Indian
Popular Film Industry: Genesis of Bollywood and the critique of the Production
Logic
Published in J-Reader, Vol 2. September, 2016; ISSN 2395-0439
Abir Chattopadhyay
Abir Chattopadhyay
Abstract
The
emergence and advent of Bollywood has probably become the terminal developing point
of Indian Popular Cinema Industry or Mumbai Mainstream Film Industry at large.
Lots of researches have already been accomplished on the recent trends of
Bollywood cinema, major narratives of mainstream cinema, about Bollywood
Entertainment Industry and so on. But very few works have so far dealt with the
genealogy of the term Bollywood. Is it just a name-sequel of Hollywood or
something similar to the traditional popular cultural notion of identifying any
Indian [or any third world] Tourist spot as commonly 'Switzerland of India'?
Naming Bollywood is not that inferiorly framed, rather is an independent
looking term having 'difficult to get' but a distinct structure of meaning.
Critics are of various conclusive outlooks and opinions about the genesis of
Bollywood but a huge inconclusiveness too prevails at large. Google Search on
Bollywood gives a plethora of activities relating mainstream Hindi cinema that
needs to be configured to get a general value of Bollywood. This paper tries to
rediscover the genesis of Bollywood in an outright open approach to find the
coordinate of it.
1.
Prologue:
In search of the Coordinate of Bollywood
What nevertheless remains unwritten
there on Mumbai or Indian Popular Film Industry? Is there any area still left unsaid
to make the audience newly informed other than endless categories of entertainment?
Is there really any new area of discussion left which the other media like
popular or critical magazines, book spaces and edited volumes could not locate
or discover? It is doubtlessly difficult to find a new area still un-researched
or un-contented by analysts, critics, popular scribes, authors serving
corporate interests etc. Indian Popular Film Industry celebrating the centenary
year of film production in various media reality shows and reality stage demonstrations
has established its supremacy on behalf of the larger nationalist system to the
millions of audience or civic population. In every such demonstration the
optimum participation of bureaucrats, corporate impresarios, critics,
production officials, producing companies, celebs, and respective government
departments is widely observed as exactly same as the milieu in IPL, where the participation
of both public, private and corporate has a common objective of ruling the dialectic
of fete.
Meanwhile the traditional Mumbai
Film Industry has been successfully metamorphosed into its present global
identity Bollywood having the least reminiscence, if not completely rejected, of
its earlier identity Bombay Film Industry whatsoever. Internet search engines comfortably
show all information, earlier related to Bombay film industry, now as under
'History of Bollywood Films' thus casually inscribed the name 'Bollywood' of
the film industry. Whatever Bollywood appears to be in audience's or
whosoever's mind or as a common socio-cultural text may here be planted as such
a frame that covers the whole of not just Mumbai but the so called mainstream
cinema as an industry on the one hand and a mystic affair rather a viscid narrative
to the public and specially the audience. Bollywood has become a signpost of
total Indian Popular film production.
There are therefore two distinct
streams of understanding the Indian Popular Cinema now celebrating the hundred
years of cinema production as a 'fete',
as the finality of all entertainment categories, overlapping and overdrawing all
gross ideological confusions and diversities toward a homology of Indian cinema
since its colonial phase. These streams of understanding or initiatives however
are:
(i)
Central Administrative initiative, a systemic effort that still promotes cinema
by its own mass-system of production-distribution-recognition [from NFDC, Films
Division to National Film Awards] which deliberately considers the holistic
structure of Indian cinema production as 'superstructure' of its own social systemic
base rather state production system.
Basically in all its efforts since
independence the Indian government tried hard to recognize such an initiative,
in the name of art, which it does not recognize as a system but recognizes its financially
empowered existence along with all radically alternative initiatives. They keep
all necessary balance with the Mumbai Cinema or Bollywood.
(ii)
Secondly a parallel stream of both private individual and 'hypercommercial' initiatives
that invest capital in both the production of popular commodity entertainers and
also the Award giving shows like AIIFA, Filmfare and many such nationally and internationally
held Award Programmes as post-production mechanism; analysts often consider as,
albeit very mystic, a superstructure of the industrial production system.
These efforts nowadays are mostly
fed by both global individual and transcorporate brands and institutions beyond
any state administrative purview. The inflow of 'huge' private capital has
become such a new symbolic artifact amount of which invested in a film becomes
a new narrative for extension in social media.
(iii)
Thirdly, a holistic mass media initiative of a new cultural expansion of the
contemporary cinema beyond its commodious nature in audience mind from its pre-global
symbolization or a 'tag' to the contemporary post-global extension of reality
that also marks the centurial development of Indian cinema as a courtesy to the
Indian Popular Cinema.
The above initiatives however generate
an ideological centripetality to every third critic that, whatever happening to
the industrialization of cinema, the age old 'public limited' conception of
social (production) base for films remains intact that gives us enough space to
sustain all traditional critiques toward good cinema, bad cinema, commercial
cinema, art cinema, protagonist's cinema, action cinema, Yash Chopra type
romantic cinema, super hero cinema, 'Bhansali-Maniratnam-Anurag Basu-Dibakar
Banerjee-Sujit Sarkar...new wave... blah-blah-blah and the list of arbitrary genres
goes on exponentially everyday. In Hollywood three particular politically extensive
features were very much distinctive since the post-war epoch, firstly 'One Man
Hero' model; secondly 'Patriot' model and thirdly supernatural model and
fourthly the 'Great Thief' model. Indian Popular cinema exactly after three
decades is witnessing the revival of those three-four models. Cumulatively
Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Tollygunge are being bashed with these above
models of cinemas.
