Indian Popular Cinema: Industry, Ideology and Consciousness

Reviewed by

Kuldip R. Rampal
Central Missouri State University

Pendakur, Manjunath. Indian Popular Cinema: Industry, Ideology and Consciousness.  Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, Inc. 2003. 226 pages.

ISBN 1-57273-501-5

    It is rare that one finds a serious writing on India’s movie industry, the world’s largest, and it is rare still that an intellectually stimulating book-length treatise is available on the subject. Manjunath Pendakur’s Indian Popular Cinema: Industry, Ideology and Consciousness is a solid addition to the literature on international cinema on both counts. Pendakur, who is dean of mass communication and media arts at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, has a rich academic experience at universities in Canada and the United States. His professional media experience includes film production and television news. He also knows the workings of the Indian film industry first hand, having worked as an assistant director to a leading filmmaker in the south of India.

    In painstaking detail, Pendakur deals with policies related to the production, exhibition and distribution of films, and the impact of globalizing media, especially television, on the Indian film industry. Also addressed are issues of film certification for exhibition and the industry’s influences on the social and cultural ethos of the country. The author says that the production and distribution sectors in the Indian film industry are dominated by entrepreneurial capital as opposed to the stable financing base assured by the established Hollywood studio system in the United States. Entrepreneurial capital for the Indian film industry, he says, has also been known to come from questionable sources at times, such as the mafia. He explains that one of the key reasons for mafia involvement in the film business is that the Indian government did not recognize film as a legitimate “industry” until 1998, which meant that institutional financing was not available to the industry or any business connected with it. That was unfortunate indeed, considering that the Indian film industry has a worldwide audience of 3.6 billion as opposed to Hollywood’s 2.6 billion, according to a TIME Asia cover story in 2003.

    Citing other problems with the industry, Pendakur says that exhibitors exert considerable power over the production sector through the distributors by insisting that market entry will be limited to pictures with leading stars and “whatever may be the current formula for success.” He also notes that the production sector suffers from cost escalations, disorganization, indiscipline, and excessive star power.

    Pendakur explains well the politics of film censorship in India before cleared for exhibition. Citing case studies of films caught in the censor’s scissors, Pendakur says that censorship policies in India are used to limit free expression and dialogue on vitally important political issues. He faults the film industry also for failing to present a united front to challenge the state’s authority. As a result, the fundamental right of free speech by filmmakers and the rights of citizens to controversial material are compromised, he says. Pendakur makes a valid point, given that India otherwise is a vibrant democracy. However, a discussion of sensitive sociological factors present in the country that compel the film censor board to act in this way would have been helpful.

    These problems, however, do not dull the magic of the 800-plus feature film industry in more than 20 languages on its vast audiences, the author says. He chronicles the history of both the art cinema and popular cinema and its spell on domestic and foreign audiences. Numerable anecdotal treatments on matters of characterization, aesthetics, romance, sexuality, etc. make the book immensely readable. Stills from many films add to the design of the book. As practically all Indian films are musicals, an entire chapter is devoted to the discussion of music, songs and their elaborate choreography. Music and songs are so critical to the success of films, he says, that the entire production crew and stars may fly off to locales around the world just to shoot song sequences at exorbitant costs. Switzerland seems to be a particular favorite.

    Because of the expansion of television and the arrival of satellite channels from U.S. and elsewhere, the audience for cinema halls may not expand, says the author. That was an accurate prognosis by the author at the time of his writing as the Indian film industry has not had much success at the box office in recent years. That explains why the movie industry is making tangible moves to reinvent itself. Increasingly, the Bombay-based Hindi film industry, or Bollywood as it is commonly called, is adopting the Hollywood commercial success formula – predicated on the themes of sex, action, pleasure and individuality – to regain commercial success for its films. Recent small-budget productions like Jism(Body), Girlfriend, Murder and Julie, which have dealt with the themes of sexuality, adultery, prostitution and lesbianism, have been highly successful at the box office. Does that mean that typical themes of mushy love stories and family dramas have lost their appeal to the Indian audience? That is the question that surely Indian film producers are grappling with and the next author on the Indian film industry could address.