Provincialising Bollywood? Cultural economy of north-Indian small-town nostalgia in the Indian multiplex

Abstract

This paper looks at the journey of new small-town films and analyses the cultural economy of this small-town nostalgia. Looking at the reconfiguration of Indian cities as a key phase, the paper attempts to argue that small-town nostalgia is produced by these reconfigurations as the small-town seeps into the big cities and produces its cinematic variant from within the urban imaginary. The paper conceptualises the small-town as a space marked by performative excess and state of exception in the realm of law and order. It is produced as an imaginary ‘other’ of the big city, a counter-utopia which threatens even as it entertains the residual cultural-self trapped in the confident but ill-conceived Indian urbanism. The multiplex, as a prominent socio-economic site of exhibition, now hosts this new small-town simulacra that disengages itself gradually from its referent and gets a life of its own. This paper, therefore, situates small-town nostalgia within the multiplex-mall probing the boundary conditions of this new genre now working in solidarity with various vernacular cinemas in its site-specific idioms, yet thriving in a space beyond. Thus, the paper raises arguments about a new cinema culture that has at its heart, complex migration patterns across India, a performative belonging, and a cinema culture of mourning.

Acknowledgements

This article was incubated in a class led by Ranjani Mazumdar and was shaped through comments made by her and fellow students. Later, Madhava Prasad made some vital suggestion about reworking the essay, following which it has benefited immensely from rigorous and patient suggestions made by the two anonymous referees and also by Vaibhav Abnave and Rajinder Dudrah.

Notes

1. It is true that the focus in the paper remains on metropolitan multiplexes, but the qualification cuts across multiplexes across the country primarily because as ‘The multiplex problem’ section discusses, the arrival of multiplexes often marks the emergence of a spatio-cultural segregation, of which the multiplex-mall becomes the means as well as the end. The tier-based classification of Indian cities follows from Sixth Central Pay Commission recommendations (see http://cdajabalpur.nic.in/6thpay_allowances/allowances.pdf for more) released in 2008, which converted the old category A-1 to X, A, B-1 and B-2 to Y and C and unclassified cities to Z. X, Y and Z are also referred to as Tier-I, Tier-II and Tier-III cities respectively.

2. See http://kafila.org/2012/09/17/the-unreality-of-wasseypur-javed-iqbal/ (last accessed 19 January 2012) for a detailed first-hand account of a journalist's visit to Dhanbad and his report on the coal mafia.

3. One would be reminded, among contemporary films, of Mani Ratnam's Raavan (2010) in which the landscape of Kerala is mixed with Avadhi, spoken in UP. Also, Billu Barber (2008), apparently set in UP is clearly shot in the western ghats. The problem therefore, is not just about ‘movies about nowhere’ for ‘people from nowhere’; often the located films are the most obviously dislocated ones for they fail to draw anything from the location keeping in line with the mainstream tradition of ‘movies about nowhere’.

4. See ‘Tigmanshu Dhulia on His Films and Fundas’ (http://www.indiawest.com/news/3359-tigmanshu-dhulia-on-his-films-and-fundas.html) on INDIAWEST website for Dhulia's defence of the box-office performance of Haasil, for example.

5. See ‘Bollywood's Cult Acts’ (http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/36/200909042009090417 47472969ee713e0/Bollywood's-cult-acts.html) on BangaloreMirror.com and ‘Cult Movies: Down the memory lane’ (http://arpitgarg.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/cult-movies-down-the- memory-lane/) on ArpitGarg's Weblog, for example. The obsession with the dialogues of the film is nearly matchless among the Hindi-speaking audience.

6. Perhaps its best parallel would be the dialogues of Sholay, especially Tumhara naam kya hai Basanti? [What is your name Basanti?] that remains to this day, perhaps one of the most popular film dialogues of all time.

7. For example, have a look at these film-posters of Ishqiya: http://fullytimepass.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/ishqiya2.jpg (last accessed 11 February 2012) and http://www.bookmymovie.in/movie_img/Ishqiya_movie_poster_x2x_in_1.jpg (last accessed 4 Feb 2012).

8. As I was writing this paper, another body of films was emerging in 2011. Yamla Pagla Deewana (2011) takes the NRIs through Benaras and then Punjab. Tanu Weds Manu (2011) also takes an NRI boy looking for a bride through a series of Indian small-towns. Chalo Dilli (2011) takes an investment banker through the city of Jaipur and the relative hinterlands of Rajasthan, to discover many faces of India. The yet another discovery of real India manages to hold them together, even as the figure of the NRI lends itself to a sort of homecoming. The predecessor for these films would be Jab We Met and even though they underline its lawlessness and chaos, they attempt an endearing portrait of the hinterland.

9. Particularly, Satya (1998) and Vaastav (1999) started the trend which instituted gangster cinema as opposed to grand family melodramas. The arrival of Company (2002) and Kaante (2003) furthered the trend among the major films. However, to a large extent, the trend was anchored by comedy films which took to a gangster vernacular and regularly parodied the character of mafia don, popularly called Bhai. Prominent among these early films would be Mahesh Manjarekar's films such as Pran Jaye Par Shaan Na Jaye (2003) and Plan (2004).