bollywood in australia extract

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Bollywood in Australia

Transnationalism and Cultural Production

Edited by

Andrew Hassam and Makarand Paranjape


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First published in 2010 by

UWA Publishing

Crawley, Western Australia 6009

www.uwap.uwa.edu.au

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study,

research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part maybe reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made

to the publisher.

Copyright Introduction and collection, Andrew Hassam and Makarand Paranjape, 2010.

Copyright in each essay remains with the individual contributor.

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

A full CIP record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

ISBN: 978 1 921401 08 4

Typeset in 11pt Bembo by Lasertype


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Dedicated to the memory of

Devika Goonewardene


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1

The global context of Bollywood in Australia

Makarand Paranjape

The transcultural character and reach of Bollywood cinema has beengradually more visible and obvious over the last two decades. What is

less understood and explored is its escalating integration with audiences,

markets and entertainment industries beyond the Indian subcontinent.

This book explores the relationship of Bollywood to Australia. We

believe that this increasingly important relationship is an outcome of the

convergence between two remarkably dynamic entitiesglobalising

Bollywood, on the one hand and Asianising Australia, on the other. If

there is a third element in this relationship, which is equally important,it is the mediating power of the vibrant diasporic community of South

Asians in Australia. Hence, at its most basic, this book explores the

conjunctures and ruptures between these three forces: Bollywood,

Australia and their interface, the diaspora.

Introduction


Andrew Hassam and Makand Paranjape


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It would be useul to see, at the outset, how Bollywood here reers

not only to the Bombay flm industry, but is symbolic o the Indian and

even the South Asian flm industry. Technically speaking, the term is a

neologism o comparatively recent provenance, invented by combiningBombay and Hollywood. The entry o the term into the OxfordEnglish

Dictionary was announced in its June 2001 quarterly online update.1 In

the ollowing year, its inclusion in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary was

noticed by TheTimes of India.2 A year later the same newspaper marked

its entrance to the new illustrated Oxford Dictionary with a picture o

Aishwarya Rai rom Devdas (2002) holding her lamp o love in her hand.3

However, the term was in circulation in the Western press much earlier,

as the title o an article, Hooray or Bollywood, by Richard Corlissthat appeared in Time magazine in 1996, shows.4 There is something

distinctly pejorative or patronising about these early uses o Bollywood;

as Corliss observes, somewhat wryly: In any other national cinema the

antics in the frst reel o Mukul S Anands Khuda Gawah (God Is My

Witness) might be giggled o the screen. But, o course, Bollywood

flms are like no other: it is sheer pop opera, dealing with emotions so

convulsive they must be sung and danced, in a solemn, giddy style and

curry westerns and wet-sari musicals are avidly watched by millions

across the world. No wonderTheTimes of India article o 2003 quotes a

variety o Bombay flm fgures complaining about the use o the term.

Noted art flm director Govind Nihalani, or instance, muses:

What can I say? It looks like the Oxford Dictionary is moving with the

times. But Bollywood is actually a disrespectul reerence to our flm

industry. It primarily means were aping Hollywood and have nothing

original to oer. In act, Bollywood as a term puts the ocus largely on

the song-and-dance cinema and ignores everything else about Indiancinema.5

Subhash Ghai, one o the great showmen o Bollywood, was even more

emphatic: Bollywood is actually scofng at our flm industry. He

mentions how the London press was already using the word as ar back

as 1989, when it sneered at the success o Ghais hit flm, Ram Lakhan

(1989):

I saw the coverage on TV and they were saying how the Bombay flm

industry is copying the style o Hollywood premieres in terms o ashion

and jewelleryand they ocused the camera on shoes and jewellery o

the stars at the party.


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Bollywood in Australia: Introduction

3

The Times of India article concludes: So the dictionary entry is more

like rubbing salt on a wound.

Yet it would appear that it is Bollywood that is having the last

laugh. I the success oSlumdog Millionaire(2008)is anything to go by,it is Hollywood that is now copying Bollywood. In addition to the

vast audience ollowing that Bollywood movies enjoy, the Bollywood

culture industry translates into huge revenues or the ashion, glamour,

cosmetics, ood and jewellery industries and many other related

enterprises that benet, as Frieda Pinto, the debutant star o Slumdog

Millionaire,is fashed on the covers o the leading magazines, including

Vogue, Maxim, Vanity Fairand Cosmopolitan. Even Anil Kapoor, whose

role in Ghais movie in 1989 won him no international visibility, ridesthe tide o global recognition ater Slumdog Millionaire, appearing on

CNN, BBC, Oprah, not to mention the Oscars in Hollywood. Hence,

given its currency, it is no surprise that we use the word Bollywood in

our book; yet, we do so in its somewhat newer, more comprehensive

sense, not only reerring to Hindi movies made in Mumbai, but also

symbolic o the Indian and even the South Asian lm industry. While

parody and un cannot be entirely removed rom its connotations, it does

denote to us something more serious, a large, vibrant and increasingly

global cultural phenomenon.

There are many reasons or seeing Bollywood in this broader and

more inclusive ashion. In the Indian context, or instance, there

has always been considerable integration between the dierent lm

raternities in India, especially between Bengal and Bombay earlier,

between Hyderabad and Bombay in the 1970s and 1980s and between

Madras and Bombay to this day. So, despite all the dierent centres

o production and the distinct character o all the dierent language

cinemas o India, in some senses there is considerable mixing andamalgamation between them. Similarly, Hollywood, in a broader

context, not only reers to the US lm industry, but also symbolises

the interaction and assimilation o several not just European, but even

Australian, elements, including directors, technicians, actors and so on.

When we examine the cultural relationship between Bollywood and

Australia, we are also, indirectly, implicated in the connections between

two larger global entities.

Bollywood has long been the worlds second cinema, as one o

the papers in this volume asserts. Bollywood lms have circulated

globally among the Indian and South Asian diaspora as a shared cultural

idiom. They have also been immensely popular in the erstwhile Soviet

Union and on the Arican continent. Further, in an age when creative,


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inormation and services industries propel economic growth, Bollywood

and its modalities o production, distribution and reception, are seen as

important players in global culture industry networks. Countries o the

developed worldSwitzerland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Australia,and New Zealandgo out o their way to welcome Bollywood

production teams to shoot in their pristine locales. Local cinema houses

in Australia, the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and

Europe regularly run shows o newly released Bollywood blockbusters.

Many Hollywood producers now outsource their post-production work

to Mumbai at costs lower than those they would incur in the US.

Yet, only specialists, rather than the general, movie-going public, have

known these acts. This is because the dominance o Hollywood hasbeen obvious and widespread in wealthy and technologically advanced

societies, while the slow but steady prolieration o Bollywood has not

been easily noticeable or recognised. Bollywood produces more lms

each year than Hollywoodor, or that matter, any other lm industry

in the world. Its viewership is also probably greater. Bollywood and,

more generally, Indian cinema, which is made in more than a dozen

languages, is not only popular in the Indian diaspora spread over more

than seventy countries across the world, but also, increasingly, among

non-Indian audiences the world over.

One might argue that such cultural fows as this book explores are

merely a part o the broader workings o globalisation, which works to

integrate markets, economies and cultures. Yet, such a view would be

somewhat simplistic. As we can observe, Bollywood is not integrated

with, say, the Czech Republic to the same degree as Australia. Many

other actors are responsible or the kind o impact that it has on Australia.

Among these are the English language and the older colonial circuits

that linked India and Australia. The Indian diaspora nds it easier tomigrate to English-speaking countries. These countries, in turn, nd it

easier to receive cultural products rom India. In the case o Australia,

its close cultural ties with the UK and the US also make its society

more receptive to Bollywood. That is because Bollywood, as mentioned

earlier, is also increasingly integrated with Hollywood. Thereore, it

can impact Australia not only directly, through the mediation o the

South Asian diaspora, but also indirectly, via Hollywood, which has

also become a carrier o Bollywood and its cultural cargo.

As we were writing this introduction, or instance, Australia has

been washed over by the Danny Boyle Slumdog Millionairewave. The

story o the astonishing success o the lm is only too well known. Its

rst brush with ame was its bonanza o Golden Globe awards and then


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its even more successul and plentiul garnering o nominations or the

Oscars. The flm was released frst in the US, where it has raked in

more than US$138 million (A$202.6 million) as o 26 March 2009,6

then in the UK, where the collections were over 30 million (A$62.6million) as o 22 March 2009.7 The flm was fnally released in India

on 22 January 2009, in the original English version and in the dubbed

Hindi version. In Australia, it has been showing to packed audiences or

several months; as o 14 January 2009, it had already grossed more than

A$3 million,8 but, according to noted critic and academic, Vijay Mishra,

it has also created among white Australians an unparalleled interest in

Bollywood.9 Whatever it may or may not do or Indias image, Slumdog

Millionairehas certainly brought Bollywood to the worlds centre stage.The flm sets itsel up as a sel-conscious, i slightly parodic, tribute

to Bollywood, complete with an improbable plot, song and dance

sequences and the overwhelming orce o destiny driving its protagonist

rom rags to riches. While a post-colonial reading could easily show

how the movie misrepresents or distorts Indian realities, that is beside

the point. The movie marks the coming o age o Bollywood in the

Western world, even i it is Hollywood pretending to be Bollywood.

Clearly, Slumdog Millionairedoes instantiate the travels o Bollywood

to Hollywood, not only in terms o its directors, actors, technicians

and musicians, but also in terms o its style and structure, content and

technique. The Cinderella-like transormation o a slum child into a

multi-millionaire is not only the stu o the American Dream, but also

very much o Bollywood antasy. To put it simply, the game show in

the movie is itsel a symbol o Bollywood, the worlds largest dream

actory, which makes the impossible come true. Bollywood, with its

links to glamorous flm stars and the underworld dons, is also depicted

in the movie so extensively that it is almost a tribute to the industry.Jamals initial defning moment is literally to rise out o a pile o shit

to get Amitabh Bachchans autograph. There are several clips rom

earlier Bachchan movies and one o the early questions in the quiz

asks who starred in the superstars 1973 hit, Zanjeer. Similarly, the tune

o the Surdas bhajan, again a link between Jamals lie and the quiz

show, is taken rom a Hindi movie. The depiction o the underworld

in the movie is also derived, as several critics have pointed out, rom

earlier Bollywood flms like Satya (1998)orCompany (2002). Although,

visually, the flm is clearly the work o outsiders, the cinematic style

mimics Bollywood, as do the dialogues and the improbabilities in the

plot. These latter, however, cannot be simply wished away because they

are implicated in a politics o representation.


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The lm has been hailed as signiying the arrival o Bollywood

in Hollywood. Yet, what is not equally obvious, though it is equally

important, is the act that the movie also illustrates a Hollywood to

Bollywood movement. The direction o the cultural fows is not justone-way or two-way, but multidirectional. In Slumdog Millionaire, it is

the case o a British director, reaching out to Bollywood or his story

and setting, using a multinational lm crew to make a product that

is sold all over the world, but chiefy in the US, UK and India. The

travels, hence, are not just rom Bollywood to Los Angeles (LA), but

rom London to Bombay, then Bombay to LA, Bombay to London

and then to Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane,

Cairns, Darwin, Hobart and so on.But it is also important to note that not only is Bollywood the

worlds second cinema, it is also an alternative cinema in that it works

according to dierent principles o organisation and meaning. In

other words, Hollywood and Bollywood have dierent grammars

o representation and embody dierent meaning-making systems. I

we were grossly to oversimpliy, Bollywood is essentially a cinema o

emotion and sentiment. It has been called melodrama, though we do

not think that that is a particularly happy or apt expression. Bollywood

lms are also mythopoetic in their structure, conveying their thematic

values through archetypes, some o which are ancient and mythic. This

is also a cinema in which song, dance, poetry, music and action use to

create a synthetic and composite orm. Bollywood has been accused o

being escapist and unrealistic, but it engages with social and political

reality more directly than any other medium o creative expression.

It does so through the use o exaggeration, symbolic representation

and metaphor. Bollywood is also a cinema o excess, that is, o excessive

sensuality and stimulation. The costumes, sets, locations, props and soon, are expected to be lavish, to the point o being antastic. Characters

are oten larger than lie and their abilities amplied till they seem

almost caricatures. This is partly because o the pressures o the star

system that dominates Bollywood. Films are sold based on the mass

appeal o Bollywood superstars, who command ees rivalling Hollywood

actors. So it would be nancially disastrous to show the protagonist, say,

dying halway through the lm, because the enormous ee that the

star has been paid would then be underutilised or wasted. Despite its

peculiarities, over a billion viewers easily understand its codes. This is

because these viewers have been schooled in reading Bollywood lms

since childhood. Even experts, who have studied these lms or years,

oten ail to pick up the complex subtext o Bollywood lms, with


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their complicated intertextuality, sel-reerentiality and subtler cultural

nuances. To that extent, Bollywood, despite its increasing globalisation,

remains somewhat ethnic in its character and constitution.

In the last two decades, not only has there has been a greaterintegration between Hollywood and Bollywood, but more and more

Bollywood lms are shot overseas, not just to cater to the rich Indian

diaspora market, but also to teach audiences in India about the rest o

the world. Australia has emerged as one o the avoured destinations o

such Bollywood lms. No wonder today in countries such as Australia,

in the domain o popular and material culture, Bollywood circulates

as a potent aesthetic and cultural marker o Indianness. Clothes,

jewellery, ood, ootwear and even dance tness schools proudly wearthe Bollywood label. At the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne,

held in March 2006, the closing ceremony eatured an elaborate dance

and musical ensemble on Bollywood themes. This study is intended to

mark this coming o age o Bollywood in Australia.

The rst such book to be published in Australia, this is a collection

o academic papers by largely Australian critics and scholars who have

made notable contributions to the emerging eld o Bollywood studies.

A good deal o the book is based on papers presented at an international

workshop entitled Transnational Dialogues on Bollywood: Australian

Perspectives, held at the Monash University Law Chambers, 30

November 2006, in Melbourne, Australia. The workshop brought

together scholars rom around Australia and rom India to explore the

transnational impact o Bollywood on public spheres around the globe

and to assess its contribution to creative industries in Australia. The

success o this workshop and indeed o lm estivals, exhibitions and

above all commercial screenings o Bollywood movies in Australia,

shows the rising interest in Bollywood in this country. What ismore, Australia reaps considerable commercial and collateral benets

when Bollywood lms are shot in here. Besides the direct nancial

gains to technicians, extras, hotels and other service providers, such

lms generate powerul, i unintended by their producers, publicity

or Australia, making it an important and distinct presence in the

Indian imagination, drawing students, tourists and visitors rom the

subcontinent to Australia.

This book has been in the making or nearly three years, somewhat

longer than expected. What we have learned by this is that there is a

great deal o fuidity and progress in this area o study. Culture itsel

transorms at a urious pace, as do its maniestations. The situation is


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no dierent when it comes to Bollywood in Australia. We have already

spoken o the enormous success o Slumdog Millionaire in Australia.

This makes it a special case, even i it is, strictly speaking, neither a

Bollywood movie, nor one that is set in Australia. Our eort has beento concentrate on flms that are both made in Bollywood and set, at

least partially, in Australia, or have some other palpable Australian

connection. When we started our project the most outstanding example

o this kind o flm was Salaam Namaste, set almost entirely in Australia.

It has been discussed in several papers here. Then, while the manuscript

was in progress, another flm, Chak De! India, had a crucial Australian

connection. The flms climax is an international womens feld hockey

fnal between an Indian and an Australian team, which takes placein Melbourne. In this flm, as one o the papers in the book observes,

Australias renown as a sporting nation is central to the plot and to the

victory o the Indian team over the hosts. The flm, thus, engages with

an important aspect o Australian culture, not just using the country as

an exotic location.

More recently, a ew more Bollywood flms were set in Australia.

The frst o these, Sajid Khans Heyy Babyy (2007), concerns three young

South Asian men in Sydney, whose reewheeling lives are changed

when they have to take care o a little baby called Angel. The flm is

a rollicking comedy, with not much going or it except the laughs. As

Beth, a Bollywood an rom Champaign, Illinois, put it in her blog: I

you have these three clowns as dads, at least theyll sing and dance or

you!10 The flm shows, typically o Bollywood, that rich Indians abroad

have white servants and white girls hovering around them (Beth calls

them contextless cheerleaders). Yet, i we set aside such clichd and

superfcial reerences to Australia, we do see, once again, that a oreign

country becomes the site o what, by Indian standards, would be ahighly unconventional amily arrangement, with three males looking

ater what is supposedly a six-day-old baby (she has teeth). Like Salaam

Namaste, the flm has a didactic component or audiences at home: it

redefnes gender roles and emphasises that males need to learn how

to nurture and not just treat women as sex objects. Not surprisingly,

though, the end restores convention by emphasising that a amily, really

to be a amily, needs both a mum and a dad.

