The Globalization of Bollywood: An Ethnography of Non-Elite Audiences in India

There has been a growing Western interest in Bollywood, India's large film industry based in Mumbai. This article attempts to find the ways in which Indian identity is being shaped by the new globalizing Bollywood and how non-elite audiences from lower middle class and rural India are understanding these images. This ethnography reveal that the non-elite audiences find themselves increasingly distanced from the images that Indian cinema is constructing. The films are creating an elitism constituted by the brand logic of transnational capital which is redefining the meaning of the masses.