Melodrama, mimicry, and menace: Reinventing Hollywood in Indian science fiction films

Abstract

In the last 10 years science fiction (sf) movies have seen a perceptible increase in the Indian film industries. Although this rise in the number of sf films reflects Indian society's changing concepts of science, technology and rationality in the context of the country's rapid development in the industrial and scientific sectors, an undeniable cause is the influence of Hollywood blockbusters, through direct and indirect borrowing and reinventing of plots, themes, and images. These borrowings, though, are more like extracted skeletons than proper remakes, because Bollywood cannot use Hollywood's socio-cultural values. Consequently, in sf movies the Indian viewer is presented with a curious amalgam of Western techno-science and a traditional, often anti-modern, values system: a blend of Western technological imagery and Indian melodrama. Even if an Indian film directly copies from a Hollywood movie, it alters the purpose, effect, and associations that the original work emphasizes. Such a process of modification embeds these films into the discourse of cultural mimicry mentioned by Homi Bhabha – a menacing, subversive, and partial copy that mocks its own sources.