Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (53 page)

36
. See Gopalan 2002; Mishra 2002; Nandy 1998; Prasad 1998; Rajadhyaksha 1993; Thomas 1995; Vasudevan 1995, 2000; Virdi 2003.

37
. See Athique and Hill 2010; Bhaskar and Allen 2009; Booth 2008; Dwyer and Patel 2002; Gopal and Moorti 2008; Govil 2005; Hughes 2006; Jacob 2009; Kaur and Sinha 2005; Kavoori and Punathambekar 2008; Majumdar 2009; Mazumdar 2007; Rai 2009; Rajadhyaksha 2009; Rajagopalan 2008; Srinivas 2009; Vasudevan 2010; Vitali 2008; Wilkinson-Weber 2005, 2006.

38
. See Abu-Lughod 2005; Booth 2008; Condry 2006; Dàvila 2001; Deger 2006; Dickey 1993; Dornfeld 1998; Ginsburg 1993, 1997; Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, and Larkin 2002; Hannerz 2004; Himpele 2008; Larkin 2008; Mankekar 1999; Martin 2009; Matzner 2010; Mazzarella 2003; Miller and Horst 2006; Miller and Slater 2001; Pinney 1997; Strassler 2010; Wilkinson-Weber 2005, 2006.

39
. Abu-Lughod 2005; Caldarola 1994; Dickey 1993; Gillespie 1995; Lull 1990; Mankekar 1999; Rofel 1994; Salamandra 1998; Yang 2002.

40
. See Caldwell 2008; Cantor 1988; Ettema and Whitney 1994; Mayer et al. 2009; Ohmann 1996; Zafirau 2009a.

41
. This was a recommendation by a scholar on a panel about the anthropology of media at the aaa meetings in the late 1990s.

42
. See Ang 1991; Cantor 1988; Crawford and Hafsteinsson 1993; Dàvila 2001; Dornfeld 1998; Espinosa 1982; Gans 1957; Kapsis 1986; Mazzarella 2003; Ohmann 1996; Zafirau 2009a, 2009b.

43
. See Barnouw and Krishnaswamy 1980; Binford 1983, 1987, 1989; Das Gupta 1981, 1986; Nandy 1987, 1995; Rangoonwalla 1983.

44
. John Hartley argues that the U.S.
television
industry is a “paedocratic regime” where “the audience is imagined as having childlike qualities and attributes.” He contends that the larger the target audience, the more it will be paedocratized (1992: 108). See also Cantor 1988; Hartley 1992; McQuail 1997; Miller et al. 2001; Ohmann 1996; Zafirau 2009b.

45
. See Larkin 2002, 2008; Miller and Horst 2006; Miller and Slater 2001; Pinney 1997, 2002; Pinney and Peterson 2003; Spitulnik 2002.

46
. Another example to demonstrate the disproportionate relationship between a small group within the industry and commercial success took place in the year 2007. While the percentage of successful films was about 11 percent, the overall accounting of that year determined by the trade press was that the industry as an aggregate made more money than it had lost, which was only the second time in ten years that it had done so. This feat was attributed to five films, which according to the trade magazine
Film Information
, had generated a combined profit of 1.25 billion rupees, without which the industry would have been in the red yet again (“Bollywood Out of the Red” 2008: 6). Each of these films—
Chak De! India, Om
Shanti Om, Welcome, Partner
, and
Taare Zameen Par
—featured the biggest male stars and were produced by leading production houses.

47
. Although I did spend time with and interview one prominent art director.

48
. A
mangalsutra
is a special necklace, with features that vary by region, worn only by married women. The gold chain with black beads and two circular pendants that
I wore during my entire fieldwork period was a recognizable symbol of marital status—equivalent to the wedding ring in Euro-American contexts.

49
. The preface went on to assert that the report was prepared based on information obtained from consulting a variety of sources such as “key industry players, trade associations, government agencies, trade publications, and industry sources” (Pricewaterhouse Coopers 2006a).

1
. India is politically organized as a federal structure; the national level of government is referred to as the Central government, or Center, and the individual states are referred to as state governments.

2
. Although television has also played an important role in these discourses as the state invested in television specifically for pedagogical and modernization purposes, cinema has existed and flourished in India as a mass medium for a much longer period. Television did not become significant in India until the mid-1980s. The first telecast began in September 1959, as a pilot unesco-sponsored educational project, and the initial range of transmission was only 40 km and educational programs were broadcast for 20 minutes, twice a week beginning in 1961. Throughout the 1960s, there were various pilot projects oriented around education, but no systematic program of television broadcasting. It was not until 1976 with the formation of Doordarshan, the state-owned single-channel network, that television programming was broadcast to a wider (but still relatively small) audience. Color broadcasting as well as national transmission via low-power transmitters and satellite began in 1982, because of India’s hosting of the Asiad games. Commercial sponsorship of programs began in 1983, as did the first major expansion of Doordarshan’s network. See Mankekar (1999) and Rajagopal (2001) for more on the history and development of television in India.

