent the process of globalization and started reflecting its ideas through the Hindi popular films?
a. 1975
b. 2011
c. 1991
d. 2000
ii. Under globalization, Bollywood can be seen as
a. India industry operating within the borders of the nation
b. a media industry concentrating on the indigenous people
c. culture industry that remains constitutively international in production and global in consumption
d. a film industry that invested on the patterns of the old industry with new sources of investement
iii. The most important aspect of the new Bollywood under globalization has been its
a. distribution and consumption activities
b. theatre halls
c. methods of acting
d. use of language
iv. Name the first satellite channel which came to India with globalization
a. BBC
b. Zee TV
c. Star TV
d. ESPN
v. Name the form of media which became a tough competitor for Hindi film industry after liberalization?
a. Radio
b. Internet
c. Television
d. Print media
vi. Glocalization can be best described as
a. distinction between the local and the global
b. dynamics of the local in the global
c. dynamics of the local in the global and the global in the local
d. dynamics of the global in the local vii. Primary target audience for the globalized Bollywood is
a. the rural audience
b. urban middle-class and NRIs
c. urban lower class
d. only the NRIs
viii. Which language, according to Madhav Prasad has been the marker of ideology in the globalized Bollywood?
a. Hindi
b. Bengali
c. English
d. Chinese
ix. 1998 was a landmark year for Bollywood industry as
a. it produced the most profitable film ever
b. it was accredited as an industry by the government
c. a Bollywood film made an entry into the Oscar awards for the first time
d. Bollywood completed hundred years of cinema
x. Songs in Hindi popular films are primarily
a. displaying sexual fantasies and eroticized communication
b. displaying the musical tradition of India
c. displaying them as a part of their narrative
d. elements that turn the film into a musical genre
FAQs:
1. As a term, has Bollywood got anything to do with Hollywood? Bollywood as a term is a mixture of 'Bombay ', the earlier name of Mumbai and Hollywood. Linking the mainstream Hindi film industry with the name of the world 's biggest film industry not only become a feeling of pride but also a tribute to the artists and technicians of Hollywood for the dexterity of work.
2. If globalization is an economic aspect, why does it influence the cultural aspect as is the case with Bollywood? As already mentioned, if we follow the classical Marxist approach, most of the times the shift in the economic base influences shifts in other aspects of life - i.e. a shift in the base inevitably influences a shift in the superstructure - the structure which is placed above the base. Hence, any cultural aspect is bound to be influenced if the economic base undergoes a shift. Therefore, with the change of the nature of the market, a commercial industry like Bollywood has to respond to the market ethics and hence has to change itself accordingly. 3. What is culture industry? Culture Industry as a term was coined by the Marxists Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer belonging to the Frankfurt School. The original essay is known as Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”, of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), where they proposed that the all the representations of popular culture including radio, print television and a part of cinema are produced and reproduced standardized cultural goods just like any other manufactured good coming out of the factory whose only objective is nothing philosophical and eclectic, but generating capital.
4. How is Bollywood considered to be a culture industry? A lot of scholars refer this term to Bollywood because Bollywood is a mainstream commercial industry whose objective is also profit generation, which is more than ever in the era of globalization. 5. Why does Bollywood invest so much on narratives related to NRIs? NRIs, or non-residential Indians have gained primacy in films as characters and as audience primarily to generate a market in the overseas. It has been a trend after globalization because the restrictions and taxes which were there previously in overseas business is eased to great extent and hence the profit generation of the new Bollywood films have been easier than before.
6. Why does Bollywood shifted from the pan-Indian audience to a more specific target group of the urban elites? As India is often been imagined as a developing country, there has been a trend of converting each and every class, whether rural or urban, into ideal consumers. Logic of consumption is best found in the urban areas where products, goods and services of all levels are readily available. Moreover, the logic of development in most of the cases have become the process of expansion of urban areas where the rural population is fast being converted into urban ones. Hence, Bollywood cinema is akin to this development and the new rural-converted-urban populace has started finding meaning in the new Bollywood. Therefore, with the influx of so many products and goods, targeting the urban elite will actually incorporate the fast transforming rural population into the same group.
7. In spite of having a lot of songs, why does a Hindi film never become a musical genre? If we pay attention to the cultural history of India, it will be clear that the India has rich heritage in aural culture, unlike the visual one of the West. hence the cultural rendering of a song or ,music piece in the West is entirely different from that of the Indian subjects. so, in spite of inclusion of a number of songs into films, the film is never been perceived as a musical genre.
8. If India has accepted globalization, why do the Hindi films stick to traditional elements? Globalization has hardly anything to do with modernity or tradition. Rather, if we consider glocalization as a valid point which has a deep effect on the film industry, globalization will inspire us into exploring the new markets and plethora of products has to offer and at the same time clinging on to the roots of tradition (to the extent of discovering and rediscovering them in a new way). So more the NRIs will feature with all the elements of Western culture, more facets of traditional inputs will visible in the image reproduction of Bollywood.
