For the most part, India stayed out of mainstream Hollywood movies between 1985 and 2000.

During the same time period, India’s economy was changing forever. The economic liberalization laws of the early 1990s opened up India’s doors and paved the way for its gigantic economic climb. Anyone who has lived in a major metro will tell you that the India of the 1980s looked nothing like the India of the 2000s.

India was ready for a new identity. The dominant movie images of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom no longer held any relevance (if they ever did). This was a new country, and it needed a new narrative to tell the world. They wanted something that showed how far they had come. They wanted a story to showcase how an entire class of New Indians had emerged.

They got Slumdog Millionaire. [Read more…]

Continuing with Hollywood movies about India that educated the West, here is another from the early 1980’s.

Octopussy

Statistics:

• Release date: 10 June 1983
• Box Office Revenue: $187 million
• Ranking: #3 Worldwide for 1983, #6 in the US in 1983
• Other top movies of 1983: Return of the Jedi, Scarface, Risky Business, Terms of Endearment

While the target audience for James Bond is quite large, the UK has always had a special relationship with India. They have built-in stereotypes that come from generations of eating Indian food and buying medicine from Indian pharmacists. (As opposed to Americans, who first need to be convinced that India actually exists.)

So would a film that features a British hero naturally be a better source of knowledge about India? We’ll see. [Read more…]

“So this is where we learned about India.”

I had just returned to the US for a visit and decided to watch a movie during some downtime. I chose Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom because I vaguely remembered it being set in India. It was the first time I had seen it since I was six and my mother forced me to shut my eyes during the ‘heart removal’ scene. (Thanks, Mom.)

Watching it later in life, with a few years of living in India behind me, all sorts of things started to make sense. Stereotypes, generalizations, cultural attitudes – all nicely packaged in a blockbuster adventure.

One thing I am always amazed at is the lack of knowledge that people in the West have about ‘real’ India. Whether they see it as a land of snake charmers and turbans (1980s) or one big call center (2000s), these perceptions seem to stick. After watching Steven Spielberg’s movie, I figured out how they’ve gotten stuck in most of our minds.

So, I thought it would be fun to go back and analyze a few movies about India from the last forty years that have served as ‘educators of the masses’ for people who have never been to India. I’ve started with the big blockbusters that would have been seen by a majority of movie-watchers. [Read more…]