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Postmodernism
AND
Popular Indian Cinema in the 21st Century
Neelam Sidhar Wright

Bollywood and Postmodernism
Bollywood and Postmodernism
Popular Indian Cinema in the 21st Century
Neelam Sidhar Wright

For my parents, Kiran and Sharda
In memory of Rameshwar Dutt Sidhar
© Neelam Sidhar Wright, 2015
Edinburgh University Press Ltd

The Tun – Holyrood Road
12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 11/13 Monotype Ehrhardt by

Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire,
and printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 9634 5 (hardback)

ISBN 978 0 7486 9635 2 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0356 6 (epub)
The right of Neelam Sidhar Wright to be identified as author of

this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related
Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
List of Figures vii
List of Abbreviations of Film Titles viii
1 Introduction: The Bollywood Eclipse 1

2 Anti-Bollywood: Traditional Modes of Studying Indian Cinema 21
3 Pedagogic Practices and Newer Approaches to Contemporary
Bollywood Cinema 46
4 Postmodernism and India 63
5 Postmodern Bollywood 79
6 Indian Cinema: A History of Repetition 128
7 Contemporary Bollywood Remakes 148
8 Conclusion: A Bollywood Renaissance? 190
Bibliography 201
List of Additional Reading 213
Appendix: Popular Indian Film Remakes 215
Filmography 220
Index 225
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the following people for all their support, guidance, feedback
and encouragement throughout the course of researching and writing this
book: Richard Murphy, Thomas Austin, Andy Medhurst, Sue Thornham,
Shohini Chaudhuri, Margaret Reynolds, Steve Jones, Sharif Mowlabocus,
the D.Phil. student organisers of the MeCCSA postgraduate conference
2008, staff at the BFI library, the British Library, the University of Sussex
library and the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai, Leena Yadav, Pollyana
Ruiz, Iain M. Smith, Michael Lawrence and his Indian cinema undergradu-
ate students, Rachael Castell and Eliot Grove from Raindance East, Asjad
Nazir, Bobby Friction, Jeremy Wooding, Herbert Krill, Paulo Mantovani, Ian
Huffer, Niall Richardson, Rosalind Galt, Corey Creekmur, Abhiji Rao, Kay
Dickinson, Richard Dyer, Ian Garwood, Stephen Barber, André Rinke, Sara
Schmitz, Catherine Reynolds and Helen Wright. I am also very grateful to
Gillian Leslie and the editorial team at Edinburgh University Press for their
advice in preparing this book for publication. Thank you to Exotic India Art
Pvt. Ltd for permitting me use of two artworks from their collection (‘Shri
Krishna’ and ‘Mumtaz Mahal’ by Kailash Raj), and to Nidhi Chopra at Pop
Goes the Art for allowing me to use her original artwork for my cover design.
I would also like to thank my parents, my brother Vikram, and my husband
Christopher for accompanying me in sitting through all those Bollywood
films, and for always sharing my enthusiasm, interest and belief in this project.
Finally, thanks to Annapurna and Amenic, whose births during the times of
writing have given this book its greatest purpose and meaning.
Figures
1.1 Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit as Mona Lisa in Gaja Gamini 1

1.2 Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
and post-millennium in Om Shanti Om 8
2.1 A (hi)story of Indian cinema 22
2.2 Critical comments on Indian cinema 42
5.1 Key features of the postmodern in contemporary Bollywood. 82
5.2 Film City billboards in 1977 and 2007 from Om Shanti Om 96
5.3 The recursive structural framework of Om Shanti Om 98
5.4 Jadoo in Koi . . . Mil Gaya as the sci-fi incarnation of Lord Krishna 104
5.5 Moments of spectacle in KMG and E.T. 110
5.6 Reality is fictionalised and pictures come to life in Abhay 119
5.7 Abhay murders Sharmilee in a hyperrealistic animated sequence in
Abhay 121
5.8 Cartoon comic aesthetics in Cash and Krrish 122
6.1 Farah Khan’s postmodern parody of The Matrix and Mission:
Impossible in Main Hoon Na 137
7.1 Ornately decorated and framed, Paro in Devdas resembles a figure
in a fine Indian miniature painting 157
7.2 ‘Wo Ladhki Hai Kahan?’ A parodic journey through popular
Hindi cinema in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s in Dil Chahta Hai 170
7.3 Exploiting Hollywood conventions in the opening sequence of
Kaante 175
7.4 Bhaiyyaji’s postmodern-esque makeover in Tashan 180
8.1 Shah Rukh Khan’s self-simulation in Billu Barber 199
Abbreviations of Film Titles
DCH Dil Chahta Hai (2001)

DDLJ Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995)
E.T. E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982)
KANK Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006)
K3G Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham (2001)
KHNH Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003)
KMG Koi . . . Mil Gaya (2003)
K2H2 Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998)
MNIK My Name Is Khan (2013)
OSO Om Shanti Om (2007)
C h apter 1
Introduction:
The Bollywood Eclipse
Figure 1.1: Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit as Mona Lisa in Gaja Gamini (Dashaka
Films, 2000).
I n May 1998, the Indian Government announced that it would grant the
Bombay film industry (commonly referred to as Bollywood) the right to
finance its films through foreign funding, bank loans and commercial invest-
ment. With this new industry status, Indian filmmakers would no longer need
to seek money from the government or resort to black money laundering via
the criminal underworld, but could instead have their productions backed by
global sponsors and multinational corporations such as Coca-Cola and Nokia.
Within this climate of economic restructuring, Bollywood also opened itself
up to several aesthetic makeovers. In 1998 it adopted the frenetic editing
2 b o l l y w o o d and po s tm o de rnism
t echniques of popular Music Television (MTV) to re-image its song sequences

(Dil Se, 1998). A year later, in 1999, the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film
Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam marked the beginnings of a new, visually ‘excessive’
style of filmmaking. This novel aestheticism was achieved not only through
Bhansali’s designer mise-en-scène and extravagant cinematography, but also
through the careful casting of Miss World contest winner Aishwarya Rai – a
rising star who would exhibit a kind of hyper-femininity and visual perfection
previously unknown to the cinema.1 Rai was soon branded as ‘the new face of
film’ by Time magazine,2 and her unique star quality was soon matched by that
of male star Hrithik Roshan in 2000. Roshan’s hyper-masculine physique and
almost superhumanly fluid dancing abilities in his first feature Kaho Naa . . .
Pyaar Hai made him an astonishing overnight success, with the Indian press
describing the Indian public’s feverishly fanatical response to his cinematic
debut as ‘Hrithik mania’. In this same year, India also witnessed the revival
of its biggest film star Amitabh Bachchan, who (previously representative as
a working-class hero and socialist political figure, both in and outside of his
films) now returned with a new, internationalised affluent image – an iconic
white goatee beard and designer suit – as a pop star and television show host.3
Bachchan also used this time to relaunch his film career by starring as a cynical
headmaster in Bollywood’s Dead Poets Society-inspired Mohabbatein, and was
subsequently voted the biggest star of the millennium in a BBC poll. Since
that time, Bachchan has worked on over seventy films and has often appeared
in middle-class patriarchal or darker anti-heroic (sometimes even villainous)
lead roles. The year 2000 also saw the release of M. F. Hussain’s Gaja Gamini,
a film with avant-garde qualities which was one of the first commercially
released art films with a major Bollywood cast (including superstars Madhuri
Dixit and Shah Rukh Khan) to display an explicitly postmodern aesthetic
style: an abstraction of realism through the fusion of historical events and
mythology, a blending of canvas art, theatre and cinema aesthetics, temporal
and spatial suspension (with the collapsing together of different historical
eras), the intersection of multiple story worlds, and the subordination of nar-
rative coherence and meaning in favour of image saturation. This film aimed to
communicate a pseudo-feminist politics by questioning modes of representa-
tion of women throughout history and playfully drawing attention to Dixit’s
female star persona – most famously by reconstructing her image in the form
of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.4
A year later, 2001 saw Bollywood’s industry status finally take effect and
saw its global circulation realised. Santosh Sivan’s Asoka was marketed across
the UK and screened at London’s Empire Leicester Square. Karan Johar’s
big-budget family melodrama Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham followed soon
after, proving to be the industry’s highest international grosser, with many
non-Indian European audiences flocking to see the film. This film, coupled
intro ductio n: the bollywood eclipse 3
with Farhan Akhtar’s smart and stylish tale of urban youth Dil Chahta Hai,
marked the beginning of a new generation of young directors in Bollywood
who promised to challenge old-fashioned attitudes and promote a newer,
more modernised India. Meanwhile in Hollywood, Baz Luhrmann also
helped draw attention to Bollywood with his homage to the cinema in his
Oscar-nominated Moulin Rouge. Further global awareness was received in
2002 with Hollywood’s first fully-fledged Bollywood-themed film The Guru,
and a similar tribute in the West End in the form of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
musical Bombay Dreams. While the West showed its critical appreciation of
Indian culture largely through East–West hybridised productions such as
BAFTA, and Golden Globe nominated Bend It Like Beckham and Golden
Lion winner Monsoon Wedding, Bollywood orchestrated its own international
publicity by exhibiting Bhansali’s even more visually operatic follow-up film
Devdas at the Cannes Film Festival. This hype was further exceeded in the
same year by the Oscar nomination of the colonial-period sports film Lagaan:
Once Upon a Time in India and the promotion of Bollywood fashion by Vanity
Fair and major department stores in London and New York. Meanwhile,
in India, Sanjay Gupta inaugurated a new era of cross-cultural remakes in
Bollywood with his Hindi adaptation of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
A year later, Bollywood produced another indirect Hollywood remake in the
form of Koi . . . Mil Gaya – a formally unacknowledged reinterpretation of
Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial.
While the West continued to play with mixing Hollywood and Bollywood
conventions in Bride and Prejudice, 2004 brought about further hybridity and
creativity in Hindi filmmaking. Farah Khan’s Main Hoon Na wowed audi-
ences with its Matrix-inspired special effects action choreography, while Hum
Tum, one of the biggest hits of the year, experimented with inserting anima-
tion sequences into its live-action diegesis.
In 2005, Bollywood released its first full-length feature animation Hanuman,
again something novel that was received well by Indian audiences. One more
landmark film came in the form of yet another Bhansali production, Black – a
film which lacked the so-called ‘essential’ song and dance elements required
for a film to be commercially successful in India. Black presented a remark-
ably unglamorous role to its lead actress Rani Mukherjee (one of the industry’s
top stars), who took on a deaf, blind and mute character, earning her several
awards and the film critical acclaim. Most importantly, the film’s commercial
success in India signalled the changing and diversifying tastes of the Indian
viewing public. At the same time, India demonstrated the power and influ-
ence Bollywood stars had over their audiences when the Times of India group
launched ‘India Poised’ – a government-supported initiative which combined
politics with entertainment media in order to reinvigorate the country’s future
leadership. Following the model of Western panel shows such as Pop Idol, the
campaign ran a television show called Lead India, inviting members of the
Indian public to apply and compete for a place in India’s assembly elections.5
Audiences were able to vote for their favourite contestants via an SMS text
or online ballot. Most significantly, despite the serious politics behind this
campaign, the judges’ panel on the programme comprised Bollywood industry
professionals such as lyricist Javed Akhtar and movie star Akshay Kumar.
The India Poised publicity campaign also included adverts starring Bollywood
megastars such as Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, which were dis-
played on TV channels6 and before film screenings in Cineplex theatres across
the country.
In 2006, Bollywood production companies realised the potential for mass
profit through film franchises and launched their first blockbuster movie
sequels, Krrish and Dhoom 2. This year also marked a first in the industry for
self-adaptation,7 producing two big-budget remakes of landmark Hindi films
from previous eras: Don and Umrao Jaan. Interestingly, these new sequels and
remakes challenged assumptions regarding Bollywood’s supposed moral high
ground, instead casting their lead stars in negative roles: Hrithik Roshan as a
master-thief in Dhoom 2, Shah Rukh Khan as a ruthless Mafia boss in Don:
The Chase Begins, and Amitabh Bachchan as a torturing psychopath in Aag (a
2008 remake of the legendary seventies ‘curry Western’ Sholay). Bollywood’s
trend for recycling continued to increase in the following years. In 2007 – the
same year that the word ‘Bollywood’ entered the Oxford English Dictionary,
veteran Indian actor Anupam Kher appeared in Ang Lee’s Chinese espionage
thriller Lust, Caution, and Indian film actress Shilpa Shetty won the public’s
vote on Big Brother in the UK – the industry’s previous record for highest-
grossing film was broken by Om Shanti Om, a postmodern remake of 1980s
Indian film Karz. Other films in the top ten of highest grossers that year
included formally unacknowledged versions of Hollywood’s Three Men and a
Baby and Hitch. The next year, 2008, followed in similar vein with two more
hit sequels (Golmaal Returns and Sarkar Raj) and Ghajini, which, despite
being a Bollywood remake of a South Indian film adaptation of Christopher
Nolan’s Memento, then became the most successful Indian film of all time.
This was also the year American rap star Snoop Dog fashioned a turban
and produced the theme song for the Bollywood hit film Singh Is Kinng. In
2009, Warner Bros Pictures released its first Hindi film – martial arts comedy
Chandni Chowk to China – while Bollywood was drawn into the Hollywood
awards limelight once more with Shah Rukh Khan presenting at the Golden
Globes and, more indirectly, through Danny Boyle’s award-winning Slumdog
Millionaire. Despite its grittier aesthetics, Boyle’s film paid homage to the
Bollywood style with an end-credit dance sequence, and by employing for its
soundtrack Bollywood composer A. R. Rahman (who subsequently won an
Oscar for his collaboration). The film also launched the international career of
Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor, who would go on to appear in major US film

and television projects (the Fox network’s 24 and Mission Impossible: Ghost
Protocol). Thus, 2009 marked a significant increase in global casting, with
Australian pop star Kylie Minogue appearing in a song sequence with Akshay
Kumar in Bollywood underwater action film Blue and Sylvester Stallone
evoking his action-star persona in Kambakkht Ishq, a romantic comedy set in
LA (also featuring Hollywood actress Denise Richards). Aishwarya Rai added
another film to her list of international productions by starring in Hollywood’s
Pink Panther 2, while transnational productions came in the form of the
attempted revival by Jennifer Lynch (daughter of surrealist director David
Lynch) of the Indian snake film genre in Hisss and Indian company UTV
Motion Pictures’ financing of the Hollywood film ExTerminators.
The above shifts in Bollywood’s film production all take place after its
economic liberalisation, and many of them point towards a new, consumer-
centred, cross-cultural, self-reflexive, visually spectacular and nostalgic style
of filmmaking in India. Bollywood’s increased impulse to repeat and recycle,
to excessively express and visualise, to commercialise and self-commodify,
to appropriate other cultural works and to de-differentiate binaries or blur
distinctions through such processes also suggests that the cinema has, in its
restructuring, acquired strikingly postmodern qualities.
New B o l l y w o o d
Some scholars have already gone further in demonstrating recent changes
within the Hindi film industry by hailing an entirely new form of cinema,
which is sometimes described as ‘New Bollywood’.8 Sangita Gopal (2011)
distinguishes this new cinema by pointing to the increased capitalisation,
regulation and restructuring of the Hindi film industry and its altered dis-
tribution and exhibition processes, the commercialisation and branding of
Bollywood and its immersion in a global economy, and the rise of the urban
middle classes and ‘transnational’ audiences. In terms of film content, she
observes ‘radically novel styles of filmmaking’ making a greater use of ‘high-
end technology’ (including steadicams), a merging of popular and parallel
cinema, a digression from the song-sequence formula (in the form of multi-
plex or Hatke films9), genre diversity (particularly Hollywood-style horror
and comedy), a ‘triumphant’ use of Hinglish, an obsession with remakes, and
most significantly, the cinema’s shifting focus towards the subjectivity of the
‘conjugated couple’ (Gopal, 2011). As regards the difference between New
Bollywood and earlier cinematic periods, Gopal distinguishes classical Hindi
cinema’s ‘self-imposed homogeneity enforced by the all-embracing format of
the social film and the masala’ (3). She acknowledges that many of the above
filmmaking processes have been present in earlier forms of the cinema (par-
ticularly films from the 1970s), but asserts that this filmmaking style has since
‘solidified’ (14) from 1991 onwards, and ‘only begins to emerge as a distinctive
product in the post-liberalization era’ (3). As she stresses, ‘New is necessary in
order to emphasise that post-liberalization Mumbai film, while owing much to
changes in the previous two decades, is nonetheless a radically new art form
that must be analysed on its own terms’ (14). However, the innovative style
Gopal refers to often corresponds to a type of cinema (Hatke) that is seen as
somewhat alternative to the commercial blockbusters that this book will inves-
tigate as part of ‘New Bollywood’.
Although it aims equally to demonstrate a significant shift in Bollywood
cinema aesthetics in recent years, my study of popular Indian cinema does
not intend to create an explicit binary of ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Bollywood. Rather,
it exposes a postmodern dialogue between the Hindi cinema of the present
and that of the past, which has ultimately allowed the cinema to reinvent
itself. The ‘New’ in this case resides in the postmodern sense of the word;
Bollywood’s ‘postmodern turn’ implies a shift that reworks or revisits previous
aesthetic trends in order to produce an aesthetic that is altogether different. As
with all postmodern works, we are not talking about a clear-cut break from the
‘classical’ in the traditional sense. Rather, we are discussing a transformation
and change that takes place through a special kind of continuity – a reworking
of the past.10 ‘New Bollywood’ here refers to contemporary films which exhibit
a strong postmodern aesthetic style which was not as present in the 1990s
(when popular Indian cinema officially became ‘Bollywood’). After 2000, this
aesthetic style came to dominate the cinema and has been used as a means of
internally commenting on and critiquing the industry in its current form.
D e f i ni ng t h e ‘ c o n t e m p o r a r y ’
A certain widespread disregard for post-1990s popular Indian films has been
evident, from popular film journalism (an October 2007 issue of Total Film
magazine offers an introductory timeline of Bollywood cinema, stopping at
1996), reference compendiums and introductory film guides (such as the BFI
100 Bollywood Films [2005], which reveals a bias towards earlier periods of the
cinema’s history), to established film societies and organisations such as the
British Film Institute (in 2007 its web archive provided a canonical list of
the ‘greatest Indian films of all time’, which included only one post-millen-
nium release).11 In this book I will reveal how film institutions, scholars and
educators concerned with Indian cinema have (until very recently) habitually
refrained from moving their focus beyond issues surrounding national identity
or diaspora politics, and therefore films released after the mid-1990s. Such
accounts would have us believe that popular Indian cinema is anything but
‘contemporary’. As I demonstrate in the following chapter, there seems to be
a shared sense among many film scholars that newer Bollywood films display
a certain ‘lack’ of critical appeal and are in some way of lesser value than their
canonised predecessors. I challenge this assumption, and instead suggest that
the problem lies in the fact that these newer films often do not fit existing
models and established theories, and are thus often left unacknowledged in
the hope that we may never assume their significance. Indian cinema has ulti-
mately been a platform for exploring cultural tradition in India. The ‘contem-
porary’, it seems, then, poses a threat to our precious established definitions of
popular ‘traditional’ Indian cinema.
We must be wary of the limitations inherent in purely offering definitions
of a cinema that no longer dominates, and of the dangers posed by this elision
of contemporary filmmaking processes. Let us consider, for example, the inad-
equacy of conceptualising contemporary Hollywood cinema without acknowl-
edging any of the developments that have taken place after 1996. Could one
justifiably describe popular American cinema without considering the impact
of CGI after The Matrix (1999), the Internet and its influence on film market-
ing strategies, recent shifts in the global economy, the emergence of DVD and
digital filmmaking, or the aftermath of 9/11? Likewise, in television, could we
claim to understand the medium today if we overlooked its shift from analogue
to digital broadcasting formats? Like its Western counterpart, popular Indian
cinema has changed dramatically in the last fifteen years. The pleasures on
offer in 1990s Indian cinema no longer suffice – they no longer wholly embrace
the needs of today’s Bollywood audience. A lead character’s charm alone is no
longer enough to push a movie to the box-office top spot. The leading actor
must now be more marketable as a superstar and be able to do his own stunts.
He must be measured and approved, exhibiting an actual talent in acting and
dancing. He must sponsor a decent haircut, display the muscles of a superhero,
and be the face of an internationally renowned consumer brand. He must offer
everything a Hollywood A-list actor does – and more. The much talked-about
rebranding of Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan demonstrates this shift
perfectly. Khan is famously known for having initially gained popularity in
the 1990s despite his scruffy hair, dark skin and ordinary stature. He originally
won audiences over because of his mischievous smile and ‘cheeky yet charm-
ing’ character (see Chopra, 2007). However, the actor himself has recently dis-
cussed his need to reinvent his image (through hair extensions, chest waxing,
intensive body building and skin-lightening12) in order to meet the demands of
current younger Bollywood audiences – including his own son. In a television
interview with director Farah Khan on the Indian celebrity talk show Koffee
with Karan (hosted by Bollywood director and producer Karan Johar), the
three discuss Shah Rukh Khan’s radical makeover for the then-upcoming film
Figure 1.2: Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (Yash Raj
Films, 1995) and post-millennium in Om Shanti Om (Red Chillies Entertainment, 2007).
Om Shanti Om, for which he physically trained for months to achieve a leaner,
muscular body. Farah Khan declares the film to have launched an entirely new
look for Khan, which she describes as an ‘item boy’ image.13 In Bollywood
film, an ‘item number’ usually refers to the objectification of a seductive female
performer (the ‘item girl’) in a singular, highly-sexualised song sequence
which is inserted in a film independently of its narrative context, but this has
been extended across gender in recent years, with actors Abhishek Bachchan,
Hrithik Roshan and Shah Rukh Khan occupying similar roles in films (see
Bachchan in Rakht [2004] and Roshan in Krazzy 4 [2008]). Such shifts on the
level of star image and on-screen sexuality are prime examples of how films
have changed in terms of their aesthetics in the post-millennial era – signalling
a New Bollywood cinema with a more contemporary visual style.
Like ‘New Bollywood’, ‘contemporary Bollywood’ here also refers to a
cinema beyond the aforementioned period of first-generation NRI movies,
specifically films released post-millennium. I shift between the terms ‘New’
and ‘contemporary’ – the former helping to emphasise the cinema as aestheti-
cally distinct and innovative, and the latter accentuating the post-millennial
era. While hesitant to confine my research to a fixed historical period, I have

found that the most significant factors solidifying change within the industry
emerge from 2001 on. The year 2001 in particular beckoned a change with
regard to the ‘polish’ of Bollywood cinema in terms of its actor-stars as well
as its general production. The release of Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai that
year is almost unanimously seen as a landmark moment in this sense, and thus
is a key text which I explore in more depth (see Chapter 7).
Th e P o s tm o d e r n
Despite ‘postmodernism’ being a highly debated and perplexing descriptive
term, the phenomenon has already brought much to cinema and its academic
study in the West. As a mode of film practice, it allows texts to inscribe and
subvert prevailing conventions and question ideology, subjectivity and his-
torical knowledge, allowing us to ‘reconsider the operations by which we both
create and give meaning to our culture through representation’ (Hutcheon,
1989: 117). In doing so, it draws our attention to certain films’ consciously
mimetic and anti-original qualities and to how contemporary films now seek to
‘rework’ rather than invent stories. Postmodern films facilitate an act of looking
from both sides of the screen (Degli-Eposti, 1998: 5) and will (mis)represent
identity in a way that exposes it as something to be understood as decentred
and complex rather than whole and fixed. Postmodernism also increases the
tension between, and closeness of, the political and the aesthetic, paradoxi-
cally creating texts that are at once culturally resistant and yet seem politically
barren (Connor, 1989: 180). Postmodernism has helped us to understand and
create shifts in knowledge and thinking, economic and social ordering, and
aesthetic debates in the contemporary Western climate. It has offered us a
means to investigate how capitalism and globalisation have impacted upon our
society, pushing our artistic cultural practice towards profit-driven eclecti-
cism and a saturation of media images and signs. The concept has also proved
useful in helping to reveal how even the most commercial and trivial art forms
can have the potential to interrogate: to be oppositional, contestatory, aestheti-
cally diverse and ideologically ambivalent (Hill, 1998: 101–2). We are able to
appreciate how popular cinema can use irony as a means of questioning truth,
reality and artificiality, how it can manipulate images for commercial ends
while problematising image-creation itself (Harvey, 1990: 323).
Postmodernism has thus provided us with new reading strategies and dif-
ferent systems of interpreting films (Degli-Eposti, 1988: 16). With this in
mind, this book attempts to apply the concept to Bollywood cinema in order to
enrich our understanding of its contemporary filmmaking processes and shed
light on a range of issues and questions concerning popular Indian film. My
10 b o l l y w o o d and po s tm o d e rni sm
study of New Bollywood explores reasons behind the lack of scholarly atten-
tion paid to post-millennial Bollywood films, particularly in existing Indian
film criticism and Western film studies courses. Within this, I consider the
issue of non-Indian audiences’ lack of interest in – even rejection of – popular
Hindi film texts, suggesting that Hindi cinema may have a more unusually
unique film language and logic of pleasure compared to other, more acces-
sible Asian cinemas. This study also argues that contemporary Indian popular
cinema should not be dismissed as crass, mindless entertainment, or consid-
ered unworthy of intellectual engagement. Rather, it suggests that there is a
credible, academically engaging cinema to be found beyond high art, political
and diasporic Indian cinema, and that current popular Indian cinema can be
found to be equally fascinating and revealing in a postmodern sense.
In addition, far from declaring it a straightforward continuation of previ-
ous eras of filmmaking, I demonstrate how post-millennial Bollywood has
mutated away from certain modes of representation, so much so that it can
be described as representing a kind of renaissance period for the cinema.
Among the cinema’s many formal aesthetic changes, the ‘noughties’ decade
saw the emergence of a new genre of contemporary Hindi cinema in the form
of the remake. In studying this recent phenomenon, I reveal how Bollywood
uses postmodern methods of appropriation in order to reinvigorate itself and
attempt to break free of its formulaic trappings. This postmodern reading will
help us to rethink and expand our current definitions of Bollywood, as well as
understand how postmodern techniques can enable a seemingly monolithic
and nationalistic cinema to become more fragmented and experimental.
P o s t m o d e r n i s m a n d i t s sc e p t ics
As with most scholarship on postmodernism, this study will naturally prompt
certain reservations and scepticism from those who argue that the ‘postmod-
ern’ is a much too contested, incoherent and problematic concept to work with,
let alone apply to non-Western cinema. It is therefore important to assert here
that the purpose of this book is not to affirm postmodernism as an unprob-
lematic, self-evident and self-fulfilling category, but instead to raise further
questions about its historical and geographical emergence, whilst examining
its usefulness as a hermeneutic tool for studying non-Western popular art
forms. Indeed, the entire ‘postmodern conundrum’ is far from solved here, but
as with other seminal works on this subject, the very goal here is to stimulate
a new discussion about the value of postmodern theory in film studies and
to foster new methods of analysing contemporary Indian cinema. This book
introduces the concept of a postmodern Bollywood cinema, and this concept
deserves (like other new theories and methodologies) to be tested, refined and
developed by others before it can be as straightforward and unproblematic as

some may urge it to be. Nevertheless, rather than taking the term for granted
and overlooking its polysemy, or discussing it too abstractly, I make definitions
of key postmodern concepts clear by firstly breaking them down into a series
of identifiable aesthetic conventions and then exploring them further through
detailed case studies offering close textual analysis of a select range of contem-
porary Bollywood texts.
Undeniably, postmodernism has traditionally been viewed as a specifically
Western phenomenon. Key postmodern theorists have spoken of it as ‘the
West’s “modern neurosis” ’ (Lyotard, 1992: 79–80), as a ‘global, yet American
postmodern culture . . . a whole new wave of American military and economic
domination throughout the world (Jameson, 1991: 57), and have explicitly
argued that ‘postmodernism cannot simply be used as a synonym for the
contemporary . . . [and] does not really describe an international cultural phe-
nomenon, for it is primarily European and American’ (Hutcheon, 1988: 4).
However, some scholars have since reviewed and withdrawn this opinion (in
her 2002 revised edition of The Politics of the Postmodern, Hutcheon changes
her perspective on postmodernism’s global reach and addresses the concept’s
subsequent internationalisation14) whilst others have explored the idea of alter-
native modernities that may be more culturally specific (see Chapter 4). What
is more, Ajay Gehlawat (2010) has reminded us that despite the dangers posed
by the application of a Eurocentric hermeneutics, ‘indigenous frames of refer-
ence can also be a trap’ (xvii).
Admittedly, it is still somewhat a challenging task to find explicit examples
of (let alone discourses on) postmodern cultural art in India – even after con-
sidering the well-publicised novels of British Indian literary author Salman
Rushdie (see Das, 2007), the work of artists such as Annu Palakunnathu
Matthew (whose portfolio entitled ‘Bollywood Satirized’ in a 2001 exhibition
mocked commercial films for reinforcing Indian traditional socio-cultural prej-
udices by manipulating and subverting images from existing film posters15), or
the post-1990s Adhunantika movement in Bengali literature, with its poetry
and short stories sharing many characteristics with the postmodern including
plurality, de-territorialisation, eclecticism, multi-linearity, pastiche, irony and
de-centredness.16 The renowned Indian art critic and curator Geeta Kapur
has perhaps been most influential in demonstrating that both modern and
postmodern art exist in contemporary India. In her book When Was Modernism
(2000), Kapur traces both modernism and the postmodern in contemporary
Indian art, periodising it from the 1930s onwards. Among India’s postmodern
pioneers, she notes artists such as K. G. Subramanyan, Bhupen Khakhar and
Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, whose work exhibits a self-conscious eclecticism,
parodic force (particularly towards high modernism), intertextuality, pop art
aesthetics, excess of signs, and a ‘pictorial vocabulary’ (313–14), often engaging
in ‘instrumental pastiche’ and a play with simulacra, and ultimately exploiting

cultural codes (319). From the 1980s onwards, such artists are seen to ‘disrupt’
and ‘provide a relief’ from Indian modernism (319), although Kapur explic-
itly cites cinema as the place from which postmodernism can most effectively
emerge (320).17 Thus Kapur asserts that ‘before the west periodizes the post-
modern entirely in its own terms and in that process also characterises it, we
have to introduce from the vantage-point of the periphery the transgressions
of uncategorized practice’ (297).
A small handful of scholars, in particular Vijay Mishra (2008), Gehlawat
(2010) and Rajinder Dudrah (2012), have recently begun to register and
tackle the concept of a ‘Postmodern Bollywood’ cinema. Gehlawat, who has
advocated a study of Bollywood through applying what Arjun Appadurai has
termed a ‘postmodern praxis’ (Appadurai [1996], cited in Gehlawat: 118),
acknowledges that a postmodern reading assumes intent on the part of the
filmmaker, and arguably requires a certain level of sophistication, literacy and
self-consciousness on the part of the viewer, which could be seen as problem-
atic when considering the lesser-privileged and under-educated members of
the Indian film audience. However, Gehlawat challenges prevailing scholarly
emphasis on passive spectatorship by emphasising the difference between
intentionality and consciousness, highlighting Indian cinema’s fundamentally
‘transgressive disruptive semiotics’ (57) which provide a distancing effect, and
arguing that Bollywood in fact serves as a ‘teaching machine’ for subaltern
audiences (79). My own study of New Bollywood, which reveals a dramatic
increase in remaking (as homage) and referencing of other canonical film texts,
suggests that the cinema explicitly offers a unique kind of pleasure through
cinephilia and that audiences are already able to pick up on these playful refer-
ences. The rise of multiplex cinemas (targeting urban middle classes) and a
greater investment in diasporic and broader global audiences also further com-
plicate the argument that the Bollywood audience is too illiterate and passive
to pick up on complex postmodern references.
Another issue that could be raised against this application of the postmod-
ern concerns how we account for the appearance of seemingly postmodern
processes, such as self-consciousness, in earlier periods of Hindi cinema. This
matter is addressed in several ways: (1) by distinguishing the idiosyncrasies of
New Bollywood’s pastiche/parody/self-reflexivity from other forms of textual
referencing; (2) by my identifying a ‘postmodern politics’ (Hutcheon, 1988,
1989) within recent films; and (3) by exploring the difference between cultural
mimicry, which is intrinsic to Indian cinematic tradition, and postmodern
blank pastiche or parody in recent Bollywood cinema. However, the very fact
that I draw connections between postmodern devices and traditional Indian
artistic traditions (for example, Chapter 7 looks at hyperrealism and figural
aesthetics in ancient Indian miniature paintings) demonstrates my intention to
question also whether postmodernism is purely a contemporary phenomenon,

or whether other versions of it have existed in the past. Further distinctions
are made with regard to New Bollywood’s innovative remaking processes.
After considering how repetition has historically functioned as a fundamen-
tal process in Indian artistic culture (through a brief historical account of
remaking in classical Hindi cinema), I go on to explain how remaking in New
Bollywood operates differently. Here, remaking is used to convey postmodern
concerns such as the prevalence of stylistic excess over discourse (figural aes-
theticism), self-referential critique, identity fragmentation, and a questioning
or crisis of representation.
Th e P o s tm o d e r n T e r r a i n
In his attempt to critique various theorisations of the postmodern, Norman
K. Denzin (1991) has distinguished how key theorists such as Fredric
Jameson (1991), Jean-François Lyotard (1992) and Jean Baudrillard (1983)
share a common nostalgic desire for an aesthetics of the past (Denzin: 48).
Postmodernism’s relationship to the past is multifaceted, but can generally
be divided into two perspectives, the first consisting of the postmodern text
having an inferior relationship to that of the past/history, with negative,
unproductive and often destructive consequences, and the second a perspec-
tive that diversely suggests how new postmodern art has the potential for a
critical revaluation of the past, resulting in a ‘freeing up’ of the text and its
meaning. Jameson, Baudrillard and Terry Eagleton (1986) can be seen to fall
into the first category. Jameson in particular, in his essay ‘Postmodernism or
the logic of late capitalism’, warns of the destructive postmodern text, which
achieves nothing but a plagiarised copy of an original work of art, stripped
of authenticity and aura, which he describes as resulting in a ‘waning of
affect’ (1984: 69). Jameson situates himself as a Marxist, using the concept
of postmodernism to tie in with and account for the damage caused by the
capitalisation of art. The postmodern text, with its ‘depthlessness’ (60), its
‘blank parodying’ (65) of authentic works, and its commercially driven exist-
ence, becomes an ideal target as a flagship for capitalism. Eagleton likewise
echoes Jameson’s argument, complaining of postmodernism as a ‘sick joke’
(1986: 131), an empty pastiche which ‘mimes the formal resolution of art and
life . . . while remorselessly emptying it of its political content’ (132). This
pessimism is further added to by Baudrillard, who introduces the notion of
the postmodern simulacra – a textual reproduction of an authentic work which
aims to subvert and pervert notions of reality, truth and hence history. For
Baudrillard, the modern image as simulation ‘does no more than resemble
itself and escape in its own logic’ (195) and thus becomes a ‘death sentence’
for all possible reference and meaning (196). Baudrillard’s preoccupations lie
predominantly with the abduction, mutilation and ‘terrorism’ of the real (196)
by the postmodern text. Reality, once it has been swallowed up by the post-
modern simulacra, has become unreachable and replaced by empty recycled
images of hypersimulation and hyperrealism (197).
For all three theorists, the mass production and recycling of previous works
of art has led to current aesthetics being intellectually frowned upon and
enjoyed at a purely sensationalist level – resulting in an increased ‘painful nos-
talgia’ (Friedberg, 1994: 188) or hopeless mourning for the past. In the case of
cinema, mainstream American filmmakers have for a long time, if not always,
been guilty of mass profit-based production and the parodying or remaking of
previous films. Therefore, in the light of the consequences of these postmod-
ern traits indicated by Jameson and Baudrillard, it would appear that main-
stream cinema is doomed:
A whole generation of films is appearing which . . . lack only an imagi-

nary and that particular hallucination which makes cinema what it is
[. . .] cinema increasingly approaches . . . in its banality, in its veracity, in
its starkness, in its tedium . . . in its pretension to be the real, the imme-
diate, the unsignified, which is the maddest of enterprises. (Baudrillard:
195)
The constant memory and loss of authenticity of the past are perhaps
unavoidable. However, not all postmodern critics have declared this cultural
phase a catastrophe. While similarly attempting to uncover the relationship
between the postmodern and the past, Jean-François Lyotard has also credited
the postmodern movement with helping to liberate texts by questioning the
importance and prioritisation of textual meaning (an effort he no longer sees as
essential in the pursuit of aesthetic appreciation). Lyotard commends the post-
modern for its abstraction of truth and realism, which has resulted in a break-
ing down of grand narratives such as history, religion, science, and existing
art institutions which presume to dictate what is and is not to be classified as a
work of art. Postmodernism embraces the popular text, with all its banalities,
trivialities and commercialism, merging it with and presenting it alongside
established works of ‘high art’. This celebratory destabilisation of such totalis-
ing social institutions is also, according to Lyotard, accompanied by another
liberating postmodern trait – the loss of meaning. To reject the need for a work
to mean something is to again defy and break down the rules by which estab-
lished art institutions operate: ‘Such rules and categories are what the work or
text is investigating. The artist and writer therefore work without rules . . . in
order to establish the rules of what will have been made’ (Lyotard: 15).
The notion of freedom of interpretation and the breaking of boundaries
is further explored by Scott Lash (1988). Lash stresses how postmodern

texts fundamentally break down the rules and boundaries of difference (for
example, between good and bad art, or high and low culture), resulting in an
elimination of difference altogether. This process of ‘de-differentiation’ (312)
can also be seen to free the text and its reader. The indulgence in pure sensa-
tion and spectacle renders both textual meaning and interpretation unneces-
sary. The instability of the boundaries and conventions constructing art and
realism are exposed (329), allowing several conflicting styles to coexist within a
single text. However, although these theorisations work well in developing an
appreciation of the postmodern text, they still do not account for how we are
to resolve the problem of that which has been lost from past forms of classical
and modernist art.
Perhaps the most useful attempt at resolving the conflict between the nos-
talgic past and present postmodernist age is that of Linda Hutcheon. Rather
than perceiving the two as separate, Hutcheon argues that this ‘mere’ nos-
talgic return and constant referencing of the past is not simply postmodern-
ism scraping together the remains of what went before, but rather a ‘critical
reworking’ of the past (1988: 4). This method of critiquing previous works is
unique to postmodernism as a result of its ability to simultaneously conform to
and resist the past and its conventions:
. . . the increasing uniformization of mass culture is one of the totalising

forces that postmodernism exists to challenge. Challenge, but not deny
. . . Postmodernism . . . refuses to posit any . . . master narrative . . . It
argues that such systems are indeed attractive, perhaps even necessary;
but this does not make them any less illusory. (Hutcheon, 1988: 13)
Hutcheon’s theorisation is valuable not only as an attack on those who

outwardly reject postmodernism, but also because it exposes an intellectual
link between or progression from the past (history, modernism) to the current
state of art. As my own study reveals, New Bollywood texts could be seen to be
guilty of both – a seemingly full-scale immersion in Jamesonian postmodern
blank pastiche, which in fact at times reveals itself as a playful postmodern
critiquing of the past.
A S t r u c t u re o f t h e b o o k
My investigation begins with a review of Indian film criticism (Chapter 2),
Bollywood’s circulation at film festivals, and pedagogical practices (Chapter
3). I ascertain how previous published work on Indian cinema and certain
teaching trends have shaped our current understanding of (and critical
a ttitudes towards) popular Indian films. Inspired by the postmodern notion

of history as narrative (which chooses to perceive historical discourse as sub-
jective storytelling rather than something conveying [actual] universal truth
or fact), I demonstrate how India’s cinematic history has been articulated
through particular intellectual discourses cultivated within the discipline of
Indian film studies. As I reveal, these discourses tend to focus upon a par-
ticular set of themes in order to fulfil specific social and political agendas,
thus often neglecting to analyse certain aspects of the text’s formal aesthetics.
Chapter 2 observes the censuring and disregard for Bollywood in traditional
approaches to Indian cinema by reviewing a variety of literary sources. These
include historical biographies, textbooks and introductory guidebooks by
renowned Indian cinema scholars, and press interviews with industry profes-
sionals. Chapter 3 goes on to look at film festival brochures, and pedagogical
accounts by those who have taught the subject to a Western audience, as well
as incorporating more empirically-based data taken from university syllabuses
on Bollywood, formal conversations with film scholars at academic confer-
ences, and my own personal observations of non-Indian undergraduate stu-
dents’ experiences of intellectually engaging with Indian film texts. Using this
information, I argue that many of the academic approaches towards, and much
critical journalistic writing on, Bollywood have worked against Bollywood’s
interests in securing international appeal. Although valuable and informa-
tive, this literature has often failed to adequately address significant aesthetic
shifts within the industry over the last decade, instead producing outmoded or
woolly definitions of contemporary Bollywood which have hindered its global
inauguration in terms both of commercial success and academic interest. In
order to motion a change in Indian film scholarship, Chapter 3 also draws
attention to more recent published work on contemporary Bollywood, which
has begun to address the significance of and offer innovative approaches to
analysing this distinctive era of cinema.
Since Chapters 2 and 3 demonstrate a widespread devaluation and mar-
ginalisation of Bollywood, my subsequent postmodern reading aptly serves
as a means of responding to and countering such attitudes by redefining the
cinema in its contemporary form. Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate how the
Indian film industry has taken a postmodern turn after the millennium as a
response to Bollywood’s increased global exchanges and commercialisation.
After a review in Chapter 4 of existing academic attempts to place the concept
in a global or international context, Chapter 5 observes how the postmodern,
as an aesthetic style and fluid cultural practice, manifests in contemporary
Bollywood film texts. To aid my investigation, I draw upon the various con-
cepts and traits identified by postmodern theorists such as Fredric Jameson,
Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard and Hayden White, as well as post-
modern film theorists such as Linda Hutcheon, Peter and Will Brooker, and
M. Keith Brooker. As the field of postmodern Bollywood cinema studies is

relatively uncharted, I feel it is important to employ a variety of tools and strat-
egies throughout my research in order to demonstrate the cinema’s versatility
(hopefully assisting its flexible application in future film studies courses) and
to aim for experimentation and exploration rather than an absolute concreti-
sation of the concept. Thus, my methodology here shifts between formalist
film theory, semiotics, (post)structuralism, broad cultural politics, and some
Marxist poetics.
In Chapter 5, my analysis of postmodern Bollywood cinema crucially
includes a close reading of three key films which I consider to be prime
examples of this new form of filmmaking. The first of these, Om Shanti Om,
directed by Farah Khan (perhaps Bollywood’s female equivalent of pastiche-
auteur Quentin Tarantino), provides a complex self-critique by employing
a variety of postmodern devices including pastiche and nostalgic recycling,
which inhabit everything from its narrative and plot to its visual aesthetics and
formal structure. Through these strategies, the film is able simultaneously to
celebrate, exploit and dismantle its own cinematic conventions and modes of
representation. A second example of postmodern Bollywood is offered through
Koi . . . Mil Gaya – the film that initiated and signalled the Bombay film
industry’s yielding to the previously unfamiliar territory of science-fiction.
This film usefully demonstrates how Bollywood uses postmodern methods
to play and experiment with a long-established theme of post-independence
Hindi cinema: the tension between modernity (progress, the future) and
tradition (regression, the past). Whereas previously Bombay film narratives
would conclude with the rejection of the former and a return to the latter, as
I reveal, Koi . . . Mil Gaya in fact facilitates the blurring of these two binaries
in order to ultimately render them both as suspect. The film also reveals how
a comparative study of a Bollywood remake of a Hollywood original (in this
case, E.T: The Extra Terrestrial) can help us to better understand both the
interconnectedness and the distinctive differences in film language between
these two dominant cinemas. My final case study uses Abhay as an example of
avant-garde techniques emerging within mainstream Indian cinema. Through
its constant interchange between conventional cinematic realism and absurd
comic book representation, the film demonstrates how some popular Indian
films deconstruct (Western) notions of realism by innovatively dissolving the
divide between non-fiction and fantasy. In doing so, the film contests the nega-
tive elitist criticism Bollywood has received, instead revealing a cinema that
cannot be underestimated and easily categorised, instead sitting comfortably
between the posts of mainstream popular entertainment and radical art.
Chapters 6 and 7 continue to provide further examples of postmodern
aesthetics in contemporary Bollywood cinema, this time looking more spe-
cifically at a particular kind of filmmaking that has emerged prolifically over
recent years: the Bollywood remake. On the basis of research that considered
144 Indian film remakes (almost one hundred of which were produced after
2000), I discuss how remaking has become a platform for innovation and crea-
tive translation in Bollywood, offering a unique form of cinephilic pleasure for
its audiences. Drawing upon various theoretical work on textual adaptation
– including issues of textual fidelity that continue to plague the Bollywood
remake’s critical reception – I look at how the diverse methods of remaking
that Bollywood employs (intertextuality, cross-cultural borrowing, aesthetic
as well as narrative appropriation, pastiche and parody) allow it to experi-
ment with and innovate in its filmmaking practices. For example, in Chapter
6, I explore how certain film stars are used as intertexts through ‘celebrity’ or
‘genetic’ intertextuality, while Chapter 7 looks at how Bollywood uses figural
excess to rework and distinguish itself aesthetically from previous canoni-
cal Indian film texts. I also explore how Bollywood cinema hybridises with
Hollywood modes of filmmaking in order to de-authenticate and dismantle
both American and its own cinematic codes and conventions.
After looking initially at how repetition has always been a fundamental
characteristic of Indian artistic culture, I go on to explain how remaking
became a central or signature feature of Bollywood cinema in the first decade
of the twenty-first century, embodying postmodern concerns such as the
prevalence of stylistic excess over discourse, self-referential critique, identity
fragmentation, and a questioning or crisis of representation. The film texts I
explore include remakes or ‘re-imaginings’ of films as diverse as Hollywood’s
critically acclaimed The Godfather and the testosterone-driven Fight Club,
the Indian socio-realist drama Devdas, the independent American cult movie
Reservoir Dogs, the special effects sci-fi film The Matrix, New Hollywood’s
taboo-breaking classic Bonnie and Clyde, and South Korea’s international
award-winning Oldboy. My analysis of postmodern remaking in Bollywood
further explains how the cinema has changed and evolved since the 1990s,
and I argue that such films can help enrich our understanding of Bollywood’s
current film language and aesthetics, revealing an Indian cinema that is at both
its most innovative and its most self-destructive.
Finally, in Chapter 8, I provide a redefinition of contemporary Bollywood
cinema, propose the value of postmodernism as a new alternative method for
studying, teaching and articulating Bollywood in the West (particularly offer-
ing us a means by which to better engage with the visual aesthetics of popular
Indian films), and, lastly, push towards a more global view of the postmodern,
which can help us to expand and update our understanding of the concept
as well as emphasise its potential for international application and cultural
impact.
Over the past fifteen years, Bollywood film production has beckoned to a
significant intervention in popular Indian cinema. There has been a break or
interruption in its filmmaking methods, an obscuring or eclipsing of previous

cinematic processes. I believe that newer Bollywood texts contain culturally,
aesthetically and politically subversive qualities which endeavour to over-
power previous aesthetic modes and conventions, revealing a postmodern shift
that has enabled a darkening of these films’ internal agendas.
This study of post-millennial Bollywood cinema concentrates on films
produced between 2000 and 2009, although more recent film releases and
developments are also considered, particularly in the final chapter. It is also
important to note that this study will not explore any of the numerous other
regional cinemas within India. While choosing to focus on a particular Indian
film industry, I have considered that there may be other varieties of Indian
cinema containing similar tropes to those discussed in this book. Therefore I
do not at this stage wish to sign off my approach as being exclusively applicable
or restricted to the remit of Bombay cinema, nor to assert that this is automati-
cally reflective of every kind of contemporary popular Indian film. But I do
envisage that my approach may be useful and adaptable when analysing other
kinds of commercial Indian cinema, such as Tamil Nadu-based films.18
The aim of this book is ultimately to explain what postmodernism means
in the context of Bollywood cinema, to demonstrate how to apply the concept
when analysing Bollywood films, and, lastly, to understand what postmodern-
ism tells us about the change and function of Bollywood film language after
the twenty-first century. This postmodern approach to Bollywood film helps
us consider what an (originally) Western theoretical framework can actively
do to raise our appreciation and alter our understanding of contemporary
popular Indian cinema, and what the Indian cinema in turn can do for our
understanding of postmodernism as a global concept.19
No t e s
1. Even Hollywood’s then most popular actress, Julia Roberts, described Rai as the most
beautiful woman in the world.
2. Unauthored (2003b).
3. From 2000 to 2005 Bachchan was the host for Kaun Banega Crorepati, India’s version of
the British quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
4. The Mona Lisa remains one of the most famously appropriated images in postmodern art
– for example, see Marcel Duchamp’s 1919 ready-made L.H.O.O.Q., Andy Warhol’s
multiple 1963 screen prints and Subodh Gupta’s 2010 three-dimensional sculpture Et tu,
Duchamp?
5. The prize also included a scholarship to study leadership and politics at Harvard
University and Rs 50 lakh for a public-welfare project.
6. Star TV channel in India, America and the UK.
7. Although the Hindi film industry had sporadically produced Indian cinema remakes prior
to this time, the solid trend for self-remakes was only realised post-millennium.
8. By announcing the demise of family epics and acknowledging the diversifying tastes of the
Indian viewing public, Dinesh Raheja and Jitendra Kothari (2004) have also been eager to
assert that Bollywood has superseded its 1990s era and that contemporary Bollywood is
‘evolving, morphing and mutating’ (146). The authors note how the cinema may be on the
cusp of a global breakthrough and query the possibility of a new wave emerging from
within commercial cinema (141).
9. See Chapter 8 for a more detailed discussion of this type of cinema.
10. Bollywood paradoxically moves forward, yet remains stuck in its ways, and this is
something that the cinema has explicitly begun to addresses self-reflexively in its films –
see my analysis of Om Shanti Om in Chapter 5.
11. BFI ‘Long List’ for Top Indian Films Poll’, <http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/
imagineasia/guide/poll/india/long_list.html> (last accessed 20 December 2007).
12. In 2007 Khan was heavily criticised for endorsing ‘Fair-and-Handsome’, an Indian men’s
skin-lightening product. The advertising campaign was considered racist towards
naturally darker-skin-toned Indians.
13. Koffee with Karan, India, Star One, 26 August 2007, episode 24.
14. See ‘Epilogue: The Postmodern . . . in Retrospect’ in Hutcheon (2002).
15. For a more detailed account of Matthew’s work see Bhattacharya (2005).
16. From Adhunika, meaning ‘new’ or ‘modern’ and Antika, meaning ‘beyond’. See
Choudhury (2001).
17. It is important to clarify that the postmodern Indian cinema Kapur refers to here is not
necessarily the contemporary Bollywood variety. For example, in her book she refers to
the films of director Kumar Sahani, who is more aligned with India’s parallel cinema
movement. However, in her other work, Kapur does consider postmodern sentiments in
more commercial art films, such as Gaja Gamini (see Kapur, 2001: 12).
18. See my section on Abhay in Chapter 5, which acknowledges that this postmodern
approach may be transferable to other Indian cinematic forms. See also Peter C. Pugsley’s
discussion of image-centred aesthetics in Tamil cinema (2013).
19. This book is based on my doctoral thesis (see Wright, 2010), and some of the ideas
discussed in it have been published in the special edition Scope e-book Cultural
Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation (Wright, 2009).
C h apter 2
Anti-Bollywood:
Traditional Modes of
Studying Indian Cinema
Po p u la r t r e n d s:
th e (hi )s to r y o f I n d i a n c i n e m a
C ompared to longer-established studies of other popular cinemas, such as

Hollywood, Bollywood cinema still seems to be in the process of emerging
as an area of academic research in the West, and its historical excavation can
equally still be considered a relatively young practice. At this stage, the need
for Indian film scholars to go back to the beginning of its historical emergence
seems logical and essential, so that we may chronologically go about construct-
ing Indian cinema’s history and explain how it has evolved into its contempo-
rary form. Mihir Bose’s book Bollywood: A History (2007), for example, offers
a detailed study of the development of cinema in India over 110 years, from
its first introduction in Bombay in 1896 (courtesy of France’s Lumiere broth-
ers), all the way to rising film star producer Amir Khan’s critically acclaimed
commercial blockbuster Rang De Basanti (2006). Interestingly, despite such
an extensive and complex history of filmmaking (and a comparatively short
period of academic research), it seems that we have already reached a stage at
which many writers, commentators and educators feel they can offer a con-
densed version of this history, emphasising the Hindi film industry’s most
significant aesthetic and thematic shifts, which can be represented as shown in
Figure 2.1 overleaf.
Such a history of the development of the Bombay film industry, though
useful for its categorisation and emphasis on the dominant trends throughout
the decades, clearly contains certain gaps. By focusing our attention on the so-
called ‘milestones’ in the history of Indian cinema in such a way, we also come
to see how entire decades (presumably considered less innovative and criti-
cally significant) appear to be pushed aside.1 But while they may leave holes
in Indian cinema’s history, these gaps do tell us a very interesting story about
1910s–20s Mythologicals
(Films like Raja Harichandra, based on Hindu texts:
Ramayana, Mahabharata)
↓
1930s–40s Stunt movies
(Star persona: Fearless Nadia)
↓
1950s Socials: the ‘Golden Era’
(Directors: Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy)
↓
[1960s: overlap with 1950s]
↓
1970s ‘Angry Man’ era and Parallel Cinema movement peak
(Social retribution action films; directors Shyam Benegal and
Ritwik Ghatak)
↓
[1980s: overlap with 1970s. Dip in cinema-going due to rise of television]
(Doordarshan channel launches successful Ramayana TV series)
↓
1990s NRI and Family Movies
(Diaspora-oriented productions; patriotic, traditionalist, family-
oriented ‘multi-starrers’)
↓
[2000s: continuation of 1990s?]
Figure 2.1: A (hi)story of Indian cinema.
the trends and biases of Indian cinema scholarship. The decades that tend to
be skimmed over in Indian cinema timelines are the ones that have produced
less politically oriented and more populist films. For example, with only a few
minor passing references to the rise of star comedian Mehmood, legendary
screen hero Dev Anand or romance movies such as Guide, Jewel Thief, An
Evening in Paris and Waqt, the 1960s decade of Bombay cinema has gener-
ally been seen as non-distinctive in itself, instead overlapping with the 1950s
golden era of social satires. Similarly, the 1980s decade is often either seen as
marked by the fizzling out of the 1970s Angry Man era, or simply skipped
over entirely, an omission justified through the supposed dip in film produc-
tion due to the rising popularity of Hindu religious television serials in India
at the time. Eighties Bombay cinema also has the misfortune of being littered
with low-brow ‘masala’ entertainment films,2 which again are given less critical
attention. As a child growing up in the 1980s, I remember this as a time when
Indian film watching distinctively moved into the home owing to the rise of
t r a d i t i o nal m o de s o f s tud yi n g in dian cin ema 23
home VCRs and VHS piracy, and a time when Amitabh Bachchan (flagship
star of the 1970s Angry Man films) still had many people crowding in the film
rental section of both India’s and the UK’s Indian-owned grocery stores. I
remember the excitement surrounding Bachchan’s new look (a notable depar-
ture from the 1970s Angry Man) as gloomy anti-hero Shahenshah (1988) or
his double role and horse-riding super-heroics in Toofan (1989).3 The same
decade saw the emergence of new actors such as college-boy romancer Amir
Khan and the on-screen sex symbol and seductress Rekha – both of whom are
regarded as icons of the cinema today.
I would argue that the 1960s and 1980s are decades from which we can best
study Indian cinema’s most popular form of filmmaking – the masala movie
– as the genre has prevailed at these points more than over any other ten-year
period. Both the 1960s and the 1980s should be considered important phases
in Indian cinema’s development. They are equally valuable for a study of
evolving aesthetics and styles in popular Indian film, even if their films may
not always explicitly reveal the national sentiments or socio-political psyche of
their audiences at that time. More recently, we can see a similar gap emerging
in relation to our understanding of popular Indian cinema in the 2000s. There
is a tendency either to view noughties films as a continuance of 1990s NRI4
films, or simply to focus on a select few texts which posit a political stance
or offer up social commentary. Indian films from the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s
thus share a lack of direct socio-political engagement and mark an increase
in so-called ‘run-of-the-mill’ populist entertainment. From looking at such a
historical narrative of the Bollywood cinema industry, we can begin see how
socio-politics and cultural tradition ultimately determine the significance of
and scholarly focus on certain periods over others.
The above gaps in Indian cinema’s narrative history are apparent in some
well-known ‘guidebook’ essays produced by leading scholars in the field of
Indian film criticism. For example, in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (1998)
Ashish Rajadhyaksha offers a condensed history, both of Indian cinema –
ending with the late 1980s and largely following the structure I described
above – and Indian film scholarship (1960s to mid-1990s). He suggests here
that Indian films are largely discussed in relation to the following themes and
contexts: film policy, government-controlled film production, censorship,
New Wave Indian cinema, 1970s ‘national emergency’ (Angry Man films),
Indian modernism, postcolonial theory (nationalism and identity), politics,
economics, the India–Pakistan partition (terrorism), and subaltern studies
(citizenship, nationalist historiographies). Choosing not to include or address
the analysis of textual film form in his account, Rajadhyaksha presents the
above research trends as the ‘nationalist critical tradition’ of Indian film
criticism. He explains how orthodox periodisations of Indian cinema serve as
‘cinematic equivalents of the ‘biography of the nation state’ (Rajadhyaksha,
1998: 536), and that India’s film history is ‘largely written from the stand point
of state policy on Indian cinema after 1947’, with a critical-theoretical focus
on ‘realist cinema’, ‘respectability’ and ‘political usefulness’ (535). Later, in
another essay, he affirms that ‘film theory has repeatedly demonstrated the
crucial role that nationalist-political constructions play in determining narra-
tive and spectatorial practices’ (2003: 33).
Many film academics will try to declare that Bollywood films are too
culturally specific (requiring a lot of prior cultural knowledge) and suggest
these films are perhaps more suitable for sociology-, anthropology-, political-
economy- or postcolonialism-based courses. Therefore it is hardly surprising
that the majority of prominent Indian cinema scholars tend to have come from
a social science rather than a film studies background. These commentators
on Indian cinema present themselves (often assertively) as culturologists,
historians or cultural philosophers, rather than as film theorists or film ana-
lysts. Heidi Pauwels, who has more recently tried to break from the above
patterns and traditions of Indian film research and criticism, notes how in
such accounts the film text itself is rarely looked on as a work of art. Pauwels
comments:
Ironically, although many of these studies argue for and see themselves
as part of a rehabilitation of popular movies as a serious object of study,
little sustained attention has been paid to detailed analysis of the films
themselves. Sometimes scholars seem mainly interested in the way films
may be invoked to address larger debates over theory within specific aca-
demic disciplines . . . (Pauwels, 2007: 2)
Social scientists have stated their objective of ‘rescuing’ Indian cinema

scholarship from being limited by over-exhaustive formal analysis and textual
parameters. As Rajadhyaksha and Kim Soyoung remark in their essay
‘Imagining the cinema anew’: ‘restricting the investigation to inside the movie
theatre and the textual practices we find there is hardly sufficient’, and they
favour instead looking at the history, spectatorship and distribution of films
(Rajadhyaksha and Soyoung, 2003: 7). Furthermore, in her guidebook on
Bollywood, Tejaswini Ganti is quick to assert that her work is ‘written from
the point of view of an anthropologist rather than a film critic’ and therefore
‘does not undertake qualitative judgements’ or much textual analysis of the
texts themselves (Ganti, 2004: 4). However, when one actually looks for this
supposed excess of formalist study, it is nowhere to be found. On the con-
trary, there appears to be a fundamental dearth of critical attention paid to
Bollywood film form, particularly covering the cinema of the 2000s. One of
the few published monographs wholly focusing on popular Hindi film form
and style is Rachel Dwyer and Diva Patel’s Cinema India: The Visual Culture
of Hindi Film (2002). But this book’s chapters on mise-en-scène and visual style
are sketchy at best, offering generalised introductory accounts and lacking any
in-depth textual analysis. Dwyer and Patel fail to offer any detail or elabora-
tions on Bollywood visual film language (for example, aspects such as tone,
pace, cinematography, ornamental framing, image composition, camera work),
and they do not account for any of the more recent contemporary aesthetic
shifts in Bollywood film style.
This social-science- and history-based scholarship on Indian cinema has
indeed helped to draw our attention to and raised our appreciation of a highly
populist form of mainstream Indian cinema. But in exploring the cinema
within the prism of political, historical and sociological frameworks, the film
text itself (in terms of its formal aesthetic and stylistic values) can become
peripheral or of secondary importance – simply an accessory to help serve
socio-political thoughts and functions. Indian cinema’s history is therefore
rather exclusively seen as driven or shaped not so much by its aesthetics or
technological changes as by, primarily, cultural, political and social factors.
This vernacular, although by no means unimportant, can become a great
obstacle when we try also to consider and engage with the cinema as an art
form in its own right.
Trad i t i o na l a p p r o a c h e s t o I n dia n fil m:

na t i o na l i s m , d i a s p o r a , p o st c ol on ia l ism a n d
cul t u ra l i d e n t i t y
As was revealed earlier in Rajadhyaksha’s account of Indian film criticism,
nationalism prevails as the most common and popular theme in Indian film
studies. The idea of popular Bombay cinema as India’s ‘national cinema’ is
often justified through its history of governmental control and financing, its
entanglement in state policies, its trans-regional appeal and thematic versatility,
its ethnic neutrality,5 and its unique application of mixed Indo languages.6 But
despite Bollywood’s mass popularity, a large majority of the total film output in
India still comes from the South, and claiming Bollywood as the nation’s official
film producer leads to many other productive regional cinemas being ignored.
There are also problems with the fact that industry and state do not necessarily
work to support each other’s interests (for an interesting discussion of the lack
of co-operation between the industry and state, see Ganti, 2008).
In recent years, the rise of globalisation and the film industry’s economic
liberalisation have also put this label under some strain. Notions of ‘national
cinema’ are now being broken down and replaced by newer labels such as
‘transnational’, ‘Asian’ and ‘global’ cinema. In fact, determining the national
cinema of India has never quite been so straightforward. Previously, Bengali
director Satyajit Ray’s socio-realist films frequently stood as fitting flagship

examples of national Indian cinema, yet his specific regional focus and lack of
appeal for mass Indian audiences suggested otherwise. Popular Indian films
rarely directly address the nation, and the fact that American cinema is con-
tinually adopted as Bollywood’s ‘blueprint’ also makes the study of both pre-
and postcolonial Indian cinema problematic (Vitali, 2006).
The nationalist focus of Indian film scholarship has naturally led to certain
film texts being studied on film courses and written about more than others.
For example, Mother India (1957), as national allegory, is perhaps the most
written-about Indian film and regularly tops the lists of core texts of most
Indian film studies courses. Another popular pair of topics which have been
increasingly drawn upon in recent years and are tied up with issues of nation
are terrorism and border-crossing – both relating to India’s ongoing conflict
concerning the Indo-Pak partition. But focusing solely on the national-ness or
political function of Hindi films is not only problematic for the mass of com-
mercially successful films produced by Bollywood that do not engage with
these issues, but also reductive for the way it can assume the homogenisation
and fixing down of Indian identity. On the contrary, the Bollywood cinema
of recent years aims not for a straightforward binding of Indian identity and
nation, but rather for a fragmentation, confusion or disassembling of identity.
Another popular area of study, branching off from national cinema, is
diasporic representation and film viewing. Since the mid-1990s, contemporary
Indian cinema has been described chiefly in relation to how it engages with
Indian diasporic communities around the world and particularly the UK and
USA. Nineties Bollywood saw the emergence of a new so-called ‘brat-pack’
generation of young filmmakers, including Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar.
Johar is perhaps the most illustrious of the group, having been responsible
for producing, if not directing, some of the most famous films in the NRI film
canon: Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge [aka DDLJ] (assistant director), Kuch
Kuch Hota Hai [aka K2H2] (director), and Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham [aka
K3G] (director).7 The early films of these filmmakers usually portray NRIs as
either corrupted by their Western cultural lifestyle (in the film Pardes [1997]
the heroine’s US-residing Indian groom is depicted as an amoral, alcoholic,
misogynistic rapist) or, in a moment of self-realisation and self-reformation,
yearning to return to their true cultural origins (in DDLJ characters repeat-
edly express a desire for the preservation of their culture and Indian identity
– most directly seen in the film’s opening sequence, where the heroine’s father
expresses a wish to leave a cold and grey London and go back to the luscious
fields of an unspoilt colourful Punjab). Such depictions are largely based on
stereotypes and caricatures, forcing the identity of the non-resident Indian
into homogenised representations. As Sanjay Srivastava (1998) has pointed
out, these films create ‘a Westernised Indian-ness, a ‘real’ identity which is
fabricated and contradictory to actual identity’ (Srivastava: 196). Nevertheless,

film sociologists have demonstrated how these texts correspond to and serve
NRI spectators’ supposed own desire to reattach themselves to an imaginary
India – the ‘Desi’ homeland:
. . . there has been a re-mapping of the ‘Indian’ subject . . . located not

just within the confines of India but also outside the nation-state where
countries of actual residence appear to matter little next to the diasporic
character’s ‘essential’ identity premised upon origins. (Kaur, 2005: 310)
Pleasure in film viewing for NRI audiences is equated to the text’s open
patriotism and securing of Indian cultural identity, although some empiri-
cal work on audiences suggests that this is not the case and that the pleasure
received from such films is based more on aesthetic grounds: the originality of
the script, the performance and star power of the actors, and the look of the
film in terms of its musical picturisations8 and fashionable costumes (ibid.).
Furthermore, as Kaur tries to prove through her interviews with diasporic
viewers, these misrepresentations can at times backfire and actually be rejected
by the NRI audience as inaccurate and somewhat cringeworthy.
Although NRI characters are not unfamiliar to Indian cinema (having regu-
larly served as negative stereotypes even before the nineties), the release of
DDLJ is often seen as the milestone that signalled a shift of agenda in the Indian
film industry. DDLJ is regarded as a flagship example for the Bollywood NRI
film. The film has famously broken records for being the longest consecutively
running Hindi movie (by January 2013 it had sustained 900 weeks in a Mumbai
theatre9), and is a core text used on Indian cinema courses to explore notions
of national identity in Hindi cinema. The film broke international records for
Bollywood, and was one of the first films to set the majority of its story on loca-
tion abroad, in Switzerland (although in reality this was achieved much earlier,
such as in the 1960s with films like An Evening in Paris). DDLJ was seen to
signal a switch in Bollywood’s targeted audience, from local Indians to global
NRIs. It perhaps marked the beginning of Bollywood’s international profile,
although the first Bollywood film to reach the top ten UK box-office charts
was Dil Se (1998). The NRI-centred plots of films like DDLJ transformed the
style and form of Hindi films, providing more opportunities for foreign loca-
tion shoots (outdoor song sequences), an increased use of English, a greater
engagement with modernity and displays of extreme wealth, and raising issues
surrounding family separation and detachment.
Studies of diasporic cinema have considered splitting it into two differ-
ent stages: firstly, the 1990s patriotic Bollywood nostalgia film, and secondly,
the rise of films from NRI diasporic filmmakers such as Mira Nair, Gurinder
Chadha, Deepa Mehta and Srinivas Krishna (Desai, 2004). However, the fact
that the Bollywood NRI genre has evolved in recent years requires us to now
consider adding a third kind of cinema to this category. The films of direc-
tors such as Karan Johar are held to be prime examples of the first stage of the
Bollywood NRI genre, yet it is interesting how Johar’s later films such as Kabhi
Alvida Naa Kehna (aka KANK, 2006), Kal Ho Naa Ho (aka KHNH, 2003) and
My Name is Khan (aka MNIK, 2010) do not quite fit this model and complicate
the supposed NRI pursuit of soulful Indian-ness. For example, we can read
K3G as a highly ironic critique of Indian values (see Hogan, 2008: 160–93),
while Johar’s subsequent three films can be seen to embrace a fragmented
Indian identity that does not wish to return to its roots. Characters in KHNH
now celebrate the split or diffusion of Indian and Western identity and are
happy to remain in New York, and in the case of KANK there is no mention of
India at all. On a more general level, there seems to be a more Western-friendly
outlook and positive view of Western cultural consumption in these films.
Even in MNIK, which describes how terrorism has disrupted the lives of the
US-residing diaspora, there is a strong desire for assimilation and the focus
shifts towards the need to act out one’s rights as a diasporic US citizen.
Discussions surrounding NRI representation in Hindi films can tend to
lead us to the assumption that these films work on the level of patriotism and
cultural preservation, but I think there is also room here for self-critique, as I
will reveal later when I discuss the fragmentation of Indian identity (of both
NRI and resident Indians) in recent Bollywood films. Some scholars are more
cynical and warn of how far this diaspora argument can be taken. For example,
Kaur states that many commercial Hindi NRI films often fail on the level of
misrepresentation, and therefore
it is too glib and cursory to say that Bollywood enables a religion-like

nostalgia for people of the Indian diaspora . . . It is also specious to
presume that Indian popular films provide a ‘shared culture’ that links
everyone who is ethnically Indian as a general rule. (Kaur, 2005: 313–14)
The diaspora approach, for all its revelations about Bollywood’s interna-
tionalisation, has been complicated, if not superseded, by new agendas and
modes of representation. Contemporary Bollywood mediates and celebrates
more significantly the experience of the (post)modern Indian and his or her
fragmentation. Instead of simply aspiring towards caricaturing and capitalis-
ing on the diasporic experience, newer Bollywood films are now invested in
the questioning and blurring of identity, rendering the previous separation of
‘foreigner’ and ‘desi’ problematic. Owing to the somewhat exhaustive output
of diaspora-related work on post-1990s Hindi cinema, I have chosen to shift
the focus away from the NRI. Instead, I draw attention to aspects of the film
text that operate outside issues of migration, for not everything in Bollywood
these days is determined and shaped by the diaspora. I aim to bring attention
back to Bollywood’s textuality and, in doing so, also consider its effect on other
emerging targeted audiences within modern developing India and the non-
Indian global market.
Postcolonial theory has also provided a fairly solid backbone to much Indian
film scholarship. Postcolonial approaches to Indian cinema have helped to
trace and explain the industry’s shifts during India’s pre-colonial, colonial
and post-independence eras. As my own study engages with postmodern
approaches, it overlaps with and shares similar interests to postcolonialism
(such as the desire to rewrite or reconstruct past histories and the use of textual
hybridity), but it also seeks to offer something beyond the postcolonial per-
spective. The application of postcolonial criticism can present problems for
the study of contemporary Bollywood cinema, particularly when it calls for a
righteous return to cultural autonomy and tradition instead of addressing the
more complex emerging modes of resistance to cultural authenticity accounted
for in my own research. Postcolonial issues are further addressed in Chapters 4
and 5 in relation to postmodernism and postmodern Bollywood.
Cultural studies approaches have also been prevalent in Indian film studies
and have also tended to help tie Bollywood films to issues of national identity.
However, in contrast to the nationalism-focused discussions mentioned above,
cultural studies of Bollywood films differ by placing a greater emphasis on and
investing more in religious thematics as opposed to state politics by drawing
attention to mythology, ritual customs, and particular culturally-driven sig-
nifying and belief systems (Dissanayake, 1988: 1). The cultural studies
approach is important in helping explain how Indians construct, maintain,
and respond to certain meaning systems that operate through the medium of
film. However, by introducing postmodernism into the equation, I take this
a step further and examine how Indians also deconstruct their own cinematic
culture and meaning systems, as well as those of others (such as the West and
Hollywood). My own investigation reveals an increased playfulness, inver-
sion, subversion and questioning of such systems. For example, the tension
between tradition and modernity is often considered a central theme in con-
temporary Asian cinema within cultural studies. But rather than seeing these
two themes as polarised within Indian films (where modernity often represents
the threat), my postmodern reading reveals how the lines between them have
become erased or blurred. This is best seen in Bollywood’s recent blending of
traditional mythological and science-fiction codes to convey an ambiguous, if
not pessimistic, outlook on traditional Indian values (as explored in Chapter 5
through my reading of Koi . . . Mil Gaya).
Some cultural sociologists have even equated Bollywood’s recent interna-
tionalisation with Hollywood hegemony, viewing the cinema’s global move as
a threat to its cultural authenticity (see Dissanayake, 1988). Bollywood’s more
recent globalised texts often fail to feature in cultural studies readings, perhaps
because they do not present themselves as straightforward cultural political
tools or ‘indigenous instruments of communication’ (ibid.: 3). They are too
explicitly and self-consciously steeped in their desire to make money as com-
mercial hybridised products, and as Wimal Dissanayake has confirmed, Indian
films are deemed valuable only as windows to Asian culture and not for their
artistic merit, unlike the ‘good artistic films’ of Satyajit Ray or Yasujirō Ozu
(ibid.: 7). I would argue that as Bollywood has become increasingly conscious
of its capacity for cultural hybridity, it has used this to its advantage. Through
my own analysis, I determine how the recent cross-cultural ‘inauthentic’ influ-
ences in Bollywood films do not simply set out to sabotage Indian cinematic
culture, but instead also enrich and affirm it. These postmodern-esque film
texts, particularly in the form of remakes, allow Bollywood to shift between
Hollywood universality and cultural specificity, maintaining a unique film
language as original plagiarisms.
P o pu la r d e f i n i t i o n s:
gu i d e s t o B o l l yw o o d c i n e ma
The publication of several introductory guidebooks on Bollywood since 2000
has paved the way for many further and higher education courses on popular
Indian cinema in the West. These first-hand resources prove ideal for new audi-
ences and novices seeking to grasp the (once daunting) general mechanics and
peculiarities of the Bombay film industry. But some of these comprehensive
guides have misled readers towards restrictive (if not outmoded and deroga-
tory) definitions of the cinema they seek to understand. Wimal Dissanayake
and K. Moti Gokulsing’s Indian Popular Cinema: A Narrative of Cultural
Change (1998) is one such text, which, in its opening chapter, promotes its
use as an introductory reading of Indian cinema for future Western media and
film studies courses. Unfortunately, the book pays poor attention to styles and
techniques in popular films beyond their musical dimensions and a handful
of outmoded genres, here labelled as the mythological, the devotional, the
social drama, and the erotic or romantic drama. The authors fail to unpick the
‘emotional excess’, ‘flashy’ (32) and ‘obtrusive’ editing (92) and ‘melodrama’
of popular films, or explain the possible intentions behind and desired effect
of their ‘lack of realism’, ‘extravagant use of colour’ and ‘self-conscious use of
sound’ (32). Instead, the authors’ focus on style and form is reserved for artis-
tic films outside the remit of popular Indian filmmaking, which are explored
in more detail and celebrated for their sequential editing, balanced framing,
centred shots and image continuity. In separating the two, Dissanayake and
Gokulsing suggest that art cinema’s purpose is to innovate and provoke, while
the popular cinema’s is to conform. As pure escapism, Bollywood is not asso-

ciated with any kind of aesthetic politics. Themes such as selfhood, tradition
versus modernity, alienation, and the impact of Westernisation are deemed to
only find expression in the artistic cinema of Ray et al. (32). While the work
of art film auteurs such as Ray (who is described by the authors as India’s
greatest filmmaker) is discussed, the directors of Bollywood are presented as
more homogeneous and therefore not distinctive enough in their technique
to deserve individual attention – with the exception of Mani Ratnam, whose
broad directorial work is only explored through a narrow selection of his most
controversial and politically edgy films. Thus, despite their book’s title and
opening promise to present and promote popular Indian cinema, Dissanayake
and Gokulsing’s reading is driven by a partiality for ‘serious’ cinema. In their
conclusion, the authors assert that popular cinema is best understood in rela-
tion to artistic cinema (136), which does nothing to assist the West’s already
fuzzy definitions of Bollywood. The authors’ discussion of new popular
Indian cinema, while hinting at its frenetic MTV and hybridised Hollywood
visual style, also has a rather negative outlook. Contemporary Bollywood is
pessimistically described as the ‘cardboard age’ – an error which is later cor-
rected in the 2004 revision of the book. The second edition (Dissanayake and
Gokulsing, 2004) includes an additional chapter noting the ‘broad concerns
and technical attributes . . . [and] the narrative grammar of Hindi mainstream
cinema [which] has metamorphosed significantly’ over the last decade (142).
Here the authors note and begin to appreciate contemporary Bollywood cin-
ema’s inherent contradictions and polysemic nature, its complex blending of
Hollywood-style gloss and indigenous narrative ethos, its sexual openness, its
potential for creative innovation via a fresh breed of directors,10 and its conflict
between serving Western or modern material needs and negotiating cultural
identity (143–4).
Tejaswini Ganti’s Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema pro-
vides a little more emphasis on recent changes in Bollywood, although her
account still paints a fairly grey picture of contemporary popular Indian
cinema. Discussing contemporary Bollywood through its corporatisation
since the year 2000, Ganti (2004: 88) presents the cinema as the antithesis
of the industry’s nostalgically mourned-for 1950s golden era, which is con-
versely seen as embodying creativity, originality, talent, quality and sincerity
(28). She typifies newer Bollywood films through their ‘matter-of-factness’,
their ‘essentially conservative outlook . . . regardless of their cosmopolitan
and MTV inspired style’ (41), and their continuation of nationalist trends
(emphasising their thematic focus on terrorism and Pro-Hindu politics). But
Ganti does highlight important changes in the cinema’s stylistic presentation:
fluid camera movements and rapid editing are mixed with more traditional
frontal encounter or frontal aesthetics11 to create a unique hybrid style (144).
However, ultimately the author’s aesthetic account falls short owing to the
socio-anthropological perspective she chooses to apply to her analysis. For
example, her explanation for Bollywood cinema’s distinctively rich saturation
of colours sees this not as a matter of aesthetic choice, but rather as a practi-
cal requirement to overcome the poor projection conditions at screenings in
Indian villages (143). As other film researchers have discovered, colour plays
an important part in the coding of Hindi films, guiding viewer pleasure and
shaping the aesthetic agenda of the films (see Patrick Colm Hogan’s cognitive
study of colour in Hindi films [2008: 194–249]). It can even serve as a film-
maker’s stylistic trademark, as in the case of Sanjay Leela Bhansali (see my
analysis of Bhansali’s Devdas in Chapter 7).
‘B o l l y wo o d ’ : t h e d o ub l e -e dg ed wor d
Bollywood, n. Brit./blwd/US/bliwd/[Humorous blend of the name of
Bombay (see BOMBAY n.) and HOLLYWOOD n.] The Indian film
industry, based in Bombay; Bombay regarded as the base of this indus-
try. (The Oxford English Dictionary Online [dictionary.oed.com])
Indian cinema guidebooks will often begin with a proclamation that the
Western world has finally ‘discovered’ popular Indian cinema through its
global marketing under the guise of ‘Bollywood’ (Ganti, 2004: 2). But these
commentaries reveal an ambiguous relationship with the term, which has been
both exploited and sneered at by industry professionals and film scholars alike.
The word ‘Bollywood’ can still be a taboo term which many writers on Indian
cinema (such as Dissanayake and Gokulsing) have, with good intentions, tried
wholeheartedly to reject or shake off in haste. Until more recently, much of the
published work on Bollywood cinema has capitalised on the word by using it in
book titles and on cover faces, while the authors of these texts have, within the
opening pages, felt the need to offer justifications for its use through lengthy
footnotes (see Pauwels, 2007: 43) or to frequently replace it with substitutes
such as ‘Bombay’, ‘Hindi’ or ‘popular Indian’ cinema (see Ganti, 2004). But
these alternative terms can be equally problematic: ‘popular Indian cinema’ is
too vague and nation-centric, failing to emphasise the industry’s global, trans-
national and diasporic ventures; ‘hi-fi’ or ‘popular Hindi film’ misleadingly
associates all films with Hindi-centred dialogue, ignoring the fact that many
of the films (especially their song sequences) include Urdu and Islamic meta-
phors and English dialogue; and ‘Bombay film’ is problematic again owing
to the industry’s numerous transnational and trans-regional productions. Of
course, ‘Bollywood’ also brings its own complications by conversely trying to
be all-encompassing. As Madhava Prasad (2003) notes, the phrase becomes an
‘empty signifier’, collapsing together and thus suppressing the individuality

and variety of films produced in India:
. . . those who have invested in earlier models of the Indian popular

cinema – the ‘so many cinemas’ model, the folk culture model, the
‘yeh-to-public-hai-yeh-sab-janti-hai’12 model, the regressive ‘pulse of
the people’ model, the ideological model, art versus popular, and so on,
should feel slightly resentful of this development which threatens to
absorb their own special areas into its commodious (because ill-defined)
purview. (Prasad, 2003: 1)
Quietly avoiding use of the term in his Encyclopaedia of Indian cinema (co-
authored with Paul Willemen, 1999), Ashish Rajadhyaksha later outwardly
rejects it in his article ‘The “Bollywoodization” of the Indian Cinema’ (2003),
suggesting that the word has little to do with the actual film industry and
instead signals a rather separate cultural phenomenon created by surround-
ing ancillary paraphernalia (theatre shows, art exhibitions, fashion culture).
Rajadhyaksha argues that ‘Bollywood’ in fact signals the demise of the Bombay
film industry, where marketing and product placement reduce cinema to ‘only
to a memory, a part of the nostalgia industry’ (38). It therefore seems that the
phrase ‘Bollywood’, despite all its commercial appeal and lure, has become
a subject of shame and denial within film academia, and I believe that this
ambivalence has in turn served to suppress our understanding of the cinema
that the term alludes to. While the word may indeed stand for a cultural trend,
fad or fashion, I believe it also serves as an artistic term: a marker of a particular
kind of visual aesthetic phenomenon that is representative of a contempo-
rised Indian film style. Rajadhyaksha’s call to ‘drive a wedge’ (31) between
Bollywood and the Indian cinema is, I think, in itself damaging and unhelpful
as the word offers us great insight into the cinema in its contemporary form.
The term’s origins are disputable. Some believe it was phonetically trans-
posed from ‘Tollywood’ in the late thirties (Prasad, 2003). Others argue it
was self-created by the Bombay industry (Bhaumik, 2007) or India’s English-
language press (Ganti, 2004). Actors within the industry have dismissed and
resented it as a Western term created for kitsch value (Malcolm, 2002) or for
referring to Indian films as simply rip-offs of Hollywood texts (see director
Subhash Ghai in Hardy [2002] and actor Ajay Devgan in Prasad [2003]).
However, it is important to note that many of the actors and directors who
once rejected the term, including megastars Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh
Bachchan, have since accepted it, adopting it during the international market-
ing and promotion of their own films.
The Oxford English Dictionary has cited the first publication of the term
‘Bollywood’ as occurring in a British crime writer’s mystery novel, Filmi, Filmi,
Inspector Ghote (Keating, 1976), although a handful of Indian film journalists

have also tried to claim they coined it. Whatever the case, these mysterious and
disputable origins of the term confirm it as something that crept up behind the
backs of industry professionals and academics without invitation, and empha-
sise the cinema’s refusal to be pinned down and categorised. The word’s loose
application and somewhat inappropriate nature (the ‘B’ in the word becomes
ever more problematic with the city’s name-change from Bombay to Mumbai)
can also be seen to reflect the informality and displacement associated with the
cinema. The fact that ‘Bollywood’, unlike its Western American counterpart,
does not refer to an actual geographical location set in wooded hills indicates the
homelessness of the cinema. Bollywood’s transferral to the global international
market means that it does not necessarily exist in any physical space as a studio-
based industry. The word therefore indicates both the cinema’s fragmented
production and the trans-locational experiences of the characters within its
more recent films. Some have therefore chosen to specifically use ‘Bollywood’ to
refer to a transnational cinema ‘at once located in the nation, but also out of the
nation in its provenance, orientation and outreach’ (Kaur and Sinha, 2005: 16).
As a portmanteau term, ‘Bollywood’ indicates an important dialogue
between two of the world’s biggest cinemas and, in fact, hints at their insepa-
rability. It expresses the recent concrete indigenisation of Hollywood aesthetic
modes in Indian films and the cinema’s tendency towards cultural fusion or
blending. As such, the term also alerts us to the cinema’s problematic relation-
ship with cultural authenticity, indicating the loss of identity and nationally or
culturally distinctive boundaries within its films. ‘Bollywood’ is often blamed
for wrongly drawing associations between Indian cinema and Hollywood
and for implying that popular Indian films simply produce inferior copies of
popular American cinema. Interestingly, Kaushik Bhaumik (2007) has revealed
how the appropriation of Western cinematic modes in Indian cinema in fact
precedes the creation of the word ‘Bollywood’, tracing Hollywood influences
as far back as the early 1900s (although I later argue that this kind of appro-
priation differs from that of newer Bollywood texts, particularly with regard to
narrative remaking and the adoption of certain stylistic codes). Nevertheless,
Bollywood is continually perceived as a pejorative term placing Indian cinema
forever in the American film industry’s shadow. Its hijacking of an essentially
Western term also hints at the Indian cinema’s ‘indulgent lampooning’ of
English dialogue in order to assist its integration into a Eurocentric world and
its desire to appeal to its growing middle-class audience (Prasad, 2008: 43).
But what may at first appear to simply be Indian cinema apeing the West can
in fact conversely be a strategy for the ‘reproduction of difference . . . which
the industry itself, in its current reflexive moment, is responding to’ (Prasad,
2003). ‘Bollywood’ simultaneously presents Indian cinema as imitative and
derivative of and alternative to the dominant Hollywood idiom – something
which I explore in more detail later in my analysis of Bollywood-Hollywood

remakes. As Bhaumik comments, ‘Bombay films are [also] a subversion of
Western cultural and political expectations, carving out their own autonomous
history outside Hollywood’ (2007: 202).
To use the word ‘Bollywood’ is to continually be conscious of the shadow
of Western cinema, which forever looms over popular Indian cinema as a con-
stant source of comparison and value-marking by film critics and academics
across the world. It connotes the Indian film industry’s current obsession with
capitalism, mass production and celebrity populism. Furthermore, the hybrid
nature of the term conveys Indian cinema’s own inherent hybridity, particu-
larly in recent years when its films have outwardly meshed together multiple
cultures and identities and negotiated between traditional Indian-ness and
Western modernity. The linguistic similarity between the two film industries
also indicates a hidden imperialist agenda: Indian cinema’s (perhaps naive)
desire for super-power and aspirations to replace Hollywood as the dominant
global cinema.
At its most basic level as a humorous blend of terms, ‘Bollywood’ refers to
the jest and ridicule which the cinema both embodies and is subjected to by
its harshest critics. It refers to a cinema that is not taken seriously and is often
mocked – it ‘denotes the user’s distance from the object, a non-participatory
passion for description’ (Prasad, 2003). Most importantly, as word-pastiche,
it is an indicator of intertextual playfulness, unabashed plagiarism, cultural
appropriation and parody. As Madhava Prasad has wisely pointed out in ‘This
Thing Called Bollywood’ – a more optimistic account of the word’s appear-
ance and usage – the change of name might indicate a change in reality too:
. . . we do find, do we not, that this cinema has given us, in the last decade
or so, a large number of films which may be said to constitute a new
genre of sorts, which has been, moreover, the staple of the new global
Bollywood presence. (Prasad, 2003: 2)
As Prasad later argues in extending his previous discussion in ‘Surviving

