Bollywoodization or ghettoization? The Bangladeshi dream factory is in disarray

Abstract

Abstract In this article, I claim that instead of making Bangladeshi films appealing to the Bangladeshi middle-class audience, the hegemony of Bollywood films has ghettoized them. I explain that with the change in the target audience and the production and exhibition of Bollywood films in the 1990s, the Bangladeshi middle-class audience responded to this change – as did the Indian middle-class audience – and was alienated from Bangladeshi commercial films. The absence of middle-class audiences in Bangladeshi cinema halls, however, was quickly filled out by working-class audiences who migrated from rural areas following economic liberalization and the expansion of the ready-made garment, housing and transport industries from the 1990s onwards. Bangladeshi commercial filmmakers then targeted the so-called captive lower-class audience with action-packed vulgar or obscene films. Through analysing the titles of Bangladeshi commercial films produced in the 1990s and the 2000s, I expound on how these films were ghettoized, completely alienating the middle-class audience.