Through engaging media coverage of the public lives of Bollywood actresses, this book unveils understandings of idealized femininity and gender within this cultural context. Beyond its own borders, such a context is unique given the global relevance of content from and about Bollywood with members of the diaspora as well as those culturally Indian individuals that are no longer part of the diaspora. This book thus engages these actresses as global Indian celebrities who are framed and presented as contemporary urban Indian exemplars of gender via media coverage about them. The book therefore offers a robust and detailed case study of the Bollywood star system so as to demonstrate how the nuances of this unique cultural context influence the dimensions of postfeminism and celebrity culture therein.
Bollywood takes over in this contemporary, magical middle grade novel about an Indian American girl whose world turns upside down when she involuntarily starts bursting into glamorous song-and-dance routines during everyday life. You know how in Bollywood when people are in love, they sing and dance from the mountaintops? Eleven-year-old Sonali wonders if they do the same when they’re breaking up. The truth is, Sonali’s parents don’t get along, and it looks like they might be separating. Sonali’s little brother, Ronak, is not taking the news well, constantly crying. Sonali would never do that. It’s embarrassing to let out so many feelings, to show the world how not okay you are. But then something strange happens, something magical, maybe. When Sonali gets upset during a field trip, she can’t bury her feelings like usual—instead, she suddenly bursts into a Bollywood song-and-dance routine about why she’s upset! The next morning, much to her dismay, Sonali’s reality has shifted. Things seem brighter, almost too bright. Her parents have had Bollywood makeovers. Her friends are also breaking out into song and dance. And somehow, everyone is acting as if this is totally normal. Sonali knows something has gone wrong, and she suspects it has something to do with her own mismanaged emotions. Can she figure it out before it’s too late?
The Media of Diaspora examines how diasporic communities have used new communications media to maintain and develop community ties on a local and transnational level. This collection of essays from a wide range of different diasporic contexts is a unique contribution to the field.
In India, cricket is a religion and cricketers are Gods. This book is a pure celebration of India's cricket history and the players who took Indian cricket to great heights. Yet unlike other books that are one-dimensional, this book also looks at the flip side and asks the ‘why’ questions that are seldom asked in India. The book offers great insights into why India has never managed to reach the peaks that the great Australian and West Indian teams of the past did. More importantly, it offers great suggestions to make Indian cricket truly great.
Identity conflicts, a prominent feature of our times, a phenomenon of belonging somewhere yet belonging nowhere, are increasingly finding their way into cinema. This book looks at the representations of identity conflicts in India on the canvas of Indian cinema, connecting them with broader socio-political developments in contemporary India. Starting with the historical background of how political developments in Europe like the emergence of Nation states, secularism, modernity influenced socio-political developments in India in the past century, the book looks at how those developments have shaped modern India. While looking at the cinematic representations of a variety of identity conflicts through the lens of cultural and political analysis, it provides insights into how the construct of an Identity and the inherent conflicts associated with it evolve and manifest themselves through the medium of a film.
Bollywood’s New Woman examines Bollywood’s construction and presentation of the Indian Woman since the 1990s. The groundbreaking collection illuminates the contexts and contours of this contemporary figure that has been identified in sociological and historical discourses as the “New Woman.” On the one hand, this figure is a variant of the fin de siècle phenomenon of the “New Woman” in the United Kingdom and the United States. In the Indian context, the New Woman is a distinct articulation resulting from the nation’s tryst with neoliberal reform, consolidation of the middle class, and the ascendency of aggressive Hindu Right politics.
Traces the development of Indian cinema from the 1920s to the mid-1990s, before Bollywood erupted onto the world stage. Bombay before Bollywood offers a fresh, alternative look at the history of Indian cinema. Avoiding the conventional focus on Indias social and mythological films, Rosie Thomas examines the subaltern genres of the magic and fighting filmsthe fantasy, costume, and stunt films popular in the decades before and immediately after independence. She explores the influence of this other cinema on the big-budget masala films of the 1970s and 1980s, before Bollywood erupted onto the world stage in the mid-1990s. Thomas focuses on key moments in this hidden history, including the 1924 fairy fantasy Gul-e-Bakavali; the 1933 talkie Lal-e-Yaman; the exploits of stunt queen Fearless Nadia; the magical neverlands of Hatimtai and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp; and the 1960s stunt capers Zimbo and Khilari. She includes a detailed ethnographic account of the Bombay film industry of the early 1980s, centering on the beliefs and fantasies of filmmakers themselves with regard to filmmaking and film audiences, and on-the-ground operations of the industry. A welcome addition to the fields of film studies and cultural studies, the book will also appeal to general readers with an interest in Indian cinema. In this powerful account, Rosie Thomas opens out filmic artifacts to an array of dazzling reflections shedding new light on the movement and circulation of popular culture in India. With a remarkable body of research conducted over a period of time, Bombay before Bollywood decisively challenges certain assumptions about India, its cinemas, and its audiences. Ranjani Mazumdar, author of Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City This is the archaeology of media performed with intellect, wit, and passion. Rosie Thomas pioneered this field and she remains its most brilliantly iridescent critic and advocate. If only all film studies were this revelatory and this enjoyable! Christopher Pinney, author of Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs Rosie Thomass body of research over the last twenty-five years has set up key discourses in the study of Indian popular cinema. This book brings together her pioneering fieldwork into film industry categories and practices, and her more recent bid to resurrect a history made well-nigh clandestine by official narratives: the significance of Arabian Nights fantasies, stunt films, and visceral attractions in Bombay cinema. Pleasurably crafted and provocatively argued, Bombay before Bollywood is an important intervention in Indian and world cinema studies. Ravi Vasudevan, author of The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema
Research and popular culture illustrate that Bollywood cinema plays an essential role for Indian national and diasporic audiences across the globe, showing that such films shed light on the history and cultural politics of India. Over time, Bollywood filmmakers have played a key role in assisting Indian women with their evolutionary practices. Films that focus on important aspects such as culture, patriarchy, and gender politics within this context are analysed in this text. Karan Johar is internationally recognised as an auteur, especially because of the novel representations of the Indian diaspora in his films. His unique relationship with Shah Rukh Khan, a global icon with a worldwide following of some 3.5 billion fans, is explored here. This book’s study of Bollywood films elucidates how Indian women have transformed over the years, from being subjugated to individuals with human rights. As such, it is a valuable source of information for cinema studies students and instructors, and an important resource for anyone interested in the history of the Bollywood industry and its impact on society as it evolves.
Bollywood in Britain provides the most extensive survey to date of the various manifestations and facets of the Bollywood phenomenon in Britain. The book analyzes the role of Hindi films in the British film market, it shows how audiences engage with Bollywood cinema and it discusses the ways the image of Bollywood in Britain has been shaped. In contrast to most of the existing books on the subject, which tend to approach Bollywood as something that is made by Asians for Asians, the book also focuses on how Bollywood has been adapted for non-Asian Britons. An analysis of Bollywood as an unofficial brand is combined with in-depth readings of texts like film reviews, the TV show Bollywood Star (2004) and novels and plays with references to the Bombay film industry. On this basis Bollywood in Britain demonstrates that the presentation of Bollywood for British mainstream culture oscillates between moments of approximation and distancing, with a clear dominance of the latter. Despite its alleged transculturality, Bollywood in Britain thus emerges as a phenomenon of difference, distance and Othering.
Key changes have emerged in Bollywood in the new millennium. Twenty-First Century Bollywood traces the emerging shifts in both the content and form of Bollywood cinema and examines these new tendencies in relation to the changing dynamics of Indian culture. The book historically situates these emerging trends in relation to previous norms, and develops new, innovative paradigms for conceptualizing Bollywood in the twenty-first century. The particular shifts in contemporary Bollywood cinema that the book examines include the changing nature of the song and dance sequence, the evolving representations of male and female sexuality, and the increasing presence of whiteness as a dominant trope in Bollywood cinema. It also focuses on the increasing presence of Bollywood in higher education courses in the West, as well as how Bollywood’s growing presence in such academic contexts illuminates the changing ways in which this cinema is consumed by Western audiences. Shifting the focus back on the cinematic elements of contemporary films themselves, the book analyses Bollywood films by considering the film dynamics on their own terms, and related to their narrative and aesthetic usage, rather than through an analysis of large-scale industrial practices. It will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Studies, Film Studies, and Cultural Studies.
