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Real and Imagined Audiences: "Lagaan" and the Hindi Film after the 1990sAuthor(s): Rachel DwyerSource: Etnofoor, Vol. 15, No. 1/2, SCREENS (2002), pp. 177-193Published by: Stichting EtnofoorStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25758031 .

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Real and Imagined Audiences:

Lagaan and the Hindi Film after the 1990s

Rachel Dwyer, SOAS

ABSTRACT The Hindi film of the 1990s marked the dominance of the musical romance: a heightened form of glamour and consumption, where 'Indian values' were tested across the

transnational Indian family. However, two of 200l's biggest hits were not romances but historical

films about subalterns, which few expected to find audiences. Indian film producers frequently talk about adjusting their films for box office success, adding elements intended to please their

audiences, imagined without audience ethnography and extensive market research. This paper focuses on Lagaan, which seemed to break with all norms of an imagined audience, yet was a great hit in India and overseas, acclaimed critically in India and nominated for an 'Oscar' in 2002. It

looks at how the film was produced, its marketing and its reception, raising issues of the relationship between the producers and the audiences in India, the diaspora and the west, in the context of genre.

The Hindi film of the 1990s marked the dominance of the musical romance, typified

by the style of Yash Raj Films: a heightened form of glamour and consumption, where

'Indian values' were tested across the transnational Indian family. Although the highest

grossing film of 2001, Kabhi khushi kabhie gham/Sometimes happiness, sometimes sorrow

(K3G\ dir. Karan Johar, 2001), was in this style, all the box-office pundits were taken

by surprise when two of the year's biggest hits were not romances but historical films

about subalterns - Lagaan/Once upon a time in India (dir. Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001) and Gadar -

ekprem katha/Turmoil - a love story (dir. Anil Sharma, 2001). Among those

who predict audience reactions to films, few thought that these films would find audiences.

Indian film producers frequently talk about adjusting their films for box office success,

adding elements intended to please their imagined audiences. Given the lack of audience

ethnography and extensive market research, this audience is imagined with varying degrees of accuracy reflected in box office returns. This paper focuses on Lagaan, which seemed

to break with all norms of an imagined audience yet was a great hit in India and overseas,

acclaimed critically in India and nominated for an 'Oscar' in 2002. It looks at how the

film producers decided to make the film, its marketing and its reception, raising issues of

the relationship between the producers and the audiences in India, the diaspora and the

west, in the context of genre.

ETNOFOOR, XV(l/2) 2002, pp. 177-193 177



The producers' search for audiences for the Hindi film

Although the Hindi film is often disparaged as 'commercial', no producer can make a film

without a thought to the possible audiences. A film simply has to make money but rarely does, as is true of all forms of popular culture. During the preproduction of a film, there are frequent discussions aimed at reducing this gamble, which centre on the audience.

The producer is all-powerful in Hindi cinema, so it is not surprising that many of the most

successful film directors produce their own films in order to avoid the pressures to adjust the

film to the producers' imagined audiences. At various stages of film making the financiers

may ask producers, or producers may ask directors to add tried and tested elements that are felt to appeal to certain sections of the audience. The most frequent examples of such features are to attract the Muslim audience such as a song drawing on 'Muslim' musical

genres, such as the ghazal or qawwali, or the appearance of a 'good Muslim' or to show

the Hindu characters demonstrating respect for Islam. Other elements could be regarded as generic requirements as one popular film tends to lead to another, following trends in

narrative style, using box office stars, successful music directors, exotic locations and so

on. While these elements are often disparaged as being 'formulaic', they are actually part of the formation of generic categories among the producers and the audience, the Yash

Raj style mentioned above being one of the most famous recent examples.1 The cinema audience in India has always been segmented (Dwyer and Patel 2002) and

the producers and the critics take this into consideration in their predictions of box office

potential. One absolute divide in Indian cinema is between the 'art' and the 'commercial'

(mainstream) cinema (although recent years suggest there may be a slight blurring of

boundaries), another is the market for non-Hindi cinema, which tend to be only in the area where the language is dominant. This paper looks only at mainstream Hindi cinema, where most of these generic divisions can be traced back to the early cinema. Genres found different audiences with action films most popular with the lower classes, while 'social problem' films appealed to the upper classes; Tslamicate' themes found favour with

Muslim audiences. Since the 1950s, Hindi cinema has not had strong generic categories, with films tending to fall into the omnibus 'social' film, often called masala 'mixed and

spicy', containing romance, action, dancing and so on. This mixing of genres is thought to

be driven by the need to reach a maximum audience rather than having a narrow appeal to

only one segment. Nevertheless, certain themes are more popular with regional audiences within the area where the Hindi film dominates - the northern Indian audience prefers action and comedy while the metropolitan audience may accept more controversial films, a

division popularly attributed to class. Others are to do with local sensibilities; so a gangster film set in Bombay may run well there but is unlikely to find a national audience. In recent

years, some producers have been willing to take risks, in particular with gangster films but these have remained popular only within a restricted audience while the most successful films remain are found among the social, films said to espouse HFV (Hindu family values).

