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Viewing the West Through Bollywood: a Celluloid Occident in the Making

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Viewing the West Through Bollywood: a Celluloid Occident in the Making Contemporary South Asia (2002), 11(2), 199–209 Viewing the West through Bollywood: a celluloid Occident in the making RAVINDER KAUR ABSTRACT Since the 1990s, the popular lm industry in India has succesfully renewed its popularity among the South Asian Diaspora and the globalised Indian middle class. Its recent lms have undergone a thematic shift where the characters encounter the West in a variety of situations reached through travel and migration. The lms sport a fantasy-like, rich look, trendy locations and designer clothes worn by young men and women. The present article locates the Hindi lms in the realm of fast-changing contemporary India with its new market-friendly economy, a globalised and upwardly mobile middle class, a vast dispora that constantly searches for authentic Indian values, and a huge, exportable, techno-savvy workforce that thrives on growing western pop-dominated cultural forms such as Bhangra/ Indi pop-music and Hinglish theatre. The search for authentic Indian values, however unintentionally, reveals the long-held images of the West and the eventual making of a cellulod Occident. Place: Europe. Characters: A rebellious, young out-of-teens Indian girl out to experience the world and a young man, who has set out to win her as his wife as per his father’s wishes. Scene: A busy nightclub somewhere in Switzerland. Rebellious girl: Will you buy me a beer? Man: No, I have no money to spare for alcohol. At this, another man comes forward to buy her the drink and asks her for a dance. They began dancing and are joined by a couple of more men. As the dance and general merrymaking proceeds, the men start making sexual advances on her. She resists, but is overpowered. She cries to her companion for help. He does respond, but by slapping her hard, thereby shocking everyone around, including the potential molesters. The girl, visibly shocked and embarrassed, walks away. Man (confronting her): Are you French? Rebellious girl: No Man: Are you German? Correspondence: R. Kaur, Centre for Development Research, Gammel Kongevej 5, DK-1610 Copenhagen, Denmark. E-mail: [email protected] ISSN 0958-4935 print; 1469-364X online/02/020199-11 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/095849302200003016 8 R. KAUR Rebellious girl: No Man: Are you British or Russian? Rebellious girl: No, I am Indian. Man: Then, do Indian girls act shamelessly like this? Rebellious girl: What do Indian men do while an innocent girl is being molested, just stand as onlookers? Man: If a woman encourages men, then they are exactly going to respond like this. What do you expect, that I should go and beat them up? Rebellious girl: If you are an Indian, then yes. After thrashing the offenders, the man has the nal word.) Man: Nevertheless, it was your mistake. (A scene from Dulhan Ham Le Jayenge, 2000) It was while sitting in a smoke- lled, makeshift cinema hall in Copenhagen that I got engaged in East–West cultural confrontation. The audience reaction to the aforementioned scene almost divided them into two groups; the ones who applauded when the girl is slapped and reminded of her un-Indian behaviour, and the ones who sighed in shocked disbelief. The most vocal in the former category were young men of Indian and Pakistani origin who clapped wildly each time the theme song Munda kamal hai (Oh! What a wonderful man) was played to the catchy Punjabi rhythm. The European background of the scene above—typical of many of the Hindi lms increasingly shot in the Swiss Alps, Scottish highlands, streets of New Orleans or Australian beaches—provided sharp contrast to highlight Indian values. Throughout the movie, although the main characters dressed in trendy Western labels, they protected each other from succumbing to Western in uences. Even when they declared their love for each other, the man refused to make any sexual contact with the girl, reminding her that, in India, it is always shaadi ke baad, after the marriage. They must not forget their traditions and values in a foreign land. The Indian lm industry produces between 850 and 1000 lms a year that are viewed by millions across Asia, Africa, Middle East and, particularly, Non-Resi- dent Indians (NRIs). The purpose of the present paper is to explore the ‘renewed’ interest of the Indian Diaspora towards popular Hindi or Bollywood lms in the past decade of the twentieth century. I call it ‘renewed’ because the lms have caught the fancy of not only the original immigrants, but also second-generation and even third-generation Indians. Hindi lms like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) and Taal (1999) created a record of sorts by climbing into the US/Canada top 20 and UK top ten charts, as well as playing to packed halls in the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Mauritius and South Africa. The ‘overseas market is huge for glossy, glamorous and up-market musicals … for this genre sky is the limit’.1 The spadework for this unprecedented success was accom- plished by movies such as Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1996), which drew the Indian Diaspora to the movie halls in a big way. The success of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, among others, helped sustain the euphoria through themes designed for the NRI community; speci cally family values, moral superiority, true 200 VIEWING THE WEST THROUGH BOLLYWOOD (unpolluted) love, the sacri ce of individual desires for greater good of the family/community, and the struggle and victory of the Indian Diaspora in preserving their cultural universe through Indian rites of passages in an alien environment. I am not suggesting that the popular Hindi cinema has only recently gained a foothold in the South Asian Diaspora but that it has been brought out of the closet from home video shows to public screenings, making it an event to be celebrated and aunted with pride. This trend is not restricted to lms alone, but is noticeable in music, paintings, dramas and other such art forms as well. Is there any explanation for this renewed ownership of popular culture? The suggestions that the South Asian Diaspora is patronising new art forms out of nostalgia or that the Hindi lm producers have nally perfected the formula to make NRIs buy cinema tickets are too simplistic. After all, the formula for popular Bollywood movies has remained much the same; that is, love triangles, sacri ces for the family, lost twins meeting again, etc. Indeed, avid moviegoers can successfully predict the ending of most Hindi lms, even though they cry each time the hero sacri ces the love of his life for his best friend. To understand the phenomenon of the increasing popularity of Hindi lms with the South Asian Diaspora, I shall try to locate the lms in fast-changing, contemporary India with its new market-friendly economy, a globalised and upwardly mobile middle class, and a huge, exportable, techno-savvy workforce that thrives on growing Western pop-dominated cultural forms such as Indi-pop music/Bhangra-pop dance and Hinglish (Hindi 1 English) theatre. I will argue these lms also help create a celluloid Occident that delimits the traditional boundaries. Theoretical considerations It is important to de ne the terms like ‘popular lms’, or rather ‘popular culture’, considering the strong opinions that keep alive the popular versus classical debate.2 While art/classical/high culture is associated with the sophisticated upper-class elite, and ‘folk culture’ with peasants/tribes and such groups who live close to nature, popular/mass/consumer/low culture is seen as belonging to the plebeians of industrial societies. The cultural theorist often laments the debasement of cultural forms through mass, mindless productions for couch- potato consumers. This approach, coupled with the watertight categorisations of art/folk/popular, reeks of over-simpli cation and an elitist bias. Popular culture is indeed an urban phenomenon that, spurred on by technological innovations, articulates the concerns and issues of an industrial people. One cannot but agree that the factors of demand, supply and pro tability guide the actual production of cultural products. But to term both the producers and the audience as intellectually and morally bankrupt is akin to the subscription of ‘cultural patriarchy’ where only the ones located at the high end are capable of deciding what is good for everyone else. 201 R. KAUR Misgivings towards popular culture also arise when it is de-linked from the dynamic processes of state and society formation. Popular cinema, like all other cultural forms, neither exists for a self-gratifying purpose, nor does it have an autonomous project. It deals with narratives that emerge from socio-political transformations in society, including an acute emphasis on all-encompassing commercial factors. Popular cinema not only in uences the society, it effectuates a ‘reciprocal-in uence’ where the society presents the raw stock to be woven into lm narratives. The historical episodes/beliefs of a nation/community/indi- vidual nd re ections in such narratives, even if partially or in fragments. These re ections can be understood as the ‘symbolic representations’ of society; not of how it is, but how it would like to represent itself.3 But how does society like to see itself? In a medium such as lms, with its strong urban–industrial–com- mercial overtones, who decides what the audience views? The standard answer of commercial lmmakers is: ‘we produce what audiences want’. Film critics, on the other hand, lament the recycling of themes and the stereotypical characteri- sation therein. But neither of these views explain why only a handful of movies succeed while most, including the so-called ‘formula lms’, fail to make an impact.
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