The Inevitable Bollywood

Gentrification of Hindi Cinema Against the background of this rise in respectability, the author argues the process of "gentrification" of Hindi cinema through transformation (1) at the textual level, evidenced in the erasure of working class settings and protagonists to favour elites and foreign locales; (2) of the spaces of viewing from single screens to multiplexes almost sanitising the audience profile to include a "suave" and possibly willing audience who pays well; (3) the claim to "respectability" of those involved in the transformed film-making institution through claiming the middle-class tag to their thought and actions; and (4) the claim to excellence of those producing cinema through the adoption of technology or success of films overseas. [...]we are able to examine the processes of a highly fragmented, decentralised and possibly disorganised enterprise. According to the author, this examination falsifies the assumption that only a "Weberian bureaucratic rationality" as a condition can produce a dominant media. The book at times may seem obvious to cinephiles and those who follow cinema academically but we are drawn to the likes of contrary evidence to certain assumptions such as the organisation of the Hindi film industry, exhibiting characteristics akin to a global late capitalist order since the end of the world war and in the present era strangely hurtling towards an agglomeration and reversing the flexibility, decentralisation and fragmentation.