From Evergreen Dev Anand to Angry
Young Man Amitabh; or from Big-B to Bollywood Badshah the age of symbolic
extension has always had a stereotype of Bombay Film Industry and became very
popular. But some recent Television promos of Bollywood have made it more
extensive toward common lives. 'Desh Ke
Janbaaz Heroes Jiske Man Me Desh Bhakti Ke Sibha Kuch Nahin Hain' and many
others have already made the extension in such an unprecedented reality
condition that legitimizes the contemporary form of 'Desh Bhakti' as a new
condition in the audience mind. This extension plausibly features a long
awaited 'imaginary' of cinema beyond
its commodity identity what was earlier witnessed in Hollywood in successive
two-three decades after the defeat in Vietnam War. Hollywood had shown the
world the 'imaginary' of freedom,
strength or might, polity, destruction, super-identity, future in astro-space,
and above all a high modernity toward global integration beyond the simple
traditional social models. Social networking media too have been proactive in
such an expansion.
This traditional and largely state-sponsored
logic of base superstructure relationship has always been the biggest award to
all Indian Popular Cinemas that the audience, albeit being mostly unaware of,
think nevertheless or being made up to legitimize the production of Bollywood cinema
either evolving from the social perspective or somehow needed or functional for
the society. Even Critics are habituated in working under the sponsored base-superstructure
relationship where any extension is considered as natural as its production
logic. This apparent naturality legitimizes all commercial stereotypes and directorial
arbitrariness as the fall out of social praxis, whereas the reality remains far
apart. So it has therefore become an ideology of Indian popular cinema beyond
all creative and political alternatives. We call them 'Mainstream' Cinema and somehow
become a vanguard of that ideology having a noble job of caging all critical
films or cinemas into a strict political format in terms of least viewership.
This cumulative or gross nationalized
ideology of popular cinema production has always been so strong and socially manipulative
that it even absorbs all alternative or critical outlooks in the name of a
needful entertainment strategy in its blackhole. Moreover the alternative
production ideologies too (until monetarist globalization) were either
dependent upon the patronage of government institutions such as NFDC, Films
Division etc. or facing otherwise very tough edge to accumulate funding, human
assistance/involvement and finally the audience. So the above formulated
general models of cinema become too much cosmetic, non-critical and loosely
measured. Noted film scholar Madhava Prasad too recognizes many such neo-classical
production logics or categorization of cinema like 'so many cinema' model, 'yeh
to public hai yeh sab janti hai' model, 'regressive pulse of people' model,
'art versus popular cinema' model etc.
So in these hundred long years,
both mainstream and most of other critical models of Indian cinema have somehow
been placed in the same production system and somewhere in the same popular
production ideology too where the forces of production and production relations
are as same as it is considered for other socialized production processes
having otherwise enough mutually opposed options. But the question nevertheless
remains whether the debate on the production logic of cinema in India gives us
any radical non-mythical space from where we can start criticizing or
categorizing cinema to be doing something 'revolutionary' alternative; or
cinema in India has yet to provide any alternative text as third text to
revolutionize the audience. I do not however intend to go into details of the
criticality of Indian cinema here in this paper. The finality of all production
concepts of Indian popular cinema therefore merges doubtlessly into 'Bollywood'
covering not just all technical feasibilities of production but all ideological
oppositions too that really is the most primated problem toward understanding
of bollywood configuration and its alternative.
As per the chronology of cinema
proceeds, common production logic of Bollywood studies chiefly manifests glossy
iconic features like history of mainstream cinema, pathfinders of early cinema
before and after independence, contemporary trend of cinematic issues: story,
casting, music and background score, cinematography, stardom, real life maturity
which the film is based on etc. But the general production logic or the rulers'
mechanism in cinema production also has a darker politics of not just controlling
the cinema production but the gross social system too. The mass audience on the
other hand never behaved radically to understand the politics of production.
The political economy of cinema
production therefore expresses a supreme producers' ideology as an apparatus to
control both mass audience and even the possible critical approaches of cinema.
A unique example tells the whole story of the ruse of the production logic of
Bollywood. The Hit & Run case against a Bollywood Actor - the verdict of a
Mumbai City Court setting him guilty - and finally absolving him from the
guilty (for not having enough evidences) pop up the relevance of another Subhas
Kapoor flick Jolly-LLB, where the Cinema at least could come out with a resolution
against the mighty offender. The whole film was not just intersecting the Hit
& Run case, as reported in the popular media, but share also two major 'mutually'
oppositional signifiers also. The cinema Jolly LLB is based on a Hit & Run
case where the main accused was a highbrow person, did everything to evade the
guilt and so the court sentence. The cases both in cinema and the reality continued
for more than a decade. The primary objective of our discussion starts here. The
reality discharges the 'accused' with 'No' evidence whereas the reel gets a
pronouncement of punishment after a film-long climactic drama. The most
interesting aspect is that both the reality and the film have shared the so
called same industrial formulation to fulfill their own objectives that quite
obviously includes 'success' in any suitable form. The entertainment value or
the use values of both signifiers share the same promotional platforms [here
Social Networking Sites are popularly used] where the logic of production or
perpetration is being primated to rule the socialization process. This is the
ruse of the contemporary production logic of Bollywood that remains far away from
the actuality where millions of people live in this country. We therefore need
to reassess the production logic where only rulers' presence felt both in seats
of judge and accused keeping others far apart.
