VERSUS BOLLYWOOD HOLLYIV'OOD

3t3

40 Bollywood versus Hollywood:

Battle of the Dream Factories
Heather Tyrrell

exhibition; and third, oppositions to Bolly.wood as a dominant cultural force in India. By focusing on these areas I hope to diin6hitrate *hy Bo=lli"v-bbA is:&ttile,tlitoretalfle, and may force us to ical ground for pqvelopment Studies and Cultural Studie-s rethink how Third World popular culture is read. ''Bollywood and Third Cinema

lntroduction Theorisation around cineml and globalisation has largely been structured in terms of a basic opposition betwesn Wesiern commercial and culturally imperialist cinema, ancl Third World non-comrnercial, indigenous, politicised cinema. Much criticism of Hollywood and much support for alternative cinemas have been based on this under-

( ilt('illJ

'Third Cinema' is a term coined originally by Argcntine film-makers Fernando Solanasand Octavio Gettino, and ginerally applied to the ttreory of cinemas opposed to imperialism and colonialism. Bollywood, as a commercial popular cinema, has a problematic relationship to theories of Third Cinema, which assume a non-commercial, minority cinema as thcir subject. In discussions of world cinema, the mainstream is gencrally taken to be North American and European cinema, with others as oppositional, marginal, and most significandy, non-commercial. Bollywood, the most prolific film industry in the world, and one with an international commercial market, challengesthis assumption. Bollywood films are not solely politically motivated, nor are they entirely devoid of 'escapist' and ideologically nationalist/anti-colonialist content. They are at once loaded. ln Qrestions of Third. Cinemo, Jim Pines and Paul Willemen (f989) talk about 'physical actsof collective self-defenceand resistance'.Bollyvrood Third World films as can bc read both as defending itself and Indian values against thc West, and as a dangerous courier of Western values to the Indian audience, and is read in both these ways by the Ind.ian popular film press.A constant processof negotiation between East and West takes place in Bollywood films, operating both in terms of style (narrative acting styles), and in terms of content (the values and ideas continuity, rnise-en-scine, expressedin the films). Indian cinematic style negotiates the cinematic traditions of the ideological heritage of colonisaClassicalHollywood, while its content addresses 'picturisation' of a single film song, hero and heroine oscillate tion; just as, in the between Eastern and Western dress in a rapid series of costume swaps as they dance and mime to music which is itself a hybrid of Eastern and Western styles. But does tlis negotiation, and its often overt anti-Western agenda, qualifr Bollywood as Third Cinema) A cinema does not automatically qualifi for the tide becauseit is produced in and for the Third World. Argentine film-makers Fernando 'big spectacle cinema' financed by big Solanas and Octavio Gettino, defined any monopoly capital as First Cinema, 'likely to respond to the aspirations of big capital'. Third Cinema was 'democratic, national, popular cinema'. But both these statements can equally be applied to Bollyuvood, which, despite its prolific commercial profi.le, has always been refused industry status by the Indian government, and which, historicallg received subsidies from Nehru's government to pursue an explicitly anti-colonial agenda. Fidel Casuo fiercely criticised Hollywood in his closing speechat the 1985 Havana Film Festival: They are poisoning the human mind in incredible dosesthrough commercialcineif matography grosslycommercial.[Third world cinemamust be supported,because] we do not survive culturally we will not survive economicallyor politically.

HeatherTyrrell,,.BollpvoodversusHollywood: Battle of the Drernt Frctories,"in TraceySkelton2n61;6 4llen (eds.),Culture ond Gtobot Chonge (Routledge,| 999),pp. 160 6.272,3. Reprinted by permiss;qn ofTaylor& Francis Books Ltd.

()r ryinrl publicrtlon dealls: Exccrpted from

Compare this speech with an article by Shah Rukh Khan, India's top film star, in 1996, defending Bollyrrood's commercial film industry in an introduction to a feature on 100 years of Indian cinema in Moile Internetilnel magazine.

r-

3t4

CULTUML GLoBALIZATIoN I:THE RoLE oF MEDIA

BOLL}1VOOD VERSUS HOLLYWOOD

I'd like to stress we are part of world cincma and we are making films firms we like, not for film festivals ' ' . M",k mlyo.a".". a"ri"aian cinema will rule the worrd. once we get the technology we are going to kill thJm.

315

AT: :Ttro".r

Khan's military m-c:allors are. directedelrlicitjr againstthe west, and not onry againstHollywood and_commercia.r cinema, -.r,"t uut ..tsoagainst,r,. i"a.p*a.nt, alter_ ."-

_ .i".^" festivals,

;;r4 fi ;;;r.r]"f.",a.,..i u.a ".