9. In spite of shooting at locations far off from the homeland, the characters of the Hindi films never feel alienated and homeless. Why? Because Hindi films never involve its characters, plots and other elements with the foreign ones. Although the locales are away from home, the ethics, morality and sentiments remain Indian to the core.
10. Why is it so that the Bollywood had been forced to change itself after globalization? With the advent of open market policies, Indian media saw the rise of various television channels including film channels where the audience for the first time could watch all the films just sitting back at home. Bollywood had to turn to newer ways to attract the Indian audience who are suddenly facing the pleasures of the satellite channels, not only in terms of its production quality, but also its marketing policies.
ASSIGNMENTS:
1. Enlist the names of the films which have released after 1992 and who have NRIs as their central protagonists.
2. Carefully pick and watch five popular films from the 1980s and then pick and watch five most successful films from 1992 to 2005. Compare the central characters with their background and their purpose in respect of the narrative.
3. Point out the differences in the mise-en-scene of the two films named Agneepath, one which released in 1991 and the second in 2012.
4. Do you think that the new Bollywood cinema has the influence of international satellite channels? If so, site examples with explanation.
5. Do you agree with the term Glocalization? Site examples from films how you can approach this term.
CASE STUDY:
Not Applicable
References: Ashish RAJADHYAKSHA, The ‘Bollywoodization’ of the Indian cinema: cultural nationalism in a global arena ' from Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 4, Number 1, 2003 Ruben Gowricharan, Bollywood in Diaspora, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands, 2004 Bollywood and Globalization, Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora, edited by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta and Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande, 2011. b. 2011 c d. 2000 ii ix. 1998 was a landmark year for Bollywood industry as a
Bollywood as a term has been roughly in vogue for the last four decades and is synonymous to the Hindi film industry of Mumbai, formerly Bombay. But not until recently the term Bollywood has become a global phenomenon with the hay days of the economic liberalization or globalization in India since 1991. But before we delve deep into Bollywood, it is imperative that we should throw light on the economic phenomena of globalization and its socio-cultural impact on India. Towards a definition of globalization: According to the Oxford dictionary, globalization is the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.
From the above definition of the term, it is difficult to draw its influence on a culture and its impact on a global scale. If we take the example of India, which in turn, is the world 's largest democracy and the largest potential market for its ever growing population, it should be borne in mind that
Firstly, Globalization implies free trade and mobility of goods, which has flooded the Indian market with innumerable foreign products,
Secondly, as the flood gates of foreign business opened to India, it exposed the indigenous business to the crude and highly demanding uneven market competition which resulted in the obliteration of a number of Indian companies. India was primarily a sellers ' market, but due to high population and a considerably huge market in comparison to the European ones with a few indigenous competitors, India turned into a consumers ' market.
According to Brian Longhearst, Globalization is a term that tries to capture the rapid social change that is occurring across a number of dimensions, including economy, politics, communications and culture....... where socio economic life cannot be firmly located in a particular place with clear boundaries. Hindi films, by the turn of the last decade of the previous century, have been an embodiment of these socio economic shifts. These shifts are in accord with the cultural shift that has been inflicted by the globalized order of things. Spectrum of the Indian market had changed overnight due to the flooding of a host of foreign products in the indigenous markets. If we consider the classical Marxist approach of the relation between an economy and its culture, economy of a state is its base and the culture that thrives there is the superstructure built on that base. So an economic implication on a nation inevitably influences the cultural practice of the societies of that nation who are exposed to that economic base.
In P. Joshi 's ‘Bollylite in America’, Bollywood has been meant for a 'culture industry that remains constitutively international in production and global in consumption. ' Popular for its Hollywood remakes and reformulation of popular Hollywood films, other regional language films (Tamil,
Telugu, Bengali, Bhojpuri, and Malayalam language) and even old films, the term Bollywood has come to represent both an acknowledgment of the debt the directors and technicians of the Hindi film industry owe to Hollywood for their creative ideas as well as a description which challenges the monopolistic hegemony of Hollywood across the globe. In this regard, Asish Rajadhyaksha presents a very interesting definition of Bollywood which enhances us to understand the industry in a better way than the usual consensus about Bollywood. According to him, Bollywoodization can be best understood as a
…..diffused cultural conglomeration involving range of distribution and consumption activities.
But this definition is prevalent only after it has incorporated the ethics and contradictory forces of globalization like privatization, and liberalization which changed the production and consumption of Mumbai films. The near universal legitimization of the term Bollywood (instead of Hindi cinema, Bombay cinema, Indian popular cinema, etc) is an index of larger social transformations taking place in India.
Changes in the Film Industry from 1991 It is imperative to throw light on the media sector of India and its subsequent effect of the liberalization policies. With the arrival of the satellite and international television channels in 1991 in India, the media scenario underwent a radical change in the entertainment arena as well as the financial policies of the same. Hong-Kong based Star TV, a subsidiary of News Corporation, and CNN started broadcasting into India using the ASIAST-1 satellite. This was followed by an unprecedented and dramatic expansion of cable television. The 'open skies policy ' under the new liberal economy suddenly exposed the Indian audience to a whole new set of cable channels from all around the world as well as from different regions of the country with their own regional languages. Hollywood films, whose views were limited to the availability of VHS cassettes and film halls, were now easily available on Star Movies and others. Therefore, the changes in the media landscape along with policy initiatives by the state precipitated a number of changes which in turn altered the Hindi film industry in the most dramatic fashion. However, 1998 saw a landmark decision which accredited Bollywood with the status of industry which facilitated the film industry to avail financial support from the government - film industry became eligible for infrastructural and credit supports which was previously available to other industries. In addition to this, the film industry enjoyed reduction in custom duties on cinematographic film, complete exemption on export profits, and tax incentives.
Changes in the Exhibition and Promotional System
With the policy shifts owing to the liberalization process, single screen theatre halls were started being replaced with the multiplexes, especially in the metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi and Kolkata. With the sophisticated financial policies for films starting from its investment to its exhibition, the film industry became corporatized with
a. development of websites for promotional activities of Bollywood films as well as the studios and the big production houses,
b. aggressive marketing and promotional activities for film music, which was having a stiff competition with the newly found indie pop songs,
c. incessant and aggressive campaigns of the newly released films in radio, television and other forms of media like mobile phones,
d. increase in the ticket prices of the films in the multiplexes,
e. the stars of the Hindi films started appearing in interviews, television shows and press meetings more than ever before,
f. advertisements started endorsing the stars who became regular faces in the satellite television channels.
According to Ravi Sundaram, circulation of thousands of various media objects (both old and new) in the forms of print flyers, signage, mobile phones, music cassettes and CDs, created a ‘visual frenzy’ centered around Bollywood.
New Challenges for Bollywood
It is true that the film industry turned into a new global Bollywood with a lot of economic and financial facilities only after the economic liberalization, but for the same open market policies cinema in India and all across the world started facing stiff challenges from other forms of media, especially television. Bollywood faced enormous pressure in every sense to maintain and attract the audiences to the film theatre from the tele-visual extravaganza. Previously the narratives were surrounded with the poverty stricken community and how a working class hero struggles to defeat the corrupt rich villains. It also accommodated the familial and community ties which proved to be more essential and core to the existence of the individual. But now Bollywood films increasingly began to depict India 's shifting relationship with the world economy through images of a hybrid relation between the national and global - there was interestingly some conscious deletion on thematic grounds like 'jhoparpatti ' (slums) and struggling protagonist in poverty and community feeling more than the feeling of a responsible citizen.
The new filmmaker of Bollywood started adopting thematic structures and narrative devices which are in accord with a broader audience who are exposed to international cinema, international sitcoms and a feeling of becoming a new global Indian under the happy charm of globalization - both economically and culturally. These strategies adopted by Bollywood to incorporate expanding audience tastes and desires can be best described as taking global formats equipped with updated visual styles, while localizing, adapting, appropriating, and ‘Indianizing’ theme . In this case, a term becomes central to the point of discussion - Glocalization, which is an amalgamation of globalization and localization. Structures of the newly evolved Bollywood films can be labeled as glocalization.
Bollywood and the Glocal
The term glocalization was first coined by Robertson in his seminal essay, ‘Glocalization: time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity.’ In the essay, he rejects and nullifies the binaries between the global and the local, the centre and the periphery, universality and particularism as models to comprehend the phenomena of globalization. Considering these models to be inadequate, Robertson says that glocalization captures the dynamics of the local in the global and the global in the local.
The theory of glocalization holds true for a phenomena like Bollywood in the era of globalization. Let us read these characteristics:
a. As Robinson theorizes further, he proposes that the theory of glocalization as a way of accounting for both global and local, not as opposites but rather as ‘mutually formative, complementary competitors, feeding off each other as they struggle for influence’. Now, the polarization between the global and the local and the notion that the local undergoes a slow death under the immense pressure of the global orders does not hold true. In Bollywood films after globalization, we see a new sense of Indian nationalism has found its way - more than ground level patriotism of defeating the anti-nationalist villains, nationalism now is more of nostalgia for a motherland that the characters have left behind.
