Bollywood Film

ENGL 471A & AA

Lecture/Discussion: Tu & Thurs 3:30-4:50pm (WY 101)

Film Screening: Tues 6:30-9:30pm (MC003 or Rausch Auditorium)

Spring 2009

Professor: Priti Joshi                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         e-mail: pjoshi@ups.edu

Office Hours: M & W 3-4pm                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Office: Wyatt 338

                         and  by appointment                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Phone:  879-3515

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Mailbox: Wyatt 331

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Introduction

What is “Bollywood”?  On one level, the answer is fairly straightforward, but, as with all academic matters, with a little probing gets more complex.  At its simplest, “Bollywood” stands for the films made in the city of Bombay (renamed “Mumbai” in 1995) in India.  (There are other large film centers, notably Chennai.  In all, India produces about 800-900 films a year.)  However, the term has come to mean not just films from the Bombay film industry, but a particular type of film produced by the Indian film industry, a song-and-dance (literally!) extravaganza.  Salman Rushdie, the novelist, has dubbed these films “Epico-Mythico-Tragico-Comico-Super-sexy-High-Masala-Art.” Bollywood films are sheer entertainment, and this course aims to introduce you to a form that is a genuine global brand – in Malaysia, Egypt, Dubai, Taiwan, South Africa, Russia, Oakland, and Southall, people –  sometimes of South Asian descent, just as often not – voraciously consume Bollywood films, humming their songs and repeating dialogue films, often in a language alien to them.

As with all popular culture, key cultural themes and concerns are elaborately articulated from within a framework that might at first appear “un-sophisticated.”  We will get beyond such surface readings to focus on the way these films pose and probe questions of national identity, gender, masculinity, women’s roles, caste, class, and wealth, as well as unpack the fantasy, fears, hopes, and anxieties that these films articulate and elaborate.   It would not be an exaggeration to say that Indian popular film is one of the best places to study India’s entry into modernity and self-fashioning in the post-independence period.  In assessing these popular films, we will locate them within the larger Indian film industry.  This course, then, will be focused on Bollywood films, but in order to develop a wider understanding, we will examine them in relation to the broader category of “Indian Cinema.”  

For the complete syllabus, click here.