2.
Ruse
of the Production logic: Suppression of production factors
We popularly consider Indian cinema
largely in terms of what Mumbai and others showing these years and so we have never
been critical about the major signifier of production they follow as their
ideology. This very signifier remains anyway the key factor a real exchange of
capital and intellect invested. Citing an interview of New York University
based Researcher Tejaswini Ganti (https://www.dukeupress.edu/producing-bollywood) would clarify the fate of
the production logic when she was asked almost a similar kind of question:
'What makes the Indian Film Industry (Bollywood) unique?'
As the question asks about the
backdrop or the genesis of a particular term and the industry format in
totality, the question asking about the complete production logic of film as an
industrial product/commodity/oeuvre in general must involve certain aspects:
(i)
Corporate i.e. investment aspects
that would talk about huge capital and other players involved and subsequently
the marketing aspects; but there is no industrial format for Bollywood or
earlier Indian Popular Film production system ever recognized by either state
or any other authority.
(ii)
Content/oeuvre aspects that involve both
aesthetic and content elements;
(iii)
Making or production of labour aspects
that involve stages of film making as both aesthetic and industrial aspects;
(iv)
Producer and director's own logic
that involves the ideological aspects of film production;
(v)
Semiotic aspects that might involve the
structural/cultural aspect that produces meaning of a film or the general logic
of a film industry;
The reaction of Tejaswini Ganti
shows our coordinate of understanding of Bollywood:
"First
of all, even though filmmakers, the government, and the media keep pronouncing
it as such there is no such thing as the “Indian film industry” – in terms of
nationally integrated structures of financing, production, distribution, and
exhibition, even if there is some overlap and circulation of personnel between
the six main film industries in India. There are many film industries in India
of which the Bombay-based Hindi film industry, now better known as “Bollywood,”
is the most well-known globally; however, Hindi films comprise about 20% of the
total number of films produced in India, with an equal number [and sometimes
more] of films being made in Telugu and Tamil every year. When all of the films
made in all of the languages – about 20 or so – are tallied up, that is what
makes India the largest feature film producing country in the world; Bollywood
doesn’t make 800-1000 films a year, it makes approximately 200 or so a year.
Now
to answer the question: I think what is quite remarkable is how despite years
of hostile or indifferent government policies, high rates of taxation, complete
disinterest by much of the organized sector, scarcity of capital, and a very
decentralized structure, the Hindi film industry managed to survive and
continue to make films that were successful, touched people’s hearts, and were
seen by millions of people all over the world. The example of the Hindi film
industry counters all of those theories trotted about by neoliberal economists
and Republican politicians in the U.S. about how excessive taxation and
regulation kills entrepreneurship – it definitely did not do that for the Hindi
film industry! Filmmakers complained and continue to complain about the Indian
government’s economic policies that affect them negatively, but it didn’t stop
them from making their films.
The description of the production account,
as stated above, of the Mumbai Film Industry or so called Bollywood along with
other regional film industries involves certain very interesting and axiomatic
aspects that give us a totalist and popular mapping of the film production as a
superstructure: These aspects are,
(i)
Absence of any industrial structure of film production despite filmmakers,
government, pronouncing it as an Industry;
(ii)
There is no such nationally integrated film production cycle: financing,
production, distribution and exhibition; the system is not even integrated by private
enterprises.
(iii)
Existence of six film industrial zones in India; among them Bollywood is
globally known;
(iv)
Number of Hindi, Tamil, Telugu films equally shares more than 70% of the total
films made in India;
(v)
Total number of films made on all Indian languages makes the country the
largest film producing country in the world; not just what Bollywood makes in a
year;
(vi)
Despite hostile and indifferent government policies Bollywood keeps on
producing sufficient films;
(vii)
Hindi films are still being circulated around the world.
Now, such a story of the production
besides the oeuvre and film making, although has established it as a 'system'
of producing films beyond all denial aspects, having its worldwide reach and
other information, could not help but mystify certain production aspects:
(i)
The actual and general production logic of film as oeuvre i.e. the production
logic of the process, orientation, commerciality, and other objectives toward
producing the 'form', making money or profit and finally ruling the public
spheres, all are involved as factors of production. The actual logic may come
out like what Prasad argued arbitrarily about the models of cinema...Yeh Public Hain Sab Janti Hain...etc.
(ii)
The genesis of the sign 'Bollywood' subsequently,
(iii)
The totalist understanding of industrial-social-economic-cultural logic of about
other film producing corners of the country etc. nowadays evenly merging into
Bollywood in terms of joint venture of both capital and mechanical reproduction
of oeuvre in every possible aspect [multiple distribution from theatres to
Youtube].
So the above argument, its
informative nature and subsequent ramifications reveal certain points of
departure from the core logic production.