The 1990s saw the audience for the Hindi film returning to the cinema halls alongside the growth of new markets (Dwyer 2000b). The Indian audience was no longer a largely

178



male, working class audience, but included the 'new middle classes' of India (Dwyer 2000a), who were avid consumers of a new style

- or even genre - of cinema typified by

the films of Yash Chopra and his company, Yash Raj Films (Dwyer 2002a). Other directors and production houses made films in this style or genre, which celebrated a consumerist, transnational society, where love, romance, fashion and fun were the goals of the young

wealthy Indians who, even if resident outside India, demonstrated to their parents true

Indian, family values (Dwyer 2000b). Some of these films were the biggest box office successes in the history of Indian cinema, and budgets for films increased enormously

during this time.

One of the major changes during the 1990s was the increasing importance of the overseas

market. Hindi films have been popular in Asia and Africa and the former Soviet Union

since early days, but achieved significant markets in Europe and North America only with

the growth of the population of South Asian descent in those countries. With the growth of cinema halls in these countries screening Hindi films in the 1990s, a significant market

emerged. Although this audience is relatively small, the great differential in price of theatre

tickets (up to ten times more in the west) and the fact that this revenue is also in highly desirable foreign exchange, made it valuable to the producers. The big budget romantic

films were the first to earn more in the Indian diaspora, in particular that in the UK and the

USA, than they did in any one of the seven Indian distribution circuits. Yash Raj Films,

quick to realise the importance of this market, opened distribution offices in the UK and

the USA in the late 1990s, which handle their films and some films of a similar style, such as those of Karan Johar that have been the largest grossing films in this market to date.

The most popular of these films included: Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge/The braveheart

will take the bride (dir. Aditya Chopra, 1995), Dil to pagal hai/Thc heart is crazy (dir. Yash Chopra, 1997) and Kuch kuch hota /^//Something happens (dir. Karan Johar, 1998). However, by 2000, as this type of film became the norm it seemed to be losing popularity, with the exception of Kaho na pyaar /zai/Won't you say that it's love (dir. Rakesh Roshan,

2000), which was most famous for creating a new superstar, Hrithik Roshan. 2001 's K3G

took the features of the 90s' film almost to the level of pastiche - the locations are ever

more exotic and unjustified, with characters in stately homes and palaces, whose interiors

are yet more lavish, having fleets of private helicopters as well as the usual top of the range

sports cars. Other genres that are popular in India, such as the action film, the nationalist

film and the crime film did not do well in the diasporic market during this decade, where

only the romantic genre has been so successful. Even films that seem on the fringes of

this 1990s genre, which have appealed only to the metropolitan audience in India, have,

surprisingly, not been marketed well in the UK (for example Dil chahta hai/The heart

loves (dir. Farhan Akhtar, 2001) whose three heroes living stylishly in millionaire style, but included a new sense of ennui, existential confusion and relationship dilemmas). Other

films marginal to the romantic genre, by contrast, have done well in the UK while not

doing well in India, such as Mani Ratnam's Dil se/From the heart.

As the overseas market became increasingly important, the producers and distributors

realised that they were not breaking into the European and American mainstream market

179



where the possibility of really large money lies. While it is well known that India produces more films than any other country, its economy is relatively small, an illustration being that the budgets of Hindi films are usually less than that of a Hollywood trailer. The major

market for expansion is clearly the west, where there are the added attractions of prestige and esteem as most Hindi filmmakers are avid Hollywood fans.

Producers perceived a variety of obstacles in attracting western audiences. The first was

that their films were technologically backward, but this changed rapidly during the 1990s

although many films still dub dialogues in post-production, which is largely unacceptable to western audiences who are familiar with sync-sound. Some thought language was the

main problem and that the west did not like subtitles, so in the late 1990s Yash Chopra planned to dub his films, starting with Lamhe/Moments (1993), which has been screened

by terrestrial BBC as Indian summer. Many producers thought western audiences did not

like the song sequences so cut these, often leaving important moments missing from films made for 'the international audience'. However, these issues were bypassed by the new

technology of the DVDs, which allows the viewer to choose optional screening of subtitles in several languages, which are also popular with some of the diaspora population. (The

DVD is a mixed blessing as the huge number of cheap pirated DVDs is causing great

problems to distributors.) The number of prints released in cinemas has increased as the

multiplex cinema allows exhibitors to take a risk by screening a film in a small theatre, even in cinemas beyond the exclusively South Asian cinemas in the distant suburbs, where

they are now screened in two versions, with and without subtitles.

Among the other usual reasons cited for the failure of Hindi films in the west are the

Hollywood competition, language, length, songs and dance, melodrama and so on. Yet while these factors are undoubtedly important, they do not explain how Hong Kong action films or other non-Hollywood cinemas run in the west. It seems that it is also because the view of India presented in Hindi cinema conflicts with the way the west imagines India. The images of India enjoyed in the west date back to the days of the British Raj

- an exotic tourist destination, typified by the premier destination of the Taj Mahal.2 India is seen as a land of Oriental exotica, of peasants and maharajas, monuments and spirituality. Such

images were particularly popular in the television and film Raj revival of 1980s' Britain

(Rushdie 1991) and in films, which showed India as an exotic backdrop, such as the James Bond film Octopussy (1983), or Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge (2001). Indian writers in

English frequently accuse one another of peddling such exotic fantasies to westerners, but this is not the place to enter such a fiercely contested debate. More realistic images of India are also popular in the west, in particular in the Indian

English novel, modern India's greatest cultural export which has appealed so much to a western audience and with literary prize committees. These novels are often family sagas of decay and nostalgia for the old middle classes (for example, Anita Desai and Vikram