Bollywood’ (2008), ‘Bollywood’ is an important indicator of change within the
Indian film industry, specifically in terms of contemporary Indian cinema’s
increased bilingualism, its internationally educated directors, its shifting
notions of Indian identity via globalisation, its textual struggles and contradic-
tions on the level of representation, its increased commoditisation as a ‘fetish
object’ (50), and, most importantly of all, its now inherent self-referential
exploitation as a global brand:
‘Bollywood’ also signals the advent of a certain reflexivity, becoming a

cinema for itself as it were, recognizing its own unique position in the
world, the contrastive pleasures and values that it represents vis-à-vis

Hollywood. This reflexivity is as much a form of self-awareness as it is
a know-how that enables the Hindi film to reproduce itself for a market
that demands its perpetuation as a source of cultural identity. (ibid.: 50)
N a t i o na l , t h i r d , w o r l d , A si an , g l ob a l or
t ra ns nat i o n a l c i n e ma ?
Our perceptions, understanding of and critical approaches towards popular
Indian cinema will be shaped by how it is categorised. Particularly with
its recent move into global territory, the concept of Bollywood cinema as
‘national’, ‘third’ or ‘world’ cinema has been complicated if not compromised,
inviting newer and more elusive labels such as ‘Asian’, ‘global’ and ‘transna-
tional’. These latter labels, although arriving with their own set of problems,
have helped broaden our understanding of the changes that have taken place
within the industry in recent years.
When perceived as ‘third cinema’, Indian films are predominantly analysed
as instruments of social change and ‘nation-bound’ national allegories (Virdi,
2003: 4), with a focus on political themes drawn from a narrow selection of
exemplary canonised classical texts. Anne Tereska Ciecko (2006) has criticised
this category for homogenising all non-Western cinema, arguing that it does
not suit Bollywood’s levels of production. This includes its textual diversity,
its obsession with luxurious wealth, happy endings and big budgets, and its
investment in modernity, capitalism and multinationalism (Ciecko, 21–2).
Furthermore, as James Chapman (2003) also suggests, it becomes very dif-
ficult to present Indian cinema as an ‘alternative’ to Hollywood, owing to
the cinema’s own governance, dominance and mass popularity within India.
Thus, some argue that Bollywood is much better suited to the category of ‘first
cinema’ owing to its commercial studio base and Hollywood-style production
model (Chaudhuri, 2005), and that it is no longer humble enough to fit the
‘world of the disadvantaged’ model of world cinema (Bhaumik, 2006: 196),
unlike the past works of Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor or Ray.
The category ‘world cinema’ has also faced much scrutiny recently as an
outdated film concept, particularly with the increase in transnational film
production. As Chapman notes, world cinema has traditionally given privilege
and preference to texts that visibly differentiate themselves from Hollywood,
while those cinemas (like contemporary Bollywood) which share common
traits or model themselves on Hollywood fall into a trap of being marginal-
ised (Chapman: 35). Similarly, Bhaumik has commented that ‘any popular
cinema without art-house, realist or genre credentials on the West’s terms
stands condemned to a marginal position in the mainstream’ (Bhaumik, 2006:
195). Following Rajadhyaksha’s concept of ‘Bollywoodization’, he argues that

Bollywood’s world profile is suspect as its impact and presence in the West has
been non-cinematic, or rather extra-cinematic. Bollywood’s marginal success
as a recognisable world cinema is therefore regarded as purely a by-product of
marketing and political multiculturalism (194), as the cinema fails to satisfy
world cinema’s taste for high modernism, realism, genre, serious subjects and
political edginess. Bhaumik suggests that Bollywood can only be accommo-
dated if the West expands its rather restrictive criteria of ‘good’ world cinema.
Unlike world cinema, the ‘Asian cinema’ model has more explicitly accom-
modated both popular and niche (artistic or cult) texts and brought into play a
larger variety of identities and subject positions (Ciecko, 2006). But some com-
mentators have also warned how the use of the prefix ‘Asian’ can be accused of
ghettoisation and of ‘Otherising’ Eastern cinema. It is often posited away from
or against Hollywood, thus reinforcing the centrality or ‘false universalism’ of
American cinema in film studies (Yoshimoto, 2006). Such arguments fail to
account for the fact that the mainstream cinema under the umbrella of ‘Asian’
(including Hong Kong and Bollywood blockbusters) also often engages in a
complex dialogue-exchange with Hollywood on the level of textual style and
form, which cannot be ignored.
There has recently been a boom in published criticism on ‘global’ con-
temporary Indian cinema, seen most notably in recurring titles such as
Brand Bollywood: A New Global Entertainment Order (Bose, 2006), Once
upon a time in Bollywood: The Global Swing of Hindi Cinema (Jolly, Wahwani
and Barretto, 2007), Global Bollywood (Kavoori and Punathambekar, 2008),
Global Bollywood: Travels of Hindi Song and Dance (Gopal and Moorti, 2008),
Untimely Bollywood: Globalization and India’s New Media Assemblage (Rai,
2009), Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and
Diaspora (Mehta and Pandharipande, 2010) and Bollywood and Globalization:
The Global Power of Popular Hindi Cinema (Karan and Schaefer, 2013). For
the most part, these texts tend to focus on diasporic filmmaking and crossover
films produced outside of the Bollywood film industry, but a number of these
global studies have also helped elevate the analysis of Bollywood’s dialogue-
exchanges with and influences from other cinemas. For example, Gurbir Jolly
sees globalisation as India’s ‘invitation to the Anglosphere’ and its opportunity
to both generate wealth and ‘civilize India’ (Jolly, 2007: xiv). Other scholars
see this global move as an opportunity to learn how the cinema negotiates, fixes
and unfixes national narratives in a global context (Kaur and Sinha, 2005). But
the national is no longer Bollywood’s only concern, with many of its seemingly
nation-centred films now additionally seeking ‘international authentication’
(see for example Susan Dewey on the Oscar expectations surrounding Lagaan
[Dewey, 2007: 11]). The ‘global cinema’ approach may be one of the latest
developments in Bollywood studies, but scepticism towards this newer form
of cinema is still abundant. For example, Ashok Raj perceives Indian cinema’s
global move as a ‘curse’ and calls for a nostalgic return to a previous cinematic
era:
The macho heroes and sensuous heroines are . . . worshipped for their
. . . ad-model looks. And as these third-generation actors are part of the
new materialism and representatives of the prevailing yuppie culture –
they are simply not equipped to evoke the awe, the dignity and the gran-
deur of the era of our cinema’s earlier legendary artists [. . .] the future
Indian film will continue to be a reflection of the profound crisis of values
being faced by society, which will only grow more complex in the future.
(Raj, 2004: 802, 804)
Similarly, Monika Mehta (2007) pessimistically sees the global as the

national in sheep’s clothing. She argues that the film industry’s recent eco-
nomic liberalisation is simply a way of the state reinscribing its authority and
values. But Mehta’s argument is largely directed towards the diaspora and
family films of the late 1990s and does not account for the noticeable apathy
towards social and political discourse that follows in later films (Mehta:
22–3).13
The most recent (and arguably the most appropriate) category used to
explore Bollywood’s current manifestation is that of ‘transnational’ cinema.
Popular Indian cinema has become infused with different cultures through
a variety of means. Not only has it appropriated other cultures in its formal
aesthetics and subject matter – setting its entire film story abroad in foreign
locations such as South Africa (Race), Australia (Salaam Namaste) and Miami
(Dostana), but it has also invested in loaning its talents to produce films for
other countries (for example, Farah Khan’s choreography work in Chinese
musical Perhaps Love) and, conversely, employing Hong Kong martial arts
experts for its own action films (Krrish). Bollywood is also becoming increas-
ingly transnational through having its films co-financed by Hollywood con-
glomerates such as Sony Pictures, (Saawariya), Walt Disney (Roadside Romeo),
Warner Brothers (Chandni Chowk to China) and most significantly, Twentieth
Century Fox (My Name Is Khan, Dum Maaro Dum, Bol Bachchan, Raaz 3).14
Despite initial fears of possible ethnocentrism, film scholars have slowly begun
to investigate cross-cultural and inter-cultural play within these transnational
films (see Mitra [1999]; Desai [2004]; Govil et al. [2005]; Bhaumik [2007]).
Transnational cinema has particularly been considered an important object
of investigation for the way in which it self-orientalises through an ‘autoeth-
nographic gaze’ (Rey Chow, cited in Chaudhuri: 97) – consciously exploiting,
exoticising, parodying and critiquing both home and foreign cultural conven-
tions (as demonstrated in my later analysis of Om Shanti Om and Kaante). It has
enabled Bollywood cinema not only to negotiate Indian identity among mul-
tiple identities, but also to dismantle and remystify Indian-ness. Most impor-
tantly for my own investigation, transnational cinemas have been identified
as operating through, occupying and serving postmodern principles. Shohini
Chaudhuri has noted the widespread influence of postmodern aesthetics in
various contemporary world cinemas (particularly MTV-style filmmaking
practices), which in China, for instance, have signalled ‘the full-blown arrival of
postmodern culture . . . hand-in-hand with its cities’ consumer lifestyles boom’
(100) and, paradoxically, in conjunction with the rise of modernity (10). In her
discussion of recent commercial Chinese transnational cinema which has tried
to resist the realist conventions of sixth-generation Chinese films, Chaudhuri
notes several markedly postmodern cultural traits, such as the rejection of
excessive politics and the blurring of (American) popular and (European) artis-
tic styles (99). She also refers to the postmodern pastiche present in contempo-
rary Thai cinema, best exemplified through its recent Westerns. We can find
similar postmodern traits within contemporary Bollywood films and, whereas
national cinema approaches to popular Indian cinema looked at the filmic con-
struction of nation, such a postmodern reading helps us consider the way in
which transnational Bollywood films dissolve nation and Indian identity.
Whilst ‘Asian cinema’ may be oversimplified and ‘third’ and ‘world’ cinema
have become outmoded, it seems that ‘global’ and ‘transnational’ are the cat-
egories that are being adopted in haste owing to the indisputable impact of
globalisation upon Bollywood filmmaking processes. But while the ‘global’ is
still a fuzzy term, the ‘transnational’ draws a convenient line from the national
to the global in specifically addressing co-production. The transnational also
refers to cross-cultural exchange on the level of textuality. Whilst a film like
Chandni Chowk to China is a transnational film on all levels – transcending geo-
graphical boundaries in its production (produced by a Hollywood studio and
filmed in Chinese studios and locations) as well as incorporating conventions
from Hong Kong martial arts films and Bollywood musicals – a film like Koi
. . . Mil Gaya may initially only be seen as a nationalist film, having being made
in India and backed by the Hindu Bharatiya Janata political party. However,
as I later reveal in my analysis of the film, Koi . . . Mil Gaya’s adoption of
Hollywood narrative and generic codes still suggests some sort of transnational
exchange in operation. New perspectives on Indian cinema in its global form
are further explored in the next chapter.
Dis p l e a s u r e a n d un p o p ul a r i t y in t h e West
Popular Indian cinema had been subject to marginalisation well before its
kitsch Bollywood status. In a 1949 UNESCO Courier article reviewing India’s
various artistic practices, Kwaja Ahmad Abbas contemplates how the cinema’s
intelligibility and success with Euro-American international audiences was
‘doubtful’, and that a specialised audience could only be secured with the ‘right
kind’ of ‘good Indian films’. While claiming to offer a list of such films, which
represented a ‘complete cross-section of . . . Indian cinema’, Abbas places a
firm emphasis on historicals, non-commercial realistic feature documentaries,
‘dignified’ mythologicals (that had ‘none of the tinselly gaudiness’ associated
with some of the more typical films of that genre) and artistic ‘masterpieces’
depicting social themes in feudal society – offering ‘simplicity’, ‘fidelity’
and a ‘humanistic approach’. Many of the films in Abbas’s recommendation
are valued for their ‘utter realism’ and their holding up a ‘mirror to Indian
life’. They are ‘daring and progressive’, with a ‘dignified restraint’. The few
popular texts that are considered worthy of merit are specifically ‘Hollywood-
style melodramas’, whose ‘colourful pageantry would appeal to the Western
audiences . . . notions of the exotic [East]’. No recognition is given here of
Indian cinema having its own popular dominant alternative to the Hollywood
melodrama. Abbas warns his Western readers that they should not approach
Indian films with the same expectation as that of Hollywood products, and
should instead expect a certain level of frustration at the over-lengthiness,
exasperating musical basis and slow tempo of the films. Interestingly, Abbas
suggests how these films ‘will acquire the nervous tension and mounting tempo
of a Hollywood thriller when the impact of industrialism has created the same
psychological atmosphere in India as in England and America’ (Abbas, 1949:
8). Abbas was certainly onto something here. Global capitalism has indeed led
to a shift in tempo within Bollywood films, although not necessarily match-
ing that of Hollywood films. Abbas’s review indicates early on how Western
pursuits of realism, logic and seriousness have served to marginalise popular
forms of Indian cinema. Not all Western responses to commercial Indian films
have been negative, but I would argue that even the positive discourse can be
vague, non-specific and kitschy. It is celebratory, yet fails to critically explore
the films beyond their bizarre novelty value. For example, as writer Justine
Hardy describes almost fetishistically in Vanity Fair’s 2002 special-edition
‘salute’ to popular Indian cinema,15 Bollywood offers ‘dreams where every-
thing is over-lit, over-fed and neo-nausea bright. This sweaty technicolour
hallucination, this spinning core of Hindi film, is forever in your face here at
flesh-on-Arabia sea’ (Hardy, 2002: 12).
Western film reviewers seem to be the usual suspects contributing to the
wave of negative censure Bollywood has received over the years, and this is
something that has already been explored by Rosie Thomas in her landmark
1985 Screen article ‘Indian cinema: Pleasures and Popularity’, and later in a
more contemporary context by Kaushik Bhaumik (2006). Thomas’s article is
possibly the most widely cited piece of academic critical writing on popular
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
TO EDUCATE A COW TO LET HER MILK DOWN.
Much inconvenience, besides an actual loss of money, is

experienced by persons who own cows that are in the habit of
withholding their milk. Having spent fifteen years of my life in
gathering knowledge of value to the farmer, and to other owners of
animals, I am unwilling that even one valuable idea should be lost to
the reader, and therefore I have, at considerable expense, illustrated
the above-named point, believing that it will be of benefit to many
persons. Although the method to be employed is very simple, it will
be found practical in its operation, while success will be certain
where the directions are followed:
Take a common bag, put into it a bushel or a bushel and a half of
grain, or its equivalent in weight of sand, then place the bag across
the back of the animal, as indicated in the engraving and the result
will be shown in the milking. As an indication of the purpose of the
cow to hold up her milk you will always see her hump up her back,
then, by applying the remedy named, the habit will be speedily
removed.
PRACTICAL RESULT OF EDUCATING THE COW

TO GIVE DOWN MILK.
PRACTICAL RESULT OF EDUCATING THE COW TO GIVE DOWN MILK.
Having directed the attention of the reader to the education of the

cow so as not to disappoint her owner in receiving the quota of milk
he may rightly expect, it is but natural that the eye should be
gratified by witnessing the result. For this purpose I have prepared
this engraving, in which is represented the bag and its contents
upon the back of the animal, in just the spot where it should be
placed. The reader will also perceive the impatient wife standing
with milking pail and stool in hand, waiting for the result, which
becomes apparent in the freely flowing milk, and one can almost
imagine that he hears her saying to her husband that it is scarcely
necessary now to milk the cow, for the simple method adopted has
caused a spontaneous flow of milk, and nothing now is needed but
to set the pail under her and view with wonder and delight the
pleasing effect produced!
A CURE FOR HEAVES, NEVER BEFORE

PUBLISHED.
Take a common stone jar, fill it with eggs, cover them with cider
vinegar, and let it stand till the vinegar eats up the shells. Then stir
all together. Take a lump of lime about the size of a goose-egg, slack
it in hot water, using about one quart of water. Add one-half pint of
the lime-water to a quart of the egg mixture. Give a teacupful, at
feeding time, in feed, three times a day.
TO CURE WORMS IN HORSES.

