Since the 1990s, the popular film industry in India has succesfully renewed its popularity among the South Asian Diaspora and the globalised Indian middle class. Its recent films have undergone a thematic shift where the characters encounter the West in a variety of situations reached through travel and migration. The films sport a fantasy-like, rich look, trendy locations and designer clothes worn by young men and women. The present article locates the Hindi films in the realm of fast-changing contemporary India with its new market-friendly economy, a globalised and upwardly mobile middle class, a vast dispora that constantly searches for authentic Indian values, and a huge, exportable, techno-savvy workforce that thrives on growing western pop-dominated cultural forms such as Bhangra/Indi pop-music and Hinglish theatre. The search for authentic Indian values, however unintentionally, reveals the long-held images of the West and the eventual making of a cellulod Occident.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Ravinder Kaur (2002) studied this question.