The first point of deflection is therefore a very popular point of
discussion not in terms of 'making' but the hypercommercial logic of film
production being made as popular cultural production of social interaction. But
in every such case the hyper-commercial logic involves a far-fetched politics that
tactfully suppresses the economic and other systemic exchange value behind the making
of such contents. In this way, the above logic evades out the general factors
of film production involved including not just about the status or fate of
capital invested but also about the other production i.e. ‘from intellectual to
labour’ factors; making of 'set and locations' that also partakes enough
political inputs of production. Instead, the capital involved in making of
films becomes a hyper-subjective issue in popular media and social networking
sites. This hyper-subjectivity often comes out as a celebratory matter or fete, where people start celebrating and
campaigning the super amount of profit in their own social and mass spheres.
The revived use of the factors of production therefore becomes the factors of
consumption in social networking spaces. Thus foreign location, technical
special effects, action sequences, sexual exposures etc become the popular
consumption points.
So the production of logic of any
oeuvre as film, deliberately misses out certain factors of production process
within the system, instead it pronounces how the capitalist or authority
factors are involved in it to manage the system, feed the system, primary
information about financing the system and finally define the system in the
version of other empowered institutions of the social system and its social
associates such as media partners, related sponsors and other corporate
associates to deliberately suppress the labour-intellectual aspects of
production or the aura of making a
work of art. All the above factors and the players' contributions to the system
are being transfused not in real economic logic but financial transsubstitution
in language beyond any concrete nationalist economic principle. So here the
whole production logic turns out to be the simple structure of financial language
that tries to substitute the cultural logic of the oeuvre or content as the
prime factor of film production. Absurd too happens.
The second departure is the genesis of Bollywood, a semiotic logic of production.
Demystification of such a produced 'sign' leads to understand a new political
economy of signification beyond all earlier production logics where the
financial value does not measure or extend any social relationship of the
oeuvre but the commodious cinema is transmutated into a further value that basically
controls both social and industrial order. As exception, some few critical efforts
were made in past two-three decades to produce some of the satire-critical
movies where behind the content the logic rather politics of production was
very apt and motivated. Films like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Albert Pinto Ko Gussa
Kiyun Ata Hain, Salim Langre Pe Mat Ro, Garam Hawa etc. have had started a new
critical-political genre which had gradually been faded out to the same industrial
system of producing popular movies and could not sustain its concrete radical critical
face. The genre of critical movies significantly disappeared in the processing
of globalization and the making of Bollywood that started primarily featuring issues
like Mumbai underworld, new religious majoritarian nationalist sentiment etc.
The third departure is the symbolic-exchange aspect of the whole
country's 'film producing regions' specially, Bollywood, where the celebratory
promotion leads to a massive effect in the audience psyche. This aspect in the
name of communicational exchange obliterates all critical social projects turning
them into a compulsively symbolic festive exchange.
The philosophy of the logic of production
is therefore to establish a proclaimed notion of what the money investing system
has produced and in this way the informatics of meta-corporate aspects of film
production suppress the actual production signifiers thus making it more and
more mystic with the time. It however leads the corresponding academic critiques
to generalize them within the traditional political economic frame constantly by
producing so called crispy, and story-telling mythic write-ups and gossips in
popular film and entertainment magazines that finally compel people believe the
whole film medium just as natural and obvious corporate social projects, albeit
largely unknown and beyond the use of even targeted audience.
The above logic therefore remained
so powerful and popularly legitimized by the corresponding social-political
system that even alternative political objectives and productions of films had
to accept the systemic legitimization to project their alternative and
revolutionary approaches. So the radicality of understanding or debating over the
production logic of Indian popular cinema has seldom been available in popular features
and film reviews. Our goal here however in this context is to rediscover the
genesis of Bollywood and other Indianwoods to understand the political economy
of Indian cinema as a huge independent productive agent. Only then we would
understand the real production logic of Bollywood because in such a situation the
so called producers of culture industry remain always outside the social system.
But they all maintain understanding with the systemic or controlling mechanism i.e.
the ruling political-financial system etc. but nowhere with the people’s
politics. This does not however mean that they don't have any idea about the
society and social process. They treat society as just a user i.e. an agent of
consumption, amass of rendering and revitalizing ‘fandom’ to finally legitimize
the signifier of Bollywood production.
Howsoever...any ideological
reduction of the production logic of Indian mainstream commercial films would legitimize
cinema a mere capitalist's "produced and owned" commodity, a fetish
of which could have been the ultimate destination and oeuvre at large that represents
the contemporary social. Popular cinema has commonly established its journey in
the audience mind not as a fetishable or fetishized commodity but a much more
than that in the realm of entertainment, lifestyle and all other 'real' forms
of micro value judgements of life and mundane exercises. In this way the so
called commodity reaches a point of substituting the total social and
represents the social systems not in the mode of reflection but as a new
guideline for people. It is therefore a different mode of production process that
albeit having roots in social issues never reflects any system without analysts'
assistance. It reflects the 'focused' social as "minimally selected" for
making the oeuvre of popular films whereas some new popular cinemas share a bit
more about the 'social' system as many big directors like Mani Ratnam,
Priyadarshan, Sujit Sarkar etc. fall in this category. Audience hardly gets any
actual or critical re-assessment of its own social in a cinema in contrast to the
contributions of critical directors like Rittick Ghattak, Mrinal Sen etc. So
with the passage of short-lived critical political era of Indian cinema the
post-globalization era accommodates films of both dealing with serious issues
and sloppy flicks in its entertainment coverage. Item numbers and Item Songs
are evident in both categories as a must evident in films dealing serious
issues whatsoever. In this process we entered a 'total' age of cinema or mediational
package.
