Terrains of Bollywood Dance: (Neoliberal) Capitalism and the Transformation of Cultural Economies

Abstract

Abstract This article explores ways of theorizing cultural change in contexts of liberalization and rapid economic growth. I focus on post-1990s India, looking on the one hand at the emergence of a Bollywood dance craze within middle class (transnational) India, and, on the other hand, at the rise of dance bars, where girls danced seductively for a male audience, a phenomenon that was subject to a vigorous moral campaign and a ban. I explore capitalism in its ability to (indiscriminately) fuel, scale, and feed phenomena as well as its production of class and disparity. I also look at lavish expenditure and ostentatious show in contexts of music and dance, exploring the connections yet contradictions of the vast surpluses of capitalism, the use of performing arts as a medium to display this money-power as status, and ideologies of productivity and industriousness and, on the other hand, of waste. I further analyze the unevenness, unintended consequences, and powerfully moral dimensions of (neoliberal) capitalism through contextualizing it as a form of liberalism. Thus I examine the ways in which we can understand the sheer pervasiveness of capitalism and its transformational power, yet also its unevenness and unpredictability, its dystopias as well as utopias.