Conjugations

Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema

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by Sangita Gopal

Type

Studies

Subject

Countries > India

Keywords

Hindi cinema, sociology, love

Publishing date

2012

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Collection

South Asia Across the Disciplines

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 240 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-0-226-30426-7

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Book Presentation:
Bollywood movies have been long known for their colorful song-and-dance numbers and knack for combining drama, comedy, action-adventure, and music. But when India entered the global marketplace in the early 1990s, its film industry transformed radically. Production and distribution of films became regulated, advertising and marketing created a largely middle-class audience, and films began to fit into genres like science fiction and horror. In this bold study of what she names New Bollywood, Sangita Gopal contends that the key to understanding these changes is to analyze films’ evolving treatment of romantic relationships.
Gopalargues that the form of the conjugal duo in movies reflects other social forces in India’s new consumerist and global society. She takes a daring look at recent Hindi films and movie trends—the decline of song-and-dance sequences, the upgraded status of the horror genre, and the rise of the multiplex and multi-plot—to demonstrate how these relationships exemplify different formulas of contemporary living. A provocative account of how cultural artifacts can embody globalization’s effects on intimate life, Conjugations will shake up the study of Hindi film.

Press Reviews:
“Brimming with historical insights and excellent close readings, [Conjugations] succeed[s] in challenging existing frameworks for interpreting representations of love, sex, and romance in Bombay cinema.”
Journal of Popular Romance Studies

“Informed by Gopal’s incredible warehouse of knowledge about popular Indian cinemas, Conjugations illuminates diverse dimensions of conjugality and Bollywood through multiple lines of inquiry, including attention to song-and-dance sequences, the emergence of the new genre of horror, and the revitalization of Bengali cinema. This dazzling and wide-reaching book will be of interest to scholars not only in cinema studies, but more generally, those interested in postcoloniality, feminism and gender, and the nation-state in South Asia.”
Jigna Desai, University of Minnesota

See the publisher website: University of Chicago Press