Therefore, this patriotic feeling is invested in the Non Residential Indian characters in today 's films. Almost all the films produced today have their protagonists settled abroad, but are Indian to the core, or even if they are Westernized, it often becomes the point of conflict in the film which finds its resolution in the national values and traditions of the native nation. An important term vehemently used in academics in this regard is 'Diaspora ', which means the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established homeland.
b. The very idea of glocalization has been attacked by many theorists for being apolitical in nature and being without any teeth or resistance to the sinister forces of globalization. The same dictum goes for Bollywood as it is an industry to cater to a wide audience ever more to generate profit. Going by this logic, there has been a deliberation by the Bollywood industry to shift its focus from one kind of target audience to the other kind - the target groups have shifted from the rural and urban lower, lower-middle and middle class to the necessarily urban upper and middleclass with special emphasis on the NRIs. But a simplistic critic of Bollywood will not be sufficient to understand the operatives and the cultural ramifications. Bollywood in the globalized context calls for an overall understanding of the global-local nexus and viewing glocalization as a mode of resistance as well as accommodation.
According to many scholars, firstly, the new Bollywood has become a site of reconfiguration of locality and local subjects in the newly evolved cultural dimension under the economic liberalization.
Secondly it served as an accounting for the new cultural trends and forms emerging at the intersections of the global and the local.
Thirdly, it is also a mode of countering the frequently expressed fear of homogenization which becomes a part and parcel of the global flows of labor, culture or capitals.
Lastly, Bollywood has become a recognition of the fact that when new ideas, objects, audio-visuals, spacial dimensions, social crisis, practices and performances are transplanted to another space, they bear the marks of history as well as undergo a process of cultural, political and ideological transcreations. In cinema, with the continuous production of global images of Indian residents, these different images, ideas and meanings attain faith and dependence on the highly varied local spaces.
Fashion, Location, Music, Choreography and Language - the Global Desi Bollywood
Global Fashion, Local Sensibilities
Not until the year of economic liberalization, India started being recognized as one of the most important fashion destinations of the world. Dresses were always being designed by the fashion designers for the Bollywood stars, but only recently have clothes become signed artifacts, and Bollywood styles and fashions become themselves separately marketable. Since liberalization, international fashion magazines like Verve, Vogue, and Elle publish Indian editions feature glossy photographs of Bollywood stars and models with various merchandising objects and designer dresses. The newly emerging fashion designers like Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Manish Malhotra, Wendell Rodricks, Ritu Kumar, Ritu Beri and many others had started participating in the most important international fashion shows at Berlin, Venice, New York and Rome became huge names in Bollywood. 1990s, especially the later part of the decade saw a shift in the way film costumes and clothes were being designed and produced. Indian viewers were no more secluded into Doordarshan anymore, and hence the satellite television network threw a plethora of glitz, glamour and notions of beauty was undergoing a rapid change among the masses. Therefore, filmmakers started believing that emphasis on fashion is imperative in a successful marketing of Bollywood film. According Wilkinson-Weber, who has done extensive investigation into Indian fashion, notes
Indian styles in film have themselves been subject to a fashion reinterpretation, contemporary designers have incorporated both their own designs, and designer label clothes from international markets into the looks they create for their actors.
It is interesting to note that earlier in Hindi films of the 70s till the late 80s, there used to be a vamp, the ‘fallen’ woman, who would lead an immoral life and was supposed to be a violation of the traditional beliefs of India. These vamps personified the urban and modern tastes of society and ‘the temptations and corruptions of anti-Indianess where being Indian meant identifying with, and committing to, constructions of tradition and virtue. This is the woman who would wear revealing dresses, and almost all the designer dresses with innovative fashion statements including fashion accessories and make ups were invested on this character. But with liberalization the tradition was ‘won’ by the fashion world, we see that there is no necessity of these vamps who would exhibit the fashionable dresses. Instead of the vamps, the new Bollywood heroines became the site of the sensual body to exhibit a host of fashion materials. These materials are not only limited to Western flamboyant designs, but also includes expensive traditional wears like lehngaas and sarees. India embraced the global trends and reinvented its traditional culture with the irresistible waves of globalization and soon Bollywood became more cosmopolitan than the other regional language films. Western clothing was no more a sign of anti-Indianness and was no longer marginalized by the audience.