3.
Bollywood
beyond Commodity: Semiology of Bollywood
Now if the general condition of
cinema production in Bollywood is just to produce a commodity of entertainment,
India then has witnessed the commodity production since its initial days. How
can one then justify the genesis of Bollywood? The Bollywood then can be
legitimized beyond the commodity purview on a new political economic plane.
In his paper 'The Thing Called
Bollywood', noted film scholar Madhava Prasad stated some very certain
arguments which are required to be assessed further when nevertheless the
finality certainly remains to rediscover Bollywood and the actuality of the production
logic of Indian Popular Cinema. In his not big but very apt analysis Prasad is
of opinion that
(i)
Bollywood, as strange name, but stranger is the wide acceptance of the
term...where the dominant prevailing view is that Indian popular cinema is an
entirely an indigenous product.
(ii)
Today not just English language media, but scholars, journalists are employing
the term.
(iii)
Is it meant to suggest that the cinema is imitative and therefore deserves to
be rechristened to highlight this derivativeness?
(iv)
'It is natural that those who have invested in earlier models of Indian popular
cinema — the 'so many cinema' model, the 'folk culture' model, the
'yeh-to-public-hai-yeh-sab-janti-hai' model, the 'regressive pulse of the
people' model, the 'ideological' model, the 'art versus popular' model and so
on should feel...resentful of this development which threatens to absorb their
own special areas into its commodious purview.
(v)
Bollywood does not have any specific signified; an empty signifier; can thus be
applied to any set of signifieds in the realm of Indian cinema.
(vi)
It seems to be a callous act of
symbolic abduction.
(vii)
The term Bollywood has crept into the vocabulary of the Anglophone national culture...without anybody noticing it...like
certain processes of which we became aware only...now witness naturalization of
Bollywood as designation for what was previously known Hindi cinema, Bombay
cinema, Indian Popular cinema, etc...the process of near-universal legitimation
of Bollywood is a symptom of some other social and cultural processes, which
have a wider significance.
(viii)
Can linguistic change be an index of
social transformations and if so, how do we make sense of them?
(ix)
Where consumer capitalism has
finally succeeded in weaning the citizens away from a strongly entrenched
culture to thrift toward a system of gratification more firmly...in its long
term control. They have produced yet another variation of nationalist ideology of tradition and
modernity...relocated...the seismic centre of Indian national identity...in
Anglo-America.
(x)
...few exceptions like DDLJ continue to pose the 'return to roots'...Bend It
Like Beckham is an obvious indicator of how the NRI is once again functioning
as facilitator in the transition to a new model of self-relation...
(xi)
NRI Patriotism...NRI is increasingly beginning to look like the sole guarantor
of Indian identity...
In this way Madhava Prasad defines Bollywood
as NRI-ization of Indian Popular Cinema. He wanted to express his concern over
the Bollywood-ization of Indian Popular cinema and its growing capitalist logic
which, according to him, is a commodious description of the 'term'; typically a
foreign made one like. For him the Bollywood or Bollywood-ization can be demystified
as NRI-ization of Indian cinema which lived earlier in an entrenched culture.
His social logic of Indian popular films thus includes afresh participation of Indian
socio-economic factors, though not very clearly posited and socio-cultural
factors or realities that was directly inducted in cinema even popular cinema.
But in the earlier era of the so
called nationally entrenched culture, Indian Popular Cinema or Bombay Film
Industry had possessed almost all those materials to become Bollywood someday. The
Corporate globalization had just made the inward passage formally open for the
global finance capital and other cultural ingredients both in the form of
corporate and private capital and culture. Is it therefore just an 'iconic'
foreign attachment of NRIs only that accomplished the Bollywoodization? If
earlier producers, according to Prasad, are so resentful of today's
Bollywoodized development of commodious culture, what then did they produce
since 1950s or even before — were not all those commodious? Were they critical
or revolutionary otherwise? No.
Moreover, it is also evident that why
then some Indian Radical and even in some instances Popular directors too have
had faced severe fund shortage throughout their careers where hardly any
producer was ready to finance their films when they strived to portray social
realities as much as they felt true? Why this fund-crunch for few directors is
still evident even in popular cinema making too? If it reveals the long cliché argument
of producers' commercial preference; then why is it so 'taken for granted' in a
social system, whereas it has never been at all a systemic issue? If
technically considered, the issue of funding a film starts from its oeuvre
script to go further any direction. So it is not the finality of cinema, the
oeuvre has long before been commodious and awaits further extension of production.
The execution is then nothing but the production of sign of the oeuvre
commodity for further commercial extension. Producers i.e. money lenders in the
pre-globalized era were probably anxious about the cultural extension of the
reality projected in cinema, if it might cause revolutionary outcome or
whatsoever. But with the advent and growth of entertainment as an extension of
the same commodity the fear of projecting any revolutionary, critical and
finally anything like ‘critical to the system’ oeuvre has gradually been
obliterated [Note: See Media's Propaganda
Model in Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman].
It now comes out to be quite
natural that in the era of global financial-mediational-ethnic convergence the
funding may come from anywhere beyond any specific definition following the
same even pre-globalization logic of funding and pre-production understanding
between all categories of producers (from money lenders to oeuvre producers). We
used to have information of very few renowned producers (money lenders or
investors) and Production Houses like R.K. Films, Yash Chopra Productions, UTV
Productions etc. out of innumerable unknown[s] in the pre-globalization era (in
the nationally entrenched culture zone) and so is the situation of the
contemporary post-globalization era. Money lending or investing mechanism in
film production remains as volatile as it was eternally evident. The
contemporary globalization scenario has just paved the way of the flush of global
excess funds and siphoned/diversified funds.
The above logic is absolutely
social and relevant to common people as well because audience in the
post-globalization world is much aware of, and possess, scribed [cosmetic]
knowledge of scripts, cinematography, music or background score, music
director, action director, dance director or choreographer, even sound
recordist in the era of dolby digital technology. Consequently any contemporary
analysis must not form any general argument on just traditional and nationally
formulated system-finance axis. Bollywood or popular cinema in its growing promotional
phase has long been fragmented into many promotional and 'Sign' factors where
to form any gross narrative behind becomes very difficult.
4.
Bollywood
Not an Empty Signifier
Howsoever, coming on to the
semiology of Bollywood what Prasad explains as its genealogy, he starts being
critical to the term Bollywood. The very first point Prasad raises is 'Bollywood is strange name...stranger is its acceptance...but
the dominant prevailing view is that Indian Popular cinema is an entirely an
indigenous product'. Certain questions may now be decoded from the above
statement.
·
Does the dialectics therefore stand
between Bollywood and indigenously produced cinemas?
·
Does Bollywood signify only NRI made cinemas
like Deepa Mehta, Gurinder Chaddha, Nagesh Kukunoor etc.?
·
In what sense the film production has
been entirely an indigenous system?
·
The technology used in making first
cinema was imported. For ‘oeuvre’ and ‘financing mechanism’ the ‘indigenous
production’ concept becomes more volatile.
·
As said earlier, are not indigenously
made films commodious?
·
Does Bollywood entail any such history
related to the specific production logic? Or does Bollywood, the term itself,
imperialize or invade meaning?
The above new epistemic options appear
even more problematic when Prasad says that 'Bollywood is a sign but having an
empty signifier...can be applied to any set of signifieds...'. Is there any
sign there which has an empty signifier out its sign value? Does Semiology
prescribe natural course of meaning within a sign dimension? Even if a sign
does not have its external social reference it must at least have its virtual
reference in the mediational universe and that too is a newer social extension
as theorists are of opinion. Moreover as the signifier originates from the
communicator of the term which Indian popular film production icons have always
been empowered enough to establish that. Furthermore no empty signifier can
produce such havoc and huge signified that covers the whole of Indian Culture
Industry.
In case of such a mass sign like
Bollywood it is largely indeterminate but never so empty because no signifier
remains empty at the time of communication. It is the signified that may come
out empty, as Umberto Eco defined, because the signifier may here be very
tricky to produce a common signified for a mass use. For Bollywood it is
exactly like that. As stated earlier that the real story of the production
logic of film is largely unknown in Indian film producing arenas the potency of
bollywood signifier also remains quite indeterminate. Bollywood is therefore a
definite and dynamic sign producing series of newer meanings and objects to
refer to by its users and far beyond films made only by NRIs. Plethora of aspects
is there which Bollywood and Bollywoodization do signify that includes 'NRI
involvement' factor too. It is simply evident on Internet how the meanings of Bollywood
are popularly framed and used, not just as a simplified statement of the wider
acceptance of the term as said Prasad.
Prasad however has argued
interestingly that 'it can be applied to any set of signified[s] within the
realm of Indian cinema'. Yeah, this is the Archemedean point where the attack
on the Bollywood sign is to be launched to liberate cinematic (aesthetic and
intellectual) signified[s] from the viscidity of entertainment. And this
process legitimizes too the value of the sign, though based primarily on the
commodity value, but immediately transsubstantiated into sign value where signifier
is not at all imaginary, rather a promotional structure very regulated by huge
monetarist affair. It has a differential logic of production that moves beyond traditional
logic or inclusion of a third element like the NRI factor. Here the value of Bollywood
as sign is to be realized only by the power of signification that
transsubstantiates money invested and the content produced into its own realm outraging
all earlier metanarratives or sign models not within a nationally entrenched
culture but ruthlessly in favour of the ruling political and social power. The history
of inclusion of so called filmy icons in Indian politics is thus old enough and
widespread in all cinema producing regions of the country. So immaterial here
is whether a commodity like DDLJ prescribes 'return to roots' as Prasad argues,
because DDLJ as a sign prescribes nothing such except a heavy load of narratives
too, otherwise Satyajit Ray, Rittick Ghattak, Mrinal Sen, Adoor Gopalkrishnan,
Girish Kasaravalli and many others would have accomplished the revolution with
their so empowered social references of oeuvres. It is just the storyline which
means lot more than return to roots when the protagonist/director combination is
trying to settle abroad. But nowhere the film has had any central message of
return to roots or anything such at all except the family of Simran; DDLJ was
however not a full length family drama. Like Bollywood DDLJ is also a structure
that projects so many common signified[s] like,
(i)
'aah tujhe chum lu main'; i.e. youth sexual arousal but very much intermittent and
not beyond the 'reality' iconic value.
(ii)
Father allows daughter to lead a conditional independence before the life
imprisonment in Deshi Shadi; so a 'ji le zindegi' syndrome is legitimizing the
patriarchal programming.
(iii)
Conflict between 'mystic deterritorialization of culture (see, Tomlinson, Lull,
Chattopadhyay) and also peaceful settlement in England';
(iv)
Fake and hyper-commercial issue-based nationalism' that cannot sustain in both
English and Indian perspectives;
(v)
'individuality’ (specially women) suppressed under traditionalism but Karwa
Chauth has been projected so emphatically to save the same ‘Deshi’ (native) womanhood
as second sex on the other hand;
All these narratives cut across
Prasad's central 'return to roots' grand-narrative or signified. It is moreover
a real difficulty to get hold of a gross and perennial signified because all
other signified[s] would immediately be transformed into signifiers for further
consumption in the communicative field of projection and critique. Audience
here would receive it not in terms of economic or any other exchange values but
as symbolic exchange.
On the other hand, In contrast to
Prasad's NRI-ization, another noted film scholar Ashis Rajadhyaksha while
coordinating Bollywood is of opinion that it is the global distribution of
certain films that makes the category Bollywood. In his words,
On what is this hype based?
Interestingly, in the past year, the box office of an Indian cinema made
indigenously was itself less central to the phenomenon than a range of
ancillary industries, mostly based in London, including theatre (the much-hyped
London stage musical Bombay Dreams, a collaboration between Indian composer A.
R. Rehman and Andrew Lloyd Webber), the music industry, advertising1 and even
fashion (the month-long ‘Bollywood’festival of food, furniture and fashion
marketing in Selfridges, London), all of which culminated in the extraordinary
marketing exercise known as Indian Summer, in July 2002 (see
http://www.bbc.co.uk/asianlife/film/indiansummer/index.shtml). All of this
began, it is usually said, with the four films that Newsweek also mentions as
having made distribution history, three of them directly or indirectly Yash
Chopra productions: Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ, 1995), the film which in
some ways started it all, Dil To Pagal Hai (DTPH, 1997) and Karan Johar’s Kuch
Kuch Hota Hai (KKHH, 1998), and Subhash Ghai’s Taal (1998). Before all these,
there is of course the original box-office hit Hum Aapke Hain Kaun? (1994). Of
Taal, for example, producer and noted ‘showman’ of Hindi cinema Ghai said, There’ll
be 125 prints of Taal only for the foreign market.
So
for Rajadhyaksha it was basically the global distribution and rating of Bombay
films that made Bollywood which is binarily opposed to the Prasad's argument.
Prasad argues about the influx of NRI-ed money and for Rajadhyaksha it is the
outflow of Indian films into the global arena that made today’s Bollywood. Both
however tried to be conclusive in defining Bollywood. Now what would therefore
be the actual coordinate of Bollywood? Both analyses talk about global exposure
of Bombay films but in opposite directional mode.
Bollywood
therefore resides beyond any gross cinema production mechanism purview.
Bollywood only refers to the 'sign' beyond commoditization. Bollywood is a sign
that although originates from the 'oeuvre' or 'cinema' commodity but transcends
subsequently toward new valuation. This new 'sign' valuation is getting more
and more expensive day by day beyond any traditional economic configuration.
5.
Coordinate
of Bollywood: Emergence of a new labour that legitimizes imaginaries
The mystic logic of Bollywood can now
be deciphered in Prasad's resentful near-concluding argument that in contrast
to its signifier 'the term is widely accepted in recent years'. The actuality
behind this logic rests not in the rarity or availability of production factor;
it is the very growth of consumption and manifestation logic in the popular audio-visual
and new media that makes the term so powerful. But it is not an obvious project
or to be a 'taken for granted' aspect of communication. It also requires and
generates a new dimension of labour and a new exchange value that would
substantiate the value of icon, brand, and all sorts of establishment act of
signifier.
The growth of sign is therefore not
dependent upon its logic of exchange value of ‘positioning’ in mediated spheres
against loads of money involved only. The consumption logic as based upon the
signification logic which is produced by a new value of labour at a new
exchange value that enriches Bollywood where being withered of any political
ideological compulsion or belief the so called ‘empowered’ elites start playing
with some imaginaries of the ‘Spectacle’ i.e. amount of money invested, the shooting
stories of hero-heroine, new item-songs, reality extensions of the film, etc. The
value of spectacle cannot however be deciphered by digging out the traditional comparable
past of the industry but by defining the value of the 'new' labour that causes
acceptance among audience. This is the coordinate of Bollywood. Media rather
mass media institutions substantiate and organize such labour to promote the
consumption aspects of the term and the audience consumes it to its widest
extent as 'believing the endless imaginaries'. Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan,
Akshay Kumar etc. are all big imaginaries of Bollywood; creators of the sign
value because money as capital is evidently invested not on cinema production
but on these icons.
