Page 193 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

180 << Conclusion

media production that characterizes Bollywood is simply another manifesta-
tion of what is an essentially “Indian” history of capital. The panel discussions
at FRAMES 2009 that I discussed spoke precisely to this issue. Of course, it is
understandable that media professionals routinely invoke notions of “Indian
culture” as a way to negotiate a position of difference in the global media
landscape, particularly in relation to the universal claims that Hollywood
makes. But the larger problem remains. As Ritu Birla, among other histori-
ans, has argued, “[T]he affirmation of an authentic Indian capitalism repeats
the structural logic of the economy/culture distinction, validating culture on
6
the grounds of its consistency with capitalist economic rationality.” A Bol-
lywood producer-director like Karan Johar comes to represent, by this logic,
an Indian capitalist. A closer look at the operations of family firms, including
the one that Karan Johar manages, suggests, however, that production rela-
tions defined by mercantile capital and kinship networks are neither static
nor contained within national boundaries. And when we move beyond fam-
ily businesses to consider a wider range of companies and professionals, it
becomes clear that every domain of Bollywood, including production, dis-
tribution, marketing and promotions, and exhibition involves negotiations
among actors and institutions enmeshed in multiple, asymmetric, and seem-
ingly incongruent cultures of capitalism.
Third, Bollywood is a site of technological and industrial convergence. Film
and media scholars have identified a number of key factors that explain
how Bombay emerged and maintained its position as the preeminent media
capital in India: the city’s position as a center of trade and commerce, and
the influx, through the decades, of mercantile capital into filmmaking; its
status as a vibrant cultural center with established theater movements ini-
tially providing the film industry with a range of creative personnel; the
use of Hindi, which accorded the Bombay-based film industry (located in
a multilingual city and in a state where the official language is Marathi)
“national” status whereas film industries in cities like Madras and Hyder-
abad were ascribed “regional” status; and the impact of India’s partition on
other centers of film production, most notably Calcutta and Lahore, and the
migration of a number of producers, directors, actors, and technicians to
Bombay during this period.
In this book, I have argued that there is another important factor that
accounts for why Bombay has managed to maintain its position as a
national media capital and claim global status in ways that no other cen-
ter of media production in India has been able to: the role played by new
media—radio, television, the Internet, and the mobile phone—in enabling
the Bombay film industry to consistently imagine and mobilize a national