Seth), although they may be set in more exotic narratives such as those of Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie. However, there is also interest in a less fantastical, modern, urban India as shown in the novels of Vikram Chandra. Although these novels are some of the best

selling novels in the west, these images of India have not been popularised in films in the

180



west except in the films by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, such as Shakespeare-wallah (1965), which are mostly scripted by the novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The Indian 'art' film also has a firm following in the west, although it is limited to the

festival circuit except in the case of the renowned director, Satyajit Ray. Ray's cinema is made in a realistic manner, close to European cinema. Although castigated in India for pedalling images of poverty to the west, Ray's films range from the modern, urban

setting to the feudal landowner's world as well as rural society. Ray drew very much on

the Bengali novel for his stories, and perhaps it is in part the closeness of these cinemas to the 'art' novel that accounts for their popularity. Yet in 2002 it seemed that a real breakthrough in marketing terms was made as in the

UK at least, there was recognition of 'Bollywood', a term generally disliked in the Indian

film industry. Many aspects of British Asian culture - from food to comedy - had become

mainstream British culture in the late 1990s. The media in particular saw the emergence of

significant figures such as Meera Syal (actor, writer, comedian) and Gurinder Chadha (film

director). In 2002 a series of loosely connected events comprised Bollywood London. The

department store Selfridges hosted several floors of furnishing, fashion and food ('23 and a half days of Bollywood'), the British Film Institute co-ordinated seasons of South Asian

films ('ImagineAsia'), the Victoria and Albert Museum hosted 'Cinema India: the art of

Bollywood', and Andrew Lloyd Weber produced a Bollywood musical, Bombay Dreams, while many books on Indian cinema were published. The media reports of these events

suggest the media's greatest interest is in the 'shock' factor - the kitsch aesthetic of 1970s

Hindi cinema; the contrast of rich and poor and so on. Bollywood is certainly a buzzword, but it remains to be seen if it is just a passing fashion that allows commodification of India as exotica of fashion and food and tourist fantasies.

Although these events made a new image of India widely known in the west, few of

these events led to the creation of a new audience for the Hindi film and producers still

felt that it was almost impossible to make a film succeed in all these markets. However, in 2002 a Hindi film, Lagaan was nominated for an 'Oscar' as best film in a foreign

language, having already been widely reviewed and discussed in the British media.3 Very much a mainstream Hindi film and a big hit in India, it eschews 'Bollywood' kitsch and

commodification of Indian culture in favour of features long neglected in Hindi cinema

notably a historical genre in a village setting. It also avoided elements thought crucial to

the 90s film, such as glamorously presented female stars, trendy clothes, 'item songs' and

foreign locations. This paper looks at how these features of the film which were sees as

risks actually led to its success at the box office worldwide.

Lagaan: the producers' view

Lagaan is set in Champaner village, north India, 1893. As in the other princely states of British

India, the villagers have to pay an agricultural tax, lagaan. The Raja pleads with Captain Russell

(Paul Blackthome) to lower the tax as the rains have failed and the villagers will starve, but is told instead to raise double tax, dugna lagaan. The villagers and the Raja plead with Captain

181



Russell to lower the tax. Annoyed by the villagers' rebellious nature, in particular Bhuvan's

(Aamir Khan) comparison of cricket to their game gulli-danda, Russell says he will excuse them

tax for three years if the villagers beat the British at cricket. If they lose, they will have to pay extra tax. The villagers are unwilling to take the risk, but Bhuvan encourages them one by one to

join him in his fight against British injustice. Bhuvan tries to teach the villagers what he thinks is cricket but they are clearly in need of help. This comes in the form of Russell's sister, Elizabeth

(Rachel Shelley), whose sense of fairplay and enthusiasm for India allows her to oppose her brother by teaching the villagers cricket. Gauri (Gracy Singh), the village girl who dreams of

marrying Bhuvan realises Elizabeth is in love with him, but Bhuvan has no delusions about his

future. The other villagers unite against the enemy, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh, high and low caste.

During the three-day match the villagers face many setbacks, not least the treachery of one of

their number, but Bhuvan wins against all odds and the villagers are relieved from their taxation.

Gauri and Bhuvan are now ready to marry, while the other villagers return to their daily routine.

Elizabeth returns to England, while her brother is posted to Africa.

The story of the making of Lagaan is told by Satyajit Bhatkal in The spirit of Lagaan (Bhatkal 2002). He narrates how Ashutosh Gowarikar, disheartened by his lack of success

as an actor and a director, wrote a script, which was to be the basis for Lagaan. Knowing it was risky, he tried to recruit a major Hindi film star, Aamir Khan, who had acted in one

of his films but Aamir rejected the script as he thought it took risks with genre and lacked a potential audience, a view that other experienced industry personnel shared:

Javed Ahktar [one of India's most famous scriptwriters and the lyricist for Lagaan], he was telling us that if we had made a list of all the 'don'ts' in Indian cinema, we broke all of them in Lagaan. To begin with it is a period film. It is a film, which has a rural background, which hasn't worked for like twenty years. The stars are wearing dhotis, whereas today all the stars wear DKNY and

Polo Sport. The women in the film are all fully clothed. A sports film has never worked in India.

