Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (46 page)

While Bhagnani was categorically contemptuous and dismissive of Bihar, Damani outlined a number of reasons for the diminished business potential of the territory. First, he pointed out that audiences in his subterritories were very poor, noting that the lowest per capita incomes in India were in the states of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. He also reasoned that the business in these territories had depreciated, in his view, “500 to 1000 percent,” due to the closure of industries and the desperate economic circumstances. Articulating a hierarchy of needs, Damani asserted, “Movies can’t be the first preference. First preference is always food; second preference is clothes; third preference is residence; fourth preference can be movies, entertainment.” Another factor limiting growth was that the state government in Bihar had not allowed ticket rates to increase for over a decade. Damani quickly pointed out, however, that even if ticket rates were allowed to increase, audiences could not afford to come to the theater: “Ultimately our businesses depend on the audiences—when the maximum numbers come to the theater—and it should be well in their reach, so that they can afford to buy the tickets” (Damani, interview, October 2000).

However, the inability to consume was almost posited as a character flaw on the part of some filmmakers, which was a sharp departure from my earlier fieldwork, where filmmakers articulated a somewhat ethical imperative to entertain poor and working-class audiences. Producer Mukesh Bhatt, whose statements I presented in the previous chapter, appeared to have undergone a complete volte-face. While in 1996 he described the main audience for Hindi cinema as the “common man,” in 2000 he was explicit that the main audiences for Hindi cinema were urban elites. I had asked him his opinion about the allegations—made by the trade press and distributors—that producers were only making films for urban and overseas audiences and he responded in the affirmative. The reason he gave was a simple matter of economics: “They are the consumers who got money to buy, you see. I have no point in making a film for rural India, which is of course a very huge population, but then my cinema halls are not taking me there. Because they have no cinema halls there, they don’t have the buying capacity; the ticket rates are so high, so why should I make films, which are not affordable, to that man there sitting in Bihar or Orissa? Why should I stoop down my sensibilities to his level of thinking, when he doesn’t have the money to buy my tickets?” Whereas earlier Bhatt argued that the only difference between him and the man on the street was that their bank balances were different, for him poverty is not just the inability to consume, but emblematic of a social and psychological divide so broad that it cannot be bridged. While the psychic unity that Bhatt had formerly expressed for the “common man” appeared somewhat disingenuous, what I want to foreground is the dramatic shift in his discourse about audiences, especially non-elite filmgoers. Delineating a dichotomy of taste based on class, Bhatt firmly located himself within the classes, city, and overseas side: “I am catering to the city audience, to the audience which has got the money to buy my tickets, to the NRI, whose sensibility. . . [matches my own], to the satellite channels, and all who are big corporate houses who are totally influenced by the Western culture and also happen to be a part of that; so we relate to each other’s sensibilities and they are the people who have got the money, and obviously you have to make films that cater to the tastebuds of people who have money, because it takes a lot of money to make a film” (Mukesh Bhatt, interview, October 2000). Four years later, it was obvious that bank balances mattered a lot in Bhatt’s imagination of the Hindi film audience. While filmmakers earlier had located themselves along the class-axis of the masses/
classes binary, they were clear that the bulk of their audience was on the mass side of the binary. Bhatt’s statements not only indicate a change in target audiences, but also reveal how changes in the Indian media landscape— his references to satellite television and corporate production companies—have had an impact on filmmakers’ understandings of their audiences.

What is also noticeable about Bhatt’s statements is that the social distance between filmmakers and their target audiences appeared to have reduced drastically. This collapsing of distance was most apparent when Bhatt discussed how it is that he came to know the tastes of the urban “youth”—defined as viewers between 18 and 25—who he argued were the demographic that most frequented the cinema. He responded to my question about how he gauged the tastes of this group by invoking his own teenage children and their preferences, “I see them watching television. I see what sort of films they [enjoy], what sort of serials. . . what sort of books they are reading, so from that, I know. . . you don’t have to go into some agency house. Your own son, sitting right under your nose, he is teaching you: just watch him; what is he watching? That’s an indication, that’s a pointer” (Mukesh Bhatt, interview, October 2000).
⁴
From the common man on the street to the teenagers in his home, from universally appealing stories based on kinship relations to “high-adrenaline” films targeting the elite urban youth market, Bhatt’s transformed perception of his audiences is an example of what I have been characterizing as the gentrification of the Hindi film industry. Bhatt explained his changed attitude by evoking the binary of two Indias, which became an increasingly prevalent trope, proffered by the media over the course of the decade, to describe social and economic conditions in the country: “There are two different worlds; there are two different Indias. The rural India and the urban India are two countries living in one country, and the gap is getting wider and wider and wider” (Mukesh Bhatt, interview, October 2000).
⁵

Bhatt’s assertions, that India was increasingly riven by deep social and economic divisions, meant that the probability of attaining a universal hit had also diminished. I asked him about filmmakers’ desires to appeal from “6 to 60” that I had observed four years earlier, and he qualified it by asserting how only a select genre of films possessed the capacity for broad appeal: “ ‘Six to 60’ is only with family socials, you know,
Hum Aapke Hain Koun!
—films about a middle-class Indian family with tradition, family values, and all that. They, of course, become blockbusters, but they can’t be made every year. . . They come once in four
to five years. Otherwise there is not that much scope in that” (Mukesh Bhatt, interview, October 2000). While Bhatt was skeptical, he allowed for the infrequent possibility of films becoming universal hits. Subhash Ghai was much more definitive in his claims that filmmakers could not appeal to such a broad spectrum of audiences. We were discussing the absence of a universal hit in 1999, and I asked Ghai if it was possible for a film to appeal all over India. He answered: “It cannot. . . because there is a contrast in the segments now. I told you initially when there were mass people,
rikshawalla-tangawalla
[rickshaw drivers, horse-carriage drivers] but even the class people had a rural heart, a rural mind. When this new generation has been educated, their sensibility is different, so now there are definitely two sensibilities. So it is not a filmmaker’s fault; a filmmaker has to speak one language. You cannot bring an optimum point between sense and nonsense” (Ghai, interview, October 2000). Ghai’s statements above are in direct contrast to his earlier ones, where he spoke of the necessity of finding the optimum balance between masses and classes. From Ghai’s remarks, it is apparent that the binary mode of thinking about audiences had not changed, but the practice of managing this binary had changed. Rather than balance, Ghai now described his filmmaking in terms of fulfilling his own artistic sensibilities, which happen to be congruent, according to him, with the tastes and preferences of the class audience.

What accounts for this transformation in attitude? What are the factors that enabled filmmakers to narrow their target audience? As apparent from filmmakers’ statements, the growing significance of diasporic markets played a crucial role. What had changed between 1996 and 2000 was that producers, and not simply distributors, were able to profit from these territories, either by establishing the infrastructure to recoup revenues directly—for example, producer/director Yash Chopra set up his own distribution offices in London and New York and began to distribute his own films, along with some others, directly in North America and the United Kingdom—or more commonly by being in a position to enter an mg distribution arrangement, rather than an outright sale of distribution rights. Another key factor was the expanding revenue potential of a film’s music rights. Since the beginning of the 1990s, when new entrants into audio production challenged HMV’s monopoly, film music played an increasingly important economic function within the Bombay film industry. By the late 1990s, the sale of music rights had become another source
of finance for filmmaking, as audio companies vying with the top production companies in the industry were willing to pay sums that amounted up to as much as 25 percent of a film’s budget. Audio companies were ready to part with sums because the soundtracks from successful Hindi films sold in the millions. Finally, the rapidly expanding presence of satellite television in India benefited film producers as well. The profusion of channels made Indian television networks look to the Hindi film industry to fill their ever-increasing demand for content, and networks began competing aggressively to buy the telecast rights for Hindi films. The networks’ willingness to pay substantial sums made satellite broadcast rights a significant source of revenue for producers, offering them a chance of recovering monies even if a film did poor theatrical business.

During my fieldwork in 2000, a variety of members of the industry relayed how overseas, satellite, and audio rights were regarded as “territories” unto themselves, indicating the extent of revenue they were capable of generating for producers. For established high-profile producers, the sales of these three categories of distribution rights brought in enough working capital to cover the cost of production, so that the revenue earned by the sale of distribution rights within India worked out to be pure profit. One feature of these new circumstances was the ability of powerful producers—those with a successful track record—to earn large sums prior to the advent of a film’s production, which was referred to as a “table profit.” When I had arrived in Bombay in October 2000, the industry was abuzz with the news that producer/director Karan Johar had already made a table profit estimated between 150 and 200 million rupees from the sale of the distribution rights for his film
Kabhi Khushi Kabhie
Gham
(Sometimes There’s Joy and Sometimes There’s Sorrow), which just began shooting that same month.
⁶

From the perspective of Indian distributors, these new sources of revenue made it feasible for producers to be less concerned about pleasing the vast majority of audiences in India. Lala Damani, the Bengal-Bihar distributor, complained that the potential profit margins for producers had become excessive, leading them to be unconcerned about the box-office fate of a film. Differentiating between a film and a “proposal,” where the former signaled effort and commitment to quality while the latter indexed a calculated avarice, Damani stated, “The earnings [are] too much. Producers of the big proposals are earning 20, 30
crores
[200–300 million rupees] on table. On table, before [a film’s] release, whether the picture is a flop or the picture is a hit.” He characterized producers as unfeeling mercenaries, likening distributors’ losses to murder: “It doesn’t
bother them that the money they are earning is a result of many murders. Even if all the distributors are totally wiped out, the producer still makes money!” (Damani, interview, October 2000). He gave me the example of the 1998 film
Dil Se
(From the Heart) where, according to him, only the producers, audio company, and overseas distributors made a profit, while the distributors in India had suffered “heavy losses,” in the tens of millions of rupees.

The fact that distributors were willing to outbid one another to pay producers their asking prices reveals that distributors perceived the potential for immense profit from the very films that they criticized. Distributors’ readiness to buy certain films, from which they do not recover their investment, demonstrates the highly uncertain knowledge environment in which they operate and their inability to predict audience response. The expansion of producers’ sources of revenue reconfigured the relationship between producers and territorial distributors, whereby the balance of power shifted toward the former from the latter, which is another way of understanding Damani’s criticisms.

As indicated by the editorials in
Film Information
at the beginning of this section, and even by Tarun Kumar’s dilemma in the editing studio that opened the previous chapter, the notions of universality and striving for broad appeal still had value in the industry in 2000. During fieldwork at that time, I encountered discussions—during scripting sessions— about audience identification, acceptance, and comprehension, which invoked the figure of the mass audience, as well as criticisms of certain films that appeared to be too niche in their appeal. While 1999 may not have had a universal hit, both 2000 and 2001 witnessed tremendous boxoffice successes, which were hailed as universal. The overwhelming domestic success of
Gadar: Ek Prem Katha
(Revolution: A Love Story), and the commercial, critical, and global success of
Lagaan
, deferred further discussions of niche and fragmented audiences. What really cemented the acceptance of social inequality and truly allowed the film industry to “escape the masses,” rather than offer an escape to them, was the entry of corporate producers and the advent of
multiplex theaters
.

The opening anecdotes of this chapter and of chapter two reference the impact of multiplex theaters on Hindi cinema, film-viewing, and the film industry, revealing how changes in the material properties of the spaces
of exhibition can engender new patterns of production and consumption. Tracing the debates and struggles over the development of movie theaters in colonial Nigeria, Brian Larkin has argued that the space of the cinema is never neutral, but one marked by specific histories and particular social practices (2002). Similarly, the emergence of the multiplex indexes a particular sociopolitical and economic configuration in India and signifies a transformation of media practice. Not only has the multiplex created new modes of sociability and reordered public space (Larkin 2002), but it has also reshaped filmmakers’ audience imaginaries. The move away from the masses and toward niche audiences, which began discursively in the previous section, is realized materially with the arrival of the multiplex. My discussion of multiplexes first addresses the material nature of the changes affecting film exhibition, and then examines how this very materiality produces new imaginings of film audiences and revises definitions of commercial success.

The most noticeable feature of multiplexes is their sheer dazzling splendor, with immaculately maintained lobbies, cornucopia-like concession areas, and plush-carpeted auditoriums, with wide velvet or leather seats, which stand in great contrast to the older
single-screen theaters
(
Figures 20
–
22
). While single-screen theaters are stand-alone establishments occupying a prominent physical and landmark-like presence in the urban landscape, the vast majority of multiplexes are located in the interior of shopping malls that have been proliferating all over urban India since the early 2000s (
Figure 23
). In fact, multiplexes are an integral element of shopping malls, serving as the anchor business. Rashesh Kanakia, the chairman of Kanakia Constructions—a commercial and residential real estate developer that created the Cinemax chain of multiplexes— explained that malls and multiplexes were completely interdependent: If the mall culture didn’t come into the country, multiplexes wouldn’t have come either, because if I make only a multiplex, it’s not a viable proposal. If I make an entire mall, in order to attract good footfalls, I require multiplex; then it becomes a viable proposal. If I make my multiplex on the third floor, my first and second floor [will] rent for a very high premium rate, because people see that at least 2000 or 3000 people are surely going to come into the mall” (Kanakia, interview, May 2006).

The symbiotic relationship between multiplexes and malls that Kanakia alludes to demonstrates how cinema has been employed to play an integral role in promoting and inculcating a newly consumerist dispensation in India. The links between cinema and consumerism are most apparent in the lobbies and concession areas of multiplexes, which feature advertising for cell phones, cell phone services, credit cards, banks, financial services, jewelry brands, clothing brands, air conditioners, and even airlines. Some multiplexes have kiosks selling CDS and DVDS, or even small stores selling clothing and jewelry (
Figure 24
). All of the publicly visible spaces in a multiplex are potential sources of advertising revenue for the theater (
Figure 25
). BIG Cinemas’ brochure, “The Power of Big Cinemas: connecting brands to 65 million consumers in 116 cities, 500 screens across the world,” details the potential advertising options for companies, revealing how every inch of their multiplexes, both interior and exterior—from doors to walls, staircases, elevators, parking lots, theater seats, and even the restrooms—is for sale to a brand (Big Cinemas 2010).

FIGURE 20
Entrance to Fame Cinemas Multiplex in Inorbit Mall, Malad (northwestern suburb of Bombay), 2005. Photo courtesy of Shyam Shroff.

FIGURE 21
Corridor of Fame Cinemas Multiplex, Vashi (Navi Bombay), 2008. Photo courtesy of Shyam Shroff.

FIGURE 22
Metro Cinema when it was still a single-screen theater, Marine Lines, Bombay, 2000. Photo by Pankaj Rishi Kumar.

FIGURE 23
Interior of Inorbit Mall, Malad, 2006. Photo by the author.

With their location in malls, multiplexes have fundamentally altered the nature of cinema-going in India, from being a highly visible feature of the urban streetscape to a much more gated experience, marked by class privilege (
Figures 26
–
27
). The design and location of shopping malls are characterized by what I call “an aesthetic of intimidation”: uniformed security guards; English-speaking staff; wide, expansive entrances set at a considerable distance from the street; driveways only open to elite forms of transport, such as private cars or taxis; and inaccessibility of public transportation. The aesthetic of intimidation ensures that the clientele patronizing the malls, and thereby the multiplexes, are only those drawn from that small fraction of Indian society that exhibits the class privilege and confidence to enter and inhabit these spaces.
⁷
When discussing the demographics of who frequents their theaters, multiplex managers in suburban Bombay listed call-center workers, it professionals, families, college students, and members of the film industry. In promotional literature targeting potential advertisers, Big Cinemas described their customers as “aspirational,” “discerning,” and “young, upwardly mobile people with high disposable income.”
⁸

Based on their target demographic of viewers comprising the “middle and upper income strata,”
⁹
a prominent characteristic of multiplexes is their explicitly articulated concern for customer service, which manifests itself rhetorically in their marketing and materially in terms of the diverse options to reserve and procure tickets. The language used in promotional literature by the main multiplex chains, such as PVR Cinemas, Fame Cinemas, Big Cinemas, and Cinemax, focuses heavily on the material and physical comfort of viewing films in their establishments, as well as on the sensory experience of cinema, detailing everything from their seat design to their sound and projection systems (
Figure 28
). In addition to comfort, the other main articulated attribute of multiplexes is the ease of obtaining tickets, which is enabled by modern communication technologies: viewers can buy tickets online, reserve tickets via text-message (referred to as sms in India), or reserve tickets by phone. Multiplex chains like Fame Cinemas and Cinemax even offer free home delivery of tickets in Bombay. Communicating through a vocabulary of quality, service, and luxury, as well as catch-phrases like, “Enjoy, relax @ Cinemax” or Big Cinema’s “
Ab Bada Mazza Ayega
[Now we’ll have a lot of fun],” multiplex marketing strategies rely on an implicit opposition to single-screen theaters in terms of their physical infrastructure, material conditions, and experiences of film-viewing. The poor state of movie theaters, even in a cine-centric city like Bombay, was a constant object of criticism by filmmakers when I began my research in 1996, and was posed as yet another challenge for filmmaking in India.

FIGURE 24
Clothing and jewelry store inside the lobby of Fame Cinemas multiplex in Inorbit Mall, 2005. Photo by the author.

FIGURE 25
Citibank kiosk inside the lobby of Fame Adlabs multiplex in Citimall, Andheri, 2005. Photo by the author.

FIGURE 26
Entrance to Inorbit Mall, Malad, 2005. Photo by the author.