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Bollywood Nation: India through its Cinema
100 years of popular cinema from Raja Harischandra to Peepli Live.
Bollywood Nation charts the evolution of Indian cinema from its mythological films in the early twentieth century to its world-class gangster and terrorist melodramas of today. In doing so, the book investigates why and how our films have become so deeply embedded in the nation's popular imagination. Is it merely that cinema is the only common form of mass national culture in a country that does not have either a common language or a common religion-or is it entwined with greater social, cultural and spiritual aspirations?
By narrating the story of India through the stories that our films tell us, Vamsee Juluri posits cinema as the voice of the nation and examines how it has shaped our understanding of our place in the world.
Bollywood Nation charts the evolution of Indian cinema from its mythological films in the early twentieth century to its world-class gangster and terrorist melodramas of today. In doing so, the book investigates why and how our films have become so deeply embedded in the nation's popular imagination. Is it merely that cinema is the only common form of mass national culture in a country that does not have either a common language or a common religion-or is it entwined with greater social, cultural and spiritual aspirations?
By narrating the story of India through the stories that our films tell us, Vamsee Juluri posits cinema as the voice of the nation and examines how it has shaped our understanding of our place in the world.
- GenresIndia
232 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2013
3 people are currently reading
141 people want to read
About the author
Vamsee Juluri
11 books71 followersVamsee Juluri is a professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of three books, the most recent of which is Rearming Hinduism: Nature, Hinduphobia and the Return of Indian Intelligence (Westland ebooks 2014). He blogs at the Huffington Post and is a regular contributor for the Indian Express.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 28, 2019
Torn between 3 stars and 4 stars for this one. So,a 3.5?
This is a book that Indian Cinema deserves, a book that underlines common themes of cinema along the last century and relates them to the existing socio-economic situation in the country.
Media shapes and reflects the shared reality of a society. While this is a known abstract fact, it was fun to see this happen in Indian Context. From the days of nehruvian era of nation building to a globalized india of ambitious young people - this book shows the intertwined jouneys of india and its cinema.
Though the theme of the book was fresh, for some reason it didn't make for a deeply engaging read. I don't really blame the writer here, but I would say this book would have made better as a documentary. I also felt that the book was mostly limited to Hindi and Telugu cinema. It would have been nice to read more about other film industries too. It takes some effort to get through the book, but it does feel rewarding at the end to have a new insight on Indian cinema and its journey.
This is a book that Indian Cinema deserves, a book that underlines common themes of cinema along the last century and relates them to the existing socio-economic situation in the country.
Media shapes and reflects the shared reality of a society. While this is a known abstract fact, it was fun to see this happen in Indian Context. From the days of nehruvian era of nation building to a globalized india of ambitious young people - this book shows the intertwined jouneys of india and its cinema.
Though the theme of the book was fresh, for some reason it didn't make for a deeply engaging read. I don't really blame the writer here, but I would say this book would have made better as a documentary. I also felt that the book was mostly limited to Hindi and Telugu cinema. It would have been nice to read more about other film industries too. It takes some effort to get through the book, but it does feel rewarding at the end to have a new insight on Indian cinema and its journey.
December 4, 2014
David Ansen, the famous film critic, once wrote "We are the movies and the movies are us". This certainly holds true for Indians. We laugh and cry with our movies. We experience love, hatred, fear and a myriad of other emotions when we are at the movies. They are the one song we all are singing, albeit in different languages. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that Vamsee Juluri, renowned author and professor, uses cinema as a prism though which to view India. His book is called Bollywood Nation - India through Its Cinema. There is no dearth of books on Bollywood. It is a popular subject that has inspired a lot of writing. However, most books deal rather superficially with the content and tone of films. This is where Vamsee Juluri’s book differs. In the introduction to the book, he says that it is "not so much a history of Indian cinema and its stars as much as a study of India through its cinema".
Vamsee explores the important themes that run through Indian films right from Dadasaheb Phalke's Raja Harishchandra(1913) to Peepli Live(2010). He has divided this nearly hundred year period neatly into four sub-periods based on the most important predilection at that time for the cinema and India in general. These are God, Country, Home and World in chronological order. While it is nobody's point that all the films made in a particular period belong to the same theme, there has always been a dominant theme that has explicitly or implicitly influenced subject selection and treatment by filmmakers of that time. This unique structure helps Vamsee to not only explore the stories and how they have been told in films but also “situate some of these meanings in the context of broader questions about India’s experiences of postcolonial modernity”.
