Bollywood memories of brand Australia: an archive of the neoliberal present

Abstract

In the last few years, there has been a minor explosion of Indian cinema-related events in Australia. How may we read this contemporary presence of Bollywood in Australia as a neoliberal archive of Australia's multicultural present? How is Bollywood part of an affective biopolitics generated in the main by members of the South Asian diaspora? How does this recent interface between multiculturalism, neoliberalism and Bollywood mark becoming Indian in Australia? This becoming Indian in Australia is fraught as the distinctions of the lived memories of the Indian diaspora in Australia compete with unlived memories of belonging, generated in effect by state forms of branding Australia and Indians in Australia. Drawing on the concept of Bollywood as an assemblage, this paper seeks to address these questions in a critical manner.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank all the interviewees for their generosity in participating in this project.

Notes

 1. A note on the usage of the term Bollywood is necessary here. I find the use of Bollywood to suggest the entire South Asian film industry by the editors of Bollywood in Australia: Transnationalism and Cultural Production somewhat of an overstatement, even though they argue that this usage is symbolic. To subsume all of these into a Bollywood signature might be inaccurate. Rajadhyaksha has unpacked the term Bollywood to describe ‘a range of distribution and consumption activities’, which is not only ‘the Indian film industry’, but which is also ‘a more diffuse cultural conglomeration’, a post-1990s phenomenon in the Indian context (2003, 27). But it is important to remember that Bollywood itself is still a contested term within Bombay cinema's commercial industries due to its early connotation as an inferior mimic of Hollywood. Yet, its continuing usage, even if referencing a range of affiliated distribution and consumption activities, refers primarily to Bombay cinema's distinctive commercial idiom and aesthetic even if much of this aesthetic is now productive of a new wave of independent Indian films. Second, Bollywood signifies commercial Hindi–Urdu filmmaking and cannot be conflated with Tamil, Telegu, Bengali, Marathi and other cinemas within South Asia.

 2. Deleuze and Guattari (1999) describe an assemblage as both ‘a machinic assemblage of bodies, of actions and passions, an intermingling of bodies reacting to one another’ as well as ‘a collective assemblage of enunciation, of acts and statements, of incorporeal transformations attributed to bodies’. Furthermore, ‘the assemblage has both territorial sides, or reterritorialized sides, which stabilize it, and cutting edges of deterritorialization, which carry it away’ (1999, 88). For Deleuze and Guatarri, the concept of the assemblage describes the complexity of the relationship between bodies, language and its ‘order-words’ that both prescribe and provoke transformations or becoming (1999, 79).

 3. Bollywood as part of Indian soft power is a debated issue. See Blarel's (2012) assessment of Bollywood as a potential of India's soft power.

 4. The accounting of racial and ethnic statistics of the population through the procedures of the census is an example of this management.

 5. See Rubinsztein-Dunlop (2012) and ABC News (2012) for news reports of these deaths.

 6. Stratton (2012) has discussed how Australian neoliberal policies have reshaped its race and class structures in the last decade. He argues that contemporary Australia's multiculturalism invites its Asian middle-class model minority to attain invisibility through honorary whiteness (2009). Stratton argues that racism has become increasingly acceptable under these policies.

 7. Literature on the Northern Territory Intervention (conducted against Indigenous Australians for which The Racial Discrimination Act had to be suspended) discusses this governmental racism. See Watson (2005) for a critical discussion of the government's relationship with Indigenous peoples in Australia.

 8. Another way in which the state might foster certain religious groups from the Indian community might be by funding faith-based organizations. See Osuri (2011) for a discussion on transnational Hindutva networks encouraged and funded by the Australian state.

 9. See White (2010) and Quinn (2010) for a sample of Australian articles on the film. Neither of the authors appeared to have a sense of the film's progressive politics. In fact, White suggests that the film painted Melbourne as a racist place, when the plot of the film turns the subject matter of racism in Australia to a reflection on patriarchal and patriotic chauvinism among its Indian–Australian characters.

10. This interview is part of a number of interviews I conducted with some of the major stakeholders concerned with showcasing Indian films in Australia for a project on the growing presence of Indian films in Australia.

11. Ganguly (2010) has written about the creative cottage industries spawned by those inspired by Bollywood.

12. Recently, SBS TV screened Bollywood Star, a three-episode reality TV show, in May/June 2012. Soliciting those who want to be Bollywood stars, the show emphasized knowledge of Bollywood films as well as talent to create a Bollywood star. The show appeared to be based on the UK Bollywood Star.

13. It is important to acknowledge that it is the history of a consistent and affective labour of predominantly South Asian communities watching Indian films that has paved the way for this regularization. These viewing pleasures were, of course, enabled by the labour of those South Asian entrepreneurs involved in bringing Indian cinemas to Australia through pirate video/DVD circuits, in an economy which Sundaram (2010) has called a pirate modernity.

14. The film festivals organized by Mind Blowing Films can be found at http://www.mindblowingfilms.com/

15. Trikone explicitly mobilizes a South Asian rather than just an ‘Indian’ population as part of its progressive politics. It has held two film festivals: Gulmohar South Asian Queer Film Festival (2008) and Satrang: South Asian Queer Film Festival (2010).

16. In December 2011, a family of Indian and Sri Lankan ethnicity was introduced to Neighbours, an Australian television show, sparking a racist row by fans who did not want this family to be part of the show (see Thorne 2011).

17. See Puar (2007) for a complex discussion of homonationalism and a reworking of the term queer in the context of terrorist assemblages. See Gopinath (2005) and Dudrah (2008) for discussion of Bollywood as a queer form in transnational contexts.