The other Bollywood blockbuster that contained a strong Australian

connection was Singh is Kinng (2008). It is the story o Happy Singh

(Akshay Kumar), a bumbling Punjabi villager sent to Australia to bring

back another villager, Lucky Singh, an underworld don on the Gold

Coast, where much o the flm is set. The flm is mostly a arce without


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serious engagement with the host country. But there are one or two

things that do stand out. First, Ben Nott, the flms cinematographer, is

an Australian. Nott is better known or working on horror flms and

the movies ofcial website jokingly highlights the, as yet, negligiblecollaboration between the Indian and Australian flm industries by

maintaining, acetiously, that Nott accepted this flm by mistake,

thinking the title reerred to his avourite writer, Stephen King.11

Though the treatment o Australia in the movie is largely superfcial,

its inversion o the power relationship between the don and the

underdog when, as a result o Luckys accident, Happy Singh becomes

Kinng, does allow a representation o marginalised black Australians, a

representation absent rom previous Bollywood depictions o Australia.In one scene, the dons goons are sent to remove a hot dog seller and his

amily who are taking custom rom an expensive restaurant. The amily

in question appear more Arican American than Aboriginal Australian,

and the scene could well come out o a Hollywood movie; yet, given the

typical Bollywood disregard o verisimilitude, we could read the amily

against the screen image as Aboriginal and the flm oers the hope, and

maybe the possibility, that uture Bollywood movies set in Australia

will portray greater political sensitivity and recognise the existence o

Aboriginal Australians as part o a more inclusive Australian society.

Finally, a third, Bachna Ae Haseeno (2008), rom the Yash Raj flm

actory, once again directed by Siddharth Anand o the Salaam Namaste

ame, was set partially in Australia. Released on 15 August 2008, the

flm eatures Ranbir Singh as Raj, a young man with a somewhat

instrumental attitude to women. The story, as it unolds, shows his

growth and development over a twelve-year period, rom eighteen

to thirty, during which time he has three serious relationships. In the

frst two, he has behaved like a cad, jilting the women who lovedhim. Now, a successul computer engineer in Sydney, he alls in love

with Gayatri, played by Deepika Padukone, a part-time cab driver and

business management student. However, this time Gayatri turns him

down. Raj embarks on a pilgrimage to his two earlier girlriends to

atone or his sins, serving them until they orgive and release him rom

the weight o past misdeeds. When he returns, he fnds Gayatri waiting

or him, having changed her mind. Again, the flm only uses Australia

as the setting o a part o this largely Indian-overseas Bildungsroman,

but it is noteworthy that this country presents resh possibilities o

hope, healing and regeneration. Anand, who is known to play with

stereotypes, scores another clever trick by making his Indian student-

cabbie a woman.


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Even as we were preparing to go to press, a spate o attacks on

Indian students in Australia, once again, brought to the oreront the

complex relationship between the two countries. One o the essays

in this volume already noted such events in the past, but the violencewas unprecedented and alarming. Curiously, Bollywood was, almost

instantly i inevitably, embroiled in the dispute when Amitabh Bachchan

turned down an honorary doctorate rom the Queensland University

o Technology citing the attacks as his reason or reusing the degree. In

his popular blog, he wrote:

I mean no disrespect to the Institution that honours me, but under the

present circumstances, where citizens o my own country are subjectedto such acts o inhuman horror, my conscience does not permit me to

accept this decoration rom a country that perpetrates such indignity to

my ellow countrymen.12

Like Bachchan, other Bollywood stars have reacted to these attacks.

Aamir Khan, or instance, said, Its very unortunate. Its very sad and

very disturbing.13 Not to be let behind, Bollywoods biggest union, the

Federation o Western India Cine Employees (FWICE), has also banned

its members rom working down under. Dinesh Chaturvedi, the head

o the Union, said, We preer to call it a non-cooperation movement

because we eel what is happening in Australia is painul and shameul.

The Australian government is just not taking adequate steps to fnd the

culprits.14 More amazingly, Mohit Suri, a young Bollywood flm-maker,

actually plans to make a flm about these incidents. Slated or shooting

later in 2009, the flm eatures an Indian student in Australia who is the

victim o racist attacks. Not surprisingly, Suri plans to shoot the flm

in Australia, despite the protests and bans: I dont think banning thecountry is going to achieve anything, he said, How can I not shoot in

Australia when that is where my story is based?15

Australia is a popular educational destination or Indian students,

with some 95,000 o them currently estimated to be in the country.16

Their total contribution not just to Australian universities, but to

ancillary businesses like travel, real estate, retail and so on would be

immense. While both countries are in a damage control mode over

these incidents, they highlight some o the underlying contradictions in

Australian society. On the one hand, many universities are increasingly

dependent on oreign students or their revenues. On the other hand,

several thousands o these students are interested not just in education,

but also in migration. Several small colleges and institutes specifcally


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target and exploit such potential immigrants, oering low-quality

education but enhanced opportunities or settlement. But instead o

accountancy or engineering or other in-demand felds, many o these

students end up as taxi drivers, waiters, shopkeepers, petrol pumpattendants and so on, which local Australians fnd threatening.17 Films

like Salaam Namaste, which deal with Indian students in Australia, ail

precisely to engage with such tensions. It would be air to assume

that, or many Bollywood flms set in this country, Australia remains

merely a backdrop rather than the real setting where the story makes a

signifcant intervention. Yet, despite the somewhat superfcial treatment

o real issues like racial tensions in Australia, Bollywood continues

to be interested in and engages with Australia. This relationship,notwithstanding these unortunate attacks, does not appear to be in

jeopardy.

We have tried to argue that Bollywood, though a cinema o

entertainment, also has elements, at times totally unexpected, o

edifcation. Its engagement with its overseas locations and audiences

also keeps changing and progressing in unpredictable ways. By the

time this book is released and read, there may be more movies with

Australian themes and connections. While it is difcult to predict what

directions they may take, as long as there is a market in Australia

or Bollywood and in India or Australia, as long as the South Asian

diaspora in Australia is dynamic, even expanding, then we may be sure

that Bollywood will keep its connection with Australia alive.

Filming Bollywood in Australia

Andrew Hassam

The use o Australian locations in Indian movies dates rom the mid-

1990s. A lovers antasy song sequence in a Tamil flm, Indian, released

in 1996, opens with reputedly the frst appearance o kangaroos in

Indian cinema bounding across the screen;18 and later in the same song

sequence, the flms stars, Urmila Matondkar and Kamal Haasan, dance

in ront o the Sydney Opera House and on top o the Harbour Bridge.

Daud (1997), a Hindi movie released the ollowing year, contains a

song in which Urmila Matondkar is flmed in Australia a second time,


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on this occasion dancing against the Pinnacles in Western Australia

with Sanjay Dutt. The rise in Australias popularity as a location in

Indian lms coincided with Urmila Matondkars own rise in popularity

ollowing the success o Rangeela (1995) and in Deewane (2000) shereturned to Australia a third time, dancing again at the Pinnacles, this

time with Ajay Devgan.

Yet while Indian, Daudand Deewanecontained song sequences lmed

in Australia, the action o the lms was set elsewhere. The rst Indian

lms to base their stories in Australia were Prem Aggan and Soldier,

both released in October 1998. The nal section oPrem Aggan is set

in Sydney, to where the heroines ather removes her or an enorced

marriage, and the villains in Soldierfee to Sydney with their ill-gottengains. In both lms, as in the song sequence in Indian, Sydney is merely

a picturesque overseas location. In Soldier, especially, this is not Sydney

as it is known in Australia: the replica o William Blighs Bounty is a

Sydney Harbour tourist attraction rather that the private yacht o an

Indian gang boss and Soldiers hero, played by Bobby Deol, is shown

travelling rom Sydney airport to Sydney Harbour on a Melbourne

tram. Sydney appears in a more amiliar orm in Dil Chahta Hai(2001),

the rst Indian lm set in Australia to achieve international success,

with the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and the replica Bounty all

making their by now predictable appearances. Yet while Sydney, like

the action in Dil Chahta Hai, may be more naturalistic (the hero goes

there to work and no one gets shot dead), the lm nonetheless employs

Sydney mainly as a backdrop or a predictable romance between its

male and emale leads, Aamir Khan and Preity Zinta.

Melbourne, lacking Sydneys Australian iconicity, is less recognisable

internationally and took longer to become popular with Indian lm-

makers. Melbourne rst appeared in a tram scene in Soldier, with thecomic actor, Johnny Lever, as a tram conductor. Soldier later sets a

romantic song sequence between Bobby Deol and Preity Zinta against

the Twelve Apostles on the Great Ocean Road, a Victorian tourist

location 280 kilometres rom Melbourne also used in Prem Aggan and

in the Tamil lm, Kaathalar Thinam (1999). Melbournes CBD makes a

feeting appearance inJanasheen (2003), a lm which, though ostensibly

set in Sydney, avoids recognisable Australian locations and ootage

o Sydney is restricted to Clovelly cemetery, while Sydneys CBD is

represented, in Bollywood style, by shots o Bangkok.