Bollywood Space and its Hybridity
Globalization, in other words, is a world economic integration, hastened by global treaties and transnational organizations such as WTO. This economic network has facilitated the functioning of a market-driven and advertiser supported consumption in an unprecedented scale. Immigration facilities, cheap air tickets and facilitation of infrastructural support for Bollywood in foreign lands allowed easy mobility in travel and tourism among the bourgeoning Indian middleclass as well as the Indian film crews. Not only the shooting became easy in foreign locations, it served a two-fold function to satisfy the desires of the two broad ranges of Bollywood audience – the first and the most lucrative film business is done in foreign lands, therefore the NRIs became the prime target for the films so that they can relate themselves with the known landscapes with Indian oneness on the screen; the second, now less important, being the Indian audience whose desire and longing for a picture perfect and almost an ‘ideal state’ could be fulfilled on the screen with the exotic spaces of desire they can seldom visit. Moreover, the Indian government does not put any major tax on profits generated in foreign currencies which an Indian can bring home. This was a huge advantage for Bollywood for overseas business. The popular location shootings at Kashmir, Ooty and Shimla soon changed to the Swiss Alps, London and New York.
In Karan Johar’s multi star-cast film, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum, one might notice that in a single song sequence Shahrukh Khan and Kajol were in Delhi, Switzerland, Cairo, and London. But shifts in cinematic locations have the tendency to create a sense of placelessness, even homelessness and alienation. While audiences recognize the allure of foreign locations, they also feel some loss and dissolution of long-held identities associated with spaces. But although there are these shifts in location, it does not delude its audience as the meanings of narratives remain irreducibly fixed to local meanings with local stories constantly revisited and even reinvented. These foreign locations, whether it is Mahesh Manjrekar’s Kaante, Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna or Kal Ho Na Ho, Rakesh Roshan’s Kaho Na Pyar Hain or Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hain or Don, Bollywood films are always domesticated with Bollywood stars who speak in Hindi in foreign lands or for that matter we can hardly see any native of the foreign land making an entry in the actual story line. The international settings do not confer the fact that the local crisis or the local cultures will find its way in the Bollywood narratives unlike Hollywood. On the contrary, these foreign spaces will be necessarily Indianized and beautiful exotic locations become a part of the world the globalized Indians inhabit. No matter wherever the place might be, Bollywood will be always telling a story about an Indian girl and a boy and an Indian family with their entire traditional ramifications held intact. Bollywood responds to both global and local imperatives by exporting Indianness to exoticized backdrops.
Music
Hindi cinema is known for its music, not as an integral part of the narrative or the story line, but as a separate entity. According to noted filmmaker, Shyam Benegal:
For Indian films, for their very sustenance, songs are very important. But that is because for any kind of Indian entertainment, particularly community entertainment, music and songs were essential features. But songs in an Indian film does not make it a musical. In India film, songs interrupt, sometimes they are part of a story…they are interludes.
Hindi film songs were dominated by mushaira, ghazal, and qawali traditions with emphasis on Indian Classical Music. Songs were composed in the traditional Indian technique - based on ragas and tunes which were accorded to the Urdu lyric poems and traditional Hindi language. One thing should be noted here is that unlike the West, which thrives on a history of rich visual culture, Indian tradition thrives on an aural culture and therefore songs become an integral part of any representation. Globalized Bollywood adheres to the primacy of song and dance per se, and also to the function of the musical parts within the film as spaces of displaying sexual fantasies and a situation of eroticized communication. But the way in which the Hindi film music is composed now (based on chords rather than ragas as was the case previously) and packaged has undergone a huge change – instead of the classical base, most of the music has shifted to groovy hip-hops and incorporated various forms of popular and rock arrangements. The reason seems to be very interesting, as Bollywood film music industry faced a big challenge in the 1990s with the advent of the newly found Indie popular music with the likes of bands like Silk Route and Euphoria, and individual stars like Lucky Ali, Kay Kay and a host of talented artists. As mentioned earlier, globalization has made Bollywood more corporatized and aggressive marketing strategies became its key areas to achieve financial success. These independent artists were appropriated by Bollywood - firstly to crush the competition and obliterate the threat of an unprecedented challenge put forward by the indie pop culture, but also to enrich film music with the inputs of these new trends and innovation of a music industry nurtured outside the film world.
Language
Globalized Bollywood has also witnessed a metamorphosis in the arena of spoken language. Usage of English has become more obvious than Hindi colloquial itself. Since independence the influence of Persian and Urdu was prominent in Hindi films. But globalization turned the spoken language into a hybrid one – a mix of Hindi and English. This trend was even reflected in the titles of the films which released after the 90s. This hybrid language has become the most common trend among the urban youth which has been infested to and by the plethora of glocal culture in satellite television channels which runs 24*7 in every household in India. Madhav Prasad in his essay ‘This thing called Bollywood’ finds out that the nationalist ideology of India was held together historically by a metalanguage which could properly articulate one nationalist sentiment. Prasad argues that in a globalized India, English provides the ideological coordinates of the new world of Bollywood films. According to him, English phrases and proverbs are liberally used to construct a web of discourse which the characters inhabit.
