Bollywood Bourgeois Author(S): Rachel Dwyer Source: India International Centre Quarterly, Vol
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Bollywood Bourgeois Author(s): Rachel Dwyer Source: India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3/4, India 60 (WINTER 2006-SPRING 2007), pp. 222-231 Published by: India International Centre Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23006084 . Accessed: 07/11/2013 09:20 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. India International Centre is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to India International Centre Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 146.96.128.36 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:20:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INDIA 60 Bollywood Bourgeois cliche of Indian cinema being the domain of the escapist fantasies of the Indian masses can now be safely put to rest. While this may have been true for The the 1980s, when the study of Indian cinema began to grow, the present cinema audiences, who are willing to pay Rs. 200 and upwards for a cinema ticket, are from various sections of the Indian middle classes and elites. These classes now dominate the public sphere in India and film is one of the major media which they are producing and consuming. It is possible to trace links between the rise of the new middle classes in the 1990s and contemporary changes in Hindi cinema. The early Indian cinema, though often scorned by elites, was not a primarily lower class form. Many of those who worked in early cinema came from educated elites, such as Dadasaheb Phalke, or mercantile backgrounds such as Chandulal Shah and most of the ByRachel Dwyer This content downloaded from 146.96.128.36 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:20:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BOLLYWOOD BOURGEOIS 'Chairs' by Anjolie Ela Menon. owners of New Theatres, Bombay Talkies and Wadia Movietones. However, other studios, such as Prabhat, were more socially mixed and actors themselves were also diverse, and some were clearly associated with dancing traditions linked to prostitution and other dubious origins, while others, such as Durga Khote and Devika Rani, came from highly respectable families. This social mixture continues in the Indian film industry up to the present. There is no major ethnography of Indian cinema audiences. We know most about silent cinema because of the Enquiry of 1927-8. Although the majority of those interviewed were elite, we get some wider views of how the audiences were perceived at this time, and talk of masses and female audiences. We can also see that the upper class The Times of India ignored film, in particular non-English films, for many years as cinema was not seen as an important cultural form. However, we recognize that the social background of those making the films and their audiences was varied. We know from the writings : Courtesy: Kitsch Kitsch Hota Hai: Kitsch and the Contemporary Imagination / Gallery Espace : 223 This content downloaded from 146.96.128.36 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:20:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INDIA 60 of B.R. Chopra, Balraj Sahni and others studying in elite colleges in Lahore, that cinema was a passion, though often forbidden by their families. As few, if any, histories have been written of the development of India's middle class, we can instead focus on them over the last 15 years. It is hard to define exactly what is meant by 'middle class' in any culture. Even if we define the middle class in India as those who are tax-payers, the numbers are not clear. However, they are undoubtedly a powerful force if only in terms of their size, which is said to be as great as 100 million or 10 per cent of the total population, but is more probably four million households or 25 million people.1 They have also become far more visible as the result of a series of government policies in the 1990s. At the beginning of India's economic liberalization in 1991, there was a widespread belief that the Indian middle classes were increasing in number and in wealth. Whether 25 or 100 million, this represented an enormous market primed for an influx of goods. However, India is getting richer and income is rising overall, but distribution of income is getting more disparate. India's consumer - spending power is only a thirtieth of that of the USA that is the size of one small American state. However, straightforward numerical conversion of currency can be misleading in that the rupee may be low in terms of exchange, but its purchasing power in India is higher especially given the cost of labour. A more useful way of examining India's middle classes is by looking at their lifestyles and consumerist behaviour. Bourdieu's analysis of taste in French society2 has certain problems in the Indian context for unlike France, which has a clearly defined 'French culture' created by the bourgeoisie, India has a plurality of cultures, further complicated by postcolonialism and the relationship to Western culture. However, the national bourgeoisie has created one hegemonic version of Indian culture, perpetuated through - government organizations academies, universities, museums, etc. - which, I argue, has attacked the new middle classes largely on the grounds of taste. Rachel Dwyer This content downloaded from 146.96.128.36 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:20:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BOLLYWOOD BOURGEOIS Bourdieu argues that taste is part of a struggle for social recognition or status, in which lifestyle plays a key part, emphasizing cultural consumption rather than production. Taste is defined by the dominant class, the bourgeoisie, who have economic capital in terms of income, employment status, etc. They impose their taste in order to establish their cultural legitimacy, to 'define the legitimate principles of domination, between economic, educational or social capital'.3 Thus the bourgeois aesthetic becomes cultural capital, seen as being inherent in the bourgeoisie rather than learnt or acquired. The bourgeoisie define what legitimate culture is and other sections of the population are seen to be lacking in taste, liking what is 'middlebrow' or 'popular'. In Bourdieu's terms, the petit bourgeoisie has to strive to differentiate themselves from those who are below them in the social hierarchy, but they may lack the education to acquire the cultural capital of the bourgeoisie. I wish to emphasize that I do not regard the idea of cultural legitimacy as totally arbitrary and beyond any aesthetic definition, but I see it as a useful working model in a social rather than purely textual analysis. While India has long had what we can now call the 'old middle classes', mostly highly educated professionals, the last century saw the emergence of new middle classes. This group is highly visible socially: located at the upper end of the economic spectrum, they - have non-landed wealth although many now have wealth from - property inflation which they use for their patterns of relatively high consumption, and they speak English as one of their major languages. They are also avid producers and consumers of much of India's public culture, in particular that of the Hindi cinema. They are now also setting their own definitions of what is culturally legitimate, contesting the values of the old middle classes. This cultural conflict has led to the almost hysterical rejection of the culture of the new middle classes that I have looked at elsewhere.4 The new middle classes would largely reject the term 'middle class' that in India refers more to the lower middle classes. They refer to themselves as 'upper class'; the professional middle classes call them the 'nouveau riche'. Yet they are located culturally within the middle classes, having largely risen from the lower middle classes, to create a new space in the middle classes, separate from the grands bourgeoisies and the old middle classes. Many would argue they actually constitute an elite, in terms of economics and because they 225 This content downloaded from 146.96.128.36 on Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:20:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions INDIA 60 are mostly drawn from the upper castes, and that they are in no way 'middling'. Yet they are contesting the middle ground, the centre of Indian life. The old middle classes are associated with realist cinema, including the 'art' cinema associated with Satyajit Ray and the 'parallel' cinemas that emerged during the 1970s. This cinema, like middle class cinema in the West, has favoured realism over melodrama and has usually depicted with most sympathy the lower middle classes, mostly shown struggling in the cities, as well as the rural poor and zamindari classes. Realist films, such as those of Shyam Benegal, were concerned with caste, class and gender, while Govind Nihalani made films about corruption and the struggle to remain human in such settings. There was also a transitional cinema which developed during these years, made by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar, B.R. Chopra and Basu Chatterjee, which can be located as having the realism of art cinema while sharing features with commercial cinema, in particular the use of song. During the 1980s, much of this audience switched its allegiance to television, as mainstream cinema became the preserve of the male urban working-class audience.