Bollywood and Postmodernism: Popular Indian Cinema in the 21st Century

Re examines contemporary Bollywood films using postmodernist film theory. ‘New Bollywood’ has arrived, but its postmodern impulse often leaves film scholars reluctant to theorise its aesthetics. How do we define the style of a contemporary Bollywood film? Are Bollywood films just uninspired Hollywood rip offs, or does their borrowing signal genuine innovation within the industry? Applying postmodern concepts and locating postmodern motifs in key commercial Hindi films, this innovative study reveals how Indian cinema has changed in the 21st century. Equipping readers with an alternative method of reading contemporary Indian cinema, Bollywood and Postmodernism takes Indian film studies beyond the exhausted theme of diaspora, and exposes a new decade of aesthetic experimentation and textual appropriation in mainstream Bombay cinema. A bold celebration of contemporary Bollywood texts, this book radically redefines Indian film and persuasively argues for its seriousness as a field of study in world cinema.One of the first books to identify and establish a new kind of Bollywood cinema emerging in the 2000s; It includes case studies of commercially successful yet academically under acknowledged postmodern Bollywood films and cross cultural remakes and conducts a detailed study of Bollywood’s formal aesthetic changes by breaking its film language down into a series of postmodern traits.