There is no arbitrary love song shot in Switzerland. You have British actors speaking English in

portions of the film. The main romantic song, half of it is in English. And then you have Amitabh

Bachchan's narration. Whenever he has given his voice as a narrator to any film, that film has

bombed. And Bachchan himself told me that! He said, T don't mind doing it for you, but I just want you to know...' (Khan 2001).

Aamir was eventually persuaded to act in the film by Ashutosh because he loved the story, not because he calculated its generic potential and was willing to take a risk. He had earlier

acted in movies which seemed risky (Deepa Mehta's 1947 Earth, John Matthew Mathan's

Sarfarosh) but which paid off but this was the first time he was to act as producer where

the consequences of failure are also economic. A few months after the film's release, he

says of its success:

I think because it is a basic human story that has some echoes in every country. It's a story about

the underdog achieving the impossible, of David against Goliath. It's kind of like mAsterix comic book: The little Gaulish village standing up against the Roman Empire, but with a lot of humour. There have been lot of films made in India, by Indians and non-Indians, about the British Raj, and it's a very serious and sombre topic. But that is not what our film is about. Our little village is not even concerned about independence. They don't know India as a nation at all; it's too large for them. They are just concerned about their village and whether their children get food or not.

They have small needs. That's why I think is doing so well with people all over, including people in every part of India (Khan 2001).

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Aamir asked the director not to tell producers that he had agreed to be involved. When no producers would take the script, Aamir, the son of a famous film producer, decided to take the risk of production himself, along with his wife, Reena Datta, forming a new

company, Aamir Khan Productions. The project was financed by well-known financier, Jhamu Sughand.

Aamir, a 'self-confessed control freak', wanted to change the way Hindi movies were

made (Hines 2001). He insisted on the film being made in a single schedule, a bound

script, fully preplanned and budgeted for.

The reason for that is not just because I want to be different but because that is the way I feel a

film should be made. A film should have a complete script before even starting pre-production.

People should be working only on one film at a time. Up to now as an actor I have been working in a system that is not used to doing those things, so for me it's been a struggle, swimming against the stream. Finally I had to produce Lagaan myself to make it the way I had been talking about (Khan 2001).

When Aamir showed me some songs and other sequences about four months before the

release, although I considered them excellent, I had doubts about the box office potential of the film. Although I have been reminded about my error subsequently, this was a view

shared by distributors and others in the industry who saw it was a well-made film but one, which did not have a ready-made audience. The producers did not set out to make a film

to appeal to any particular audience but ended up by making a film which achieved the

greatest international recognition of a Hindi film for many years while being a box office success at home and overseas. Producers in the industry, such as Yash Chopra himself,

regard it as a brilliant film and it is widely held to be a landmark in the history of Hindi

cinema.

Lagaan: the reception

The producers had to undertake a major marketing campaign, as the film seemed to have

little in its favour except the presence of Aamir Khan and the music by AR Rehman.

However, they met this challenge with a strong campaign on television as their overseas

distributor is Sony Entertainment Television which has a popular channel which featured

short trailers/teasers almost every hour, supported by a good website, publicity booklet, and various other marketing events.4

Lagaan created a new audience for Hindi mainstream films in the UK.5 It was well

marketed to non-Asian media in the UK and was reviewed, unusually, in listings in the

mainstream British press and in film journals such as Sight and Sound.6 This was done

by holding previews in mainstream cinemas in the key Leicester Square area to which

members of the western press were invited and which the cast and crew attended. The

film had good subtitles and a glossy, attractive booklet (similar in design to the website) was distributed to the invited audiences. The press who were aware of public interest in

'Bollywood' films, but had found them inaccessible through lack of publicity information,

183



subtitles and regular screening times, were keen to attend previews. They then reviewed

the films in the mainstream press, which is very important for audiences in the UK. By contrast, even when Lagaan moved to the South Asian cinemas, it still had a mixed

audience as word of mouth and the 'Oscar' nomination made it the most talked about

Indian film to date.

Lagaan also benefited from 'negative publicity'. Andrew Roberts, a Cambridge historian, highly regarded for his political biographies, is a lone figure in arguing that

the Raj was, on the whole, a good thing. He made some rather silly remarks in the Daily

Telegraph when Lagaan was nominated for the 'Oscar'. These were widely reported in

the Indian media as he said that Lagaan was an anti-British film. The film is quite clearly not anti-British, as it shows the villain being held in contempt by the British authorities, who uphold justice at all times, and portrays his sister as a heroine on the side of right, and has an Indian traitor who betrays the villagers to the villain.

The marketing campaign paid off well at the box office. Indian box office figures are

often unreliable and several websites give differing figures so the following should be

taken as a guide. Lagaan collected Rs 35 crore, almost twice the costs of its budget.7 Lagaan was much more successful outside India being declared the 17th largest grossing

foreign language film earning US$ 1.4 m.8 Lagaan collected US$ 2,427,510 in India but

835,767 in the US and 710,967 in the UK.9

Lagaan dominated the awards ceremonies for the films of 2001/2. It took seven of

thirteen awards at the Indian International Film Awards; it swept the Zee awards; it took

eight Filmfare awards; and four awards from Screen (including best film and best director). The 'Oscar' nomination remains a matter of national pride, whatever its detractors may

say about the producers pandering to a western audience.

Lagaan is the only mainstream Hindi film that has found favour with a global audience

although it has not penetrated deeply into the western market, its returns being a fraction

of those of a hit Hollywood movie. Other films seem to find specific audiences in India,

among the South Asian diaspora and the western audience. Producers have been able to

make films that target the diasporic audience and the metropolitan centres in India (the 'classes') or films that appeal to particular regional centres (the 'masses'), but are still

struggling to make films that are still recognisably Hindi films that appeal to western

audiences as well as the other audiences it has already. Lagaan is one of the few films that

have ever achieved in reaching all these markets.

One of the reasons for Lagaan's universal appeal is simply that it is a well-made film

that tells an archetypal story of the transformation of an ordinary peasant into a noble hero

through his struggle against injustice. The defeat of the powerful by the powerless that have the moral upper hand is a universal theme. The peasant's determination, focus and themes of sacrifice, love and leadership also recur in tales of popular folk heroes as well as

film heroes. Lagaan also draws on other elements of film found in other narratives, such as the Magnificent Seven and Seven Samurai, movies about the ultimate victory of simple

villagers against greater powers, buddy movies and so on.

Lagaan contains multiple genres within the dominant historical genre, which it revives

184



in a new form. The sports movie has its own fans, and the cricket match in Lagaan - which

lasts longer than most Hollywood films - managed to find an appreciative audience even in

non-cricketing America. Lagaan can also appeal as a film about resisting neo-colonialism

through self-reliance and effort rather than despair in the face of insurmountable odds, which could have a broad appeal to a western audience while having a more specific

meaning to the Indian audience.

The visual culture of Lagaan also appeals to westerners as well as Indians as it is

beautifully designed and somewhat exotic, yet realistic in the film's village context and

recognisably Indian. Its sets are by Nitin Desai, a highly regarded set-designer, and are

realistically simple yet striking. Khadi, the homespun cloth popularised by Gandhi as part of the freedom struggle, was used by the costumes designed by Bhanu Athaiya (who won

the 'Oscar' for her designs for Gandhi) and has become fashionable in the west as well as

in India since the film.

Lagaan's reception went against the trend of the Hindi film in the west. In the 1990s, the

Hindi film became truly global in as much as in addition to its long-standing non-western

audiences, it created a significant market in the west but only among the South Asian

diaspora (Dwyer 2000b). This globalising of a local, non-western cinema was in part due

to the celebration of the transnational Indian and the upholding of 'Indian values'. It is

ironic then that Lagaan, which has been the first mainstream Hindi movie to be a major

global and critical success, has done so by rejecting the features of the 1990s film that

made it global. Like the 1990s films, Lagaan celebrates Indian values, which are shown

here to be rooted as much in the Indian past as in the Indian present. However, it differs

in being anticosmopolitan and local, eschewing the figure of the transnational Indian (of course, the setting of the film predates this figure).

The west finds the 1990s Hindi film unfamiliar, as it does not refer to western images of India but to Indian metropolitan consumerist fantasies, which are different in their

aspirations from western consumerism, which is well provided for in the west by American

film and television. It has long been recognised that entertainment is not necessarily universal but is usually specific to certain times and places (Dyer 1977). The 1990s Hindi

film, which has appealed so much to the South Asian diaspora, does not make sense to a

western audience except as exotica or even kitsch. However, films like Lagaan map onto

western understandings of India (see above), as its depiction of imperialism is familiar

from Empire films and the Raj nostalgia of the 1980s.

Like westerners, the British Asians enjoyed Lagaan, but they still favour the 1990s

romance. K3G, though it released in December, was the biggest box office hit of the

year, and emerged quickly as such as in its first weekend in the UK it reached number

3 in the UK charts, taking ,?473,355.10 Its audience was ready-made, constituted by the

1990s film, which came to see the second film of the famous director, Karan Johar, and

his amazing star-studded cast. The film had all the right ingredients - music, glamour,

a diasporic theme, poor girl-rich boy, family conflicts and so on - but has something of a calculated feel as it clearly courts its audience rather than reaching out to new

audiences.

185



It was not only in the west but also in India that Lagaan tapped into existing markets and

created new markets, initiated in part by marketing but also by word of mouth, probably the

most important way of creating an audience for films in India where the critics' opinions are often disregarded.

The only existing market for Lagaan in India was primarily based on two star names -

Aamir Khan and AR Rahman. Aamir Khan is one of India's top box office stars, who

moved from college kid to tapori ('streetwise') roles. His character, Bhuvan, is a peasant, a

subaltern, who becomes heroic through the actions he takes in the film from very ordinary

beginnings. The film's plebeian reference is very different from the 90s film, recalling the

Amitabh Bachchan roles of the 1970s, reinforced by Amitabh's unmistakeable voiceovers.

The other strong factor in the film's favour was the music of AR Rahman, India's most

popular and highly paid music director.

Although the cricket match was not part of the marketing campaign, it was important in that the Indian cricket team is always a source of national pride. Indeed, it is often said

that when all else seems to go wrong, they are the one constant success story of modern

India.

In the context of the Indian as well as the global market, Lagaan goes against the popular features of the 1990s film. It is strongly regional, as is shown in its use of the Avadhi

dialect of Hindi rather than Bombay (Bambaiya) Hindi mixed with English, its costume of

homespun cloth rather than designer wear, and its setting of an ordinary village rather than

spectacular locations around the world. Lagaan has no reference to bourgeois and western

values, having a subaltern viewpoint, upholding the view the peasant rather than that of

the merchant or businessman so popular in the 1990s film. One of the great differences is that Lagaan upholds inclusive community values, rejecting divisions of caste, region and

religion, rather than focusing on family values or tub-thumping patriotism. It also gives less lip service to religiosity and ritual, except for folk songs and dances with religious references, while the temple is seen as a public space rather than a temple-palace.

