Musical Numbers in Bollywood Cinema’s Homeland and Diaspora

Abstract

AbstractHow does Bollywood cinema depict ideas about the homeland and diaspora, and what kind of relationships can we track and decipher about diaspora culture as the cinema creates itineraries through its films and related popular cultures? In response, this chapter will use musical numbers in Bollywood cinema to draw attention to a series of representations and cultural politics about the homeland and diaspora relationship as in need of further exploration. It will look at select musical numbers from two broad types of Bollywood films that deal with the diaspora in terms of its relationship to the homeland in actual and imagined ways. The first type of diaspora film might be considered as a dominant ideology of popular Hindi cinema where the relationship between the homeland and the diaspora is represented in limited or conservative ways. In the second type of film, this relationship is shown to be contested, at the very least, and as an imaginative mode of being.