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.