Tis seismic shift in genre is certainly important in extending the Hindi films audience and may also tell us something about the Indian audiences. It may be that the historical has created its own audiences in India rather than tap into those existing for the 1990s film although it is hard to determine this in the absence of audience studies. Gadar, a

film about a proseperous farmer of northwest Inda, who became a hero, found its huge audience in areas inhabited by people of similar social backgrounds to its hero. However, while Lagaan''s audience includes many who constituted the audience for the 1990s film, it also found for the first time a new audience who could appreciate the universal story of the villager. Although the evidence is inconclusive, there may be new audiences in

India who reject the concerns of 1990s films. The 1990s also saw the rise of the lower castes in India (Jaffrelot 2002) and Lagaan may have appealed to these sections of the audience who celebrated heroes like themselves, who shared their values. Nevertheless, the concerns of the 1990s romance have reached beyond the immediate class reference to

all aspiring consumers, many of whom may belong to lower classes and castes. It is only a

suggestion that the plebeian, lower caste reference may appeal to wider groups who share

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these values, returning us to the ironical position that this film is appreciated more by the western audience who have not watched the 1990s film.

The historical and other genres

Despite the remarkable success of several films of the 1990s, 2000 saw one of the worst

years for Hindi films at the box office in India as the elements of the 1990s film did not seem to be finding favour with the audience. Lagaan, with its refusal of many of these

defining characteristics of the 1990s film, seemed a wild card. Yet it is significant that 2001 saw the release of two other historical films, Gadar and Asoka (dir. Santosh Sivan). Gadar is the story of a Sikh lorry driver who falls in love with a Muslim convent-educated girl.

He saves her during the partition riots where she loses her family and they marry and have a child. She goes to Pakistan to find her family but when they try to force her to remarry, her husband comes to rescue her. Gadar was the biggest box-office grosser of 2001, and the longest box office runner, being in the theatres for 18 weeks in Bombay/Mumbai.11 It found enormous audiences in the areas of India where the partition had displaced the

largest populations, namely the northwest. The audiences here were said to be such that

early morning screenings of the films had to be held as villagers came to the towns to see

this film. Asoka was the great Buddhist emperor of India, who began his rule as a brutal

warrior, eschewing violence after his conversion. His edicts are the first writing in India, and his lion symbol has become India's national emblem. Although in international box office figures12 Asoka appears as the 20th largest grossing foreign film, earning Sim,13 it was declared a flop in India.14 It took risks by concentrating on a romantic legend rather

than the story of a noble emperor. In the west, the Buddhist story might have attracted a

greater audience but the story of the warrior king had little fresh appeal and nothing that was specifically Indian about it. Asoka is barely known in the west and more needed to be

made of why he is known as 'Asoka the Great'.

In many ways the historical was a genre ripe for revival, as it is one of the most enduring genres, which has been popular since the beginnings of cinema. Genres operate in cyclical patterns of popularity (Altman 1999), and the historical was revived in the west in the

1990s, when some of the greatest hits included Braveheart, Gladiator and Titanic, the

latter having unprecedented international success, as did Elizabeth (1998), whose director, Shekhar Kapur, had previously made mainstream Hindi movies including Mr India (1987).

However, the historical film had faded from the Indian screen during the 1960s, although it had some extended life on television serials.15 Perhaps it is significant that the last major film in the west that concerned India was the 'Oscar' winning Gandhi, which depicted the historical freedom struggle, at least in part, as a moral battle. In India, historicals

dealt mostly with great moments of India's medieval past, usually set in the Mughal and Maratha periods which are often regarded as India's golden ages, and are staged as elaborate costume dramas whose dialogues afforded close links with the nationalist

movement.

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The major question arising from the reappearance of the historical in 2001 is why it

appeared suddenly in so many places. The decline of the historical is often explained in

terms of economics, in that the budgets needed for top stars, opulent sets and costumes

for the courtly historical made them unviable, but in recent years budgets for films with

contemporary settings have reached unheard of sums, that there is now little difference

between the budgets for the two types of film. In the west, new technologies were essential

in the making of Titanic, for shots of the ship sailing, or in Braveheart to create large armies, but these have been used less in Hindi films. Another reason is that the producers blame the box office failures of recent films on their weak stories and historicals provide a ready-made, already popular story. In the Indian context, the historical is likely to

be popular as it deploys the major attractions of Hindi cinema to great effect such as

spectacle by showing well known images of the past as well as grandiloquent dialogue,

stylised gesture and resounding music.16 Given that producers blame the lack of success of

Hindi films in recent times on their poor stories, the historical would seem an ideal choice

with their stories rooted in the melodrama of a shared experience of popular history. The

narrative of the historical film also builds on melodramatic elements found in almost all

Hindi cinema, such as the struggle between good and evil, the former embodied by a man

(rarely a woman) of the people, who takes a heroic against a black-hearted villain. Marcia

Landy's analysis of the historical genre in other cinemas may be extended to explain the

appeal of the Hindi historical:

Official or elite historical representations, especially monumental narratives of national formation, are saturated with melodrama. The melodramas take the form of threats to national continuity,

inevitably involving scenarios of physical and spiritual struggle; or personal, familial, and group

sacrifice; of patriotism; and of an intense and excessive concentration on belonging and exclusion.

