Bollywood's India: A Public Fantasy
Priya Joshi
Abstract
This book analyzes the role of popular blockbuster films made by Bollywood in the making, unmaking and remaking of modern India. It explains that Bollywood films are India’s most popular entertainment and one of its most powerful social forces. It argues that Bollywood’s blockbusters contest ideas about state formation, capture the nation’s dispersed anxieties and fabricate public fantasies of what constitutes “India.” The book provides an interdisciplinary account of popular cinema as a space that filters politics and modernity for its viewers. It covers themes such as crime and punishment, f ... More
This book analyzes the role of popular blockbuster films made by Bollywood in the making, unmaking and remaking of modern India. It explains that Bollywood films are India’s most popular entertainment and one of its most powerful social forces. It argues that Bollywood’s blockbusters contest ideas about state formation, capture the nation’s dispersed anxieties and fabricate public fantasies of what constitutes “India.” The book provides an interdisciplinary account of popular cinema as a space that filters politics and modernity for its viewers. It covers themes such as crime and punishment, family and individuality, vigilante and community, and shows how these capture the diffuse aspirations of an evolving nation. It reveals the cinema’s social impact across decades that saw the decline of studios, the rise of the multi-star genre, and the arrival of corporate capital and new media platforms. It includes studies of iconic and less familiar films, including Awara (1951), Ab Dilli Dur Nahin (1957), Deewaar (1975), Sholay (1975), Dil Se (1998), A Wednesday (2008), and 3 Idiots (2009). Overall it conveys the pleasures and politics of Bollywood blockbusters.
Keywords:
Bollywood blockbusters,
Bollywood films,
Awara,
Ab Dilli Dur Nahin,
Deewaar,
Sholay,
Dil Se,
popular entertainment,
new media platforms,
India
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780231169615 |
Published to Columbia Scholarship Online: November 2015 |
DOI:10.7312/columbia/9780231169615.001.0001 |