Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (15 page)

Although the above discussion of the deterioration of cinema thus far hinges centrally on an interpretation of commercial outcome, box-office collections in India are not the objective, transparent indices of audience demographics or behavior that they are purported to be. Given the absence of empirical data and the lack of verifiable systems for collecting information about the demographics of film viewership, filmmakers’ and journalists’ pronouncements about certain categories of audiences and cinematic standards should not be taken as statements of some empirically observable reality; instead, they throw into relief attitudes held by media practitioners (film and print) about age, gender, class, and the public consumption of films. A dominant assumption of this discussion is that sex and violence are synonymous with lower standards and poorer quality. This discourse sets up opposing categories of “middle classes” and “masses/front-benchers,” which have different values arising from differing material conditions, resulting in differing aesthetic standards and cinematic tastes. The much-maligned front-benchers are young, poor males who see movies in theaters and are represented in this discourse as vulgar, prurient, violent, and profane. They are this way because the movies they allegedly enjoy watching repeatedly—making them boxoffice hits—are characterized as having the same qualities. Due to the sheer numbers of front-benchers, filmmakers have no choice but to cater to their degenerate taste, thus positing the “masses” as the root of the “decline” in Hindi cinema.

In this schema, the middle classes—“genteel” and watching films on video in the privacy of their homes—due to their different morals and values, have distinct cinematic preferences and aesthetic standards, characterized by their dislike of the films that front-benchers enjoy. The depiction of the increasingly mass nature of film as an adulteration of a middle-class standard is present even in academic treatments of Indian film history. Scholars present a narrative where, since Independence in 1947, the Hindi film industry, which had grown and changed in response to an influx of illegal profits from the Second World War, extended beyond its educated middle-class audience of prewar days to a new mass audience of uprooted peasants “confronting the unsettling realities of urban and industrial life” (Binford 1989: 80). The growth of this audience in the urban landscape precipitated what Ashis Nandy characterized as
“the expansion of low-brow mass culture” (Nandy 1987). The movie theater can be said to have become a primary locus of this “low-brow” culture, as the middle classes did not frequent it anymore.

I contend that the dominant association between mainstream Hindi cinema and the masses—firmly established by film scholars, filmmakers, and the English-language press—was the root cause for Hindi films not being considered cool or fashionable for such a long period. Shah Rukh Khan mentioned during our interview how he too at one time did not consider it “fashionable” to like mainstream Hindi films, instead preferring Hollywood films, which were considered more fashionable. Describing Hindi cinema as “pure,
masala
entertainment,” “a modern form of
nautanki
,” and a “modern form of street theater,” Khan explained that the main audiences for Hindi films were those that, because of their limited economic means, had no other options for entertainment.
¹⁵
Although he did not use the terms “masses,” or the “common man,” his description of the target audience for Hindi cinema alludes to these concepts.

Khan’s explanation for why Hindi films were an object of distaste and condescension by social elites is remarkably evocative of Bourdieu’s arguments about class, taste, and the practice of
distinction
(1984). He surmised that expressing a distaste for Hindi cinema was a way to communicate one’s class position and cultural capital.

Khan also articulated that Hindi films did not possess much
symbolic capital
: “It does not make a good conversation piece to come back home and tell that I saw x-y-z Hindi film. It makes more of a conversation piece to like
Phantom of the Opera
than some Hindi movie.” When I asked him why that was the case, he explained: “Because it’s a common mode of entertainment. It’s not a specialized mode of entertainment. It’s not
skiing, high up in the Alps. It’s not shooting some pool. It’s not playing bridge with a beer in your hand. It’s not going to a discotheque, in mini skirts. Whenever things are more inaccessible or more special, they become more important to people. This is common entertainment. For me to say that I saw x-y-z Hindi film—because even the
rikshaw-wallah
[rickshaw driver] has seen the film—it doesn’t make it special at all” (Shah Rukh Khan, interview, 15 March 1996). After communicating this tremendous consciousness and awareness about the low cultural status of Hindi cinema and its audiences, Khan characterized his involvement in a somewhat populist vein, “I for one would say, very frankly, that I make films for that person who has no other mode of entertainment, and my job is just to entertain them, and I am very happy, and I’m very proud I can do that. I don’t give a damn for people who don’t think it’s special.” However, Khan admitted his initial ambivalence about working in Hindi cinema: “Five, six years ago, because of my education perhaps—being from St. Columba’s School in Delhi—and then doing my graduation and master’s and stuff, I may have also thought I wanted to make films always, but always thought that I’ll make films which are different. There is no different thing. They are all the same films. Finally, it is just which one entertains you. And I have come to grips with that” (Shah Rukh Khan, interview, 15 March 1996). Despite the populist undertones of his assertions, by mentioning his elite high school, college education, and graduate degree, Khan locates himself within a social world that would normally not be associated with Hindi cinema.

His ambivalence about the form of popular cinema and the link he posited between the films and the socioeconomic status of their audiences came up later in our interview as well. We were discussing the global circulation of Hindi films, and Khan expressed his surprise at some of their unexpected peregrinations: “Even in Switzerland I saw some houses playing the films we’ve done, which is strange, because Switzerland is a very high per-capita kind of place, where I didn’t think Hindi films would reach.” He marveled that “foreigners” actually liked Hindi films: “We just need to make them a little less tacky, and I’m sure we can reach the international market” (Shah Rukh Khan, interview, 21 March 1996). Not only do Khan’s statements reveal his underlying disdain for the mainstream cinema, they also illustrate the underlying developmentalist attitudes that accompany a discussion of Hindi cinema and its audiences. Given his characterizations of Hindi cinema as a medium produced explicitly for the Indian masses, it was surprising to Khan that Hindi films actually circulated in a “developed” country like Switzerland—as signified by its
high per-capita income—and that foreigners, by which he most probably meant white Europeans, would like them.
¹⁶
As Hindi films have been circulating internationally since the 1950s, Khan’s idea of “the international market” is obviously a very circumscribed one—representing the industrialized North.

All of the statements presented thus far illustrate how commercial filmmaking is predicated on a sharp dichotomy between filmmakers and audiences, through which filmmakers also constitute their identities as sophisticated social elites. The primary audiences for Hindi cinema in the 1980s and early 1990s are represented as a distinct class from filmmakers. Although filmmakers allude to the existence of more elite viewers, their presumed absence in the cinema hall renders them as if non-existent. The sentiment of disdain, which I argue is an integral part of the
production culture
of the Hindi film industry, is apparent in the discussion of front-benchers and declining standards of Hindi cinema. However, just about four years after the articles discussed above proclaimed that filmmakers had to “cater to front-benchers or face ruin,” Khan was predicting that attitudes toward Hindi cinema were changing for the better. In the following section, I discuss the changes in films, filmmakers, and audiences that occurred in the industry and filmmaking from 1994 to 2002 that made it possible for films to be considered “cool” a decade later.

In January 1996, when I arrived in Bombay to start my fieldwork, the dominant mood within the film industry was of optimism: that audiences were “coming back” to theaters because the quality of films and of movie theaters was improving immensely. The optimism was connected to the unanticipated and astounding box-office success of two films,
Hum
Aapke Hain Koun!
(HAHK; What Do I Mean to You!) and
Dilwale Dulhaniya
Le Jayenge
(DDLJ; The Braveheart Will Take the Bride). When HAHK was released in 1994, the Hindi film industry was absolutely stunned by its phenomenal success, for it had been written off after preview screenings as one of the biggest flops waiting to happen. It was initially dismissed by the industry as a long, boring “wedding video,” due to its 14 songs, 195-minute running time—lengthy even by Indian standards
¹⁷
— elaborate depictions of North Indian Hindu wedding rituals, and the absence of a villain or violence
¹⁸
(
Figures 2
–
3
). With its portrayal of excessively wealthy but harmonious families, traditionally dressed heroines,
and young lovers who were willing to sacrifice their love out of a sense of duty to their families, the film challenged the dominant norms of filmmaking at the time. Its relatively linear and episodic narrative structure, very minimal plot, and lack of a villain were also not typical of mainstream Hindi films at the time.

FIGURE 2
Scene from
Hum Aapke Hain Koun!
Courtesy and copyright of Rajshri Productions.

FIGURE 3
Madhuri Dixit and Salman Khan in Hum Aapke Hain Koun! Courtesy and copyright of Rajshri Productions.

FIGURE 4
Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge
. Courtesy and copyright of Yash Raj Films,
www.yashrajfilms.com
.

The industry was again taken by surprise the following year with the release of DDLJ, a
love story
involving two Indians born and raised in Britain, which appeared as if it would surpass HAHK’s box-office success (
Figure 4
). While DDLJ had a more familiar theme of young lovers who have to battle against parental opposition to their union (an unyielding father), its most unusual element—widely commented upon by the press—was that the young couple chose not to elope. In earlier love stories, youthful rebellion was the norm, and young lovers ran away together in order to make a new life for themselves despite parental opposition. DDLJ presented a different male protagonist, one who appeared almost passive in contrast to earlier heroes. In DDLJ, even though the heroine’s mother encourages the young couple to elope—this in itself an unusual portrayal—the hero refuses to do so and works very hard to win over the heroine’s father, to gain his permission for their marriage, despite the fact that the heroine’s marriage had already been arranged by
her father to his best friend’s son. DDLJ has earned the title of the longest running Indian film of all time, having completed 800 weeks in Bombay’s Maratha Mandir theater as of February 18, 2011. Both films, due to their tremendous success in India and in diasporic markets, had an enormous
impact on filmmaking
—in terms of themes, long titles, visual style, music, and marketing—for the next decade. They ushered in an era of what the industry termed “family entertainers”—love stories filled with songs, dances, and cultural spectacle like weddings, set against the backdrop of extremely wealthy, extended, and frequently transnational, families.

The extent of HAHK’s and DDLJ’s success was beyond the industry’s expectations because of the altered media landscape that Hindi filmmakers were operating in by the mid-1990s, which included the presence of satellite television. Both films were also touted as initiating a resurgence in theater going, which was remarked upon by the English-language press in articles like “Goodbye to Formula?” (Chandra 1995) and “Back to the Movies: In the Age of TV, Audiences Flock Back to Movie Halls” (Chatterjee 1996). The tone of these articles was in stark contrast to the scenario presented a mere four years earlier. Whereas earlier articles had been overly pessimistic in their assessment of the state of filmmaking and the health of the Hindi film industry, this later batch was filled with statements about the magic of cinema and the new wave of innovation sweeping through the industry. For example, “Goodbye to Formula” asserted, “Business is booming, but clichés are passé. . . The box office is lapping up un-Bollywood films, leaving traditional wisdom stumped. Even the money men are now looking beyond the twin peaks of violence and vulgarity” (Chandra 1995: 120). These sentiments were a strong contrast to the industry’s own previous articulations of gloom and, as well as scholarly accounts that, focusing on earlier periods of the Hindi film industry, continually predicted its decline due to the entrance of technologies such as video and cable television (see Chakravarty 1993; Pendakur 1989; Vasudevan 1990).

The commercial performance of HAHK and DDLJ demonstrated to the film industry that in the age of satellite, cable, video
piracy
, and increased competition
for audiences
, it was still possible to generate astronomical profits at the box-office. Taran Adarsh, the editor of
Trade Guide
, a weekly trade magazine, characterized to me the impact of HAHK on the industry:

Shyam Shroff, the head of the distribution company Shringar Films, and the father of Shravan Shroff, explained that the increased business potential that these two films signified was connected to their quality. “In a gap of one year, you have two major blockbusters like never ever have happened in the film industry. You have that kind of business waiting for you; the point is now you have to have a picture to collect that kind of audience, that kind of money. If you make a bad movie, you don’t expect people to go and pay you” (Shyam Shroff, interview, April 1996). Shroff and Adarsh both expressed a tautology that I heard frequently during my fieldwork: audiences will only come to see a good film, and the way to know if a film is “good” is when audiences come to see it. Of course, their statements linking commercial success with cinematic quality is in direct contrast to the arguments presented in the previous section, especially in relation to the discussion about
Lamhe
—an acknowledged “good” film that performed poorly at the box-office. In the discussion about the 1980s, the dominant view presented by the press and filmmakers was that “bad,” “trashy,” or “vulgar” films were the ones that did well at the box-office and that good films like
Lamhe
did not have much commercial scope. The unanticipated success of HAHK and DDLJ therefore necessitated a major re-envisioning of the industry’s axioms about filmmaking and audiences. Similar to filmmakers’ discourses about the ’80s, however, cinematic quality in the ’90s was linked to the advent of new technologies and the social class of audiences.

The attitudes toward new media technologies underwent a remarkable transformation between the two periods. Whereas video was posited as the reason for the degeneration of Hindi cinema in the 1980s, the presence of satellite television was cited as a factor for the improved production values of Hindi films in the 1990s. If video made filmmakers take shortcuts, satellite made them try harder. There were two strands to this
argument—enticement and education—each addressing the distinctly imagined class-based identities of the audience. One explanation, based on middle-class ideals of domestic comfort and privatized leisure, centered on trying to entice assumedly elite viewers away from their television sets. Filmmakers argued that since they faced increased competition from satellite television, they had to spend lavishly to project a cinematic experience unavailable at home. Rajjat Barjatya, the director of marketing for Rajshri Films, explained their decision to make
Hum Aapke
Hain Koun!
with optical stereo sound as a way to deal with the challenges posed by satellite television: “That is the only way we can combat video and satellite TV, which is penetrating almost every home today. . . When you sit at home you have 50 channels, and at least 45 to 50 films are being screened every day if you include the TV and cable channels. Why [would] a person come to a cinema? The film has to be extraordinary; the cinema has to be extraordinary; the entire experience has to be extraordinary, only then will he come” (Barjatya, interview, April 1996).

The other explanation had to do with the reforming tastes of the implied
mass audience
. Filmmakers argued that with audiences being exposed to the “best” in the world, or to “international” standards, they demanded no less from Hindi films. DDLJ’s director, Aditya Chopra, explained that audiences were becoming better judges of quality and more discerning in their tastes, which he attributed to satellite television and its plethora of channels: “Mainly due to satellite, they see so much international stuff that when they come and see a Hindi film. . . I’ve seen [the] audience talk today about camerawork, about sound, about effect, which was unheard of! A common man saying, ‘
arre kya
light
kiya
shot
ko
!’ [Look how well he lit that shot!]. You know, they [didn’t used to] talk like that! But nowadays they do, so it’s a positive step” (Aditya Chopra, interview, April 1996). According to Chopra, the consequence of audiences becoming more cinematically literate is that they patronize better quality films, enabling the box-office to be a truly accurate and transparent signifier of cinematic quality: “At least earlier, even bad films used to run. Now, thankfully, no bad film does well, which actually harms us more; if a bad film does well, it harms us more, even when a good film does not do well.

When a bad film does well, you suddenly get shaken
ki
[that] ‘Oh God! It’s going to take a lot of time for them to actually understand that [on the one hand] this is not good, [and on the other] this is good’ ” (Aditya Chopra, interview, April 1996). Chopra’s comments about “bad films” running at an earlier time are an allusion to the trashy ’80s and indicate the im
pact of audience taste upon filmmakers; he represents audiences’ poor choice in films as undermining his aesthetic sensibilities. The implication here, consistent with the audience-based narratives of cinematic quality presented in the previous section, is that more discerning audiences will lead to better filmmaking.