Such scenarios are justified in terms of biological determinism, especially in relation to questions of individual and group survival (Landy 1996:17).

The historical also gives great play to the image of the star. In most Hindi films, the star

image invokes discourses about nation, sexuality and gender. These can be developed to a greater degree in the historical where the star is a heroic, usually nationalist, figure and since he is usually male, embodies contemporary ideas about masculinity which seem

to be reinforced by their historical association (Dyer 1998, Dwyer 2000a). He is often

sexually attractive to women closely associated with the enemy, and who may help save

him at their own risk.

Lagaan does not fulfil many of the requirements of the historical Hindi film nor does it claim this generic definition. While it may be disputed whether it is actually a historical

film, it seems that it is a new mutation of the historical genre, in the sense that it is not a

social (which is, by definition, set in the present), nor does it belong to any other existing genre. It is a hybrid, in that it includes elements of the village film, the Raj film, the sports film and so on. I have called it a historical as it is set in the past, at a specific though undetermined historical moment, which it attempts to portray, even though its characters are all fictional and it does not draw on existing storylines. By calling it a new historical, it can be linked to the other historical films of 2001, Gadar and Asoka, rather than seeing

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them as belonging to three separate, new and unnamed genres, while Asoka has closer

links to the old historical genre of Hindi cinema. Hindi film genres have always been

hybrid or hyphenated, so it is not surprising that this new historical genre should be so

too, with Gadar also a hybrid as a historical-partition-intercommunal film. These three

historicals are mostly based on original storylines, which redefine the historical genre in

Hindi cinema, redeploying motifs that define them rather than sharing a set of exclusive

features (Neale 1980). Asoka is nearest to the older form of the historical that is the story of a well-known historical character, but breaks the rules by not telling the well-known

stories about him. Lagaan and Gadar tell their stories from a plebeian viewpoint, a feature

not very common in the earlier historicals.17 The development of a new genre is likely to tell us something about the wider society in

which it is produced and consumed. Although genres do not reflect a nation's thoughts at

a given time (Neale 1990:64), they are often associated with shifts in mentalite (Todorov

1984:80-93) and it may be that the historical can be associated with new ideologies, which

require the creation of new emblems of the nation, drawing on popular stories. In present

day India, Hindutva would be a clear candidate but historical films to date have not shown

indications of its ideology, with the possible exception of Hey! Ram (dir. Kamal Hasan,

2000), a box office failure. Nevertheless, it is likely that recent moves to 'rewrite' Indian

history from a Hindutva perspective have led to a reconsideration of narratives of Indian

history in some quarters as new versions of histories, new heroes and so on are created in

popular discourses, in education and so on.

Genres also create 'genre communities' (Altman 1999:156-164) in which 'films are

not just a content and a form transmitted by producers to consumers, they are also the

medium of an additional mode of communication that groups of consumers carry out

with each other' (Altman 1999:162). This is particularly striking in the case of the Hindi

film where generic communities are constituted not only by films but by film magazines

(Dwyer 2000a), Internet sites and so on. Given that these films are so recent, it is not

easy to identify such a community already, but it may be connected with a new opening of memory. Urvashi Butalia (2000) writes that she found an unwillingness to discuss

partition, a situation that has changed greatly in recent years in India, perhaps in the wake

of 1997's golden jubilee or because of the violent aftershocks of partition currently being felt in Gujarat State and in the current Indo-Pakistan tensions. This reworking of the genre of the historical film certainly allows for discussion of history, memory and nostalgia, the

retelling of stories, perhaps in the hope of creating a national consensus. It also creates

a space for new ideas of a national identity, or a new definition of 'Indian values'. It

is striking that Lagaan not only stirs up national pride around cricket but also shows

the necessity of an overriding religiously and ethnically diverse identity. This 'unity in

diversity' is depicted as being in existence over a century ago and can be seen as opposing ideas of communal and caste division.

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Concluding remarks

It is impossible to predict what will happen next with the Hindi film at the box office,

just as no one could have guessed that 2001 would see two historical films doing so well

and one achieving international recognition. It is too early to see what affect Lagaan's international success will have on the industry. It is not unlikely that this new genre will

develop into a further creolised genre and that other hyphenated genres will develop. It seems that attempts to tailor films to specific, imagined markets are not likely to succeed, as they can appear crudely cynical and manipulative. Producers remain eager to reach as

many markets as possible, but it seems almost impossible to find a film that will appeal to

the Indian audiences as well as the diaspora and the western audiences. It remains to be seen whether Lagaan was unique in finding success with so many audiences. An attempt was made in 2002 to take a Hindi film to an international audience with the release of the highest budget film to date, Devdas (dir. Sanjay Leela Bhansali), yet another version, albeit much altered, of the much loved novel of the middlebrow middle classes of Bengal. Devdas, from a rich land-owning family, cannot marry his beloved, so takes up with a

dancing girl and kills himself in a descent into alcoholism. Ashis Nandy (2000) called Devdas a 'maudlin, effeminate hero', who seems out of keeping with the modern day hero of the 1990s or the hero of Lagaan who is willing to take on the concerns of others and

fight for his beliefs. This much-anticipated film received a good initial opening in India and among the diaspora but was critically panned by western critics and has not sustained its popularity.