Choreography
An overlooked arena in Bollywood is the field of choreography. Through the ages, Bollywood choreography has gained considerable amount of sophistication and respect. This has also its influence drawn from the satellite television programs on dance competitions like Boogie Woogie and international and national music videos in channels belonging to a multinational corporation who gained their access in India only after globalization. Choreography in Hindi films, which was taken just as a time pass and was taken in the least serious way by the viewers, suddenly became a spectacle with huge investments and taking highly skilled artists and chorographers as item numbers. Another change that had taken place in globalized Bollywood films is a matter of a far more serious and economic concern – the accompanying dancers in Hindi films used to belong to the groups of junior artists, most of whom were from lower middle-class and slum areas. But suddenly this changed with Subhash Ghai’s Taal, which introduced the famous dancer Shyamak Davar and his group which replacing the former setting of junior artists as dancers. Accompanying dancers in contemporary Bollywood evolved from junior artists to highly skilled and upper class professional dancers, courtesy to a number of modern dancing schools. This has further evolved to foreign dance troops who come as packages with other facilities when a Bollywood film is shot abroad. Since the early 1990s, there has been an explosion in the number of foreign women dancers who are used as extras for the song and dance sequences in films (Mumbai film industry’s demand for foreign dancers has brought a large number of women from Eastern Europe and Russia). Since 1960, Hindi films’ nationalism through the role of women represented Western women as primarily ‘immoral and sexually accessible to the Indian male’ and as embodiment of unbridled sexuality. The trend is still continuing today and the value judgment of women based on their sexuality and chastity is immensely significant for the audience. Indian viewers recognize the influx of these foreign women into the song and dance sequences and equate their presence with overt sexualization of film choreography. As V.Lal puts it in his essay ‘The Impossibility of the Outsider in Modern Hindi film’, over sexualization of song and dance may create a cultural threat and anxiety, but such tensions are appeased with a logic that the ‘foreign’ backup dancers can be ‘sexy’ but the ‘Indian’ heroines and heroes have to maintain the decorum of modesty and tradition. Globalization has made song sequences a site of absolute and flawless pleasure, but seldom have we talked about the particular class of junior artists, who are perished under the new liberalization aesthetics. However, maintaining the tradition-modernity and sober-obscene construct of the Bollywood notions in accord with its audience has become a conventional practice with the Indian heroines gearing up in both Western and traditional attires and participating in the same choreography with the ‘other’ cultural representations through the white women (both blonde and brunette) who wear revealing dresses and symbolize sexual ecstasy. It is of course a niche created by the globalized Bollywood according to G. Gangoly in his essay ‘Sexuality, Sensuality, and Belonging: Representations of the Anglo-Indian and the Western Women in Hindi Cinema’. It is a curious fact that the integration of MTVization, especially the beach party reality shows like Grind and due to new trends in advertisements with star endorsements has further eased the tension of this stance of traditional sanctity in contemporary Bollywood films. Heroines are more global than ever, sexually more liberated than the previous years and the women characters are gaining more independence in terms of economic and social structure as the space of unfolding of the narrative is mostly New York, London or any other first world city. We see the evolution of super stars like Katrina Kaif, whose very presence reminds us that our women of desire in cinema is an Indian who exhibit and combine the beauties and characteristics of a white woman too.
Globalization has embraced Bollywood cinema not to impose the global cultures in the Indian terrain neither to challenge the cultural archetypes, nor to question the nationalist feelings into jeopardy. On the contrary, the national image and the desire of the nation as an emerging global power under the umbrella of the United States is reconfigured and consolidated in a new way. Bollywood through its films have invested a vision of portraying itself to the world as a global superpower, not from the military point of view, but as a highly skilled and updated human resource tank whose representations are manifested through the protagonists and their friends inside, and mostly outside the country. But this is not the only agenda that Bollywood has – the cultural ramifications and re-endorsements of the familial emotions along with the Non-residential Indian community feelings are of prime importance. As Bourden points out, with the changes in media production, consumption, and exhibition, ‘locality is produced as one 's sense of difference from the global, but the new locality is no longer a spontaneous expression of given, long-held local traditions. Glocalization has helped Bollywood not only to link the spaces far and broad stretching to different continents, but also to invent the localities which are hybrid in nature, but national in culture. An Indian audience in contemporary times aspires to be a global citizen, and Bollywood becomes a key cultural impetus through which global is constructed locally just as the local is constructed globally.
3. OBJECTIVE
i. To understand the cultural ramifications of the terms 'globalization ' and what we understand as 'Bollywood ' in particular reference to Mumbai (previously Bombay) film industry.
ii. To understand the various impacts of globalization on Hindi films not resulting in mutation of the Hindi film cultural but a new coexistence of hybridity.
iii. To trace the impact of the new 'glocal ' or hybrid culture on various aspects of Hindi popular cinema challenged by the ever changing Indian media under globalization.
4. SUMMARY
With the new market liberalization policies, Indian media scenario underwent a rapid change in the way it reached to its audience. Waves of change in the Indian media industry penetrated into the Hindi film industry as well. This marked a departure of the Hindi popular cinema from the way it operated in the eighties and deliberately changed the way its ways both as an industry and as a commercial product as well. Hindi popular cinema, preferably termed as Bollywood, under the new global ethics became international in production and global in consumption, at the sometime maintaining and reiterating facets of what we may call Indian culture (mostly limited to the upper caste Hindu North Indian culture). This may be termed as 'glocalization ' which means global ideas with local stories. The new Bollywood also came with the over-arching presence of the NRIs who gained importance in the new Bollywood of globalization. With the overseas business and opportunity of this certainly influenced and changed the way in which Hindi popular incorporated locations, songs, choreography and a number merchandizing items starting from fashion, accessories to other commercial products.
5. GLOSSARY:
globalization: the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale
glocalization: the practice of conducting business according to both local and global considerations.
Marxist approach: The political and economic philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in which the concept of class struggle plays a central role in understanding society 's allegedly inevitable development from bourgeois oppression under capitalism to a socialist and ultimately classless society.
privatization: The process of removing (something) from government control and place it in private control or ownership.
open skies policy: An open sky policy is an international agreement wherein two or more nations agree to allow unrestricted over flight and landing rights to one another. It is an international agreement. It helps foster friendship and trust between countries.
particularism: Exclusive adherence to, dedication to, or interest in one 's own group, party, sect, or nation.
WTO: World Trade Organization
Diaspora: The dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland
homogenization: It is defined as a state-led policy aimed at cultural standardization and the overlap between state and culture.
discourse: A speech or a written communication on a particular topic in an authoritative way.
archetypes: (in Jungian theory) a primitive mental image inherited from the earliest human ancestors, and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious
REFERENCES:
Ashish RAJADHYAKSHA, The ‘Bollywoodization’ of the Indian cinema: cultural nationalism in a global arena ' from Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 4, Number 1, 2003
Ruben Gowricharan, Bollywood in Diaspora, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands, 2004
Sharmistha Acharya, BOLLYWOOD AND GLOBALIZATION, San Francisco State university, 2007
Shakuntala Rao, THE GLOBALIZATION OF BOLLYWOOD: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF NON-ELITE AUDIENCES IN INDIA, State University of New York, Department of Communication, Routledge, 2007.
Bollywood and Globalization, Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora, edited by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta and Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande, 2011.
LINKS:
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/conversi/ISA.pdf
http://openarchive.cbs.dk/bitstream/handle/10398/7796/Creative%20Encounters%20Working%20Papers%2026.pdf?sequence=1
QUIZ:
i. Around what year did Bollywood underwent the process of globalization and started reflecting its ideas through the Hindi popular films?
a. 1975
b. 2011
c. 1991
d. 2000
ii. Under globalization, Bollywood can be seen as
a. India industry operating within the borders of the nation
b. a media industry concentrating on the indigenous people
c. culture industry that remains constitutively international in production and global in consumption
d. a film industry that invested on the patterns of the old industry with new sources of investement
iii. The most important aspect of the new Bollywood under globalization has been its
a. distribution and consumption activities
b. theatre halls
c. methods of acting
d. use of language
iv. Name the first satellite channel which came to India with globalization
a. BBC
b. Zee TV
c. Star TV
d. ESPN
v. Name the form of media which became a tough competitor for Hindi film industry after liberalization?
a. Radio
b. Internet
c. Television
d. Print media
vi. Glocalization can be best described as
a. distinction between the local and the global
b. dynamics of the local in the global
c. dynamics of the local in the global and the global in the local
d. dynamics of the global in the local vii. Primary target audience for the globalized Bollywood is
a. the rural audience
b. urban middle-class and NRIs
c. urban lower class
d. only the NRIs
viii. Which language, according to Madhav Prasad has been the marker of ideology in the globalized Bollywood?
a. Hindi
b. Bengali
c. English
d. Chinese
ix. 1998 was a landmark year for Bollywood industry as
a. it produced the most profitable film ever
b. it was accredited as an industry by the government
c. a Bollywood film made an entry into the Oscar awards for the first time
d. Bollywood completed hundred years of cinema
x. Songs in Hindi popular films are primarily
a. displaying sexual fantasies and eroticized communication
b. displaying the musical tradition of India
c. displaying them as a part of their narrative
d. elements that turn the film into a musical genre
FAQs:
1. As a term, has Bollywood got anything to do with Hollywood? Bollywood as a term is a mixture of 'Bombay ', the earlier name of Mumbai and Hollywood. Linking the mainstream Hindi film industry with the name of the world 's biggest film industry not only become a feeling of pride but also a tribute to the artists and technicians of Hollywood for the dexterity of work.
