“I Need an Indian Touch”: Glocalization and Bollywood Films

Abstract This article examines the audience demand that Bollywood films, in order to be popular among Indians, have "an Indian touch" even while exhibiting global influences. Audience responses to the use of English, Western clothing, musical styles, and settings range from anxiety to pleasure and vary from subject to subject, but audience members expressed an almost universal expectation that Bollywood films contain traditional clothing and music, that they retain the emphasis on familial emotion, and that they reinforce Indian values. Such reciprocal adaptation between the symptoms of globalization and the retention of "an Indian touch" is discussed using the theoretical framework of glocalization in international communication.