Bollywood and Globalization

Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora

Edited by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande

Publication date:

01 January 2010

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781843318330

Commercial cinema has always been one of the biggest indigenous industries in India, and remains so in the post-globalization era, when Indian economy has entered a new phase of global participation, liberalization and expansion. Issues of community, gender, society, social and economic justice, bourgeois-liberal individualism, secular nationhood and ethnic identity are nowhere more explored in the Indian cultural mainstream than in commercial cinema. As Indian economy and policy have gone through a sea-change after the end of the Cold War and the commencement of the Global Capital, the largest cultural industry has followed suit. This book is a significant addition to the study of post-Global Indian culture. The articles represent a variety of theoretical and pedagogical approaches, and the collection will be appreciated by beginners and scholars alike.

Acknowledgements; Notes on Contributors; Bollywood, Nation, Diaspora: An Incomplete Introduction to Indian Cinema in the Era of Globalization; Sentimental Symptoms; Is Everybody Saying ‘Shava Shava’ To Bollywood Bhangra?; Bollywood Babes; Globalization and the Cultural Imaginary; Rang de Basanti; Between Yaars; Imagining the Past in the Present; ‘It's All About Loving Your Parents’; Select Bibliography

‘As the [book suggests], “global Bollywood” has become an important site for assessing (and projecting notions of) complex changes taking place in Indian society since the early 1990s. And like the phenomenon itself, the perspectives on offer are as often perplexing as illuminating. The signifiers of globalization—the corporatization of culture, the ubiquity of consumption, the mediatization of everyday life, the technologization of the economy—have found in Bollywood their prime symbolic real estate, and herein lies both its relevance and its attraction for the foreseeable future.’ —Sumita S. Chakravarty in ‘TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies’