Western media has begun to pay more attention to India as its prominence in world affairs grows, yet this massive nation with its diverse population and complicated history continues to mystify the Western imagination. Images from Bollywood—glitzy stars, lavish musical numbers, sentimental plotlines—represent the alienation as well as the fascination that stand in the way of Western understanding of India. This conference approaches the cultural divide by bringing scholarly focus to Bollywood culture.

Bollywood is India’s largest film industry and the largest in the world by volume, with over 3 billion tickets sold annually. Though the term is sometimes used to refer to Indian film as a whole, the designation “Bollywood” (a portmanteau of “Bombay” and “Hollywood”) is specific to the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, only one branch of India’s multilingual film production. Nevertheless, for much of its history Bollywood has occupied the place of “national” cinema in India. It is, furthermore, the only one of India’s cinemas with a significant international presence; Bollywood is the cinematic face India presents to the world.

In its early years, Bollywood turned out films with a social message, chiefly family melodramas that idealized the homeland and generated optimism about the nation. In the 1970s as national confidence plummeted and Indira Gandhi declared an “Emergency” for the country, angry young men took over the screen. In the 80s and 90s, increasing violence and a new emphasis on conspicuous consumption caused many critics to write off Bollywood, but today scholars are turning back to Bollywood to ask what it can tell us about cinema, globalization, and India.

Today’s Bollywood is a product of India’s economic liberalization and the globalization that accompanied it. A decade ago, national deregulation threatened Bollywood’s profits with loosened controls on piracy and increased competition from television. Bollywood responded with multimedia marketing (particularly in the form of movie songs), increased star presence (often two or three megastars appear in the same film), and sexier characters and plots. The influence of Hong Kong cinema, MTV, and global advertising now appears in glossy production and rapid-cut editing. The Indian diaspora—20 million strong—has long been a significant market for Bollywood. More recently, its mark on the industry has become visible in a spate of plotlines about non-resident Indians, or NRIs, and their struggles outside the homeland. Meanwhile Bollywood has begun to make inroads into Hollywood’s territory, with an Oscar nomination for Lagaan (2001), the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Bombay Dreams (2002), and popular crossover films like Monsoon Wedding (2001) and Bride and Prejudice (2004).

For some commentators, Bollywood enables an “imagined community” for India and its diaspora; for others, it signifies the stain of global capitalism on a once-indigenous national form. Most agree, however, that Bollywood remains understudied by the Western academy. This seminar offers a remedy, combining the perspectives of specialists in Indian culture, film, art, religion, and music to generate a new understanding of Bollywood.

Presenters will include: Rochona Majumdar, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Steven Collins (South Asian Languages and Civilizations), Kaley Mason (Music), Karin Zitzewitz (Social Sciences), and Virginia Wexman (English, Emerita, University of Illinois at Chicago)

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