The rst Indian lm to make extensive dramatic use o Melbourne

was yet another Tamil lm, Nala Damayanthi (2003), though the pull

o Sydneys icons nonetheless proved too strong or the lms producers:


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Sydney Harbour Bridge is glimpsed as the heros plane lands at

Melbourne; the hero, Ramji, commutes to suburban Melbourne across

the Sydney Harbour Bridge; and some o the song sequences eature

Sydneys Darling Harbour. Melbournes sights are less recognisable toaudiences in India and while many will have heard o the Melbourne

Cricket Ground, other tourist attractions that appear in Nala Damayanthi,

the casino and the aquarium, have no distinctive Melbourne associations.

Melbourne, thereore, operates more generically to provide an urban

liestyle environment containing a range o tourist attractions: Ramji

(Madhavan) enjoys a amily day out in the city, walking in the grounds

o the Royal Exhibition Building and visiting the Melbourne Museum;

he perorms rituals or his dead ather by the River Yarra; and heencounters emus and kangaroos at the zoo. Melbourne does have its

icons, such as the colourul beach huts at Brighton that are glimpsed in

a song sequence in Nala Damayanthiand again in two songs in Koi Aap

Sa (2005), but Melbournes Brighton Beach is not as amous overseas as

Sydneys Bondi.

The song sequences in Indian popular cinema are distinctive and the

use o Australia in song picturisations seems bizarre to Australians not

used to the Bollywood convention, which allows song sequences to be

situated outside the time and space o the story. South Asian audiences

understand such discontinuities, appreciating song sequences or their

emotional intensity rather than their realism, and an Indian diasporic

audience in Perth cheered at the song sequence in Aa Ab Laut Chalen

(1999) shot in Kings Park in Perth, even though the lm was set in the

USA.19 On the other hand, Australians rom outside the South Asian

community are bewildered by the spectacle o Hrithik Roshan and

Amisha Patel inAap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage(2002) dancing in ront

o government buildings in Canberra, a bewilderment due as muchto the rare sight o Canberra in a eature lm as to the disjunction

between Canberra and Bollywood dancing. Indian lm-makers enjoy

the fexibility o being able to choose overseas lm locations or their

exotic looks, ignoring their connotations or those who live in them.

Popular denitions o Bollywood include the convention that they

should use exotic locations, though the exotic location in Hindi lms is

not necessarily overseas and antasy song sequences have been lmed at

locations within India, such as the mountains o Kashmir (Bobby, 1973)

or the beaches o Goa (Dil Chahta Hai), locations which contrast with

the everyday world o the mass audience. Sri Lanka also continues to

be popular, the Tamil lm Poi(2006), starring the Australian, Vimala

Raman, using it extensively. Film-makers rst started lming in


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14


more distant locations in the 1960s, thirty years beore they lmed in

Australia. The arrival o colour cinematography encouraged the use o

romantic, outdoor settings,20 and overseas locations were used mainly

as outdoor settings or the romances o the period, as in Sangam (1964),Love in Tokyo (1966) and Evening in Paris (1967). Purab Aur Paschim

(1970) established London as a location or a story, though more as a

site o Western decadence than as a setting or romance, and Londons

corrupting infuence on the Indian abroad was reinorced in Des Pardes

(1978). The replacement o the romantic hero with the angry young

man in the social analysis lms o the 1970s, associated above all with

the lm Sholay (1975) and the screen persona o Amitabh Bachchan,

made exotic overseas locations less necessary; as Asha Kasbekar putsit: Gory spectacle in disused warehouses and colorul cabaret dances

in the sleazy, smoke-lled bars requented by the hero replaced the

mellifuous love songs set in natural scenic beauty.21 With the return o

romance as the dominant element in Bollywood in the late 1980s, there

was a return to lming romantic song antasies overseas. The veteran

producer and director, Yash Chopra, turned Switzerland into an Indian

honeymoon destination with a number o lms beginning with Faaslein 1985 ater the troubles in Kashmir prevented lming in Indias

mountainous north;22 and Scotland, in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai(1998), and

New Zealand, in Daudand Deewane, have oten doubled or Kashmir

to provide spectacular mountain scenery or song sequences.

London and New York are, o course, the market leaders in attracting

Indian lm-makers, with London eaturing in at least a dozen major

Bollywood productions in 2007. And Switzerland, Canada and South

Arica remain enduring locations. However, recently there has been

increased competition rom newer global cities, such as Singapore,

Hong Kong, Bangkok and Dubai, which have sought Bollywood lmproduction, much as the UK, the US and Australia have done, in

order to oer a showcase to attract Indian tourism, business migration

and oreign investment. Australia has, nonetheless, witnessed a relative

boom in attracting Indian lm productions in the last two or three

years. Salaam Namaste (2005), Preity Zintas third Australian lm, did

or Melbourne what Dil Chahta Hai did or Sydney and two more

Hindi blockbusters set in Australia opened in 2007: Chak De! India, a

vehicle or Bollywood superstar, Shah Rukh Khan, much o which was

lmed in sports acilities in Melbourne and Sydney, and Heyy Babyy,

starring Akshay Kumar, shot on location in Sydney and Brisbane. In

2008, our more big-budget Bollywood movies eaturing Australia

were released: Love Story 2050, lmed in and around Adelaide; Singh


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15

is Kinng, flmed on the Gold Coast; Bachna Ae Haseeno, by the director

oSalaam Namaste, Siddharth Anand, flmed in Sydney; and Victory, a

cricket movie, flmed during the Australia-India Test matches played

in Sydney and Melbourne in 2007/2008. In addition, Salman Khanflmed Main Aur Mrs Khanna in Melbourne in May 2008. Tamil

movies make much less impact among nonTamil speaking audiences,

as is the case or those Telugu, Kannada and Punjabi movies that have

eatured Australian locations, but their contribution is welcomed by

the Australian flm industry and, having pioneered the use o Australia

in Indian movies, Tamil flm-makers continue to shoot regularly in

Australia. Australia is most oten used as a backdrop to one or two

antasy song sequences, as most recently in Maaya Kannaadi (2007)and Pokkiri(Prabhu, 2007), but Nala Damayanthihas been ollowed by

Thiruttu Payale(2006) and Unnale Unnale(2007), both o which also set

part o their stories in Melbourne.

The volume begins with Adrian Mabbott Athiques chapter, The

Crossover Audience: Mediated Multiculturalism and the Indian Film,

which undertakes a critical examination o the term crossover as it

is being deployed in the context o the Indian flm industry and its

engagement with Western media industries and export markets. Within

the specifc context o Australian multiculturalism, this crossing over

Figure 1: Tanisha and Vinay in Unnale Unnalein ront o a Melbourne tramadvertisement eaturing Aishwarya Rai


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16


is a orm o cultural and commercial exchange dened by the success

o a media arteact originating in a South Asian ethnic culture with a

majority audience located in another, the so-called Anglo-Australian

culture. As Athique argues, South Asians resident in the West havegiven popular Indian cinema a commercially viable presence in the new

context o multiplex exhibition, and it has been the subsequent ringing

o cash registers that has instigated a new aection or Indian lms in

the Western media. Events, such as the Indian Film Festival, have been

designed to promote Indian lms amongst a more mainstream audience,

though as Athique also notes, obstacles, such as the need or subtitles and

the length o the movies, limit the success o Indian popular cinema in

Australia. Against this background, Athique raised the question amonga number o young Australians who showed an interest in Indian lms

o how likely it seemed that a signicant crossover audience or Indian

lms would emerge in Australia. Athiques conclusion is that it still

remains to be seen whether the current firtation with Bollywood

will be just a passing ashion or an ongoing addition to the cultural

repertoire o metropolitan Australia. Despite his scepticism, however,

Athique believes that enthusiasm or Bollywood is one o the more

benevolent examples o Western ignorance o non-Western cultures

and should perhaps be encouraged, rather than disparaged.

In Cultural Encounters: The Use and Abuse o Bollywood in

Australia, Devika Goonewadene refects on her own experience o

the increasing visibility o Indian popular cinema in Australia rom

two specic vantage points that are derived rom her own political

and academic position as a post-colonial, diasporic South Asian: that

o migrantcitizen and that o teacher o Indian knowledges in the

West. By refecting on her own cultural engagements with Bollywood

in Australia in its dierent maniestationsrom dance and musicperormances to the cinema and lecture theatresGoonewardene

shows how Bollywood can be used to ashion a social and cultural

identity that allows a migrant to eel at home in an Australian

space through that spaces incorporation in Hindi lms. Particularly

important is the way Goonewardene recounts teaching International

Relations though the medium o Hindi cinema, choosing to do so

because the visibility o Bollywood in Australia allows her to utilise,

and tease out the implications o, her students knowledge o an

everyday phenomenon. Goonewardenes experience o being among

the crowd watching the flming oChak De! India (2007) in Melbourne

makes her optimistic o the eect o Bollywood in Australia in a

postSeptember 11 world:


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17

At a time when cultural, ethnic and religious dierence is the object o

international and domestic terrorismHindi cinema is one means o

showing that there is a ground on which we can all meet peaceably.

While Athique ocuses on cinema audiences and Goonewardene on

the classroom, in Salaam Namaste, Melbourne and Cosmopolitanism,

Andrew Hassam looks closely at the methods used by Australian

government flm, tourism and trade commissions to attract Indian

producers to flm in Australian locations. Taking the internationally

successul Yash Raj production, Salaam Namaste(2005), as a case study,

Hassam analyses what the Indian producers are looking or in choosing

an Australian flm location and how ar the world o Bollywood matchesthe Brand Melbourne that was pitched to them by state flm and

tourism commissions. He also considers what images are being excluded

by the projection o Australia appearing in Bollywood, such as the lives

o the housewives, the shopkeepers and the taxi drivers who comprise

the audience o radio station Salaam Namaste. Hassam concludes that,

while Indian flm-makers and Australian government bodies collude in

the projection o Australian cities as modern, Western and cosmopolitan

urban spaces, they do so in dierent and contradictory ways as a result

o diering defnitions o cosmopolitanism: Australian government

agencies project Australia overseas as a culturally diverse nation, while

Indian flm-makers seek images o a globalised consumerism or the

gratifcation o audiences in India. The result is Australian government

support or a depiction o Australia in Bollywood that not only erases

the lives o urban Indigenous Australians, Chinese Australians and,

ironically, Australian Sikh taxi-drivers, but also ails to promote the

non-elite cosmopolitanism ound in Australian suburbs.

In Chak De! Australia: Bollywood Down Under, MakarandParanjape argues that the flm Chak De! India rewrites the earlier

Lagaan (2001), with the shit between them, rom a colonial cricket

match between India and England to an international hockey match

between India and Australia, marking the move o Bollywood and

the South Asian diaspora into a global arena, an Indianisation o the

globe. Bollywood is ast gaining recognition and legitimacy as the

second cinema o the world, and the frst part o this chapter examines,

in broad theoretical terms, the relationship between Hollywood and

Bollywood:

While Hollywood, though appearing to be universal, excludes several

sections o the worlds population rom participating as equals in its


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18


oerings, Bollywood it would seem oers surreptitious enjoyment, even

voyeuristic pleasure, to those whom it does not even address directly.

In the second part, Makarand explores how Bollywood is beingboth shaped by, but is also shaping, the newly globalised Indian. With

a complex and evolving history of representation of Indians abroad,

Bollywood has not just shown sensitivity to changing social, cultural and

economic ethnoscapes, but has also served the education of the Indian

masses on how to regard Indian expatriates. Bollywood is not only a

cinema of allurements, but also of pedagogical engagement: rather than

being merely escapist, Bollywood is also educative, teaching folks back at

home how postmodern relationships develop and work themselves out.Srilata Ravi approaches Bollywood in Australia rom what she calls

a gastropoetics standpoint o Bollywood. India is a land o diverse

ood culture and Cook Cook Hota Hai: Indian Cinema, Kitchen

Culture and Diaspora is an exploration o not only the role o cooks

and cooking that are a key eature o Indian cinema, but also how

a gastropoetics o Bollywood permits Indian flms set in Australia

to be compared with those set within other diasporic South Asian

communities. Ravi selects our flms or discussion, all with proessional

male cooks as the protagonist: Sai Ali Khan as the suave Nikhil Arora,

architect-turned-che in Melbourne in Salaam Namaste; Madhavan as

an unsophisticated cook in the Tamil movie, NalaDamayanthi (2003),

also set in Melbourne; Madhavan again in Ramji Londonwaley (2005),

the Hindi remake o Nala Damayanthi set in London; and Amitabh

Bachchan as the sixty-our-year-old Buddhadev Gupta, owner and

head che o Spice 6 in London in Cheeni Kum (2007). The our

flms depict the South Asian kitchen as a transnational space through

which proessionals, students, tourists, permanent residents and illegalimmigrants all pass, and, ollowing a close analysis o the transnational

interplay between economics and social practice, Ravi concludes:

As owners o small businesses with fnancial and cultural interests

in multiple locations, Nick, Buddha and both the Ramjis are prime

examples o a new breed o entrepreneurs who contribute to the efcient

circulation o talent, capital and revenues in a transnational world.

Like the flms she discusses, Ravis study adds a new dimension to

culinary politics in the Indian diaspora. She exposes the subtle cultural

politics o vernacular cinema and permits a more nuanced understanding

o the nationalist politics o global Indian cinema.


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19

Anjali Gera Roys chapter, Rangla Punjab in Canberra, Yamla

Jatt Folk Night in Sydney, Oorja Nights in Melbourne, considers

the ways in which Indian popular cinema has broadened the appeal

in Australia o Bhangra, music associated with Punjabi harvest ritualand naturalised globally as a Bollywood song and dance ormula. As

Roy notes, Bollywood Bhangra, a new Bhangra genre produced in

Bollywood, has played a signicant role in enabling Bhangras crossover

rom regional olk music to national, and now global, popular music.

Through interviews conducted with Australian Bhangra practitioners

in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne, Roy explores how Bhangra,

while serving as the most important ethnocultural signier o Punjabi

identity in Australia, also circulates in Australia through the overlappingglobal fows o British Asian music and Hindi cinema, placing it at the

centre o the production o Asian youth cultures in Australia. Yet Roy

also discovers that an increasing number o non-Punjabi ans have

developed a taste or Bhangra, due to its inclusion in crossover lms

like Monsoon Wedding(2001), Bend it Like Beckham (2002) and Bride and

Prejudice(2004), as well as in Bollywood hits like Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003)

and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006).

In Orbits o Desire: Bollywood as Creative Industry in Australia,

Debjani Ganguly explores Bollywood as sot power. Using Joseph

Nyes idea that creative and cultural contributions to the public sphere

are as important as military or economic power, she argues that it

is Bollywood that is most responsible or the global allure o India.

According to her, in the last two decades, the ulcrum o Bollywoods

global power has shited rom the transnational impact o popular

Bombay lms to lucrative zones o extra-cinematic visuality, which

include live dance and musical spectacles, ashion, ood, tourism,

art exhibitions, aerobic tness centres, dance classes, music albums,television productions and an array o other digital and web-based

modalities o entertainment. These products create a broader market

than just cinema-going South Asians in the diaspora. Examining two

case studies rom Canberra, Bollywood Dimensions, Canberras rst

dance and tness school run by Anshu Srivastava and Project Samosa,

an intercultural youth lm project conducted by Australian National

University (ANU) students, Ganguly concludes that:

Bollywood, in the eyes o the Australian political and cultural

establishment, now appears to epitomise an all-encompassing Indian

perormative modality in a rst world multicultural society, as also a

placeholder or Indian cultural diversity in late modernity.


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20


The last academic paper in the volume is Sweet Dreams are Made

o This: Bollywood and Transnational South Asians in Australia by

Devleena Ghosh. Ghosh starts by commenting on the viewing habits

o Indo-Fijian immigrants to Australia, or whom Bollywood lmsand TV serials are part o a weekly amily ritual essential to eeling

Indian. She observes, however, that there are intergenerational conficts

and dierences in the manner in which these movies and TV shows

are viewed. While the older generation insists on being part o their

culture and tradition, the younger, oten Australian-born, children

oten nd some o their contents uncool, i not ridiculous. At the

same time, Bollywood-style parties, Indo-chic and remix music do

shape a large part o the identities o young South Asian Australians.Ghosh shows how the experience o the South Asian diaspora in

Australia is reracted through prisms o the Bollywood culture industry.