One dram white hellebore in powder, 1 dram sulphate of iron in
powder, 1 oz. flaxseed meal.
The above for one dose, mixed with bran-mash, given at night.
Repeat in forty-eight hours, if the horse is old. Two doses are
enough for the worst case.
TO EDUCATE CATTLE TO LEAD BEHIND A

WAGON.
TO EDUCATE CATTLE TO LEAD BEHIND A WAGON.
Make a rope halter and put it on the head of the animal you desire
to lead; then take a small rope, about twenty feet long, double it in
the center, placing it under the tail; cross it on the back, bringing the
ends down each side of the animals neck and then through the
nose-piece of the halter under the lower jaw, and tie the ends firmly
to the end of your wagon.
If you wish to lead more than one, take another rope, twice the
length of the former one, double it in the center, placing it under the
tail, cross it on the back, bringing the ends down each side of the
animal’s neck and then through under the lower jaw. Now bring the
ends, one on each side of the forward cow, and carry the rope
through the halter under the jaw and tie it to the wagon.
By adopting this plan no difficulty will be experienced in educating
your animals to lead, and when you drive home with your cattle
following thus they will be sure to arrive there at the same time as
yourself.
TO EDUCATE A TENDER-MOUTHED HORSE TO
PULL ON THE BIT.
TO EDUCATE A TENDER-MOUTHED HORSE TO PULL

ON THE BIT.
Many horses are very sensitive to a hurt in any part of the body,
so much so that they often grow frantic when severely punished,
and it seems to be the delight of some persons to inflict injury to a
horse of this temperament, sometimes with a view to make him rear
or prance about, believing it adds to the appearance of the animal,
when the contrary is the fact; a bad habit is almost sure to grow out
of such treatment, and then it may take some time to eradicate it.
One of the evils often presented is that the animal becomes tender-
mouthed, and I have known many cases where balking has been the
result. Let me urge the reader never to jerk sharply on the bit,
except when educating or correcting a habit, as heretofore directed.
The only effectual method of treatment for a tender mouth is to
use a large straight bit, leave the check-rein quite loose, and drop
the bit low down in the mouth, as seen in engraving, which will slip
up and down and harden the mouth in a short time.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE NOT TO BE AFRAID OF

A BUFFALO ROBE.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE NOT TO BE AFRAID OF A BUFFALO ROBE.

The education of the horse being quite a new idea to many
persons, it therefore becomes necessary that, in my characteristic
explanations, I should make my ideas both plain and simple—so that
even the most unlettered may not become fogged while attempting
to apply any illustrated idea in my work.
A Buffalo robe is an article in common use, and one at which very
many horses become frightened, proving a decided source of
annoyance. Let not the reader imagine that one lesson, as below
indicated, is sufficient to warrant success and thoroughly eradicate
the habit. Much depends upon the temperament of the animal; but,
in most cases, three lessons carefully imparted will accomplish the
purpose. After you have given two or three lessons do not tempt
your horse by suddenly approaching him with the robe, and when
you do approach him, be sure you have the Bonaparte bridle on him,
that you may be able at once to control when the slightest
resistance is seen.
Directions.—If your animal is very nervous lay him down, as
directed in other places, fold the robe, hair side in, making it as
small as possible; let him smell of it, rub it gently over his nose,
head and body; punish if he resists—if not caress. When submission
is apparent allow him to rise to his feet; then, with your Bonaparte
bridle, properly adjusted, present the robe to him again. Bearing in
mind the grand idea, punish for disobedience and caress when he
obeys. Carefully avoid all unnecessary excitement while educating
any animal, as it only tends to benumb their senses and make them
less susceptible of being taught.
INTELLIGENCE OF ANIMALS.
In discussing the intelligence of animals I am aware that many
persons, at the outset, would question the propriety of the term.
Man has so long arrogated the exclusive possession of mind, or at
least of a mind capable of rational reflection, that he is reluctant to
concede the fact of its possession by the lower orders of animate
life. Those acts which, in the brute creation, seem to proceed from
the action of powers analagous to human intelligence, it has been
usual to ascribe to an irrational faculty called instinct; a power
invariable and despotic in its action, but in no degree the result of
reflection; some metaphysicians even going so far as to assert that
the action of animals is purely automatic, the difference in this
respect between them and the automaton moved by wires and
springs being that the former possesses a consciousness of their
acts, while the latter does not. Facts in myriads, exist which
challenge the correctness of such a theory, while in almost equal
number they assert the existence, at least in its embryonic state, of
a mind capable of thought, and, to a limited degree, of reflection
and comparison, with the ability to deduce conclusions from the
facts which it considers.
This intelligence varies greatly in the different animal races, in
some species being barely perceptible, while in others it is too
conspicuous to be ignored; and between individuals of the same
species there exists a difference so marked that, in the more favored
ones which come under our observation, the intelligence is so clear
as to almost startle us by the feeling that behind the full, liquid eye
of the horse, or prompting the fixed gaze bent on us by our trusty
canine companion, there may be a mind kindred to our own and
which lacks only the power of articulate expression to respond to our
thoughts by answering sentiments. It is the absence of the power of
speech in animals which leaves us in doubt as to the exact degree of
intelligence possessed by them. If, when the farmer says, “Carlo! the
cows are in the corn—turn them out!” the dog should turn his head
and reply, “Yes, sir, I’ll have them out in a moment!” there could be
no doubt of the intelligent interchange of thought. But the fact of his
doing that which in the supposed case he would express, proves as
conclusively his comprehension of the command and his purpose to
obey. The horse or dog, however fully he may understand the
directions he receives, can give no other response than by his acts,
and to words of praise or censure he can reply only by signs; these
are clearly understood by us and show that our meaning is
comprehended by the animal, thus proving a real interchange of
thought. A popular author has said: “A dog may bark, a horse may
neigh, but it is not by these sounds that they express the delicate
shades of ever-varying emotion; it is by a thousand varieties of
gesture which few indeed of us can analyze but which all clearly
understand. A dog converses with his master by means of his eyes
and his ears and his tail, nay rather by every muscle of his body.”
To test the existence and extent of intelligence we must determine
the capacity for comprehending thought. We recognize this capacity
in a child long before it can express itself in language. Its dawn is
seen as the infant learns to associate certain articulate sounds with
certain persons, acts, or things, and to distinguish the meaning of
tones which encourage, restrain or chide it. It is only after a twelve-
month or more of constant tuition, lovingly and intelligently given,
that our children begin to express in language the thoughts which
are awakened by our words and acts, yet the comprehension is as
evident and the response as apparent, the whole mental process
being as perfect, long before. The same test which proves the
intelligence of the child demonstrates its existence in animals there
is a similar power of comprehending the wishes expressed, by
associating certain articulate sounds with certain acts required, as
well as an equal recognition of the tones of voice by which approval,
reproof or anger are made known; but, lacking the organs of
speech, they are debarred, and forever must be, from any except
the most limited interchange of thought. For this reason, attentive
study is needed in ascertaining the extent to which they comprehend
and respond to the intelligence which addresses them.
In the case of wild or undomesticated animals there is little
opportunity for investigating this interesting subject. We see the
beaver build his dam, and we understand the object so admirably
attained by his work. We know that the elephant, to be taken in the
pitfall, must see on the earth that covers it the foot-prints of one of
his fellows, and we surmise the process of reasoning by which he
concludes that he is safe in venturing where another of his kind has
trodden. We learn that the ostrich which in torrid regions trusts to
the heat of the sand for the incubation of her eggs, will in a more
temperate latitude supply the heat which would else be lacking by
setting on her eggs during the cooler nights; but in none of these,
nor in a score of other cases, in which there seems a rational
foresight, can we determine how far the acts result from intelligent
reflection. In domesticated animals, and especially in such as are
trained for the service of man, the action of intelligence may be
clearly traced; it is demonstrated by the ease and certainty with
which they can be educated; it is seen in the readiness with which
many receive and act upon ideas communicated to them; and in a
multitude of instances the mental process is evident by which they
have, independently, reached conclusions rationally deduced from
facts of their previous knowledge. Mr. J. Hope relates a circumstance
of a terrier who had been temporarily left by his master in the care
of a Mrs. Langford at St. Albans. This lady owned a large house-dog
which, disliking the presence of the stranger, quarreled with him,
biting and severely wounding him, after which the terrier
disappeared; but in a few days he returned again, accompanied by a
powerful mastiff, when both together fell upon the original assailant,
whom they nearly killed. The mastiff was the watch-dog at his
master’s house, more than a day’s journey distant, and had been
brought by the terrier for the sole purpose of avenging the injury he
had received, after which they left in company and proceeded
together to their home. Here was displayed a power of combining
ideas and of communicating them to one of his own kind, when the
two acted on the plan they had preconcerted.
In a work just issued, an anecdote is related of a dog who had
lost his master and afterwards became old and blind, passing his
time sadly in the same corner, which he rarely quitted. “One day
came a step like that of his lost master, and he suddenly left his
place. The man who had just entered wore ribbed stockings as his
master had done. The old dog had lost his scent and referred at
once to the stockings that he remembered, rubbing his face against
them. Believing that his master had returned, he gave way to the
most extravagant delight. The man spoke; the momentary illusion
was dispelled, the dog went sadly back to his place, lay wearily
down, and died.” Here was a double process of reasoning and even
a balancing of testimony with a decision that the negative evidence
of the strange voice outweighed the affirmative proof in the step and
the stockings.
Much evidence favors the belief that animals not only become
familiar with the words habitually addressed to them, but that they,
to a certain extent, understand our language. A dog, belonging to a
friend of the writer, would slink from the room with every indication
of shame if a fault of which he had been guilty was spoken of in his
presence. The author of “Chapters on Animals” describes a dog in
his possession which clearly distinguishes between those visitors at
the house who are favorites with his master and those whom he
dislikes, and adds: “I know not how he discovers these differences in
my feelings, except it be by overhearing remarks when the guests
are gone.”
The elephant, though one of the clumsiest of animals, exhibits
marks of high intelligence, and evidently understands the language
in which he is addressed. He can be stimulated to unusual exertions
by the promise of a reward. “I have seen,” says a French writer, “two
occupied in beating down a wall which their keepers had desired
them to do and encouraged them by a promise of fruits and brandy.”
They were left alone and continued at the work, stimulated by the
promised reward, until it was accomplished. “When a reward is
promised to an elephant,” says the same author, “it is dangerous to
disappoint him, as he never fails to revenge the insult.” Nothing of
this could occur without an understanding of the language.
In India they were formerly employed to launch vessels, and it is
related that one being directed to force a large ship into the water,
the task proved beyond his strength; whereupon his master, in a
sarcastic tone, ordered the keeper to take away this lazy beast and
bring another; the poor animal, as if stung by emulation, instantly
repeated his efforts, fractured his skull and died on the spot.
It may be said that the tones of the voice rather than the words
are what the animal understands, yet a dog knows his name
however spoken, and a horse understands a whole vocabulary of
orders. But the intelligence which comprehends the meaning of a
tone, is not less than that required to understand a word or
sentence. Mr. Hamerton, the artist, widely known as a lover of
animals, mentions a favorite dog which met an untimely death by
drowning, and in his lament over his lost pet, says: “He was a dog of
rare gifts, exceptionally intelligent, who would obey a look where
another needed an order. He would sit studying his master’s face
and had become from careful observation so acute a physiognomist
that he read whatever thoughts of mine had any concern for him.”
The shrewd intelligence of our countrymen is nowhere more
clearly seen than in the keen bargains the New Englander is famous
for driving. But our domestic animals make bargains with us and
sometimes resolutely keep us to them. On this point a pleasant
writer relates an anecdote of a favorite mare who was so difficult to
catch in the pasture as to often require six men to effect it; “but,”
says he, “I carried corn to her for a long time, without trying to take
her, leaving the corn on the ground. Next, I induced her to eat the
corn while I held it, still leaving her free. Finally I persuaded her to
follow me, and now she will come trotting half a mile at my whistle,
leaping ditches, fording brooks, in the darkness and rain, or in
impenetrable fog. She follows me like a dog to the stable and I
administer the corn there. But it is a bargain; she knowingly sells her
liberty for the corn. The experiment of reducing the reward to test
her behavior having been tried, she ceased to obey the whistle and
resumed her former habits; but the full and due quantity having
been restored, she yielded her liberty again without resistance, and
since then she is not to be cheated.”
A horse which is regularly used for attending church, will, from its
own observation, learn to recognize the Sabbath and understand the
meaning of the church bells. Two interesting illustrations of this fact
I give on the authority of a recent number of the Hartford Post:
A pair of horses that had been used during the week

in team-work to Springfield, on Sunday were
harnessed and driven to the door unhitched, and, the
family being rather tardy that morning, as soon as the
second bell began to ring the horses started off alone,
and with their usual Sunday motion went up in front of
the church, when, after waiting the usual time, they
quietly went around under the horse-shed.
Here the horses plainly understood the distinction between that

day and the six previous ones when they had been driven to
Springfield, else they would have gone, after starting, to where they
had been going through the week; they also evidently understood
that at the ringing of the second bell it was time to start for church.
The gentleman who communicated the foregoing adds an instance
which occurred in his own family:
The father of the writer, owing to increasing

infirmities, rode alone to meeting, half a mile, driving
an old gray mare twenty years old, and had not failed
of going every Sabbath for some years. On one
occasion, owing to a fall, he could not go to meeting,
and on Sunday morning, as the time for meeting
approached, the horse, in a lot near the house,
manifested great uneasiness, and when the second
bell struck she leaped over the fence and trotted
quietly to church, stopping at her usual hitching-place,
under an old elm tree, until the close of the service,
when the faithful animal returned safely to the house.
When we remember that such exhibitions of intelligence occur

continually where the animals have received no training on the
subjects to which they relate, it seems certain that they are the
result of a mental process which strongly resembles thought, and we
would expect, from patient culture, displays of intelligence greatly in
advance of those ordinarily taking place. Such an expectation is
justified by the results which have followed training when directed to
this end. In a paper entitled “Canine Guests,” Philip Gilbert Hamerton
gives an account of the trained dogs of M. du Rouil which, but for
the unimpeachable veracity of the writer, would be almost incredible.
M. du Rouil began to educate his first dog out of curiosity to see the
effect of the sort of education which seemed to him best adapted for
establishing a close understanding between the human and canine
minds; the results astonished himself and were so gratifying that he
subsequently educated two others on the same principles. Two of
these dogs, “Blanche” and “Lyda,” with their master, were guests of
Mr. Hamerton, and the intelligence they exhibited, and which he
describes, is, by his own admission, “incredible,” yet may be so only
because of our ignorance of the nature and extent of the mental
powers belonging to the animal creation. Among the many feats
performed by them were the spelling of words by lettered cards; the
correction of words purposely misspelled; the working out of simple
problems in arithmetic and the playing of cards and dominoes. Of
the latter, Mr. Hamerton says: “Both the dogs played a game at
dominoes. This was managed as follows: the dogs sat on chairs
opposite each other, and took up the domino that was wanted; but
the master placed it in its position and kept announcing the state of
the game. Their distress when they could not go on without drawing
from the bank was announced in piteous whines, and amused us all
exceedingly. Lyda was the loser, and precipitately retreated to hide
herself with an evident consciousness of defeat.”
An incident occurred in the course of the evening which showed
some understanding of language. A little girl wanted Blanche to
come to her, but the dog kept away, on which M. du Rouil said,
“Blanche, go salute the little girl!” She immediately went up to the
child and made a formal obeisance.
The owner of Blanche stated that he was going home one night
accompanied by the dog and on his way saw a man who was
searching for some object that he had lost. “What are you seeking?”
he asked. The man answered that he had lost 280 francs. “Possibly
my dog may be able to find them for you; have you any money left?
If you have, show her a piece of gold.” It was done and the dog
directed to search. She at once set out and soon returned, bringing
first one piece of gold, then another, and then a bank-note, till the
whole sum that had been lost was regained.
M. du Rouil said that Blanche really knew all the letters and the
playing-cards by their names, and Lyda really knew all the figures. In
addition to this Blanche had studied about one hundred and fifty
words in different languages, something like twenty in each
language. So it was with Lyda and the figures. She knew each one
by its name, and would bring the one called for. In describing the
earlier stages of training through which these dogs had passed, their
owner said the first thing was to make the dog fetch an object, the
next to make him discriminate between one of two very different
objects placed together, and bring one or the other as it was
mentioned by its name. In beginning the alphabet he put two most
dissimilar letters side by side to begin with, such as an O and an I,
avoiding the confusion of similar ones, such as O and Q or B and R.
Gradually the dog became observant enough to discriminate
between letters in which the difference was not so marked. M. du
Rouil said he had found the greatest difficulty in teaching Blanche to
distinguish between the knaves and kings in playing-cards, but that
she learned the aces very promptly. When he was asked what, after
his ten years’ experience, was his opinion of the intelligence of dogs,
he answered, with great emphasis, “that it is infinite.”
In subsequent pages I shall set forth my method of educating
both dogs and horses to perform a variety of feats, which will be
described, and from the ideas thus imparted the reader may multiply
the number of tricks to any desired amount.
FERREN’S PATENTED STEEL HORSESHOE.
HOOF EXPANDING HORSE SHOE FOR CONTRACTED FEET & CORNS

Ground surface of shoe.
The hoof prepared for the shoe.

