Bombay Cinema: an Archive of the City

Abstract

Over the past decade and a half, the Indian city has changed beyond recognition. Today's increasingly divided Bombay is simultaneously a city of decline, since the brutal closures of its textile mills, and one of exponentially increasing wealth and consumer display, following the economic liberalization of the early 1990s and subsequent globalization. Glitzy shopping malls now mushroom where mills once stood, in the midst of their impoverished, former communities. Over the same period, Bombay cinema has seen the emergence of lavish big-budget family films, sexually assertive heroines and dark gangster movies. Bombay Cinema: an Archive of the City is an imaginative and welcome exploration of modernity in the Indian context, and of the relationship between the Indian city and its cinema. Mazumdar's project examines the relevance of recent Euro-American cultural theory to the South Asian context. Fascinating questions arise: what is the equivalent of the flâneur in a city in which – until recently – there have been few, if any, shop window displays or arcades, and in which leisurely strolling has been scarcely feasible? What might it mean to talk of ‘shocks’ and ‘hyperstimulus’ in the context of the vibrant, noisy bazaars (streets) of the modern South Asian city? What relevance do theories of modernity have to cities with decidedly fuzzy lines between urban and rural, where hundreds of thousands sleep on the ‘footpaths’ or roadside pavements, creating ‘mimic villages’ or quasi-rural communities within that urban space?