This is the first full-scale ethnography of Bollywood production, written by a media anthropologist who has had over a decade of access to the filmmakers themselves. The book describes the filmmakers' social world, their filmmaking practices - including an average day on set - and their production culture. Ganti argues that the filmmakers hold their audiences and industry in low regard and that the industry has been in a process of gentrification, moving aside lower-class workers, films, and audiences to raise the stature of the filmmakers and the industry.
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. How the Hindi Film Industry Became "Bollywood" 1
Part 1. The Social Status of Films and Filmmakers
1. From Vice to Virtue: The State and Filmmaking in India 41
2. From Slumdogs to Millionaires: The Gentrification of Hindi
Cinema 77
3. Casting Respectability 119
Part 2. The Practices and Processes of Film Production
4. A Day in the Life of a Hindi Film Set 155
5. The Structure, Organization, and Social Relations of the Hindi
Film Industry 175
6. Sentiments of Disdain and Practices of Distinction: The Work
Culture of the Hindi Film Industry 215
7. Risky Business: Managing Uncertainty in the Hindi Film Industry
243
Part 3. Discourses and Practices of Audience-Making
8. Pleasing Both Aunties and Servants: The Hindi Film Industry and
Its Audience Imaginaries 281
9. The Fear of Large Numbers: The Gentrification of Audience
Imaginaries 315
Epilogue: My Name Is Bollywood 359
Notes 367
Bibliography 401
Index 419
Tejaswini Ganti is Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University. She is the author of Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema.
"This is the first book on Bollywood to combine a deep knowledge of the dynamics of script, song, stars, and style in this cinematic world with an equally keen sense of the unique nature of the politics, finance, and cultural prejudices of the film industry. It will be an indispensable benchmark for all future studies of Bollywood and of similar cinematic industries worldwide, and it will be of interest to media scholars, anthropologists, sociologists of culture, and the curious general reader." Arjun Appadurai, New York University "Tejaswini Ganti mines her extensive contacts in an industry generally closed-off to most outsiders to provide us with in-depth analyses of the sensibilities, compulsions, and desires of important figures in the film industry and the social practices of film production. Producing Bollywood provides unique insights into the forces that shape the production of films in one of the largest film industries in the world. By going beyond the hype surrounding 'Bollywood' and by eschewing simplistic dismissals about escapism and the profit-making drive of Bollywood film-makers, this book enables us to understand the cultural logics that shape the production of Bollywood film. Based on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in multiple sites of film production, Producing Bollywood is truly a trailblazing piece of work." Purnima Mankekar, author of Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India
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