Although it seems unlikely that Bombay is about to become a centre producing films, which find wider international success, diasporic filmmakers are making films within

Hollywood and western independent film making circuits. While it is almost a decade since Shekhar Kapur quit India and Hindi films to make highly acclaimed films for an international audience, these films that have not appealed in India. In the intervening years, however, diasporic film makers have found success with all audiences, notably Meera Nair with Monsoon Wedding (2002) and Gurinder Chadha with Bend it like Beckham, whose Hindi version Football-shootball, hay Rabal (Football-shootball, O God!) has been a

surprise hit. These two films have little in common, except that they are comedies with serious themes, made in western idioms, in which the major participants are South Asians. It is a sign how much the Indian audiences have changed that these films have done well,

although they have not achieved the success of a hit Hindi movie. These changes are due, at least in part, to the expansion of television in India, where soap operas are creating audiences for more mundane family melodramas and for western television programmes and films, sometimes dubbed into Hindi. Ten years ago these films, in particular Beckam, would have looked alien and exotic, but now Indians have seen British Asian culture on television or through the rapid increase in international travel.

However, Hollywood remains the dominant form of international filmmaking and it knows that India, with its great cinema going audiences is likely to prove a good distribution circuit. Hollywood has also found an increased audience in India in the last decade, with

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Titanic being the biggest hit of its year in India, and other Hollywood movies such as

Spiderman (2002) are now finding audiences, as they are now appearing in both English in dubbed versions. It may seem that Hollywood is once again laying claim to global and universal status, not least because of its superior technology, enormous budgets for

the films and their marketing. Although Hindi films are entering the UK and US box

office charts, they are yet to become hits on the scale of Hollywood and British films

there. Lagaan has clearly made steps in the right direction and it remains to be seen if it was a one-off or has started a new trend. One option is for Hindi filmmakers to follow

Shekhar Kapur in switching to making western films but, like others, Aamir Khan remains

adamant that he wants to change film making in India, to make films that appeal to a

western audience, but not by giving up the unique form of the Hindi film:

Indian cinema is larger than life. It's got a sweep to it; it's got a romance to it. The audience is

transported into another world. Most Hollywood films are like this also, it's just that the world

they create is a little different ... we are not looking to the west for inspiration. We have our

own tradition of great filmmaking. When I think of what I want to do as a moviemaker I think of Indian films of the '50s and '60s, of directors like Mehboob Khan, who made Mother India, of K.

Asif, who made Mughul-e-Asam, of Bimal Roy and Gum Dutt, and as an actor of Dilip Kumar

(Khan 2001).

E-mail address: [email protected]

Notes

1. Many producers say if there was a formula, then they wish someone would tell them. This is

part of the process Altman identifies in the creation of genres: the producers' game (Altman

1999:38f). 2. See Edensor's study of tourism at the Taj Mahal: Edensor 1998. 3. American coverage came much later, after the 'Oscars'.

4. See: http://www.lagaan.com/ 5. Mira Nair's Monsoon wedding, although made in Hindi and a huge success in the west and in

India, is not a mainstream Hindi film in terms of production, stars, music, style and so on.

6. Review of Lagaan: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/2001_10/ 7. See: http://www.mumbai-central.com/specials/bolly_2001 _roundup.html 8 See: http://www.thefilmexperience.net/Awards/2001/01boxoffice.html 9 Figures for the end of July 2001 from: http://www.cyberbollywood.com/boxoffice/history/2001/

0701/20.html 10. See: http://www.mumbai-central.com/specials/bolly_2001 _roundup.html 11. It is one of the biggest ever box office successes in India, collecting US$ 3,533,761 in India,

120,000 in the USA and 155,401 in the UK. Figures for the end of July 2001 from http:// www.cyberbollywood.com/boxoffice/history/2001/070 l/20.html

12. Asoka is said to have earned US$ 900,000 in India, 700,000 in the US and 730,000 in the UK -

http://www.cyberbollywood.com^oxofficemistory/2001/1101/23.html 13. See: http://www.thefilmexperience.net/Awards/2001/01boxoffice.html 14. See: http://www.cyberbollywood.com/boxoffice/articles/nov01/28.html 15. I am indebted to discussions with Urvi Mukhopadhyay on the historical films in earlier Indian

cinema. She is currently researching representations of the medieval in Indian cinema.

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16. See Dwyer and Patel 2002, Chapter 1 on the attractions of the Hindi cinema. 17. When the Hollywood western was revived by Clint Eastwood, he brought a new style and

viewpoint to the genre.

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LAGAAN/Once upon a time in India Writer/director: Ashutosh Gowariker

Editor: Ballu Saluja Director of Photography: Anil Mehta Production designer: Nitin Chandrakant Desai Sound: Nakul Kamte

Music: AR Rahman

Playback Singers: Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Alka Yagnik, Udit Narayan, Sadhana Sargam,

Sukhvinder Singh and others

Lyrics: Javed Akhtar

Choreographer: Saroj Khan, raju Khan, Vaibhavi Merchant, Ganesh Hegde, Terrence Lewis

Selected Cast: Aamir Khan, Gracy Singh, Rachel Shelley, Paul Blackthorne Producer: Aamir Khan

Presenter: Jhamu Sughand International distributor: Sony Entertainment Television Ltd.

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