2. If globalization is an economic aspect, why does it influence the cultural aspect as is the case with Bollywood? As already mentioned, if we follow the classical Marxist approach, most of the times the shift in the economic base influences shifts in other aspects of life - i.e. a shift in the base inevitably influences a shift in the superstructure - the structure which is placed above the base. Hence, any cultural aspect is bound to be influenced if the economic base undergoes a shift. Therefore, with the change of the nature of the market, a commercial industry like Bollywood has to respond to the market ethics and hence has to change itself accordingly. 3. What is culture industry? Culture Industry as a term was coined by the Marxists Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer belonging to the Frankfurt School. The original essay is known as Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”, of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), where they proposed that the all the representations of popular culture including radio, print television and a part of cinema are produced and reproduced standardized cultural goods just like any other manufactured good coming out of the factory whose only objective is nothing philosophical and eclectic, but generating capital.
4. How is Bollywood considered to be a culture industry? A lot of scholars refer this term to Bollywood because Bollywood is a mainstream commercial industry whose objective is also profit generation, which is more than ever in the era of globalization. 5. Why does Bollywood invest so much on narratives related to NRIs? NRIs, or non-residential Indians have gained primacy in films as characters and as audience primarily to generate a market in the overseas. It has been a trend after globalization because the restrictions and taxes which were there previously in overseas business is eased to great extent and hence the profit generation of the new Bollywood films have been easier than before.
6. Why does Bollywood shifted from the pan-Indian audience to a more specific target group of the urban elites? As India is often been imagined as a developing country, there has been a trend of converting each and every class, whether rural or urban, into ideal consumers. Logic of consumption is best found in the urban areas where products, goods and services of all levels are readily available. Moreover, the logic of development in most of the cases have become the process of expansion of urban areas where the rural population is fast being converted into urban ones. Hence, Bollywood cinema is akin to this development and the new rural-converted-urban populace has started finding meaning in the new Bollywood. Therefore, with the influx of so many products and goods, targeting the urban elite will actually incorporate the fast transforming rural population into the same group.
7. In spite of having a lot of songs, why does a Hindi film never become a musical genre? If we pay attention to the cultural history of India, it will be clear that the India has rich heritage in aural culture, unlike the visual one of the West. hence the cultural rendering of a song or ,music piece in the West is entirely different from that of the Indian subjects. so, in spite of inclusion of a number of songs into films, the film is never been perceived as a musical genre.
8. If India has accepted globalization, why do the Hindi films stick to traditional elements? Globalization has hardly anything to do with modernity or tradition. Rather, if we consider glocalization as a valid point which has a deep effect on the film industry, globalization will inspire us into exploring the new markets and plethora of products has to offer and at the same time clinging on to the roots of tradition (to the extent of discovering and rediscovering them in a new way). So more the NRIs will feature with all the elements of Western culture, more facets of traditional inputs will visible in the image reproduction of Bollywood.
9. In spite of shooting at locations far off from the homeland, the characters of the Hindi films never feel alienated and homeless. Why? Because Hindi films never involve its characters, plots and other elements with the foreign ones. Although the locales are away from home, the ethics, morality and sentiments remain Indian to the core.
10. Why is it so that the Bollywood had been forced to change itself after globalization? With the advent of open market policies, Indian media saw the rise of various television channels including film channels where the audience for the first time could watch all the films just sitting back at home. Bollywood had to turn to newer ways to attract the Indian audience who are suddenly facing the pleasures of the satellite channels, not only in terms of its production quality, but also its marketing policies.
ASSIGNMENTS:
1. Enlist the names of the films which have released after 1992 and who have NRIs as their central protagonists.
2. Carefully pick and watch five popular films from the 1980s and then pick and watch five most successful films from 1992 to 2005. Compare the central characters with their background and their purpose in respect of the narrative.
3. Point out the differences in the mise-en-scene of the two films named Agneepath, one which released in 1991 and the second in 2012.
4. Do you think that the new Bollywood cinema has the influence of international satellite channels? If so, site examples with explanation.
5. Do you agree with the term Glocalization? Site examples from films how you can approach this term.
CASE STUDY:
Not Applicable
References: Ashish RAJADHYAKSHA, The ‘Bollywoodization’ of the Indian cinema: cultural nationalism in a global arena ' from Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 4, Number 1, 2003 Ruben Gowricharan, Bollywood in Diaspora, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands, 2004 Bollywood and Globalization, Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora, edited by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta and Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande, 2011. b. 2011 c d. 2000 ii ix. 1998 was a landmark year for Bollywood industry as a
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