3
. While the introduction of commercial satellite and cable television in 1991 has changed the television landscape considerably, the only network television— which is free, unlike cable and satellite—is still the state-controlled Doordarshan, which in the 1990s consisted of only two channels, but since the mid-2000s has expanded to seventeen channels.

4
. Examples include the 1951 Film Enquiry Committee, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Film Seminar of 1955, the Khosla Committee on Film Censorship in 1968, the Symposium on Cinema in Developing Countries in 1979, the Working Group on National Film Policy in 1980, and the National Conference on Challenges Before
Indian Cinema
in 1998.

5
. The Emergency was a two-year period from 1975 to 1977, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency, suspended the constitution and civil liberties, imprisoned many political opponents, and nationalized banks and other key sectors of the economy.

6
. On the early relationship of the Indian National Congress and cinema, also see Bandyopadhyay (1993). For more on Phalke and his
nationalism
, see Barnouw and Krishnaswamy (1980), Kaul (1998), and Shoesmith (1988).
Swadeshi
was a principle articulated by Indian nationalists with respect to imported goods, especially mill-made cloth. The call by Gandhi and others to reject foreign goods and use only indigenously produced goods culminated in a movement where a form of protest against colonial rule was to burn British cloth.

7
. What Gandhi meant by “losing his caste” is that he would lose his respectable social status.

8
. The letter is reprinted in its entirety in both Bandyopadhyay (1993) and Kaul (1998). As far as I can determine, Gandhi never responded, which is not surprising, since it would be very unlikely that he would be reading a film magazine. The letter should be taken as Abbas’s attempt to address the common perceptions and criticisms of cinema prevalent during that time.

9
. In addition to
Mahatma
(the great soul), “
bapu
” was the other most commonly used appellation for Gandhi.

10
. Not everyone was as deferential as Abbas about Gandhi’s criticism of cinema. Baburao Patel, the editor of
Filmindia
, retorted in the issue dated January 1940: “Let this Champion of the
Daridra Narayan
[Godly Poor] come down and meet us and we shall try to convince him, or be convinced. Surely as workers in the film field, we are not worse than the poor untouchables, for whom the old Mahatma’s heart so often bleeds. And if he thinks we are, the more reason why he should come to our rescue” (in Kaul 1998: 51).

11
. Reportedly Gandhi saw his first film in 1944—
Ram Rajya
(The Rule of Ram)— which was based on the Hindu epic
Ramayana
. For more details about the screening see Kaul (1998). He wrote to a cousin about the experience: “It was a depressing experience and I felt like running away from the place, but I could not do so. It was sheer waste of time” (in Jeffrey 2006: 211).

12
. The complete list:
Life of Louis Pasteur
;
Life of Emile Zola
;
Boys’ Town
;
Lost Horizon
;
Juarez
;
Sant Tukaram
;
Sant Tulsidas
;
Seeta
;
Vidyapati
;
Janma Bhoomi
(Birth Land);
Dharti Mata
(Mother Earth); and
Admi
(Man). Abbas also provided brief (one-to two-sentence) descriptions of each film.

13
. In fact according to Kaul (1998), Nehru was an avid viewer of films, as a result of his education in England.

14
. For more about film censorship see Ganti (2009).

15
. Prior to 1960, Bombay was also the name of the state (derived from the colonialera Bombay Presidency) in which the city of Bombay was located. This region became divided into the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra following much agitation and the continuing process of states’ reorganization that began in 1957.

16
. Uttar Pradesh, located in northern India, is the most populous state of the country.

17
. This phrase is not my coinage but taken from media theory to characterize the model of media influence developed in early mass communications research that drew upon the Frankfurt School’s overtly pessimistic view of mass media.

18
. Miller et al. (2001: 179) terms this view of film as a technology that can enter viewers’ minds either to edify or pervert as the “domestic effects model” (dem).

19
. This statement, which is prominently displayed on the Indian Censor Board’s website, is taken from the Supreme Court’s judgment dated March 30, 1989, in a civil appeal relating to censorship of the Tamil film
Ore Oru Gramathile
.

20
. This attitude is prevalent even within Western media reports and articles about filmmaking in India, exemplified by writers’ incredulity at the sheer volume of film production and lavish production values of mainstream Indian films—a type of surprise that a country like India—poor, overpopulated, developing—could actually have thriving film industries when so many Western countries do not.

21
. There are two widely noted influences for this group of directors: the Italian neo-
realist movement; and the earlier “art” film directors such as Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Ritwik Ghatak, who were all working in Bengali-language cinema.

22
. New Cinema generated its own stars, specifically Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Naseerudin Shah, and Om Puri, who appeared in film after film. While filmmakers working outside the dominant paradigm received loans from nfdc to make films, many of these were never released theatrically because of a lack of an alternative distribution and exhibition network. nfdc-funded films have been the ones that tended to receive the National Awards granted by the Indian government.