While the book focuses only on popular cinema and not art or parallel cinema, the tone is semi-academic. Vamsee first builds his theories and then quotes examples from films. The first theme, God, is also called the founding theme of Indian cinema because most of the initial films were about God or mythology. While it is true that God helps sell a film; that is not the only reason for the theme. It also has to do with the centrality of God to Indian life and thinking at the time cinema started in India and this centrality survives to a large extent till today. Vamsee provides several examples to show how films have adhered to the idea of God as “One and many”. Hinduism is a largely henotheistic religion – believing in one God without denying the existence of others. A large number of films have been made about Krishna, Rama, Shiva, Ganesha, Hanuman, the Goddesses and saints but none of them take a monotheistic view – arguing that only one of them is God and no one else, or a polytheistic view – depicting each of the Gods as separate and equal. They confirm to the Hindu sensibility about God being one but making himself accessible to human mind in countless forms. We also see how films adopted and propagated Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of truth as God which is amusing because Mahatma Gandhi famously disliked films !!
Through the freedom struggle, post independence era of nation building and even today in the age of globalization, cinema has been preoccupied with the idea of India – what the country means or ought to mean to us. The political and social conditions in the country have influenced films. For example, the book argues that after Nehru’s passing away in 1964, idealism in politics was replaced by power pursuit; the youth was confronted with unemployment, inflation, poverty and homelessness and that this was responsible for fading out of the romantic hero, best represented by Rajesh Khanna and its replacement by an angry young man in the form of Amitabh Bacchhan. This character was best laid out in films like Zanjeer, Sholay, Deewar and Don.
Under the theme of home, Vamsee traces the rise of television in the eighties spurred on by the live telecast of the 1982 Asian games. A number of path breaking serials like Hum Log, Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, Buniyaad, Tamas, Khandaan and Subah captured the imagination of the burgeoning middle class. Telecast of the epic serial Ramayan was a major watershed in the history of Indian television. It coincided with the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in the country. How much one affected the other and in turn was affected by it can be a matter of debate. What is beyond debate is that popular media and socio-political trends were once again remarkably in lockstep.
The final part of the book deals with the unforeseen and unmitigated assault of satellite television with programs like Baywatch and channels like MTV exposing Indian audience to the seductively packaged consumerist worldview propagated by international media. The traditionalist reaction could be seen in the form of films like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun which celebrated the endangered concept of a happy extended family. It is a testament to the resilience of India that it was able to withstand the assault of satellite television, which itself has in fact progressively got Indianized. Out of the interaction of the conflicting forces of globalization and tradition, came out movies like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Pardes, which celebrated an Indian who could be successful anywhere in the world but whose heart lay in India.
This book does not attempt an exhaustive genre wise coverage of the films. That would have made for a much bulkier tome. By restricting itself to dominant themes, the book provides enough theory for the academically oriented reader without making it too dry for the casual reader interested only in knowing more about cinema.
Vamsee explores the important themes that run through Indian films right from Dadasaheb Phalke's Raja Harishchandra(1913) to Peepli Live(2010). He has divided this nearly hundred year period neatly into four sub-periods based on the most important predilection at that time for the cinema and India in general. These are God, Country, Home and World in chronological order. While it is nobody's point that all the films made in a particular period belong to the same theme, there has always been a dominant theme that has explicitly or implicitly influenced subject selection and treatment by filmmakers of that time. This unique structure helps Vamsee to not only explore the stories and how they have been told in films but also “situate some of these meanings in the context of broader questions about India’s experiences of postcolonial modernity”.
While the book focuses only on popular cinema and not art or parallel cinema, the tone is semi-academic. Vamsee first builds his theories and then quotes examples from films. The first theme, God, is also called the founding theme of Indian cinema because most of the initial films were about God or mythology. While it is true that God helps sell a film; that is not the only reason for the theme. It also has to do with the centrality of God to Indian life and thinking at the time cinema started in India and this centrality survives to a large extent till today. Vamsee provides several examples to show how films have adhered to the idea of God as “One and many”. Hinduism is a largely henotheistic religion – believing in one God without denying the existence of others. A large number of films have been made about Krishna, Rama, Shiva, Ganesha, Hanuman, the Goddesses and saints but none of them take a monotheistic view – arguing that only one of them is God and no one else, or a polytheistic view – depicting each of the Gods as separate and equal. They confirm to the Hindu sensibility about God being one but making himself accessible to human mind in countless forms. We also see how films adopted and propagated Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of truth as God which is amusing because Mahatma Gandhi famously disliked films !!
