Bollywood Research Articles

‘If Madonna can … ’: emergence of the female indipop star in the 1990s MTV cultural economy

ABSTRACT As cinema moved from exhibition theatres to cable television in the late-1980s pre-liberal License Raj 1 economy, the competitive music label market in India pushed its executives to look beyond the established modes of music making and selling. This development also collided with the growing cultural demand for new and ‘fresh’ female voices, and innovative audio-visual modes inspired by the MTV consumerism model of the West. Additionally, music videos of international popstars such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, etc. started making waves in India through direct and indirect channels. As a result, the influence of western music video culture led the music industry officials to rope in ‘westernized in style, desi at heart’ female performers to represent the new wave of alternative non-film popular music – collectively popularised by music labels and the media as Hindi Pop or Indipop. Moreover, the cultural impact of American popstar Madonna’s stardom, performativity, and politics also played a critical role in the way the emerging Indipop ‘divas’ projected themselves, both in and outside the diegesis of their music videos, during the 90s MTV boom in India. Engaging with the textual and extratextual world of indipop music videos that belong to the ‘new women’ of the neoliberal-90s – Jasmine Bharucha, Alisha Chinai, Shweta Shetty, etc.—this paper attempts to track and locate the emergence of these ‘non-film’ 2 female voices in the traditional ‘song and dance’ aesthetic substructure of Bombay cinema.

Popular media’s role in fostering sex education in middle schools: A comparative analysis of Netflix series Sex Education and Bollywood film Oh My God 2

India as a country has always been seen as a repository of culture and heritage. The historical ruins, temples, scriptures of this ancient land foster liberty regarding sexuality and its significance in the advancement of civilization. However, sex education is still a taboo and an alien topic in the Indian education system. On the other hand, in the USA, one of the most advanced countries, sex education is a mandate, but sadly, there are middle schools in many states in the USA, which do not ponder over the subject at all.The reason behind this is the fact that there is no unified National Policy regarding Sex-Education in the USA, it is vested with the states individually. The USA government had been promoting ‘Abstinence-only-until-marriage’ (AOUM) education till Obama came. Even after implementing an evidence-based sex education system, the overall status of comprehensive sex education is unsatisfactory in the USA. This research aims at dealing with the issues associated with implementing and practising sex-education in the middle school and how the popular media deals with it and influences it. The paper takes into account the famous Netflix series Sex Education which is hugely applauded for its candid and inclusive approach towards sex and sexuality of teenagers and the recent bollywood film OMG2 which serves as a critique of the Indian education system which fails to provide proper knowledge on the subject and jeopardises the adolescent life.

Mumbai to Dubai: Promotional strategies and the celluloid journey of Bollywood films to the UAE

In recent years, the cinematic migration of Bollywood films from Mumbai to Dubai has captivated attention, prompting a focused investigation. This study aims to scrutinize the promotional strategies used in distributing Bollywood films in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through meticulous analysis of questionnaire responses. Executing an extensive survey for UAE moviegoers and industry professionals, the research seeks quantitative data on the efficacy of diverse promotional strategies. The study underscores the importance of cultural variables in Bollywood-UAE film promotion, examining cultural similarities between India and the UAE, portraying UAE culture in Bollywood films, and using cultural festivals for marketing. Economic factors driving this collaboration, including box office success, coproductions, and the impact of Bollywood tourism on the UAE economy, are systematically analyzed. The study explores technological advancements in film promotion—social media, internet streaming, and virtual reality—and their impact on the relationship between Bollywood and the UAE. The survey investigates audience preferences, advertising impacts, and awareness levels by examining specific advertising tactics in the UAE, such as premieres, endorsements, tours, and participation in festivals and award shows. In addition to providing a comprehensive understanding of the promotional environment, the questionnaire data analysis identifies trends influencing the trajectory of Bollywood films in the UAE, offering empirical support to film studies and marketing. The hypothesis is tested on the Chi-square, Pearson Correlation, and Mann‒Whitney. The research’s conclusions contribute to understanding the globalization of the Bollywood film industry, guiding producers, marketers, and researchers in cross-cultural film promotion and global industry partnerships.

Rhythm, noise and action: decoding R.D. Burman’s soundtracks of Bombay cinema

ABSTRACT The sustained use of ‘Western’ style orchestration in Bombay film music can be attributed to the trajectory of two kinds of musical practices, one tethered to the leisure economies developed by the colonial rule from the 19th century onwards, and second, the robust and frequent presence of travelling jazz bands from the early twentieth century. As a period of intense transformation, the decade of the 1940s saw musicians from different parts of the subcontinent move to Bombay to find work in the film industry. This process often involved adapting to new performance contexts, genres and instruments. Studios in the Bombay film industry became fecund spaces where musicians and arrangers trained in Western classical music came in heady contact with the jazz men of Bombay’s nightclubss. Focusing on the late 1960s as another transitional moment, this article traces R.D. Burman’s affective encounters with these ‘mobile musicking bodies.’ Biographies of his key musicians give us detailed accounts of their training and involvement in diverse sites of musical performance, before they arrived in the Bombay film industry. This detour informs my analysis of R.D. Burman and his team’s innovative film scores, underlining vocal effects, side rhythms and inclusion of edgy off-key sounds. Moving away from a song-driven approach, I focus on title tracks, background scores and extended instrumental set-pieces of crime and action genres that are now getting recirculated on the internet by R.D. Burman’s fans. Through a methodology that will combine textual analysis, internet ethnography and close listening, the article will argue that these new soundscapes carried the inscriptions of global music cultures and ‘extra-musical’ noise.

Impact of Item Songs in Hindi Films on Psychological Well-Being of Young Women in Pakistan

Movies are a popular form of mass media that helps shape ideas, develop images, and reinforce dominant cultural norms. The structure of the "lyrics and dance moves" of item songs objectifies women in the most humiliating ways. In Pakistan, there is massive viewership of Hindi films. This study focuses on the impact of Hindi item songs on the psychological wellbeing of young women in Pakistan. It also investigates the perception of self among young women after watching Hindi item songs. The study used the survey method to consider 150 female participants (aged 17-30 years). The findings of the study suggest that participants of the survey admire the self-confidence of the “item girl” portrayed in item songs, and they also see her as an “independent woman”. Though they do not prefer to watch item songs with family, they love to use it as a celebration song at weddings, parties and other gatherings and also like to perform on such songs compared to different songs. The study concludes that despite some otherwise conceptions, young women in Pakistan are convinced by the “depiction of confident women” in Hindi item songs. The uses and gratifications hypothesis posits that individuals consume various media types because they anticipate obtaining certain gratifications from such choices.

(Re)Looking at the Women of Indian Cinema in the Praxis of Conventional Rendering

Films significantly impact social consciousness as they have the power to shape opinions, influence perspectives, and contribute to cultural conversations. In shaping perceptions, films enable people to perceive certain issues, events, or groups of people from dissimilar viewpoints. This paper looks into the nuances of representation of Indian women in films, primarily in Hindi cinema, and how their portrayal differs when their identities are constructed by writers and directors of the opposite gender. It argues for an equitable position for representing women in cinema and highlights the role of intersectional relationships between race, class, sexuality, and ability for the same. With an emphasis on feminist film theory and its praxis, this paper traces the history of Indian cinematic renderings in giving agency to women in films and how the perspectives of women writers and directors seeps into their creations for a positive outcome, whereas the male centric industry hinders the proper portrayal of the lived experience. It finally advocates for an academic understanding of the lacunas that exist in the entire ecosystem and offers an expansive approach for devising actionable and sustainable solutions to the critical problem of representation.

The Sex Worker That She Is Not: Suggestion, Risk and Public Femininity in Contemporary Hindi Cinema

This paper argues for the significance of sex work as a figurative and affective reference point in the production of ideas of romance, risk and respectability in public culture through a reading of contemporary Hindi cinema. Reading the films Jab We Met (2007) and Pink (2016), I ask what the sex worker does in the films’ narratives when she herself is absented from it but brought up suggestively. I propose suggestion as a figurative technique deployed in the films to mediate a tension about knowing and identifying sex work as well as to produce an ideology of romance, personhood and injury, critical to assemblages of femininity in these films. This paper argues that such a reading of films that privileges the figuration of sex work through what may otherwise be seen as a minor invocation, presents the opportunity to critically examine naturalised ideas of romance, risk and respectability that find expression in them. It makes the case for the figure of the sex worker as an important node of affective intensification in the larger sphere of public sexuality.

Cinematic Kaleidoscope: Hindi Films Tranforming Gender Identities

Cinematic Kaleidoscope: Hindi Films Tranforming Gender Identities

“Jack and Johnny went up the hill”: Emergent homonationalism and the construction of a palatable queer subject in post-Section 377 Bollywood cinema

ABSTRACT This article interrogates an archetype it terms the “palatable queer subject” in post-Section 377 Bollywood cinema. It advances that the production of this subject reflects and reifies India’s emergent homonationalism in the wake of the 2018 decriminalization of homosexual relations. The palatable queer upholds nationalism while enabling India to present itself on the global stage as a progressive nation state. In the Indian context, decriminalization granted this particular subject access to a newly sedimented norm of queerness predicated on the exclusion of more marginalized queer communities. This article strives to excavate this archetype in Hitesh Kewalya’s Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (Be particularly careful of marriage). It extends Jasbir Puar’s framework of homonationalism in new geographic and conceptual directions, arguing that the palatable queer subject in Bollywood cinema reveals that certain queer people – namely, cisgender upper-caste, upper-class men – have been folded into the nation state, at the expense of more vulnerable queer people.

Evolution of Female Desire and Fantasy in Bollywood Cinema: Perspectives from Male and Female Directors in the Post-Liberalization Era

The camaraderie between cinema and fantasy has a prolonged story, as one escalates the other. Since echoes of 'sexual fantasies’ and ‘gaze’ in cinema have been primarily celebrated and fantasized through patriarchal prisms, Bollywood and female desire have historically been fraught with challenges. However, Bollywood cinema has lately been undergoing significant landscape twists by featuring female fantasies in a bold and progressive manner at the forefront of narratives. In light of this, drawing from theoretical perspectives on the male gaze and psychoanalytic feminism, this paper will examine the evolving representations of female desire, fantasy and sexuality in contemporary Bollywood cinema. Through a nuanced analysis of nine key Bollywood films from 1996 to 2023, this paper will compare male and female directors' approaches to the male gaze when depicting female desire and sexuality on screen, examining how filmmakers' personal perspectives shape cinematic portrayals. It will also consider how economic liberalization affected the representation of female sexual desires and fantasies in Bollywood cinema, emphasizing the intersection of culture, economics, and gender in Indian popular culture. To conclude, this paper will illuminate how Bollywood cinema has become a powerful platform for the exploration of female desire and fantasy, serving as a catalyst for social change and challenging conventional gender norms in contemporary Indian society.

Political and Cultural Dynamics in Bollywood and Nollywood Films: A Comparative Perspective

Films are popularly believed to be reflection of reality as well as a representation of the societies in which they were produced. They are excellent windows into their societies of origin and could thus serve as good anthropological or historical documents containing data about socio-political events that have happened in their societies of origin. One of the multiple data one can extract/gather from films is the socio-cultural and political dynamics prevailing in the society in which the films subsist. This paper attempts to illustrate this thesis through a review of relevant Bollywood and Nollywood films. Specifically, the study hinges on a review of relevant selected films to show how Bollywood and Nollywood are a reflection of cultural and political dynamics in India and Nigeria respectively. The paper starts with a brief background which examines the extent to which Nollywood and Bollywood films could be considered a reflection of contemporary Nigeria and India. It proceeds to defining the concept of cultural and political dynamics, with strict respect to the Indian and Nigerian experiences. The paper ends up with an examination of how these cultural and political dynamics are reflected in relevant Bollywood and Nollywood films. It concludes that both Nigerian and Bollywood films reflect social and political dynamics in their societies of origin in the same way.

Leveraging history to invoke nationalism: from the annals of history to social engineering of present and future in Hindi cinema

ABSTRACT Nationalism calls for one’s loyalty and affiliation towards their chosen nation. Various versions of nationalism emphasise that one must prioritise said nation above themselves and their personal ethics, hence, allowing the nation to overpower the nationalist’s individuality. In this article, we use Critical Discourse Analysis to deconstruct the narratives of nationalism as portrayed in two popular films, viz. The Kashmir Files and Uri: The Surgical Strike, which are based on real historical events – the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus and the surgical strike by the Indian Army in retaliation to the Uri attack. Both films use narrative strategies to frame key historical events into certain ideological contexts, and hence they serve the populist purpose of swaying viewers’ opinion in favour of the dominant socio-political class.

Evolving Cinematic Techniques in Hindi Films: A Practice-Based Study on the Integration of Technology and Tradition

Evolving Cinematic Techniques in Hindi Films: A Practice-Based Study on the Integration of Technology and Tradition

UNDERSTANDING BOLLYWOOD CULT FILMS: EXPLORING THEIR ROLE IN CHANGING CONVENTIONS AND IMPACTING NEW THOUGHTS IN INDIAN YOUTH, SOCIETY AND CULTURE

This research explores the impact of Bollywood cult films on Indian society and culture, focusing on how they challenge preconceived notions and promote original thought. Cult films often address taboo topics and minority perspectives, encouraging viewers to think critically and explore alternative options. These films reflect social and cultural shifts in India, highlighting the concerns and opinions of younger generations and building passionate fan followings. Despite having a low return on investment, many cult films have a long-lasting influence, sometimes serving as catalysts for social and cultural movements and impacting the careers of performers and filmmakers. The study highlights the importance of filmmakers considering the social impact of their work and using their platform to support ideals that promote peace, justice and social harmony. Researchers and students interested in the film industry, popular culture and society can use this data to examine and compare various cult films and understand their cultural and social values. The results of this research can be used by scholars, students and researchers to better understand the cultural and social significance of Bollywood cult films and their impact on Indian society and culture.

Portrayal of Disability in Hindi Cinema

Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood, is a powerful medium that influences public perception and social norms in India. The portrayal of differently-abled characters in the films is also among them. The portrayal of disability can either reinforce stereotypes and prejudices or challenge them and promote inclusivity. This paper will analyze the portrayal of disability in Hindi cinema in the 21st century, exploring how these representations have evolved and their impact on societal attitudes towards disability. This study is based on qualitative research and uses secondary data like books, journals, and films. There are a total of 11 films taken from the time span of 2005 to 2023. The portrayal of disability in Hindi cinema has undergone significant changes, as demonstrated by many films. These films depict differently-abled individuals with outstanding empathy and depth, highlighting their capabilities and the obstacles they face in society. An examination of specific Hindi films reveals both advancements and difficulties in the depiction of disabilities. Although films have succeeded in increasing awareness and promoting empathy, they occasionally succumb to the pitfalls of sentimentalism or exceptionalism. The cultural consequences of these films differ, emphasizing the necessity for genuine and subtle depictions that strike a balance between realism and empowerment. Future films should aim to achieve a wide range of different and precise portrayals, which should include the participation of differently-abled actors and creators in order to guarantee authenticity. Cinema has the potential to promote inclusivity in society by nurturing empathy and questioning cultural prejudices, thereby acknowledging the dignity and skills of differently-abled individuals.

Politics and Violence in Representation of Acid Attack Victims in the Media: A Feminist Discursive Perspective

Abstract In recent times, narratives of acid attack survivors have become common in the media (newspapers and magazines), showcasing them simultaneously as fashion models and victims of a heinous crime. In a similar vein, the Hindi film Chhapaak underscores the barbarity of an acid attack and the subsequent struggles for justice by the protagonist. Drawing on feminist critical discourse analysis and insights from Nancy Fraser on cannibal capitalism, this article analyzes the discursive construction of acid assault victims through select extracts from media articles and the film to highlight the politics of representation of the survivors and their ordeals against patriarchal and androcentric arrangements in society. Linguistic analysis (through speech acts, vocabulary, and presupposition) reveals contradictory discourses of celebration and discrimination in the media in relation to fashion, where the acid survivors are used not only to increase awareness about the offense but also to promote sales of garments. The discourses of rampant unemployment, gender-based oppression, and racial violence, despite laws regulating the sale of acid, underscore the cannibalizing tendencies of a capitalist society that seeks to devour and shun women after incapacitating them. Furthermore, the complicity of public agencies (legal, medical, and governmental) hints at apathy, callousness, and the systemic violence symptomatic of a profit-driven capitalist society.

The changing dynamics of Indian nationalism in contemporary Hindi movies

ABSTRACT Nationalism, an ideological concept that people of shared national identity adopt, is one of the most explored genres of the Hindi film industry. The theme of nationalism which once demanded a sacred and elevated treatment from cinema-makers has faced a comparatively light-hearted, ordinary, and relatable approach in contemporary times. Rather than confining the notion of nationalism within the nation's territory, such new-age movies depict how exiles and immigrants redefine the notion of nationalism. Replacing the exaggerated, parochial, and exclusive depictions of hyper-nationalism in early Hindi war movies with what Benedict Anderson calls ‘long-distance nationalism’, contemporary movies have the potential to expand the idea of the nation beyond its borders. Two such movies that depict characters redefining the notion of nationalism through their acts of transnationalism are Meghna Gulzar's Raazi and Raja Krishna Menon’s Airlift. Both the films refrain from engaging in the classical discourse of nationalism to reveal how dispersed immigrants contribute to the spirit of Indian nationalism through their acts of political participation.

Politics of apoliticality and the Indian citizen in popular Hindi cinema

ABSTRACT Popular Hindi cinema in contemporary times has characteristic patterns of ideological positioning, that reflect the populist authoritarian regime and its political agenda of a monolithic Hindu identity with its corresponding political version of a nation built on Hindutva policies. Film genres like historicals have been ideal propaganda vehicles in building counternarratives to challenge the fragile secular structures that keep the heterogeneity of the nation in place. A sub-genre to be mentioned in this context is biopics which have emerged as a popular sub-genre of historicals in contemporary Indian cinema. They narrate tales of individuals who have led extraordinary lives or have shaped their lives to become role models for the young to learn and emulate. Biopics can be turned into narratives about nationalism with little effort and we see several films shaping discourses on nationalism and national identity. Using biopics released since 2010, I seek to explore the significance of this hero in biopics in a neoliberal nationalist paradigm. The films chosen are those that depict the lives of common people who have turned heroes, as in the case of films like Manjhi – The Mountain Man (2015), Super 30 (2019), and Pad Man (2018).

Digital Platforms and Globalization: Transforming Gender and Social Narratives in the Hindi Film Industry through Case Studies of Select Films and Web-Series

Digital Platforms and Globalization: Transforming Gender and Social Narratives in the Hindi Film Industry through Case Studies of Select Films and Web-Series

INFLUENCE OF CHANGING PORTRAYALS OF WOMEN IN HINDI CINEMA ON YOUTH’S PROGRESSIVE GENDER ATTITUDES

This research paper examines the impact of evolving portrayals of women in Hindi cinema on the progressive gender attitudes of contemporary youth. In recent decades, Hindi cinema has increasingly shifted from portraying women primarily in conventional and submissive positions to presenting them in more forward-thinking and active roles. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of these alterations in cinematic portrayals on the perceptions and attitudes of young individuals towards gender equality. Through the use of a mixed-methods methodology including quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews, this study examines the relationship between film depictions and changes in gender attitudes among young people. Empirical evidence suggests that favourable depictions of women in contemporary Hindi film are linked to more progressive gender perspectives among young people, underscoring the capacity of media to influence society standards and behaviours.