Page 26 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

Introduction >> 13

The second speaker to address the gathering was Yash Chopra, cochair-
man of the FICCI Entertainment Committee. Chopra is also one of the
most prominent and influential producer-directors in Bollywood who has,
with his son Aditya Chopra’s assistance, transformed his production com-
pany into a powerful family-owned studio that now has stakes in film pro-
duction, film distribution, home entertainment, television, and music (Yash
Raj Films). A few minutes into his address, after exhorting everyone in the
media and entertainment industries to consider the economic downturn as
an opportunity to reflect on their business practices, Chopra announced that
he wanted to invite “a very, very talented writer, producer and director, some-
one who is like a son to me . . . Karan Johar, onto the stage.” And to thunder-
ous applause from the audience, Chopra declared: “Karan, who is very dear
to me, will from today serve as co-chairman of the FICCI Entertainment
Committee along with me and Kunal Dasgupta.” Karan Johar represents
another powerful family in Bollywood. He has also, since 2000, refashioned
a small-scale production company that his father had established in 1976 into
a “corporatized” set up (Dharma Productions). Thanking “Yash Uncle” and
touching his feet in a gesture of respect, Karan Johar went on to remark that
his father, producer-director Yash Johar, had always dreamed of a platform
like FICCI-FRAMES, an organization that could “put Indian entertainment
on the global map.”
Yash Chopra’s presence on this stage and Karan Johar’s induction into
FICCI were striking reminders to everyone present of the enduring power
of long-standing social and kinship relationships in the Bombay film indus-
try and, equally important, the creative ways in which small-scale, family-
run businesses have responded to changes in the global media landscape
and calls for corporatization. For all their confidence in market cycles, risk
management techniques, and Hollywood-style film marketing, corporate
executives had come to acknowledge, if only grudgingly, that established
family-run companies had considerable experience in gauging audience
tastes and expectations. By the same token, prominent figures like Yash Cho-
pra had been pointing out over the past few years that corporatization had
led to greater transparency and changes in business practices. Every panel at
FRAMES 2009 that I attended featured interactions between representatives
of large media corporations (including Hollywood studios) and producers
who were grappling with the challenges of transforming their family-run
businesses, production cultures, and outlooks to fit visions of a corporatized
media industry.
Such interactions suggest that processes of corporatization and the
emergence of new circuits of global capital in Bombay did not result in the