This experience, she believes, radically transgures the concept o

Australian, subverting and shaping the way in which a mainstream

Australian youth identity is constructed in the public sphere. Yet, while

such subversion o the received ideas o what it means to be Australian

may produce liminality, such liminality does not necessarily result in

aimlessly postmodern or foating selves. Instead, the blurred boundaries

and radical re-enchantments o both the past and the present reveal

the always contingent, contested nature o subjectivity, a subjectivity

grounded in:

a thousand plateaus, subjectivities elt and experienced through the body,

through historical landscapes, through domestic spaces, and through

perormance, as well as through the much more dicult realm o the

imaginary, o the impact o ideals and the weight o history.

The volume concludes with an insiders view o the successul bid

to attract Harry Baweja to lm part o his blockbuster movie, Love

Story 2050(2008), in Adelaide, South Australia. In his interview with

Andrew Hassam, AK Tareen, the Senior Trade CommissionerIndia,

Government o South Australia, talks about the importance o

promoting bilateral ties between South Australia and India and the

role o lm in attracting Indian trade, investment, tourism and skilled

migration to Australia. Prior to accepting his current post, AK Tareen

worked or almost twelve years or the Australian Trade Commission

in India and was instrumental in attracting the very rst Indian lm

to shoot in Australia, a Tamil lm called Indian (1996). As he is based

in Chennai, Tareen gives an additional perspective rom the South o


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21

India, a perspective in particular on Tamil movies made in Australia

and which, with lower budgets and production values and with a

more restricted language community, ail to attract attention outside

Tamil communities, including the Sri Lankan Tamil communities, inAustralia. However, as Tareen points out, Tamil flms such as Nala

Damayanthi and Thiruttu Payale (2006) are nonetheless regarded by

Australian trade, flm and tourism commissions as important ways o

promoting Australia in India, a timely reminder that the appearance o

Australia in Indian flms has an indirect value over and above headline

fgures o budgets and box ofce receipts.

Notes to the Introduction

1 OED OnlineQuarterly Update, 14 June 2001, , viewed 30 March 2009.

2 Bollywood Joins the Dictionary, TheTimes of India, 21 November 2002, , viewed 30 March 2009.

3 Bollywood in Oxord Dictionary, TheTimes of India, 2 July 2003, , viewed 30 March 2009.

4 R Corliss , Hooray or Bollywood!, Time, 16 September 1996, , viewed 30 March

2009.

5 Bollywood in Oxord Dictionary.

6 Box ofce/business orSlumdog Millionaire, Internet Movie Database, , viewed 30 March 2009.

7 ibid.

8 ibid.

9 Personal conversation with the author, 25 March 2009.

10 More on Heyy Babyy, Beth Loves Bollywood, 10 September 2008, , viewed

31 March 2009.

11 Singh is Kinng: the Crew, 2008, ,

viewed 30 March 2009.

12 B Henderson, Bollywood star turns down honorary degree ater attacks.

, viewed 8 August 2009.

13 Attacks on Indians in Austra lia very disturbing: Aamir Khan. , viewed 8 August 2009.

14 Bollywood boycotts Oz over racist attacks on Indians. , viewed

12 August 2009.

15 Bollywood flm set in Austra lia to ocus on attacks. , v iewed 12 August

2009.

16 Bollywood flm set in Austra lia to ocus on attacks. , v iewed 12 August

2009.


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22


17 See Michiel Baas PhD disser tation Imagined Mobility. Migration and Transnational ism

on Indian Students in Australia, submitted to the University o Netherlands, Amsterdam,

2009.

18 Interview with AK Tareen, Senior Trade CommissionerIndia, Government o South

Australia, 27 February 2007; an edited version o this interview appears in the current

volume.

19 M Madan, Bollywood Down Under: Imagining New Neighbourhoods, South Asia,

vol. 13, 2000.

20 A Kasbekar, Pop Culture India! Media, Arts and Lifestyle, ABCClio, Santa Barbara,

Caliornia, 2006, p. 195.

21 ibid., p. 196.

22 B Jaisinghani, Shooting with a Business Angle, Financial Express (Mumbai), 13 June

2004, , viewed

11 June 2005.


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23

I cant keep it inside my head anymore! All this preaching by the Western

media about what I should appreciate rom my own popular culture.

One Bride and Prejudice(Gurinder Chadha 2004) comes along aimed at

ignorant white audiences, and they lap it up because everything Indian

is the favour o the season.1

Writing in Metro at the end o 2005, Sapna Samant, a trustee o the Asia

Film Festival Aotearoa, is stirred into action by a sense o indignation

at the appropriation o popular Indian cinema by the machinery o the

Western media industry. Recent attempts by Hollywood to sell hybridised

Bollywood style to Western audiences and the prousion o Bollywood

copy in glossy magazines have all served to threaten Samants sense o

ownership and o privileged inside knowledge, over the products o

the popular Indian cinema. As Samant puts it: Bombay cinema is my

cinema. I know what its all aboutI dont like those Johnny-come-lately

ignorant Westerners and media people advising me about it.2

The argument made by Samant is all about authenticity: that the

real experience o Indian cinema can only be accessed by those who

1

The Crossover Audience: Mediated

Multiculturalism and the Indian Film

Adrian Athique


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24


are steeped in its cultural context and its history. By extension, those

viewers must themselves be authentically Indian or, at the very least,

India specialists. This is a position open to criticism in a number

o respects, but here I will restrict mysel to the specic context ocinema, rstly, by pointing out the long-standing infuence o Western

lm ashions on Indian lm-making and the requent appropriation

o Hollywood styles, themes and even scripts or the Indian market;

and, secondly, by recognising that Indian cinema has long enjoyed

popularity with audiences spread across the globe, who have little

detailed understanding o Indian society but who have consistently

ound enjoyment in the mixture o action, eroticism and sentimentality

pedalled by the Bombay lmwallahs.In Samants deence, however, it is also air to say that the breathless

insiderism o Western journalists explaining to their readers how to

enjoy Indian cinema as kitsch, cult and ull o colour is every bit

as patronising as the scorn that used to be poured upon Indian lms

when they were laughably unashionable. It is understandable, thereore,

that all this might annoy anyone with a long-standing commitment

to the Indian cinema. It may also prove to be the case that, while

the blissul miscomprehension o the more subtle aspects o Indian

cinema by viewers in Nigeria or Turkey has had little infuence over

the workings o the industry itsel, the newound interest by dilettantes

in the Anglophone world could have ar larger implications or the way

that the Indian lm industry unctions. This, however, brings us to the

major omission in Samants narrative, which is that this is not simply a

case o appropriation by the machinery o the Western media, it is also

an indication o the new strategies devised by the Indian lm industry

to sell itsel more eectively in a global marketplace and o the larger

rebranding o India as a global economic power.3

Imagining a Western audience

The notion o a Western viewer is as old as the study o Indian cinema.

Since the days o the Indian Film Society movements in the 1950s

there has been a comparison between an Indian audience, typied by

illiteracy and an enthusiasm or escapist are and an occidental viewer

acculturated to a diet o realism rather than antasy, drama rather than

melodrama and psychological motivation over musical excess.4 O

course, besides the music, this realist model o Western audiences rather

contradicts the popular are consumed in European, North American


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25

The Crossover Audience

and Australasian cinemas. It did, perhaps, suit the kind o audiences

addressed by art-house cinemas and flm estivals, which in Anglophone

countries have traditionally been the most common environment or

the screening o oreign-language flms. Prior to the 1990s, the onlyIndian flms to reach any signifcant Western audiences were art-house

flms operating in this niche market. As Jigna Desai puts it:

The phenomenon o the art house is based on positioning oreign flms

as ethnographic documents o other (national) cultures and thereore

as representatives o national cinemas. In particular, oreign Third

World flms that can be read as portraying the other through cultural

dierence (i.e., gender and sexual experiences or nativist renderings orural village lie) are deemed as most authentic.5

The art-house audience in the West represents a collection o consumers

with various degrees o investment in an ethno-cultural scheme o

World Cinema. This coalition o interests might include those with an

academic or proessional interest either in cinema or in the so-called

producing culture. It also encompasses viewers whose consumption

o oreign flms represents a mixture o autodidacticism and aesthetic

pleasure-seeking, gaining them a measure o cosmopolitan cultural

capital. Art-house outlets oten collocate a Third World exotic with

European auteurcinema and with the alternative or independent sector

o the host nations local flm culture.6

During the last decade, however, Indian flms have escaped this

aesthetic ghetto and begun to appear in the popular imagination.

