Introduction: The Bollywood Eclipse

This book examines changes in Bollywood's film production during the twenty-first century, and particularly after its economic liberalisation, giving rise to a ‘New Bollywood’. It shows how the Indian cinema has acquired evidently postmodern qualities and explains what postmodernism means in the context of Bollywood cinema. It also considers what postmodernism tells us about the change and function of Bollywood film language after the twenty-first century. The book describes Bollywood's ‘postmodern turn’ as a form of transformation that reworks or revisits previous aesthetic trends in order to produce a radically different aesthetic. ‘New Bollywood’ refers to contemporary films characterised by a strong postmodern aesthetic style which was not as present in the 1990s. This introductory chapter discusses the meaning of ‘contemporary Bollywood’, postmodernism as a means of reading and interpreting films, and the structure of the book.

Indian Cinema: A History of Repetition

This chapter examines examples of postmodern aesthetics in contemporary Bollywood cinema by looking more specifically at a particular kind of filmmaking that has emerged prolifically over recent years: the Bollywood remake. Drawing upon various theoretical work on textual adaptation — including issues of textual fidelity that continue to plague the Bollywood remake's critical reception — the chapter considers how remaking has emerged as a platform for innovation and creative translation in Bollywood. It also explores how the diverse methods of remaking that Bollywood employs (intertextuality, cross-cultural borrowing, aesthetic and narrative appropriation, pastiche and parody) allow it to experiment with and innovate in its filmmaking practices. The chapter discusses and compares Bollywood remakes produced within the post-millennium decade in order to highlight a new phenomenon of remaking that is symptomatic of the recent impact of postmodernism, globalisation, modernisation and internationalisation in Indian cinema.

Conclusion: A Bollywood Renaissance?

This book has highlighted some of the fundamental changes that have occurred in Bollywood cinema after its economic liberalisation at the turn of the twenty-first century. Through an analysis of various film texts, it has demonstrated how Bollywood, as well as being global and transnational, has reached a postmodern stage that has provided new ways of reading Indian cinema. It has also examined the Bollywood remake, arguing that remaking was contemporary Bollywood's most significant and effective means of achieving creative innovation. Furthermore, it has described some of the devices at the core of New Bollywood's unique cinematic language, such as figural excess and hyperrealism, which enable the cinema to operate differently as an art form and film language. The book concludes by offering a redefinition of contemporary Bollywood cinema, proposing the value of postmodernism as a new alternative method for studying, teaching and articulating Bollywood in the West. It also reflects on Bollywood's future prospects.

Pedagogic Practices and Newer Approaches to Contemporary Bollywood Cinema

This chapter focuses on pedagogic practices and newer approaches to contemporary Bollywood cinema. It begins with a discussion of Satyajit Ray's views on popular Indian cinema and the reasons for Indian cinema's cursory appearance in film studies courses. It then considers student responses to studying popular Indian films, the current status of Indian film education and academia's alleged failure to do much good for popular Indian cinema. It also examines postmodern practices in contemporary Bollywood cinema and outlines new directions in Indian film research. The chapter argues that many of the academic approaches towards, and much critical journalistic writing on, Bollywood have worked against Bollywood's interests in securing international appeal.

Anti-Bollywood: Traditional Modes of Studying Indian Cinema

This chapter discusses Indian film criticism, with a particular focus on traditional modes of studying Indian cinema. It first traces the history of the development of the Bombay film industry from the 1910s to the 2000s, arguing that the 1960s and 1980s are decades from which we can best study Indian cinema's most popular form of filmmaking: the masala genre. It then considers traditional approaches to Indian film and some popular themes in Indian film studies, including nationalism, diaspora, postcolonialism and cultural identity. It also examines introductory guidebooks and other literary sources that it accuses of having misled readers towards restrictive (if not outmoded and derogatory) definitions of the cinema they seek to understand. The chapter concludes with an overview of categories used to explore Bollywood's current manifestation, namely, third cinema, world cinema, Asian cinema, global contemporary Indian cinema and transnational cinema.

Postmodern Bollywood

This chapter examines how the postmodern, as an aesthetic style and fluid cultural practice, manifests in contemporary Bollywood film texts. Drawing upon the various concepts and traits identified by postmodern theorists such as Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard and Hayden White, as well as postmodern film theorists such as Linda Hutcheon, Peter and Will Brooker, and M. Keith Brooker, the chapter reveals a variety of postmodern strategies and conventions operating within contemporary Bollywood cinema. It also analyses the films Om Shanti Om, Koi...Mil Gaya and Abhay, as well as several features of postmodernism that are present in them, including depthlessness, blank parody, intertextuality, hyperrealism, metahistory, and the sublime. The chapter concludes by explaining how films such as Abhay may help resolve the conflict between art cinema and mainstream popular Indian cinema.

Postmodernism and India

This chapter examines how the Indian film industry has taken a postmodern turn after the millennium as a response to Bollywood's increased global exchanges and commercialisation. It first considers the postmodern presence in contemporary Indian cinema by observing the film industry's geographical site of production in two of India's most prominent celluloid cities: Delhi and Mumbai. It then explores postmodern shifts in contemporary Bollywood and the concept of postmodernism within a global context by reviewing selected critical writing which has previously attempted to relate the concept to both Western and Eastern cinemas. It also analyses the issue of legitimacy wih respect to the relationship between contemporary Bollywood cinema and postmodern art concerns.

Contemporary Bollywood Remakes

This chapter examines postmodern aesthetics in the contemporary Bollywood remake through an in-depth analysis of one of the genre's earliest, most prominent examples: the Devdas lineage. Two of the most popular and widely regarded versions of Devdas are discussed: Bimal Roy's 1955 classic and Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 2002 version. The chapter considers how Bollywood uses figural excess to rework and distinguish itself aesthetically from previous canonical Indian film texts, drawing upon Scott Lash's views on postmodernism as a ‘regime of signification’. It also explores how Bollywood cinema hybridises with Hollywood modes of filmmaking in order to de-authenticate and dismantle both American and its own cinematic codes and conventions. Finally, it describes synaesthesia in Indian cinema and offers a reading of two more films, Dil Chahta Hai and Kaante.