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DIS‐ORIENTALIZING BOLLYWOOD

2005; Routledge; Volume: 3; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17400300500037381

1740-7923

Sheila J. Nayar,

Asian Culture and Media Studies

Abstract This paper is born of its author's long‐term interest in (a) making Hindi popular film (also known as ‘Bollywood’) accessible to a Western audience, and (b) blurring the lines of what is oft perceived by students as ‘that’ commercial Asian industry—as versus ‘this’ Hollywood one. Pedagogically, it seeks ways to assimilate Bollywood and other forms of non‐Hollywood popular cinema into survey film courses that are, more often than not, weighted toward a Western concept of content, culture, and aesthetic vision. In keeping with that philosophical vision, it discusses how one might—even while acknowledging difference—integrate Bombay cinema and other marginalized commercial cinemas into the survey framework typical of a small liberal arts college, as well as the ways in which these other (and Other) cinemas can be rendered part of a socio‐historical continuum of filmic expression rather than relegated to the figurative margins of the curriculum. Notes All ensuing quotes from Giannetti, unless otherwise noted, are from this same sidebar and page. Emphasis added. Some good, accessible texts on Hindi film to facilitate contextualized exposure to Bollywood cinema include Rachel Dwyer and Divia Patel's Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film (Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, Citation2002). More difficult and theoretically dense, but accordingly rewarding, is Sumita Chakravarty's National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, Citation 1947 –1987 (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1993). In terms of independent essays, I have found most helpful Rosie Thomas' ‘Indian cinema: pleasures and popularity’, Screen, vol. 26, nos. 3/4, 1985, pp. 116–131. Also of value is Vijay Mishra, Peter Jeffrey and Brian Shoesmith's ‘The actor as parallel text in Bombay cinema’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 2, Citation1989, pp. 49–67. I have taken this directly from Giannetti's own text, but the original concept was of course borrowed from structural linguistics. This is not an article intended to prove or disprove the validity of this theory. For readers who are skeptical or who require more in‐depth consideration of orality's impact on visual narrative, see Sheila J. Nayar, ‘Invisible representation: the oral contours of a national popular cinema’, Film Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 3, spring Citation2004, pp. 13–23. See, for instance, Ravi S. Vasudevan, ‘Addressing the spectator of a “Third World” national cinema: the Bombay “social” film of the Citation1940s and 1950s’, Screen, vol. 36, no. 4, 1995, pp. 305–324. Emphasis added. It is important to acknowledge that there are numerous regional, non‐Hindi‐speaking film industries, such as those of Tamil Nadu and Punjab, that exist alongside Bollywood. For this, I recommend foremost Rosie Thomas' essay ‘Indian cinema: pleasures and popularity’, Screen, vol. 26, nos. 3/4, 1985, pp. 116–131. This paper is of course itself not intended as a comparative assessment of value systems, only as a route to pedagogical means of incorporating Hindi popular films into a conventionally Western‐oriented curriculum; but because rendering such films accessible has been one of my major aims and interests professionally, I can direct readers to two of my own articles that examine explicit, consistent changes made to Bombay film adapted from Hollywood storylines in the early and late 1990s. These essays are ‘The values of fantasy: Indian popular cinema through Western scripts’, Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 31, no. 1, summer Citation1997, pp. 73–90; and, ‘Dreams, Dharma & Mrs. Doubtfire’, Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 31, no. 2, summer Citation2003, pp. 73–82. My emphases. Here Alejandro Amenábar's film The Others comes to mind, with its intentionally isomeric repositioning of the others as ‘us’—protagonists who are ghosts but don't know it—and the us as ‘others’—antagonist‐humans who try to reach them and rid them from their home. I suspect that JanMohamed, despite my citing his work several times, would be one of those scholars critical of the manner in which I have not more directly attended to the political context of these films.