Part o the reason or this is that South Asians resident in the West

and inhabiting the same metropolises as the old art-house audiences

have given popular Indian cinema a commercially viable presence inthe new context o multiplex exhibition.7 The subsequent ringing o

cash registers has instigated a new aection or Indian flms in the

Western media. The sporadic, derisory remarks o the past have given

way to some talking up that has ocused upon key fgures in the

Indian flm industry (such as superstar Shah Rukh Khan, ormer Miss

World Aishwarya Rai and director Yash Chopra) who have proved

most popular with Indian cinemas diasporic audiences in the West

and who have used this popularity to reposition themselves within the

international market.8


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26


The making of Bollywood

Ashish Rajadhyaksha has described these recent trends and the

international rebranding o Indian commercial cinema as a processo Bollywoodisation.9 While the popular press now presents Indian

cinema and Bollywood as eectively synonymous, Rajadhyaksha

is at pains to make a distinction between the two.10 Rajadhyaksha

makes this distinction or two major reasons. These are, rstly, because

the cultural industry surrounding the Bollywood brand extends ar

beyond the production and consumption o eature lms and, secondly,

because the high-budget gloss and transnational themes o the major

Bollywood lms are ar rom representative o the majority o Indianlm production. By Rajadhyakshas denition, the Bollywood culture

industry does not encompass Indias small art, or parallel, cinema or the

regional-language cinemas which constitute the bulk o lm production

and consumption in the subcontinent. Even as a sector o Hindi cinema,

the Bollywood brand appears to exclude the low-budget comedies and

vigilante lms which constitute the majority o screenings. Instead

Bollywood is dened by the high-budget, saccharine, upper middle-

class melodrama which represents a tongue-in-cheek repackaging o

the masala movie within an afuent, nostalgic and highly exclusive

view o Indian culture and society. These productions are consciously

transnational and have been increasingly saturated with product

placements or global consumer ashions and multinational sponsors.11

So i Bollywood is not the Indian cinema per se, it might be adequately

described as the export lager o the Indian cinema, since it is Bollywood

productions that dominate Indias lm exports, becoming centrally

positioned as the trademark Indian lm. Indian politicians have recently

become keen to emphasise the worldwide popularity o these lms and,in particular, their success in key Western markets as ambassadors or

Indias growing global ambitions.12 For their part, Indian producers have

attempted to consolidate their success in the West by widely promoting

the Bollywood brand in a Euro-American market that continues to see

itsel as the central, hegemonic eld o global media culture.

Apart rom an interest in the box oce now being made rom Indian

lms in the West, the newly ashionable status o Indian lms amongst

Western commentators can also be related to economic shits in the

Indian mediascape itsel where Western media concerns are seeking to

become major players.13 A urther actor at play in the buzz surrounding

Bollywood in the West has been the success o a number o directors

o Indian origin working within various Western lm industries who


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27


have produced Indian-themed lms which have successully targeted

audiences in the West.14 Despite the obvious dierences between these

lms and mainstream Indian cinema, the lms o US-based Mira Nair,

Canada-based Deepa Mehta and UK-based Gurinder Chadha haverequently been confated with Bollywood in the Western media. Both

Indian and expatriate directors have beneted rom this popular allacy:

mainstream Indian lms have been associated, or example, with the

success o Nairs Monsoon Wedding(2001), whilst the colour as culture

connotations o Bollywood branding have also been used to market the

lms o non-resident Indian (NRI) directors, such as Chadhas Bride

and Prejudice(2004).

The crossover audience

The success o Bollywood and NRI lms with niche audiences in

the UK has encouraged the staging o events designed to promote

Indian lms amongst a more mainstream audience. In 2002, the British

Film Institute (BFI) organised an extensive showcase o Indian cinema,

ImagineAsia, as part o a nationwide Indian Summer estival which also

included the use o Bollywood themes in department store merchandise,

visual art exhibitions and theatrical productions. This celebration

o Indian popular culture under the rubric o multiculturalism was

designed to promote Indo-British trade exchanges, emphasise ocial

recognition o Britains large South Asian population and to draw

prots rom providing a context or the consumption o Indian cultural

products by the UKs majority white population. The BFIs ImagineAsia

estival o Indian cinema was considered a success, primarily since it

drew almost a third o its audience rom outside Britains South Asianpopulation.15

ImagineAsia was a hugely successul, all-singing all-dancing masala

estival. There hasnt been anything quite like it beore. As one o the bfs

largest ever events it broke new ground on several ronts: introducing a

broader appreciation and mainstreaming o South Asian lm cultures to

a cross over audience in the UK.16

The term crossover deserves some attention because, as Desai has

also observed, its use is synonymous with the quest or white audiences

or ethnic media arteacts.17 The crossing described by the term is

unidirectional, that is rom a niche audience to a larger mainstream


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audience which promises greater exposure and profts. The term

is generally not used, or example, to describe the consumption o

mainstream media by niche audiences. The crossover audience

or both Indian-produced and NRI-directed flms is imagined as adesired market based upon a collective notion o culturally literate

cosmopolitan members o the majority population willing to extend

their consumption o media cultures (and media as culture). Within the

context o multiculturalism, this crossover can be defned as the success

o a media arteact located in one ethnic culture with a majority audience

located in another. This is because, whilst the logic o multiculturalism

challenges the idea o a culturally homogeneous national audience,

it continues to assume that there are certain audiences that arecommensurate with communities and demographic populations.18

As such, the emphasis on crossover success shits discussion away

rom the issues associated with the burden o representation and the

relations between cultural producers and black British communities to

appealing to white demographic markets, with Indian flms becoming

integrated into capitalist expansion through the logic and rhetoric o

multiculturalism.19

O course, multiculturalism is not only a rhetorical project, it also

constructs and naturalises an industry with both internal and external

aspects. Within the host nation a range o leisure industries, providing

music, textiles, movies, literature, urniture and ood acilitates the

acquisition, possession and display o products o oreign cultural

provenance. The external interests o the multicultural industry acilitate

this trade in commodities between the importing and exporting nation,

but are also incorporated with other aspects o interstate trade and the

movements, in both directions, o fnancial, military and ideological

capital. In the case o cinema, the celebration o the media projects oother cultures is also related to urthering desires to extend economic

opportunities or the national media industry in those markets. Western

media companies now view India as a potentially lucrative media market

and, with Indian production budgets also increasing dramatically, a

number o national industries have been keen to court Indian producers

and their appetite or oshore production and post-production acilities.

The British have despatched industry delegations, government ministers

and even Prince Charles to Mumbai in recent years to drum up trade.20

Australia has also been in on the action, with millions o Bollywood

dollars entering Australia in the last ten years, leading to the setting-up

o the Film, Arts, Media and Entertainment (FAME) chapter o the

Australia-India Business Council and trips to Indias flm capital by


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leading Australian politicians, such as Queenslands then-Premier Peter

Beattie in 2004.21

The crossover industry

Australian lm producer John Winter believes that, despite current

high expectations in India, only a small number o Indian movies will

actually have the potential to reach audiences in the West beyond the

niche ethnic and art-house audiences. According to Winter, a oreign-

language lm will not succeed at the national level in Australia unless

it consciously addresses a crossover aesthetic in both plot and style.However, Winter believes that it is possible to make such translations,

since:

Indian lms arent that dierent rom Australian/American lms in

terms o structure, in terms o storytelling. Theyre linear, they have the

same use o past, present and uture that we use as devices. They have

the same characterisation in terms o goodies and baddies and confict

and resolution o confict.22

Winter claims that some elements o the standard Indian eature

would require modication in order to cultivate an Australian audience.

Winter identies the minor hurdles to be overcome as adjusting movie

length and making the song sequences accessible to a Western viewer.

A more serious obstacle is the poor t in market terms between the

audiences already inclined to consume oreign-language lms and

audiences oriented around the kind o commercial entertainment

typied by the Bollywood lm:

Where they are inaccessible is oreign language or a start, so youve got

a oreign language lm but it is obviously clearly commercial. So were

used to seeing oreign language lms that are designed orwell more

likely go or them that are art-house, you know. That collection o the

Australian public will go to see an art-house lm, theyll got to see a

French lm with subtitles, thats OK, but i it was a totally commercial

lm, which the Indian ones are, I can see that with subtitles you have a

crossing o demographics.23

Despite these diculties, there have been a number o one-o

estivals directed at mainstreaming Indian commercial cinema, such


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as Bollywood at Bondi(2002) and Bollywood at Cremorne(2003). A more

substantial vehicle is the Beginners Guide to Bollywood or Bollywood

Masala festivals which have toured Australias state capitals annually since

2003. All of these events have been directed towards developing a white,urban, crossover audience or Indian lms and have been accompanied

in the Australian press by the descriptions of Bollywood chic so offensive

to Sapna Samant.24 Festival co-director o Bollywood Masala, Marcus

Georgiades, stated that the primary aim was to introduce Indian cinema

to Australian audiences, who have never seen an Indian lm other than

Monsoon Wedding and to build the crossover market.25

The Bollywood Masala estival has each year begun with a ten-day

run at Fox Studios Australia. This twenty-nine-hectare site, ormerlythe Sydney Showground, is a movie production studio in Sydneys

inner city, conjoined with a shopping and entertainment complex.