Through the freedom struggle, post independence era of nation building and even today in the age of globalization, cinema has been preoccupied with the idea of India – what the country means or ought to mean to us. The political and social conditions in the country have influenced films. For example, the book argues that after Nehru’s passing away in 1964, idealism in politics was replaced by power pursuit; the youth was confronted with unemployment, inflation, poverty and homelessness and that this was responsible for fading out of the romantic hero, best represented by Rajesh Khanna and its replacement by an angry young man in the form of Amitabh Bacchhan. This character was best laid out in films like Zanjeer, Sholay, Deewar and Don.
Under the theme of home, Vamsee traces the rise of television in the eighties spurred on by the live telecast of the 1982 Asian games. A number of path breaking serials like Hum Log, Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, Buniyaad, Tamas, Khandaan and Subah captured the imagination of the burgeoning middle class. Telecast of the epic serial Ramayan was a major watershed in the history of Indian television. It coincided with the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in the country. How much one affected the other and in turn was affected by it can be a matter of debate. What is beyond debate is that popular media and socio-political trends were once again remarkably in lockstep.
The final part of the book deals with the unforeseen and unmitigated assault of satellite television with programs like Baywatch and channels like MTV exposing Indian audience to the seductively packaged consumerist worldview propagated by international media. The traditionalist reaction could be seen in the form of films like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun which celebrated the endangered concept of a happy extended family. It is a testament to the resilience of India that it was able to withstand the assault of satellite television, which itself has in fact progressively got Indianized. Out of the interaction of the conflicting forces of globalization and tradition, came out movies like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Pardes, which celebrated an Indian who could be successful anywhere in the world but whose heart lay in India.
This book does not attempt an exhaustive genre wise coverage of the films. That would have made for a much bulkier tome. By restricting itself to dominant themes, the book provides enough theory for the academically oriented reader without making it too dry for the casual reader interested only in knowing more about cinema.
August 11, 2020
It's not that 'Bollywood Nation' is not heavy or info packed but the fluidity of the arguments comes to the reader's support.
I guess it's quite evident that I liked the book for its flow but it's useful for one more important reason. It gives you a basic notion of what has happened till now in the film industry is based on a pattern, and once you understand it you are ready to predict the next stage of films and their content.
An attempt to see the best in our films or at least, the best in us that our films have shown us. This book takes you through the phases that the Bollywood industry has gone through. The author takes popular movies over the years and talks about their relationship their times. The book tells us about how much our films reflects not only the social history of our times, but also our negotiations and struggles with broader dilemmas as human beings. We should not get confused, ‘Bollywood Nation’ is purely an academic work but it has been presented and written in such a way which engages all sorts of readers. The writing tone adopted by Juluri is humble and that sometimes gives reader the sense that they have become a part of the book now.
“…so long as Hindi films are watched and their songs sung, India will survive”
-Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi (2007)
I guess it's quite evident that I liked the book for its flow but it's useful for one more important reason. It gives you a basic notion of what has happened till now in the film industry is based on a pattern, and once you understand it you are ready to predict the next stage of films and their content.
An attempt to see the best in our films or at least, the best in us that our films have shown us. This book takes you through the phases that the Bollywood industry has gone through. The author takes popular movies over the years and talks about their relationship their times. The book tells us about how much our films reflects not only the social history of our times, but also our negotiations and struggles with broader dilemmas as human beings. We should not get confused, ‘Bollywood Nation’ is purely an academic work but it has been presented and written in such a way which engages all sorts of readers. The writing tone adopted by Juluri is humble and that sometimes gives reader the sense that they have become a part of the book now.
“…so long as Hindi films are watched and their songs sung, India will survive”
-Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi (2007)
September 19, 2017
The book takes you through the phases that the bollywood industry has gone through. You get to know some new details rather the popular ones talked about film history by our parents at home. However, I still think the author could have added more details.
May 17, 2019
The chapter on doordarshan was good.. otherwise not recommended.
February 20, 2014
I enjoyed reading this book. The author takes popular movies over the years and talks about their relationship with their times. The premise is Bollywood is beyond pure entertainment, its movies reflect society and also influence it. Its pretty logical once you see the examples.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews