A book review I did for India Today magazine:
Rachel Dwyer's latest book offers a guided tour of the new Bollywood. But her glancing style can miss crucial shifts and details.
When Rachel Dwyer's new book was published in the UK, it had Aishwarya Rai beckoning seductively from beneath the title Bollywood's India: Hindi Cinema as a Guide to Contemporary India. The American edition traded that in for a more artsy "meta" cover, appropriate for the University of Chicago Press: a beach lined with life-size cutouts of film stars that people can pose with. For the Indian edition, both those have been forsaken for a text-heavy cover that foregrounds the book's new name: Picture Abhi Baaki Hai. The Hinglish rechristening even lends itself to a suitably filmy four-letter acronym, akin to many of Dwyer's favoured films: PABH.
PABH sets out to explore how the imaginary worlds of mainstream Hindi films have changed since the 1990s, partly or wholly in response to socio-economic and political changes. She makes it clear that this is a cinema that "eschews the value of realism", and she wants to look at it as a "source of India's dreaming".
The term Bollywood is being used more and more as a too-loose synonym for all Hindi cinema across all time, so I was glad that Dwyer, who co-edited a 2011 collection called Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood with Jerry Pinto, adheres to the narrower definition proposed by film scholars, including Ravi Vasudevan, in that book: the "high-profile, export-oriented Bombay film" that has emerged since the 1990s as a commodity for the global entertainment industry. So Dwyer's cut-off date for films in this book is 1991, marking the moment of economic liberalisation, which she calls "as important a watershed in India's history as 1947".
However, the watershed film, which she also recognises, came four years later -- Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995). One problem with using 1991 as the point of departure is that Dwyer feels compelled to include films like Khalnayak, Raja Hindustani, Karan Arjun and Baazigar, though they belong to what the book's own blurb calls the cinema of thakurs and judwa bhais. For example, having mentioned that servants are "rarely seen these days", Dwyer cites Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! andRaja Hindustani as exceptions, without noting that they date to the very beginning of her period:1994 and 1996 respectively.
The missing servants also provide an instance of how Dwyer's glancing style can miss crucial shifts. Bollywood's near-erasure of servants seems fascinating, especially since servants are far from disappearing from Indian life, and increasingly finding place in affluent NRI households. But Dwyer, having given servants two lines in a half-page section on "Friends", moves disinterestedly on to discuss pets.
While she might not always zoom in on the telling detail, Dwyer largely succeeds in providing a panoramic view. The book is not, as she says, a sociological profile of Bollywood, or a potted history of the industry. Her chapters deal not with particular films, genres or directorial oeuvres, but with the broad themes with which she thinks contemporary Hindi cinema is preoccupied: nationhood and transnationalism; caste, class and region; religion; home and family; love and romance, and so on.
Naturally, each of her seven chapters must cover a great deal of ground. The "Unity" chapter, for instance, whizzes through depictions of ancient India (Asoka) and medieval India (Jodhaa Akbar) to ask whether the proliferation of Bhagat Singh in films maps on to a disenchantment with Congress politics, before moving swiftly on to films on Partition and NRI nationalism.
When Dwyer pauses the sweep of her narrative to analyse a set of films she knows well, she can be very engaging-as when arguing that the Gandhi of the Munnabhai films is tailored to not challenge a consumerist world, or pointing out how frequently the suffering Shah Rukh Khan persona involves being "widowed, rejected, ill, injured, or disabled".
Unfortunately, the book's structuring makes it circuitous and sometimes repetitive. "The poor" for instance, appear in an early chapter, but only in the penultimate chapter does the book register the massive wealth of most Hindi cinema characters today. A chapter on "Emotions" seems out of sync with the rest of the book.
As an expert on Yash Chopra (to whose memory this book is dedicated) and on Hinduism, Dwyer is insightful on the changing filmic depictions of romance (the focus shifting from the family's acceptance of the couple to the hero's problems with decision-making) and religion (from the popular religiosity of "overt miracles" to a more ostentatious performance of rituals and festivals).
But even on religion, PABH often feels too pat. For one, Dwyer's account is handicapped by her refusal to step away from big-budget extravaganzas and acknowledge the widespread success of supernatural thrillers, where all kinds of Hindu practices-from Vedic chants to Aghori rites and black magic-appear in conversation with science and psychiatry. She mentions only Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007), ignoring a narrative imagination that extends from Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra's Aks (2001) and Ram Gopal Varma's Bhoot(2003), all the way to the Bhatts' Raaz franchise. For another, she falls back frustratingly on an ahistorical Hinduism to explain specifically contemporary Indian phenomena: in explaining the new legitimacy of wealth, for instance, her first port of call is Lakshmi, not liberalisation.
India is too diverse to lend itself to broad generalisations, and Hindi films reflect that, if nothing else. So sweeping declarations, especially about politics, caste and class, sometimes end up either sounding banal, or revealing Dwyer's blind spots. "It is quite unusual to have a hero in naukri-paid employment," she writes, dismissing in one fell swoop countless office-centred movies (Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year, Life in a Metro, Karthik Calling Karthik and Pyaar Ka Punchnama, just off the top of my head) and the clean-cut corporate heroes of so many others (Ra.One, Swades, Tanu Weds Manu, Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, Love Aaj Kal, Cocktail and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara).
Written for a non-Indian readership, PABH often glosses things in an annoyingly facile manner, "the upper castes, which include Brahmins, warriors and merchants". Its Indian publishers have not seen fit to remove even obvious Britishisms, like "Ganga -- the goddess of the river Ganges". Despite these irritants, Dwyer's book fills a slot. For anyone who hasn't grown up in the Bollywood universe, this is as good a guided tour as they're going to get.
