Page 192 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

176 Transnationality, Globalization, and Postcoloniality

(sometimes with as few as 200 subscribers) if they wanted. The result was

that the content of Indian film and television changed; more foreign shows

and more foreign films made their way into the market. In the late 1980s,

few people went to see American films; now the newly built cineplexes are
busy and popular. American and other shows (and their adapted Indian
versions) are popular on television. Perhaps as a result, India recently
rejected the Hindu traditionalists at the polls and elected a government
more committed to economic and cultural modernization.
India ’ s entanglement with globalization has also had profound effects
at least on the segment of the population in direct contact with foreign
economic penetration in the form of outsourced services such as call
centers where Indians answer the telephone and deal with customers in
places such as the United States. Such call center workers often have to
adopt Western names (Alan instead of Ashok), and they often also have to
pretend to be Western. As a result, some report that they come to identify

with their new Western self and have difficulty adjusting back, after a long
shift at work, to their actual lives and actual identities. Men report that
they complain when they get home after a night pretending to be Western
about how “ Indians ” in their own household behave. Often, the complaint
is that they are too Indian. This cultural shift toward a desire to emulate a
global vision of modernity takes the form of changes in attitude fostered
by advertising and the new consumer culture that has taken hold in the
global middle class especially. Whereas in the 1980s, the ideal of female
beauty in the media was a voluptuous body and while women then scorned
western dress (miniskirts and jeans) in favor of traditional saris, since 1991
(the rough start date of the modern media era in India), the ideal of female
beauty in the media has become markedly thinner, and fashionable women
now wear miniskirts and jeans. In Indian culture, the old contrast between
a modestly dressed and therefore virtuous woman and an overly Westernized
anti - heroine has disappeared. Middle - class Indians now also report feeling
superior to “ locals ” who cannot afford Western consumer goods and must
make do with indigenous products.
The clash between old and new, tradition and modernity, often plays
out in the narratives of popular Indian films (referred to as Bollywood

because they are made in what used to be called Bombay , today the city of
Mumbai). The arrival of foreign corporations has helped create a new
middle class that is associated with the adoption of Western attitudes

toward consumption and the more flexible lifestyle (especially in regard to
marriage) that one finds in the West, where arranged marriages are a thing