Table Of ContentBollywood and Its Other(s)
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Bollywood and Its Other(s)
Towards New Configurations
Edited by
Vikrant Kishore
University of Newcastle, Australia
Amit Sarwal
Deakin University, Australia
and
Parichay Patra
Monash University, Australia
Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Vikrant Kishore, Amit Sarwal
and Parichay Patra 2014
Individual chapters © Contributors 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-42649-9
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First published 2014 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-49085-1 ISBN 978-1-137-42650-5 (eBook)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bollywood and its other(s) : towards new configurations / edited by Vikrant
Kishore, University of Newcastle, Australia; Amit Sarwal, Deakin University,
Australia; Parichay Patra, Monash University, Australia.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Motion picture industry—India—Mumbai. 2. Motion pictures,
Hindi—India—Mumbai. I. Kishore, Vikrant, 1976– editor. II. Sarwal, Amit,
1981– editor. III. Patra, Parichay, 1985– editor.
PN1993.5.I8B59255 2014
791.43'0954792—dc23 2014022070
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
Contents
List of Figures vii
Notes on Contributors viii
Introduction 1
Vikrant Kishore, Amit Sarwal and Parichay Patra
Section I Exploring the Other: Cinema, Aesthetics, Philosophy
1 Self, Other and Bollywood: The Evolution of the Hindi Film
as a Site of Ambivalence 13
Dibyakusum Ray
2 Bombay Cinema’s Aesthetic Other: Hindi Shastriya
Cinema in Retrospect 24
Parichay Patra
Section II Diaspora and the Formation of the Global Bollywood
3 Transgressing the Moral Universe: Bollywood and
the Terrain of the Representable 41
Sarah A. Joshi
4 A Perfect Match: Entertainment and Excess of Cricket within
the Diasporic Experience of Bollywood 55
Sanchari De and Manas Ghosh
Section III The Musicality of Bollywood: Possibilities
of Alternative Reading(s)
5 Hindi Popular Cinema and Its Peripheries: Of Female Singers,
Performances and the Presence/Absence of Suraiya 67
Madhuja Mukherjee
6 ‘Dil Dance Maare Re’: Bollywoodisation of the Indian Folk
Dance Forms 86
Vikrant Kishore
7 The Systems Model of Creativity and Indian Film: A Study of
Two Young Music Directors from Kerala, India 110
Phillip McIntyre, Bob Davis and Vikrant Kishore
v
vi Contents
Section IV Bollywood’s Other(s): Sexuality, B Movie, Queerness
8 Sugar and Spice: The Golden Age of the Hindi Movie Vamps,
1960s–1970s 133
Suneeti Rekhari
9 Popular Forms, Altering Normativities: Queer Buddies in
Contemporary Mainstream Hindi Cinema 146
Aneeta Rajendran
10 Hinglish Cinema: The Confluence of East and West 161
Prateek and Amit Sarwal
11 The Ramsay Chronicles: Non-normative Sexualities in Purana
Mandir and Bandh Darwaza 174
Mithuraaj Dhusiya
12 Bollywood’s Encounters with the Third Kind: A Critical
Catalogue of Hindi Science Fiction Films 186
Sami Ahmad Khan
Section V Bollywood’s Other, India’s Other
13 Death Becomes Her: Bombay Cinema, Nation and Kashmir:
In Conversation with the Desire Machine Collective,
Guwahati 205
Kaushik Bhaumik
Afterword 217
Anupam Sharma
Index 222
Figure
7.1 Systems model of creativity according to Kerrigan
(2013, p. 114) 113
vii
Notes on Contributors
Kaushik Bhaumik is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the
School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru Unive rsity, New Delhi.
A film historian who undertook his research on early cinema in India
at the University of Oxford, he has published widely in journals and
edited volumes on early cinema, bazaar arts and modern Indian art.
He served as a research fellow at the Ferguson Centre for African and
Asian Studies, Open University, UK, and as the Senior Vice President
at Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art and the Deputy Director of the Osian’s
Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema. He co-edited Indian Cinema
Book (2008) and, with Elizabeth Edwards, Visual Senses: A Cultural Reader
(2009). His monograph on early Bombay cinema is forthcoming. He has
recently guest edited the Marg special issue on the 100 years of Bombay
cinema. Project Cinema/City, co-edited with Madhusree Datta and Rohan
Shivkumar, has just been released.
Bob Davis is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Creative Technology at
Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. His areas of interest include music
for film, popular music, music analysis, electro-acoustic performance
and music in education.
Sanchari De is a doctoral student at the Department of Film Studies,
Jadavpur University, India, and a recipient of the prestigious CSDS-
ICSSR fellowship for her research. She studied English Literature at the
University of Calcutta and Film Studies at Jadavpur University. She has
made presentations at international conferences/seminars/symposia
in India, Singapore and United States. Her research interests include
digital media, political mobilization and information aesthetics. Apart
from that, she keenly studies films, specifically New Iranian Cinema.
She has recently been selected by the Erasmus Mundus India to Europe
(EMINTE) scholarship programme to undertake research as an exchange
student at Lund University, Sweden.
Mithuraaj Dhusiya teaches English Literature in the Department of
English, Hans Raj College, University of Delhi, India. Currently, he is
pursuing his PhD on Indian horror films at the University of Delhi.
He has presented papers at several international and national confer-
ences. He has published on snake-women in Indian horror cinema and
viii
Notes on Contributors ix
reviewed a number of books on films; forthcoming publications include
journal articles on sport and Indian films, Indian horror comedies and
Marathi horror films.
Manas Ghosh is Assistant Professor in the Department of Film Studies,
Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He has been awarded a PhD in the area of
New Asian Cinema. He contributes regularly to the Journal of the Moving
Image, and is Regional Coordinator (India) to the editorial board of
Asian Cinema.
Sarah A. Joshi teaches in the master’s programme on World Cinema at
Birkbeck College, University of London. She has received her doctoral
degree on popular Hindi cinema from the same institution. The title
of her thesis is ‘The Diasporic Romance: The NRI Trope and Interracial
Transgression in Popular Hindi Cinema’. Her current area of interest
is the interaction and reverse synergies of Indian media across BRICS
nations, including the implications of soft power. She has published
widely in journals and edited volumes.
Sami Ahmad Khan studied Literature at the University of Delhi. He
then completed his master’s in English at Jawaharlal Nehru University
(JNU) and went to the University of Iowa, USA, on a Fulbright grant.
Currently he is a doctoral candidate at JNU, where he is working on
Techno-culture Studies. He has engaged in film production, teaching,
theatre and writing. His debut thriller ‘Red Jihad’ won the Muse India
Young Writer (Runner-Up) Award at the Hyderabad Literary Festival and
Excellence in Youth Fiction Writing award at Delhi World Book Fair
2013. He is now working on his second book.
Vikrant Kishore is an alumnus of RMIT University (Melbourne), AJK
Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia and St
Stephens College, Delhi University, India. He is an academic, filmmaker,
journalist and a photographer. Currently based in Newcastle, Australia,
Kishore is working at the University of Newcastle as Lecturer in
Communication and Media Production and Course Coordinator (Music
Video) in the BA of Communication. He completed his doctorate in
‘Bollywood Cinema and Dance’ from Royal Melbourne Institute of
Technology (RMIT) University in 2011. After the completion of his PhD,
he worked as a researcher on the Australian Research Council funded
project on ‘Mapping Lifestyle Television in Asia’ at RMIT University,
Melbourne, under the leadership of Tania Lewis. He has more than 25
documentaries and corporate films to his credit, and his area of exper-
tise are Bollywood films, the folk and tribal culture of eastern India, as