23
. This total includes touring cinemas, which comprise almost one-fourth of the theaters. The most current figures based on the Government of India’s Ministry of Statistics—6,607 permanent cinemas and 1,914 touring cinemas—which is a total of 8,521 cinemas for all of India. Movie theaters are unevenly distributed throughout the country, with many more in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu than in the northern and most populous states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The United States, which has a much smaller theater-going population (1.363 billion tickets sold in 2008, including Canada), had 39,233 movie screens in 2009 (nato 2009).

24
. A Department of Culture, set up in the Ministry of Education, oversees the National Gallery of Modern Art that opened in 1954 in New Delhi. Three national academies were established in the 1950s to deal with the visual, performance, and literary arts: the Lalit Kala Akademi for painting and sculpture, the Sahitya Akademi for literature, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi for music, dance, and theater. All three are entirely state-funded, but autonomous, organizations with an India-wide representation of artists, critics, and scholars. The Indian Council of Cultural Relations was formed in 1950 to promote international cultural activity. The National School of Drama was founded in 1959 to serve as an all-India institution for higher learning in theater.

25
.
Chalachitra
is the Hindi word for films. The word is a coinage that literally means moving (
chal
) picture (
chitra
), but is never used in daily discourse or conversation. The English words—picture, film, or cinema—are much more commonly used in ordinary speech, no matter what the language.

26
. The Nehru Centre is located in Worli, north of downtown Bombay, and is home to the nfdc and is a frequent venue for film festivals, exhibitions, and other cultural events.

27
. See Ganti (1998) for a full discussion of the cultural politics of this particular event.

28
. Watsons Hotel is currently referred to as either the Esplanade Mansion or the Army-Navy Building.

29
. The ceremonies began with a moment of silence for the remembrance of Hindi film actor Raaj Kumar, who had died two days earlier, and for all those before him. The minister for cultural affairs, Pramod Navalkar, then presented renowned playback singer Lata Mangeshkar with a big bouquet of flowers and led her to a tall brass oil lamp. Navalkar and Mangeshkar lit the lamp together, officially initiating the program. State minister for cultural affairs Anil Deshmukh “released” the official program of the film festival by unwrapping a package tied in red ribbon, taking out a brochure titled in English, “Celebrating the 100th Year of the Arrival of Cinema in Mumbai,” displaying it to the audience and then distributing it
to all of the guests present on stage. See Ganti (1998) for a detailed description of this event.

30
. The first Indian sound film—
Alam Ara
—was released in 1931. The publications associated with these industry-initiated commemorations are
Indian Talkie 1931–56:
Silver Jubilee Souvenir
published by the Film Federation of India, and 50 Years of
Indian Talkies (1931–1981)
published by the Indian Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

31
. Just a sampling of this trope: a book titled
Satellite Invasion of India
, D. C. Bhatt, 1996; and a news article from the Malaysian
New Strait Times
with the headline, “India Battles Invasion by Satellite tv” (1993). See Mankekar (1999) for a further discussion of the anxieties and debates provoked by the entry of satellite television in India.

32
. The ficci was established in 1927 and represents itself as the “largest and oldest apex business organisation in India.” On its website it also characterizes its history as “closely interwoven with India’s struggle for independence.” See
http://www.ficci.com
. My description of the conference is based on documents produced by ffi and ficci, which include the conference schedule and the text of speeches and presentations. I thank Shyam Shroff of Shringar Films for providing me with these materials.

33
. It comprised an inaugural session filled with introductions, welcomes, keynotes and special addresses by representatives of ficci and ffi, four substantive sessions dealing with issues of taxation, intellectual property rights, institutional finance, and industry status, and a closing session with speeches by ficci representatives, actors, and the union minister for information and broadcasting. Union minister refers to a cabinet member at the national level, whereas state minister refers to the cabinet member at the individual state level.

34
. For years filmmakers had been putting forward a list of demands to the finance minister before the yearly budget asking for certain concessions. These demands included the reduction or removal of import duty on raw stock since raw stock was not produced within the country, and therefore there was no domestic industry to protect. Another longstanding demand had been the exemption of filmmakers’ export earnings from income tax; the exemption only applied to corporations that exported goods and since production companies were mostly limited partnerships or proprietary concerns, they were not eligible for such exemptions.

35
. Khanna is currently the chairman of Reliance Entertainment—a unit of Reliance ada—one of India’s largest conglomerates.

36
. For example, see “Industry Status Granted to Films” (1998); and Mathur (2002).

37
. It is important to understand the distinction between black money and the extent of organized crime’s involvement in filmmaking. Black money is basically unreported and therefore untaxed income; black money is about tax evasion and not money-laundering. Organized crime launders money through filmmaking, but businessmen from a variety of enterprises—real estate, construction, diamond trading, etc—invest untaxed income into filmmaking.

38
. For more on this topic see Chopra (2007).

39
. In fact, one of my informants in 1996 was R. Mohan—a businessman who made his fortune in a variety of sectors who decided to venture into film production first in his native state of Kerala and then in Bombay. In his interview with me he represented his foray into film production both as a business decision—the one sector where one could earn fantastic profits—as well as a personal, creative decision: he was “bitten by the film bug.”

40
. Some
of
the earliest states—prior to 2003—to offer incentives for multiplex development were Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh.