http://www.himalmag.com/99Sep/world.htm http://www.himalmag.com/99Sep/world.htm
Why the world loves Hindi movies
Deepa Gahlot
Once thought to be only meant for the silly ones, Hindi masalas now have fans worldwide not all of them silly.
SEPTEMBER 1999
The global popularity of Hindi cinema crept up and hit the Bombay film industry in the eye last year when Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se made it to the UK Top 10 in its first week. Then in August this year, Amitabh Bachchan topped a BBC online poll on the most popular star of the millennium, beating Hollywood demi-gods by a long shot; what’s more, Govinda finished tenth on the list.
More recently, Subhash Ghai’s Taal broke box-office records in the US, mainly because he thought it worth releasing an unheard-of 44 prints in the overseas circuit. The oddest success story is, of course, of Rajnikant’s Tamil films bowling over Japanese filmgoers.
Indian audiences used to treat the indigenous film—whether in Hindi or in any regional language, the popular film’s form remains the same—as an acquired taste peculiar to Indian culture, a “vice” to be admitted to sheepishly, something to be slightly ashamed of, like paan stains on the teeth and coconut oil in the hair. In spite of a comfortably receptive overseas market, the Hindi film industry was smugly content with the vast audiences it had at its command within the Subcontinent. So unlike Hollywood, Indian filmmakers did not feel the need to expand internationally beyond a few known and fairly lucrative territories that went under the omnibus label of “Overseas”. A clear example of ghar ka murgi daal barabar—a piquant Hindi saying which means that people often ignore what is right under their noses. In this case, a unique product and an eminently exportable commodity.
There was always a small and steady market for Hindi cinema abroad, or wherever there was a sizeable South Asian immigrant population. And their popularity also extended to the native population of the Gulf, some African countries, and, oddly enough, Russia and some East European countries, plus a minute cult following in campuses across the US, the UK and rest of Europe. Raj Kapoor and Mithun Chakraborty are hugely popular in Russia, Amitabh Bachchan’s name can open doors in Egypt, and shopkeepers in Singapore are known to have declined payment from anyone who knows the words to the latest Hindi hit film song.
It is only in the last few years that Hindi cinema—with films like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge, Dil To Pagal Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai—has come out from its closet of tiny suburban movie halls, video parlours and smuggled pirated VCDs, right into the mainstream. They have got a large-enough audience to figure in the top charts, bag impressive theatre chains and get noticed by critics of upmarket publications. (Till recently, the only Indian filmmaker known abroad was Satyajit Ray.)
The media worldwide has started doing features, photo-essays, TV series and documentaries on popular Indian cinema. It’s no longer disgraceful to admit to a passion for the masala movie—even film scholars, researchers and historians now find it worth analysing it as a powerful form of popular culture.
This interest abroad has perhaps coincided with the emergence of a strong Asian subculture in the West, which, as usual, has exported our own Indianness back to us, apparent in the way Hindi cinema has caught on with the hip, urban teen set who earlier used to think that the Hindi masala movie was infra dig, only meant for lumpens and bored housewives. Like the dominance of Black culture some years ago, it is the turn of Indian/South Asian culture now—Indian food, yoga, ayurveda, spirituality, are all in vogue. There’s bhangra rap in the discos, salwar kameez and saris being accepted as haute couture, henna tattoos as fashion; Madonna singing shlokas and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan composing for major Hollywood films. Now, Indian films are shown regularly on television all over the world to a multiplying flock of multi-cultural audiences, and not just on ethnic channels.
Bollywood is no longer ghetto territory, but a world to be fancied—not a Hollywood rip-off but an equal; and a means of running around the cultural hegemony of Hollywood. The fact that the big Hollywood studios and entertainment conglomerates are fighting for an entry into the Indian market proves that there is something they still have to learn about audience tastes.
“As a result of exposure to quality Hindi films, Indian cinema is no more obscure in the West,” says Nasreen Munni Kabir who made Movie Mahal, Channel 4’s first major series on Hindi cinema, in the early 80s. “The best example of the acceptance of Hindi films in the West is an ad for Powergen that shows a group of Indian villagers watching a song and dance scene when the power goes off. The Powergen is switched on and the film is resumed. This ad would never have happened three years ago. Now India is fashionable in the West, like Black culture was some years ago.”