One of the most valuable patents for Horseshoes was granted to
H. B. Ferren, of Batavia, N. Y., for a Steel Horseshoe, which promises
to come into general use, and will, to a very large extent, supersede
an Iron Shoe, whether made by a machine or by hand, because its
form is the best, the material is durable, and the manner of making
is such as to secure economy, and its adoption will prevent many of
the prevalent cruel malpractices upon a horse’s foot.
TRICK HORSES.
Many horses are susceptible of an education far more extensive
than is necessary for ordinary use, and for the benefit of such
persons as may desire to teach their horses something more than
the usual accomplishments, whether for their own amusement, or
for the purpose of seeing how far the intelligence of the animal can
be developed, I have prepared a description of a variety of tricks,
which, as performed by my horses, have been received with
universal applause, both in Canada and in the United States; to
simplify which, I have, at considerable cost, procured plates,
illustrating each of the tricks. But that no person may be misled into
supposing that this forms a part of my general system of educating
the horse, I deem it proper to present these directions separately.
Though the tricks to be hereafter illustrated and explained will add
nothing of intrinsic value to the horse, nor of real benefit to his
owner, yet the reader will readily see in them the demonstration of a
highly important fact, viz., that horses can be taught the meaning of
words, and to yield obedience to sounds to such an extent as to
convince a candid mind that their intelligence is far in advance of
that generally attributed to them. With these remarks I will proceed
to explain the modus operandi, as I call attention to a variety of
tricks they may easily be taught to perform. Before passing to this,
let me impress on the reader some leading principles in educating
the horse. First, never allow yourself to get in a hurry; impatience or
excitement on your part will go far in defeating the object of your
instructions. Second, do not prolong your lessons beyond twenty
minutes at one time; and, especially, never use severity beyond that
which may be absolutely necessary. Thus by kindness and patience
in repeating your lessons at short intervals, you will surmount every
difficulty and accomplish your purpose in a manner satisfactory to
yourself.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO MOUNT A PEDESTAL.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO MOUNT A PEDESTAL.
First make the Bonaparte bridle, and place it on your horse, then
lead him quietly up to the pedestal, and say to him, “Get up with
your fore-feet!” of course he will not obey; now you must teach him
your meaning. While you hold the bridle let some one take hold of
his front foot, raise it carefully and place it on the pedestal; then
caress him, after which say, “Get down!” at the same time using
your bridle in gently backing him. When he puts his foot down do
not omit to caress him. Repeat this until he will obey when spoken
to, then go through the same process with the other foot. After this,
place both feet on the pedestal; then require him to get down, then
up and down till he will obey you without the use of the bridle. Great
care should be taken not to excite the horse while educating him, for
when excited his brain becomes muddled, and he is unfitted for
retaining your instruction.
To make your horse stand on three legs: take a pin, and place it in
the end of your whipstock, and with the point prick him slightly on
the leg, in front, just below the fetlock joint, but not hard enough to
make him kick; repeat this several times accompanied by the words,
“hold up your foot!” continuing to repeat the punishment and words
until he will obey the command without punishment.
HOW TO MAKE A HORSE WALTZ.

Tie his head to his side by means of a surcingle and cord,
fastening the cord at the side, reaching from the mouth; touch him
lightly with the whip. He has to go, and, of course, he must go
around and around. He soon learns perfectly to waltz by the motion
of the whip, the teacher still repeating the word “waltz.”
TO EDUCATE THE HORSE TO WALK ON HIS

HIND FEET.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO WALK ON HIS HIND FEET.
Make the Bonaparte bridle, and put it on your horse; also put on a
bitting rig, similar to the one shown in the engraving, drawing his
head pretty well up and in. Now stand near his head with bridle in
hand, and jerk upward, as though you desired to lift him up, at the
same time repeating the words, “stand up on your hind feet!” repeat
this several times, and if he does not make a move to please you,
take hold of one leg, raising him up with one hand and using the
bridle with the other, as before directed, not forgetting to caress him
if he makes the slightest move in the direction of obedience. In
order to ensure success, kindness and patience should be the ruling
principles. After you have taught your horse to stand on his hind feet
you will next educate him to walk upright. This can be easily done
by observing the following directions. Stand in front of him, whip in
hand, saying, “Get up!” then shake the whip in front of him, stepping
backwards slowly, at the same time say to him, “Come here!”
repeating it sharply and touching him gently with the whip on the
knees. By carefully observing the above directions, you will quickly
teach your horse to stand upright, and to walk on his hind feet.
HOW TO MAKE A HORSE SAY “NO.”

Prick him on the neck at the terminus of the mane till he shakes
his head, then remove the pin, caress him, repeat for a while, and
your horse will soon shake his head when you raise your hand to
your heart; be always sure to treat the animal kindly for well-doing,
and caress him when he deserves it, and he will repay you by his
love for you and willingness to do your bidding.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO PUSH A VEHICLE.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO PUSH A VEHICLE.
After your horse has been taught to mount a pedestal with his
fore-feet, and to stand and walk upright on his hind-feet it is a
comparatively easy task to educate him to mount upon a vehicle and
push it. It is not at all necessary that a horse should be attached to
it in front, as appears in the illustration, where the engraver has
placed a representation of my black horse, Prince Albert, as a matter
of taste, not as being necessary in conducting the instruction.
In this trick it will be scarcely necessary for the educator to put
the Bonaparte bridle on his horse unless he should show some
stubbornness, but, with bitting rig on, stand near his head, whip in
hand, and say to him in rather a loud and sharp tone of voice, “Get
up!” Some fear on his part may be manifested, still do not give up
nor lose your patience, but lift his feet up and caress him. When he
does get up do not at first allow the vehicle to move, nor until he
has mounted two or three times, then say to him, “Push!” and in a
short time you will have taught him not only to get up on the vehicle
but to push it in front of him. After your horse has been thoroughly
taught, you will discover that he is delighted to amuse you, and he
will appear pleased to participate in the enjoyment of the trick.
HOW TO MAKE A HORSE GO LAME.

Tap him on the fore-leg till he holds it up, then caress him kindly;
lead him with the left hand to the bit, and tap the left fore-leg with a
stick in your right hand; repeat the word “lame, lame, lame,” and
your horse will soon learn to hold up one leg at the command.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO BE VICIOUS.

TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO BE VICIOUS.
Many persons are incredulous in regard to the assertion that

horses can be educated; had one lived a hundred years ago he
might have been excused for such incredulity, but in this age of
knowledge and advancement in all departments of human life, no
man should close his eyes to any of the developments wrought by
man’s ingenuity. That the horse possesses more intelligence than
many are disposed to admit, facts abundantly prove, and that he is
quite as susceptible of acquiring evil and vicious habits as is man,
the following trick will show.
My horse, Prince Albert, appears to enjoy the subjoined trick
greatly, and I regard it as quite a sensational one. To educate a
horse to be vicious you have only to attract his attention, and then
appear to be afraid of him. For instance, strike him lightly with a
whip on the knees, then run away from him, and after you have
repeated this a few times he will run after you. You may make the
trick more interesting by calling him names, such as “a nigger,” “a
mean horse,” and on speaking the words run from him. But be
careful to have some place of safety, so that, when he follows, you
may get out of his reach, as at some time he may disappoint and
overtake you and mete out a punishment that will be anything but
pleasing or desirable.
HOW TO TEACH A HORSE TO LAUGH.

Prick him with a pin on the nose till he turns his lip up; then
caress him well. He will soon learn that when you point towards him
and say, “Laugh,” that it means a prick in the nose, if he does not
turn his lip up.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO WALK ON HIS

KNEES.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO WALK ON HIS KNEES.

The reader will observe, by reading my book, that great use is
made of the Bonaparte bridle, and if those who handle horses will
always resort to it when obedience from the horse is desired, they
will save much time, trouble and annoyance that so often occur,
especially to persons who quickly loose their tempers. Men can
accomplish more in fifteen minutes using the bridle than in fifteen
hours with any other means, as it does not inflict a severe
punishment when properly used, but never fails to secure obedience.
Therefore, as in most cases it is used, I, in the present, introduce it
again.
Put a surcingle on the horse, attach a strap to his nigh fore-foot
between the fetlock joint and hoof and draw it up to within eight or
ten inches of his body, then take a strap or cord, say 6 or 7 feet
long, and fasten it to his off fore-leg in the same manner and secure
the services of some person to assist you, directing him to stand on
the off-side, and, when directed, to pull up his foot. Place on the
horse the Bonaparte bridle, and take your position in front of him
with bridle in hand, requesting assistant to pull, when your horse will
come down on his knees, now pull on your bridle and say, “Come
here,” when he will soon obey you. Do not make your lessons long,
but repeat them often; not forgetting to caress him if he should
make the slightest move towards you.
Never attempt to teach a horse this trick with shoes on his hind-
feet, as he might cut himself, which would cause him to dread a
second effort.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO DRIVE A BOY OFF

THE PEDESTAL.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO DRIVE A BOY OFF THE PEDESTAL.
It will be necessary to first educate the horse to mount the

pedestal. Instructions to do this may be found elsewhere; then
proceed in the following manner to educate to the above trick. Put
on the Bonaparte bridle, using a cord, say twenty feet long, and
send your horse away from you with a whip, the length of the cord,
then give him a slight pull, and say, “Come here;” then run from him
and mount the pedestal yourself; when he approaches he will try to
mount, and as he does so you jump off. After you have thus
exercised him a few times get a boy to assist you. Let the boy stand
on the pedestal, and say to your horse, “Come here and mount up;”
instruct the boy to leave so soon as the animal shall mount.
You will find this trick quite a sensational one, and not difficult to
learn your horse.
TO SHAKE HANDS.
This is easily accomplished by tying a short strap or piece of cord
to the forward foot below the fetlock; then stand directly in front of
the horse, and hold the end of the strap in your hand, and say,
“Shake hands, sir.” After which pull immediately upon the strap,
which will bring his foot forward, and which you are to accept as
shaking hands; then, of course, you must caress and feed him, and
keep him repeating, until, when you make the demand, he will bring
the foot forward in anticipation of having it pulled up.
HOW TO MAKE A HORSE BOW.

Prick him in the breast with a pin, till he throws his head down
and up the least bit; then take the pin away, and caress him kindly;
repeat for a few times, until when you stand back and attract his
attention, he will nod his head, expecting a prick in the breast.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO SIT DOWN.

TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO SIT DOWN.
Horses differ very much in their capacity for being taught
therefore, if you desire a pleasing subject, select one that is
tractable. Directions: Make the Bonaparte bridle, and place it on your
horse, so that you may have him under proper control, then put on
him a common hame collar; now take two pole-straps and place one
on each hind-leg, below the fetlock joint, and attach a cord, say
twelve feet long, to each strap, carry your cord up through the collar
on each side and bring the ends behind him, holding also the end of
the Bonaparte bridle in your hand, and commence to pull on your
cords; now repeat over the words, “sit down;” as he goes backwards
draw up still more on your cords, until he shall sit down. Do not
allow him to remain in this sitting posture more than a minute the
first lesson. Repeat this two or three times a day for five or six days,
and you, with the assistance of a whip pointed downwards to the
ground, will witness the pleasing effect of your instruction by seeing
your horse sit down at the word of command.
TO CURE THE SCRATCHES IN THE SHORTEST

TIME EVER KNOWN.
Use two tablespoonfuls of lard, and one tablespoonful of slacked
lime; brush out the dirt and dust from the foot; use no water. Apply
the salve, well mixed, twice each day. It will cure the worst cases in
4 to 6 days.
Another remedy:
Hydrate of potassa, 10 grains; pulverized nut-galls, ½ oz.; white
lead, pulverized opium, each ¼ oz.; lard, ¼ lb. Wash with soap-
suds, rub dry, and apply the mixture night and morning. Give
purging ball.
TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO BORE FOR OIL.

TO EDUCATE A HORSE TO BORE FOR OIL.
Place on your horse the Camanche bridle, and educate him to the
words, “Come here,” so that he will mind you readily on hearing the
words; by this you can better control him while educating to the trick
in question. Some difficulty may at first be experienced, but by
patience and perseverance you will not fail.
Take an ordinary pole-strap and place it on your horse below the
fetlock joint on the off fore-foot; now take one loose turn round the
nigh fore-foot, and take the end of the strap in one hand, with the
other hand pull gently on the bridle, using the words as instructed.
Your animal will attempt to obey, but will find himself somewhat
hampered, yet he will quickly learn. If he should at first move a foot
to please you, say “Whoa,” and then caress. Make your lesson short,
and do not try to force him too much, for if you do he will become
excited and resist your effort.
HOW TO MAKE A HORSE WALK UP.

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More Than Bollywood Studies in Indian Popular Music 1st

Indian Literature and Popular Cinema Recasting Classics

Health Communication in 21st 2 Kevin B. Wright

Mad Tales from Bollywood Portrayal of Mental Illness in

Information retrieval Searching in the 21st century 1st

Statistics in the 21st Century Ed 1st Edition Martin A.

Urban Planning in the 21st Century 1st Edition Daniel S.

World Politics In The 21st Century 1st Edition W. Raymond

Popular Indian Cinema in the 21st Century

Neelam Sidhar Wright

Neelam Sidhar Wright

© Neelam Sidhar Wright, 2015

Edinburgh University Press Ltd

Typeset in 11/13 Monotype Ehrhardt by

ISBN 978 0 7486 9634 5 (hardback)

The right of Neelam Sidhar Wright to be identified as author of

1 Introduction: The Bollywood Eclipse 1

1.1 Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit as Mona Lisa in Gaja Gamini 1

DCH Dil Chahta Hai (2001)

t­ echniques of popular Music Television (MTV) to re-image its song sequences

Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor, who would go on to appear in major US film

era. While hesitant to confine my research to a fixed historical period, I have

developed by others before it can be as straightforward and unproblematic as

in ‘instrumental pastiche’ and a play with simulacra, and ultimately exploiting

question also whether postmodernism is purely a contemporary phenomenon,

A whole generation of films is appearing which . . . lack only an imagi-

is further explored by Scott Lash (1988). Lash stresses how postmodern

. . . the increasing uniformization of mass culture is one of the totalising

Hutcheon’s theorisation is valuable not only as an attack on those who

a­ ttitudes towards) popular Indian films. Inspired by the postmodern notion

M. Keith Brooker. As the field of postmodern Bollywood cinema studies is

interruption in its filmmaking methods, an obscuring or eclipsing of previous

C ompared to longer-established studies of other popular cinemas, such as

Social scientists have stated their objective of ‘rescuing’ Indian cinema

Trad i t i o na l a p p r o a c h e s t o I n dia n fil m:

director Satyajit Ray’s socio-realist films frequently stood as fitting flagship

fabricated and contradictory to actual identity’ (Srivastava: 196). Nevertheless,

. . . there has been a re-mapping of the ‘Indian’ subject . . . located not

it is too glib and cursory to say that Bollywood enables a religion-like

the popular cinema’s is to conform. As pure escapism, Bollywood is not asso-

‘empty signifier’, collapsing together and thus suppressing the individuality

. . . those who have invested in earlier models of the Indian popular

Inspector Ghote (Keating, 1976), although a handful of Indian film journalists

which I explore in more detail later in my analysis of Bollywood-Hollywood

As Prasad later argues in extending his previous discussion in ‘Surviving

‘Bollywood’ also signals the advent of a certain reflexivity, becoming a

world, the contrastive pleasures and values that it represents vis-à-vis

195). Following Rajadhyaksha’s concept of ‘Bollywoodization’, he argues that

Similarly, Monika Mehta (2007) pessimistically sees the global as the

Much inconvenience, besides an actual loss of money, is

PRACTICAL RESULT OF EDUCATING THE COW

PRACTICAL RESULT OF EDUCATING THE COW TO GIVE DOWN MILK.

Having directed the attention of the reader to the education of the

A CURE FOR HEAVES, NEVER BEFORE

TO CURE WORMS IN HORSES.

TO EDUCATE CATTLE TO LEAD BEHIND A

TO EDUCATE A TENDER-MOUTHED HORSE TO PULL

t echniques of popular Music Television (MTV) to re-image its song sequences

a ttitudes towards) popular Indian films. Inspired by the postmodern notion