The venue is situated next to Sydneys amous cricket ground and

exemplies the ethos o multiplex exhibition, although a site o this

scale might be better described as a megaplex.26 Ben Goldsmith and

Tom ORegan describe the Fox Studios site as both a locomotive or

production and a stargate, a source o media glamour and a symbolic

expression o an international, entrepreneurial city.27 Hoyts, one o

the major, nationwide Australian cinema exhibition chains, operates

a fagship cinema at Fox Studios known as La Premiere, along with

Hoyts Cinema Paris, a smaller our-screen, art-house venue. According

to their publicity, Cinema Paris is dedicated to local, national &

international art-house through to quality lms o a wider appeal and

has become the new home or International lm estivals. Cinema

Paris has thereore hosted estivals o Spanish, Mexican, Serbian, Irish

and, most recently, Bollywood lms.28

Launched as a Beginners Guide to Bollywoodat the Cinema Paris inSeptember 2003, the estival was intended to serve as an introduction

to Indian lms or the Australian mainstream, rather than catering to

their existing audience and it was with this in mind that the eleven

movies screened in 2003 were drawn rom the biggest hits o the

last decade.29 Relaunched the ollowing year as the Bollywood Masala

estival, it oered metropolitan Australia the major Indian blockbusters

o 2004 alongside a couple o art-house eatures.30 Here, a estival trailer

preceded each screening, with a lmed introduction by patron Yash

Chopra and advertisements rom estival sponsors.31 For the opening

night o Bollywood Masala, sari-clad hostesses showered estival-goers

with petals as they entered the cinema. The opening lm on two

screens, Main Hoon Na (2004), was introduced by the Indian High


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Commissioner in Australia.32 As well as the flm screenings, Bollywood

Masala also included Q & A sessions with young directors, Rohan Sippy

and Nikhil Advani and a ticketed opening-night party which sold itsel

on the chance to meet the directors. This was held at Arena, an adjacenthospitality bar within the Fox Studios complex and was attended by a

mix o local Indian ans and Australian media personnel. Outside the

estival schedule, the Cinema Paris is now a regular venue or a small

number o Indian flms throughout the year. Indian flms are also being

shown at a select number o Hoyts cinemas in the major cities, making

the involvement o the Hoyts chain crucial to mainstreaming Indian

flms in Australia. According to Mark Chamberlain, national flm

programmer or Hoyts Cinemas and the man responsible or makingBollywood flms accessible to Australians:

Bollywood is a trend thats taking over the whole world and Australia

is no exception. On a trip to Birmingham in early 2002, I visited

one o the citys multiplexes. Out o its 12 screens, fve were showing

Bollywood movies. I remember asking mysel i there was any reason

why the same couldnt happen in Australia. Ater all, we pride ourselves

on our multiculturalism.

Figure 2: Indian Film Festival 2004


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Chamberlain, a die-hard an o Bollywood movies wasted no time

and, by mid-2002, Devdas, Indias rst movie to be ocially selected

at Cannes (2002) also became the rst-ever Bollywood fick to be

screened at Hoyts.33

The story behind the mainstreaming activities o Hoyts is a complex

one, arising rom their partnership with MG Distribution who supplies

the estival eatures.34 MG Distribution, in turn, has close links with

one o Indias premier production houses, Yash Chopras Yash Raj

Films (2005).35 It was in the context o securing production work

that Melbourne-based Black Cat Productions approached director Yash

Chopra at the International Indian Film Awards (IIFA) in Malaysia in

2002.36

According to Mitu Lange, co-director o the Bollywood Masalafestivals and of MG Distribution, Chopra offered instead the distribution

rights for his movies in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. MG Distribution

was the new company that arose rom this discussion, seeking to build

a market or commercial Indian movies through mainstream Australian

exhibitors. Lange describes their nascent audience:

Our rst release was on 20 December [2002] with two really big

lms. One was Yash Chopras Saathiya. Another was Kaante. We were

screening them at Forum Cinema, which is one o the heritage cinemas

in MelbourneIt[]s been really interesting or me to see the dierent

kinds o audiences that weve been havingWhen we started it was just

Indian students, and a ew amilies. And when they started knowing the

lms were all subtitled or sure, then we started getting a lot o Indian

students with their Australian spouses and their Australian riends and

so on. And ater a while we started getting Greek and Italian amilies

then there was a signicant amount rom the gay community who came.

They bought the CDs and we had a little bar at the Forum and they hadscotch with a samosa and they just loved the lm.37

Recognising that the mainstream market is limited compared to the

number o movies available or release, the strategy o MG Distribution

is to ensure that a small number o the best Indian movies get a

mainstream release at key sites in the main Australian cities. The

Bollywood Masala estival is the major publicity fagship or their activities

and, according to Sydneys Sunday Telegraph, has become one o the most

popular lm events in Australia.38 Lange claims that in the course o its

tour across Australia in 20045, the estival recorded an attendance

o 40,000-odd people o which 80 percent were non-Indians.39 With

an explicitly crossover mandate, the estival consciously addresses a


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cosmopolitan, inner-city consumer, sensitive to global ashions and

can rely on widespread coverage rom mainstream press publications.

This promotional drive to create a crossover audience in Australia has,

however, to be seen as a qualied success because, while the proleo lm estivals in the inner city may be high compared to everyday

exhibition practices, such events are only able to access a relatively small

component o the nationwide, Australian cinema audience.

In an eort both to reduce the level o piracy in the Australian

market and to relocate Indian flms away rom the grocery stores

associated with the Indian community and into mainstream outlets, MG

Distribution teamed up with another Australian distribution company,

Madman Entertainment, in April 2004. Madman Entertainmentproduces and distributes niche media in playback ormats (including

Japanese anime, Australian and other independent flm, Asian martial

arts and sports eatures). As a joint venture, the two companies

launched the Bollywood Masala label to distribute Bollywood titles

in the mainstream Australian playback market. Lange announced the

new label at the opening o Bollywood Masala 2004 at Cinema Paris,

along with a polite plea to estival-goers to stay away rom the video

pirates. The frst two titles on the label, Chalte Chalte (2003) and

Armaan (2003), were publicised in the estival programme in terms

avourable to a mainstream viewer (Shah Rukh Khan was presented

as the Indian Tom Cruise and Amitabh Bachchan as the Indian

Clint Eastwood) and these and subsequent titles can now be ound

in the art-house sections o some o Australias major rental ranchises.

Another ormal partnership between legitimate Indian flm distributors

and the mainstream Australian media was established when fty-one

per cent o MG Distribution was acquired by Swish in October 2007,

creating Swish MG Distribution, now handling both theatrical andplayback distribution in Australia and expanding its operations in

New Zealand.

Crossing over: a case study

In the rst place, the Bollywoodisation o Indian cinema in Australia

clearly underscores the infuence o global media ashions in the US

and UK upon the Australian market. As part o these trends, English-

language movies such as Moulin Rouge!(2001) orThe Guru (2002) have

plagiarised (and thus popularised) Bollywood movie stylistics, as have

broadcast advertisements in Australia or yoghurt and cars. So, whilst


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a mainstream audience or Indian movies remained putative during

20032005, when the ollowing case study was conducted, the prole

o Indian lms had undeniably been heightened within the intertextual

and transnational media sphere operating across Australian society. Asearly as 2003, The Australian was condent enough to claim:

Indian lms make up the most enthusiastically fuorescent, kinetic

and kaleidoscopic national cinema anywhere and slowly but surely

Australian audiences are succumbing to the charms o these all-singing,

all-dancing love stories.40

The veracity o such a proposition rests o course on how the wordsslowly and surely are interpreted. In order to explore this extraordinary

claim, I conducted interviews with a number o young Australians

who showed an interest in Indian lms. During these interviews, I

raised the question o how likely it seemed to them that a signicant

crossover audience or Indian lms would emerge in Australia. O

these interviewees, the Indian-Australian respondents were in broad

agreement, based upon their own perceptions o Anglo-Australians, that

there was little chance o Indian lms succeeding with a mainstream

audience. Priyas response is simple and direct in this regard:

Not Aussies, noI dont think thats going to happen. I mean, noI

think that Indian movies are too dierent to be something that everyone

might want to watch. Theyre dealing with dierent things that you

wouldnt see in normal movies.

bollywood in australia extract

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