A national cinema’s transnational aspirations? Considerations on “Bollywood”

Abstract

Popular Indian cinema theorized as a national cinema has recently undergone a ‘transnational turn’ within global cinema studies. Judging by the slew of books on ‘Bollywood’ with ‘travel’, ‘global’, ‘transnational’, and ‘border crossing’ in their titles, it would appear that the national is no longer a relevant rubric for Indian popular cinema. Despite the push to disavow the national in favor of transnational cinema studies, acknowledging other nodes connecting the expansive proliferation of films worldwide after digitization, the national cinema framework remains truculently relevant. A transnational approach might speak to a salutary universal cultural humanism in films, but it risks flattening cinematic storytelling, distinctive esthetics, and the particularity of cultural tropes integral to cinema historiography. Challenges to ‘national’ Indian cinema from regional, interregional, and regional–transnational connections strain the national rubric, but they underscore as much as they undercut the persistence of the Janus-faced concept of the nation in cinema studies.