'Hollywood Raises Hell in Bollywood'

very popular at all. Most cinemas show i< Reym Binford ,"yr-i'h., ,"f;:t;;;;".1\4ira

essay rnnotation and.Imitation

in

the obligatory song-and-dance sequences of the Tqdianmainstream film are a striking example of indigenously basedaesthetic p"".ipr.r 1*i* remote antecedents in the tra_ ditional Sanskritdramal shaping*. technology. "r.'"ii_i".,!d s are a form of opposition to Western ms are not musicals alone; they are an ;melodrama, action, comedy, social comng intensely traglc sceneswith jolly song )m one, extreme of feeling to another (ai rheatre).

Bollwood vs Hollywood The reasons for Bollywood'sresistance to colonisationby Hollywood are aesthetic and cultural as well as political. The formula for Bollywood films has beenjokingly summarised as 'A star,six songs,three dances',and theseOmnibus or Masala films must havethe right mix of a diverse rangeof ingredientsto satisfytheir audiences. Without them a fllm 'lacksin entertainment value'. Floweverrigid this formula, adherence to it doesnot guarantee a film's success. OnIy one in ten films makesa profit, and whether a film is a hit or a flop depends on the unquantifiable judgementof the Bombayaudience, who either fill or desert cinemahousesin a film's first week of release . Films which imitate the formula of previoushits sink without a trace, while others appearfrom nowhere to become blockbusters. As Subhash K. Iha remarksing wagazine:'The vagaries of the boxoffice have flummoxed film-makersand trade watchersforever'. If Indian filmgnakers areunableto guarantee audiences, Western film product is unlikelyto do so. ' The market for undubbed Westernfi.lmsin India before L992 wasvery small. consisting only of an Englishspeaking middle-class 6lite, and western films'hadfar

rronically, while, from outside, Bo'ywood is popularly viewed as a more escapist cinema than even -the western .o-^..iJ .inema, it has absorbed withrn it as

3r6

CUqURAL GLOBALTZATTON t:THE ROLEOF MEDIA

VERSUS BOLLWVOOD HOLLWVOOD

3t7

rewards. Star felt they had finally found a way to infiltrate the Indian market, by using an Indian figurehead company. The succcssfulmove of multinational media companies into the Ind.ian market was ultimately dernonstrated, however, when the 42nd 'the Indian Oscars', were screened Annual Filmfare Awards, otherwise known aS exclusively on Sony Entertainment Television's Hindi Channel in March 1997. Populor discourses of Hollywood I Bollywood opposition Both Hollywood and Bollyrvood have made their direct opposition explicit in India, and their rivalry has passedinto popular cultural vocabulary. The promotion poster 'Hollywood challenges Bollywood'; Hollyfor Stallone's Clffianger (1993) reads wood's decision to choose Clffianger as the vehicle for its challenge was perhaps based on a superficial read.ingofcontemporary Indian film as high in action content, without taking into consideration its juxtaposition with other elements of the 'Masala' mix, such as song and emodonal melodrama. Clffiangeis challenge failed. In concntitrast, as one Indian trade paper commented, a series of Indian music cassettes 'Bollywood vs Hollywood' have been highly commercially successful. ded Within Indian popular culture, the commercial success of Indian cinema has become emblematic of India's resistance to the West, and Bollywood stars have become figureheads in what is viewed as a battle against Westernisation. Actress 'drew herself up and lectured the Madhuri Dixit, known as Bollyvzood's'queen bee', 'offered her a Canadian dollar for an autograph'. I guy on patriotism' when a fan have already mentioned the nationalist sentiments expressed by actor Shah Rukh Khan in a Motie magazine feature. Another instance is an advert for BPL (an Indian electrical hardware company) which appeared in g magozine, a leading Indian English{anguage film magazine, every month from October 1996 to lanwary L997. The advert combines a photograph of film star Amitabh Bachchan with discourses around national pride. December's advert concludes: a few centuries ago that India would becomea poor, ThirdWho would haveguessed World countryl And who knowswhat India will becomein the next centuryl Who knows what may happen if we believein ourselves? Hollyvood's failure to supersede Boll)ryood reveals that an existing Third World culture can be a crucial factor in halting Western cultural imperialism, even when political and economic barriers are lifted. Barnouw and Krishnaswamy (1963) describe in The Ind.ian Film\ow Hollywood monopolised ttre world cinema market during the First World War, while other film producers were handicapped by the loss of resources and labour-power to the war effort, and successfullydefined the cinematic experience for the rest of the world according to their product, so that, in effect, politics shaped economics shaped culture. However, llollywood has not defined what makes a film work in India, where, conversely, cultural dispariry rather than any political or economic factor, has slowed Western commercial expansion. [. ..] Conclusion Bollywood is a wild-card in the globalisation process of the media. Its position is constandy shifting: influenced by its diasporic audiences, by Western moves into India, by newly emerging cultural dialogues between East and West, and by new

3t8

CULTUML GLOBALIZATIONI:THE ROLEOF MEDIA

QUESTTONS

3t9

I l

I I