Bollywood's India

Hindi Cinema as a Guide to Modern India

Bibliographic Data

ID7429129
AuthorsRachel Dwyer (corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume41
Issue3
Pages381-398
Publication date2010-10-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsian Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0306-8374 • E-ISSN: 1477-1500
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03068374.2010.508231
OpenAlexW2081184638
LanguageEN
Citations received17

This article propounds the thesis that Bollywood cinema, the modern Indian cinema based in Mumbai (Bombay) is a better guide to the realities of modern India than other, more scholarly works. The author, who distinguishes and describes a number of different types of Bollywood film, suggests that these films are an unparalleled guide to the thoughts, aspirations and attitudes of the hundreds of millions of members of the emergent middle classes. For example, their view of history is purveyed by the cinema, not by books written by academic historians; their attitudes to politics are formed by films, not by the speeches given by politicians. Notes Rachel Dwyer, Bollywood's India: Hindi Cinema as a Guide to Modern India. London: Reaktion Books, 2011. Ashis Nandy (Ed.), The Secret Politics of our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Popular Cinema. London: Zed Books, 1998, p. 7. Richard Dyer, ‘Entertainment and Utopia'. Movie Vol. 24 (Spring 1977): 2–13. Rachel Dwyer, ‘Ich mag es, wenn du zornig wirst: Amitabh Bachchan, Emotionen und Stars im Hindi-film’ [I Love You When You're Angry: Amitabh Bachchan, the Star and Emotion in the Hindi Film], in Claus Tieber (Ed.), Fokus Bollywood: das indische Kino in wissenschaftlichen Diskursen. Münster: Lit. Verlag, 2009, pp. 99–115; and Rachel Dwyer, ‘Happy Ever After: Hindi Films and the Happy Ending’, in Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov (Ed.), The Topography of Happiness from the American Dream to Postsocialism/Тоnография счастья от Американской мечты к пост-социализму, 2010, No further details. Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004, pp. 2, 23. Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. With introduction by Miriam Bratu Hansen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, p. 163. Edward Luce, In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India. London: Little Brown, 2006, p. 48, estimates this is around 35 million so if we add the households this could take us to 200 million middle class people. India Today, February 19, 2007. Annette Kuhn, Dreaming of Fred and Ginger: Cinema and Cultural Memory. London: Routledge, 2002. Discussed in Rachel Dwyer, ‘The Case of the Missing Mahatma: Gandhi and the Hindi Cinema’. Public Culture, special issue, 2010. No further details. Richard Dyer, Stars. Supplementary chapter by Paul McDonald. London: British Film Institute, 1998. Christopher Pinney, ‘Photos of the Gods’: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2004, p. 117. Ashish Rajadhyaksha, ‘The “Bollywoodization” of the Indian Cinema: Cultural Nationalism in a Global Arena’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Vol. 4. Issue 1 (2003): 25–39, and Ravi Vasudevan, ‘The Meanings of “Bollywood”’, in Rachel Dwyer and Jerry Pinto (Eds.), Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood: The Many Forms of Hindi Cinema. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010. Forthcoming. Mark B. Sandberg, ‘Effigy and Narrative: Looking into the Nineteenth-Century Folk Museum’, in Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz (Eds.), Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, p. 353. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001, p. xiii. Anderson Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (revised edition). London: Verso, 1983. Dwyer, ‘The Case of the Missing Mahatma’. Quoted in Pinney, ‘Photos of the Gods’, p. 124. Statement of Mr M. K. Gandhi, Sabarmati, dated November 12, 1927. ICC III: 56. Dwyer, ‘The Case of the Missing Mahatma’, discusses Gandhi's absence from the Hindi cinema and the biopic in Hindi cinema. Ashis Nandy, ‘History's Forgotten Doubles’. History and Theory Vol. 34. Issue 2. Theme Issue 34: World Historians and Their Critics (May 1995): 47. Wendy Doniger, ‘The Mythology of Self-imitation in Passing: Race, Gender and Politics’. The Henry Myers Annual Lecture, delivered at SOAS, 20 September 2004. Additional informationNotes on contributorsRachel DwyerRachel Dwyer is the first professor of Hindi Cinema in the UK. She teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She has published extensively on the Indian cinema and her next book, Bollywood's India1 is due to be published in 2011

South Asian Cinema and Culture