Page 27 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

14 << Introduction

delegitimization of existing relations of media production or kinship-based
capitalist networks more generally. In fact, the influence that small-scale and
family-owned production companies wield in Bollywood indicates novel
social and institutional arrangements and adaptations that theories of media
globalization have yet to take into account. As I show in chapter 2, positing
the world of kinship-based media production as a domain opposed to and
incommensurable with an industrialized and purportedly rational model
fails to account for the kinds of exchanges and relationships upon which Bol-
lywood’s production dynamics rest. But this does not imply documenting a
set of practices that are somehow essentially Indian. The more relevant task
remains, as Kajri Jain observes in her study of the production and circulation
of calendar images in India, accounting for the “distinctive character that . . .
capitalist networks take on through being forged in articulation with existing
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economic, political, and social formations.” Steering clear of narratives of
homogenization and, at the other extreme, celebrations of local difference,
this book thus aims to develop a nuanced account of relations between capi-
tal, space, and cultural production as they play out in Bollywood.
In doing so, it joins a growing body of literature that decenters Hol-
lywood to highlight new directions and patterns of media circulation that
define our world today. To be sure, this is not simply a question of assessing
the extent of Bombay, Hong Kong, or Seoul’s global reach. Media capital, as
Curtin reminds us, is a “relational concept, not simply an acknowledgment
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of dominance.” In other words, we need to analyze the reconfiguration of
the Bombay film industry’s spatial reach while maintaining an awareness of
how established centers like Hollywood respond to and reflect on their own
position in the midst of considerable social, technological, and institutional
change. Consider, for instance, this image that appeared in the Wall Street
Journal in 2008.
The image accompanied an article that provided a survey of Hollywood’s
changing relations with India, and focused in particular on a recent deal
between the Bombay-based company Reliance Entertainment and the Hol-
lywood company DreamWorks SKG. Reliance Entertainment’s investment
of $500 million allowed DreamWorks, led by Steven Spielberg, to leave Via-
com’s Paramount Pictures and launch a new venture. As the story noted, for
Hollywood studios struggling to raise finances in the midst of a major eco-
nomic crisis, pursuing opportunities in India seemed to make sense. It was
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to be a new beginning.
It was only fitting, then, that the new figure occupying the director’s seat
was a twenty-first-century incarnation of Lord Ganesha, the androgynous,
light-skinned, four-armed Hindu god who is typically invoked to bless new