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Imagined spaces: The implications of song and dance for Bollywood's diasporic communities

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10304310802001755

1469-3666

Kai-Ti Kao, Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario,

Cinema and Media Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. There are, of course, exceptions, and further debate upon the definitions of film musical could beg the inclusion of such films as Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Footloose (1984), and MTV music clips. In recent film history, Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge (2001) is a notable success as film musical, blending an MTV approach with an acknowledged Bollywood influence, and Adam Shankman's Hairspray (Citation2007) and Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) evince a sense of the genre's resurgence in 2007. 2. The terms 'Bollywood' and 'Hindi cinema' are often used interchangeably to refer to the Indian film industry. While 'Bollywood' refers specifically to the popular, commercial movies, 'Hindi cinema' encompasses Indian art house movies as well. For the purposes of this article, we will be using the former term, as we are working from the precepts of Hollywood musical and 'Bollywood' celebrates these. 3. Berkeley was one of the famous directors/choreographers of the era with films such as 42nd Street (1933). His signature style involved the large-scale production number, utilizing vast numbers of dancers and a range of innovative camera angles, particularly the use of the aerial shot. 4. While the global Indian diaspora had a long and rich history and is widely dispersed around the globe, for the purposes of this article we are primarily referring to what Vijay Mishra terms 'the diaspora of late capital', which describes 'largely a post-1960s phenomenon distinguished by the movement of economic migrants (but also refugees) into the metropolitan centers of the former empire as well as the New World and Australia' (2002, 235–6). This is not to suggest that older Indian diasporas do not consume Indian media or are not also caught up in negotiating questions of identity and culture. However, recent movies, such as those focused on in this article, depict and target the new diaspora, that which is relatively recent in formation, largely Western based and middle class in formation. 5. CitationSheila Nayar argues that the musical space functions to contain these spectacular fantasies which allow the expression of elements which may not typically be accepted by the conservative Indian movie-going public. She observes that: 'Release and catharsis must be carefully contained, so that the collective experience can be pleasurable and – even as violence splatters or lasciviousness thrusts its way across the screen – moral at its core' (1997, 84). Such elements are accepted because the musical numbers exist in a space beyond the movie's central narrative, and it is also expected, as this is what has come to define the Bollywood genre. 6. See, for example, Vijay Mishra's discussion of the use of Bollywood in the construction of identity in Mishra (2002, 235–69). 7. K3G, for example, uses Blenheim Palace as the location for Rohan and Poo's college. The use of the well-known, eighteenth-century home of the Duke of Marlborough as a British college illustrates how British diasporic life is often imagined in very elaborate, aristocratic terms that would be recognized as fantastical by the British diaspora itself. 8. Nayar notes of its many audiences in countries as diverse as Nigeria and Slovakia, that scholars have speculated (albeit often only in passing) as to why such disparate nations identify so intensely with these Hindi-language popular films – films which are, incidentally, frequently ridiculed by critics for their masala ('spice-mix') blend of tawdry escapism, formulaic storytelling, and narratively irrelevant song-and-dance numbers. (2004, online) Nayar's analysis, leaning on the orality of Hindi cinema, has a tendency to underestimate the sophistication of her subject's ability to achieve quite a tremendous visual and aural spectacle of the imagination, one which generically transcends language and geographic space. 9. The patriotism of the Indian song played over scenes of the capital of the former colonizer is likewise ironic; a postcolonial, auditory re-drawing of cultural exchange and exploitation. 10. A point that is gently mocked through the character of Mr Kholi in Chadha's Bride and Prejudice (Citation2004). 11. Nayar observes that Parents may attempt initially to control their child's independence by refusing to condone a marriage; but the son or daughter's task is then to prove the parents wrong – to assist them, either directly or indirectly, in obtaining moral enlightenment: that judgement on the basis of economic inequality is flawed, that love must conquer all. (1997, 85) This point is played out in both K3G, with Rahul's marriage to poor, lower class Anjali against the wishes of his tradition-bound father, as well as in KHNH, when it is Naina's impending marriage to Rohit that triggers conciliation between her mother and grandmother. 12. Aman cheerfully refers to the grandmother as a silly old hag, playing on the stereotype of the older Indian matriarch who clings to traditional values and refuses to 'assimilate' or 'move with the times'. 13. Thus even while seeming ostensibly to reject tradition, the Indian Aman speaks on its behalf. 14. Naina is, of course, the 'pretty woman', though Aman cheerfully denies this. The song can be interpreted as a mantra to who she could be – both Western and Indian simultaneously, an amalgam of the two without needing to feel that being one necessarily means being less.