Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire [Hardcover]

Vijay Mishra (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 7, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0415930146 | ISBN-13: 978-0415930147 | Edition: 1

India is home to Bollywood - the largest film industry in the world. Movie theaters are said to be the "temples of modern India," with Bombay producing nearly 800 films per year that are viewed by roughly 11 million people per day. In Bollywood Cinema, Vijay Mishra argues that Indian film production and reception is shaped by the desire for national community and a pan-Indian popular culture. Seeking to understand Bollywood according to its own narrative and aesthetic principles and in relation to a global film industry, he views Indian cinema through the dual methodologies of postcolonial studies and film theory. Mishra discusses classics such as Mother India (1957) and Devdas (1935) and recent films including Ram Lakhan (1989) and Khalnayak (1993), linking their form and content to broader issues of national identity, epic tradition, popular culture, history, and the implications of diaspora.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drawing on postcolonial and film theory, Vijay Mishra (The Gothic Sublime), a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Australia's Murdoch University, sees Indian cinema as an effort to cut across the country's numerous communities and achieve a pan-Indian culture. In Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, Mishra explores film from Bombay in light of national and international cultural and aesthetic proclivities, including the prevalence of epics, the relegation of female actors to supporting roles, film representations of the Indian diaspora and sexual subtexts in the Indian gothic. Always sticking close to the countless films themselves (e.g. Mother India, Kismet, Zanjeer) and other texts (fanzines, a Salman Rushdie novel, film reviews), Mishra offers an erudite, scholarly and hip tribute to Indian cinema in all its glory, folly and abundance. 38 b&w photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

...the particular strength of Bollywood Cinema, indeed, is the plurality of critical perspectives brought to bear and the author's ability to synthesize them into a coherent whole.
–James Chapman, Film International

...the book...rewards the reader with provocative ideas on a dozen topics: anticolonial and postcolonial struggles, melodrama, gender roles, patriarchal power, androgyny, gothic style, diaspora, and of course particular movies (like Mother India) and stars (like Amitabh Bachchan)..
–CHOICE, P.H. Stacy, University of Hartford

A masterly synthesis of existing scholarship on Bombay cinema as well as a timely exploration of the growing importance that this cinema is assuming in the Indian diaspora. . . . an engaging study.
–Sumita Chakravarty, New School University

Here, finally, is a book on Bollywood that is written for those who have experienced Bollywood as well as those who are strangers to that phenomenon. Mishra's analysis of Bollywood cinema is a considerable one within a handful of such analyses emerging today from within academe. It has in it something for the film historian, the curious newcomer, the fan, and the critic.
–Sonora Jh-Nambiar, Seattle University, Communication Research Trends, 2004

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (December 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415930146
• ISBN-13: 978-0415930147
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,193,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wholeheartedly Recommended., July 16, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire (Paperback)

When I started this book, I had not imagined that this is going to be such a detailed analysis of characters, scenes and the movies themselves from Indian Cinema. It is such a wonderful attempt at explaining Indian Cinema that I simply couldn't help praising Vijay Mishra, and thanking him at the same time for my broadened horizons and perspective.

But I may add, get this book only if you know about Bollywood in little detail. This is not a text introducing Indian Cinema to someone unfamiliar to it. If you are a hindi movie fan, its a must must read, and I am quite sure you will find it very interesting and informative as well. I personally wholeheartedly recommend this book to everyone who wants to know about Bollywood and understand its psychology.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars For academics only, August 20, 2005

By 

Marcello Mastroianni - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire (Paperback)

It's conceivable that some scholarly professor living in some dimly-lit library on some hermetically-sealed university campus will be able to decipher this jargon-filled tome. For the rest of us, this book is a virtually unreadable barrage of dry, dismal, academic slang without even a single moment of levity. It's two-hundred-plus pages of "crucial cultural intertexts" and "structural homology" and "strucural displacement" -- and those three phrases came from ONE SENTENCE on page four!

How is it possible to write a book about Bollywood that is so utterly devoid of color and joy? The author has accomplished exactly that. It could be that this book might contain a few tangible ideas or meaningful illuminations, but they're buried so deeply under the weight of such pompous verbage that they'll never see the light of day. Bollywood has never been so tediously presented!