Beyond Crossover Films:Bride and Prejudiceand the Problems of Representing Postcolonial India in a Neoliberal World (original) (raw)

2016, The Journal of Popular Culture

N 2015, A NUMBER OF ESSAYS WERE PUBLISHED BY AMERICANS ABOUT their experiences in India, often depicting the country as a horror zone, and following in a long tradition of representing India as outside human civilization. For example, in "One Hundred Days in India," Jennifer Sinor describes India as a cesspool of leprosy, poverty, and dirt. In "Holding Your Breath in India," Gardiner Harris, a South Asian correspondent, documents the health hazards of living in Delhi. Oindrila Mukherjee observes, in "How to Survive a Visit to India: The Ethics of Representation," that the authors of both essays "seem not to have registered any positive or any enriching experience in India." These negative representations of India contrast with the Indian government's branding of the nation as India Shining in 2004. Bollywood films also support an image of a resurgent and affluent India. If the one-sided representation of India in Western narratives is disturbing, then the image of India formed by the Indian government and Bollywood is equally reductive because the positive effects of economic development, such as an increase in the GDP after liberalization in 1991, has been accompanied by a growth in income disparity, poverty, and unemployment. Both Western and mainstream Bollywood representations are trapped in the endless loops of a shared imperial history and that history's complicated, pervasive effects. Despite the complex history between the United States and India, it is possible to represent India beyond imperial stereotypes and the equally restrictive Indian responses. Director Gurinder