Kabir feels that the Asian sub-culture is seeping into the mainstream with the rise of Asians into positions of influence, while their younger generation is more accepting of other cultures. “Far from repudiating their Asianness, young Asians are more confident and proud of their bi-culturalism,” says the producer.
Interestingly, this upsurge of Indian culture abroad has coincided with a back-to-roots traditionalism in Indian society, reflected in the phenomenal popularity of religious and mythological serials on television and films like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge and Pardes, which focus on the traditional Indian family, ancient rituals and patriarchal values. There is doubtless a commercial element involved—everything ultimately turns into a marketing tool—but the Hindi movie is fulfilling a need to cling on to something familiar in a fast-changing world which is sweeping away cultural contrasts and demanding uniformity (and conformity) in the name of globalisation. It has perhaps become imperative for Indian films to depict what is in the Indian mind—an urgency to accept the global, but retain the traditional.
Fortunately for filmmakers, this trend in India goes very well with the nostalgia of the non-resident Indian (NRI) for what has been left behind. While first-generation immigrants yearn for their homeland, the second or third generation does not want to assimilate completely into a foreign culture, and craves to preserve a vestige of their Indian identity. The Indian filmmaker capitalises on this homesickness and nostalgia by making films that give the NRI as well as the disconcerted desis a glimpse of their ‘glorious’ past. Successful films thus are the ones that depict rituals like weddings, Holi, Diwali, and even the outdated Karva Chauth (the fast wives observe for the longevity of their husbands), with a loud splash of colour, custom and music, which is enough to reassure the post-liberalisation Indian as well as the nostalgic NRI that Indian culture is not all lost.
A Hum Aapke Hain Kaun or Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam celebrates the Indianness of the joint family, religious rituals, cherished virtues of unselfishness and sacrifice, to cover up for the blatant consumerism, self-indulgence and short-cut spiritualism of real life. It’s not all that surprising then, that the trend of violence in Indian mainstream cinema of the late 1970s and 1980s has made way for romance, fidelity, family values and the cuteness of heroes like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan and Govinda, who in spite of their gym-pumped muscles, come as close to an internationally approved androgyny as a patriarchal society will allow.
The spectacle of ritual, song, dance, sentiment, romance, is obviously as attractive to the non-Indian film viewer, as it is to the escapism-seeking, often poverty-stricken Indian. In an increasingly mechanised, impersonal, troubled and splintering world, the emotionalism, filial and marital loyalty, fantasy and constancy, as portrayed in Hindi/Indian films, is a fleeting source of comfort. One of the biggest Hollywood hits in recent times—Titanic—is an example of the globalisation of the Indian film formula. Romance, music and family duty have also returned to international films, and Indian popular cinema almost has a patent on them.
The undying appeal of the Indian film to the non-Indian viewer from countries and cultures as diverse as Japan, South Africa, Russia, Malaysia, Egypt, West Indies, lies in its core of fantasy wrapped in tradition. The mainstream cinema is usually as far removed from reality as possible, with no claim whatsoever on authenticity or accuracy, but the die-hard viewer doesn’t care about a couple living in Chandigarh singing songs in Amsterdam, a Scottish castle being passed off as a Delhi college or a Swiss chalet as a residence in Mumbai. This unabashed disregard for time, space and geography can only happen in the alternative zone of existence that Indian cinema offers—a relief from harsh reality.
Hindi/Indian cinema demands and gets total suspension of disbelief. It works at the level of ballad, fable, fairy tale and simple morality yarn, where virtue is always rewarded and wickedness punished. To the West this blend of the simple and the outlandish is attractive, while others find resonances of their own lost innocence in the illusory world of the Indian film. This is the only world where there are no doubts or confusion or nasty surprises.
In real life, you can never know when you might be run over by a car, blown up by a terrorist’s bomb or caught by a sniper’s bullet; your marriage could break up, parents disown you, kids abandon you. In real life, you will have to deal with illness, redundancy, betrayal, riots. In the usual Bollywood fare, there are no divorces, families stay together; more often than not, kids are deferential, parents indulgent, and neighbours considerate. When characters go through inhuman suffering and emerge victorious, and, mysteriously unscathed, there is a sense of collective catharsis that even the most slickly made Western film cannot guarantee.
Where else do you get a permanent promise of happy endings? In a Hindi movie, almost always, the boy and the girl live happily ever after.