Bollywood is therefore a 'means' of
producing imaginaries that being detached from the social mode of production
creates its own production forces and its 'new' exchange value. And in both
cases money is nowhere considered or found as a true preset of exchange value because money nowhere in a
system is used as true instrument of exchange, rather it is substituted as consumptive
sumptuary value. It is the commodious cinema that turns into the promotional
sign value where money is further substantiated with the icons or iconic factors
like "items". Here producers' money being expended but not at all exchanged
in any economic dealing. In the Indian mainstream cinema, money is thus expended
hugely to de-recognize all other traditional factors (specially human labour
and intellect) of production and the corresponding social liability and the
central social institutional system i.e. 'government and its people' too.
Foreign locations, foreigners' involvement, newer global equations of
relational couplings nowadays feature the Indian cinema. So money, invested and
expended; and the content, used, create cinema as a final category of product. In
such cases, as Baudrillard says, the total functioning is being performed like
an auction, social auction. In his words,
'Money
is nullified as divisible exchange value and is transsubstantiated by its
expenditure into an indivisible sumptuary value. Thus it becomes the homolog of
the painting (here please read cinema as oeuvre and Bollywood as Sign of
production) as a sign, a unique and indivisible object...'
In this way, the general production
logic is basically transsubstantiated into an indivisible sign value, here
called, Bollywood. The transsubstantiation of money and the content into the
particular sign Bollywood can therefore be easily established by the
consideration of cinema as a canvas-category that becomes an object having only
the investment logic as the base of production. The work of making commodity
thus projects its value not in the quality of but the glimpses of spectacles
for audience consumption. These spectacles are sign values that create the
central Sign of Bollywood. The ideology of Bollywood is therefore "it
happens here" or "it happens here too". The money value does
cease to become an economic value because in every such case the
transsubstantiation of money value beyond content value becomes a subject of
discussion that helps enriching sign value of the category. Social Networking
Sites and many other informative spaces often witness such popular posting from
both production corners and enthusiasts that this is a huge budgeted film that affords to show such and such locations
or stunts or risky shots etc.
So any ideological reduction in the
general value of production of Indian popular cinema would certainly intercept
to understand the being of Bollywood critically and would on the other hand
promote the glamour of sign value as natural as the extension of lifestyle to
finally establish a control over the audience culture. A quantitative study
would somewhat clarify the consumptive situation: A search of 'Bollywood' on
Google gives us 907 hundred thousand results, which all are the consumed
outcome that outcasts the genesis of the term compared to the value of its 'newer'
usage as a new use value or manifestation value. The new use value of Bollywood
has been legitimized by the usage or consumption of millions of institutions or
sources. If the Bollywood signifier remains mystic in the labour of consumption
the signified of it is vividly open in the physical and virtual world. So it is
no less important to accept the open factor than to define it in terms of the
age old reduced production logic which neither legitimizes the value of traditional
labour or intellect nor justify the use of money, the new labour and finally
the politics of oeuvre.
6.
Bollywood-ization
finality: Entertainment and Social Alienation
Now what if Bollywood becomes
self-reflexively proactive to produce further meaning? The signifier of Bollywood
in the contemporary mediation system, originating from the earlier signifieds
of rituals, now works as the revival of the supreme sign value. It is then more
of an 'out of the system' association with Hollywood on the basis of the
importation of cinematographic technology and development of global cinema features
in Mumbai, Chennai the term Bollywood started producing its own substructures
in various revivalist modes. It started working in a new free trading environment,
where no earlier economic, social preambular logic would work.
The Bollywoodization phenomenon
therefore produces unlimited cultural forms, materials and ideas as newer
'Reality's. The use values of all forms and categories are to be generalized as
Entertainment. Entertainment therefore remains finality of the Bollywoodization.
The Bollywoodization phenomenon is the Culture Industry of India. The growth of
Culture Industry in India with the popularity factor among audience has therefore
alienated the real production system and the traditional labour force from the
spectacle. The accumulated labour in the film industry has neither been
recognized as intellectual property nor as a labour force. The history of
Bombay film icons and popular filmy hyperreal tentacles have been the identity of
the Culture Industry or Bollywoodization.
Lastly, Bollywood is therefore such
a postindustrial phenomenon when media are in full concentration and convergence
in the globe. Not just in Mumbai but in other giant film producing areas
specially Chennai, Hyderabad also the cinema operates under transcorporate Bollywood
coverage in all respect.
Bollywood is therefore such a sign
dimension that although originates from the commodious structure of films,
transcends far beyond the commodity and all traditional production values. Bollywood
has produced a new value to be exchanged by the new labour producing hyperreal
media-texts. It is so operating beyond an industrial format. No 'autonomy of
cinema industry' trivia can be used to justify its operation. Mere industrial-commodious
analysis and description of its colonial past falls short of coordinating
Bollywood.
Reference:
(1)
Prasad Madhava: The Thing Called Bollywood; isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1218620.files
(2)
Rajadhyaksha Ashish: The Bollywoodization of the Indian Cinema: Cultural
Nationalism in a global arena; Inter-Asia
Cultural Studies, Volume 4, Number 1, 2003;
(3) Adorno
Theodor: Culture Industry; Routlege;
(4) Baudrillard
J.: For A Critique of the Political Economy of Sign; Telos Press.