When Rachel Dwyer's new book was published in the UK, it had Aishwarya Rai beckoning seductively from beneath the title Bollywood's India: Hindi Cinema as a Guide to Contemporary India. The American edition traded that in for a more artsy "meta" cover, appropriate for the University of Chicago Press: a beach lined with life-size cutouts of film stars that people can pose with. For the Indian edition, both those have been forsaken for a text-heavy cover that foregrounds the book's new name: Picture Abhi Baaki Hai. The Hinglish rechristening even lends itself to a suitably filmy four-letter acronym, akin to many of Dwyer's favoured films: PABH.
PABH sets out to explore how the imaginary worlds of mainstream Hindi films have changed since the 1990s, partly or wholly in response to socio-economic and political changes. She makes it clear that this is a cinema that "eschews the value of realism", and she wants to look at it as a "source of India's dreaming".
The term Bollywood is being used more and more as a too-loose synonym for all Hindi cinema across all time, so I was glad that Dwyer, who co-edited a 2011 collection called Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood with Jerry Pinto, adheres to the narrower definition proposed by film scholars, including Ravi Vasudevan, in that book: the "high-profile, export-oriented Bombay film" that has emerged since the 1990s as a commodity for the global entertainment industry. So Dwyer's cut-off date for films in this book is 1991, marking the moment of economic liberalisation, which she calls "as important a watershed in India's history as 1947".However, the watershed film, which she also recognises, came four years later -- Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995). One problem with using 1991 as the point of departure is that Dwyer feels compelled to include films like Khalnayak, Raja Hindustani, Karan Arjun and Baazigar, though they belong to what the book's own blurb calls the cinema of thakurs and judwa bhais. For example, having mentioned that servants are "rarely seen these days", Dwyer cites Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! andRaja Hindustani as exceptions, without noting that they date to the very beginning of her period:1994 and 1996 respectively.
The missing servants also provide an instance of how Dwyer's glancing style can miss crucial shifts. Bollywood's near-erasure of servants seems fascinating, especially since servants are far from disappearing from Indian life, and increasingly finding place in affluent NRI households. But Dwyer, having given servants two lines in a half-page section on "Friends", moves disinterestedly on to discuss pets.
While she might not always zoom in on the telling detail, Dwyer largely succeeds in providing a panoramic view. The book is not, as she says, a sociological profile of Bollywood, or a potted history of the industry. Her chapters deal not with particular films, genres or directorial oeuvres, but with the broad themes with which she thinks contemporary Hindi cinema is preoccupied: nationhood and transnationalism; caste, class and region; religion; home and family; love and romance, and so on.
Naturally, each of her seven chapters must cover a great deal of ground. The "Unity" chapter, for instance, whizzes through depictions of ancient India (Asoka) and medieval India (Jodhaa Akbar) to ask whether the proliferation of Bhagat Singh in films maps on to a disenchantment with Congress politics, before moving swiftly on to films on Partition and NRI nationalism.
When Dwyer pauses the sweep of her narrative to analyse a set of films she knows well, she can be very engaging-as when arguing that the Gandhi of the Munnabhai films is tailored to not challenge a consumerist world, or pointing out how frequently the suffering Shah Rukh Khan persona involves being "widowed, rejected, ill, injured, or disabled".
Unfortunately, the book's structuring makes it circuitous and sometimes repetitive. "The poor" for instance, appear in an early chapter, but only in the penultimate chapter does the book register the massive wealth of most Hindi cinema characters today. A chapter on "Emotions" seems out of sync with the rest of the book.
As an expert on Yash Chopra (to whose memory this book is dedicated) and on Hinduism, Dwyer is insightful on the changing filmic depictions of romance (the focus shifting from the family's acceptance of the couple to the hero's problems with decision-making) and religion (from the popular religiosity of "overt miracles" to a more ostentatious performance of rituals and festivals).
But even on religion, PABH often feels too pat. For one, Dwyer's account is handicapped by her refusal to step away from big-budget extravaganzas and acknowledge the widespread success of supernatural thrillers, where all kinds of Hindu practices-from Vedic chants to Aghori rites and black magic-appear in conversation with science and psychiatry. She mentions only Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007), ignoring a narrative imagination that extends from Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra's Aks (2001) and Ram Gopal Varma's Bhoot(2003), all the way to the Bhatts' Raaz franchise. For another, she falls back frustratingly on an ahistorical Hinduism to explain specifically contemporary Indian phenomena: in explaining the new legitimacy of wealth, for instance, her first port of call is Lakshmi, not liberalisation.
India is too diverse to lend itself to broad generalisations, and Hindi films reflect that, if nothing else. So sweeping declarations, especially about politics, caste and class, sometimes end up either sounding banal, or revealing Dwyer's blind spots. "It is quite unusual to have a hero in naukri-paid employment," she writes, dismissing in one fell swoop countless office-centred movies (Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year, Life in a Metro, Karthik Calling Karthik and Pyaar Ka Punchnama, just off the top of my head) and the clean-cut corporate heroes of so many others (Ra.One, Swades, Tanu Weds Manu, Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, Love Aaj Kal, Cocktail and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara).
Written for a non-Indian readership, PABH often glosses things in an annoyingly facile manner, "the upper castes, which include Brahmins, warriors and merchants". Its Indian publishers have not seen fit to remove even obvious Britishisms, like "Ganga -- the goddess of the river Ganges". Despite these irritants, Dwyer's book fills a slot. For anyone who hasn't grown up in the Bollywood universe, this is as good a guided tour as they're going to get.
No comments:
Post a Comment