Musical Numbers in Bollywood Cinema’s Homeland and Diaspora

How does Bollywood cinema depict ideas about the homeland and diaspora, and what kind of relationships can we track and decipher about diaspora culture as the cinema creates itineraries through its films and related popular cultures? In response, this chapter will use musical numbers in Bollywood cinema to draw attention to a series of representations and cultural politics about the homeland and diaspora relationship as in need of further exploration. It will look at select musical numbers from two broad types of Bollywood films that deal with the diaspora in terms of its relationship to the homeland in actual and imagined ways. The first type of diaspora film might be considered as a dominant ideology of popular Hindi cinema where the relationship between the homeland and the diaspora is represented in limited or conservative ways. In the second type of film, this relationship is shown to be contested, at the very least, and as an imaginative mode of being

Live and let live: The Black 007 in No Time To Die

No Time To Die (2021) saw the arrival of a Black British 007 as protagonist in the James Bond film franchise. The Black 007 Nomi was played by Black British actress Lashana Lynch with diasporic ethnic and cultural connections to Jamaica. These references are taken up in the film in the context of a late-modern postcolonial Britain. No Time To Die is an interesting case in the Bond film franchise and in scholarly studies of James Bond as it allows us to think through issues of race, gender, representation, and belonging vis-à-vis an ongoing debate amongst Bond mania in the British media around the idea of a Black James Bond. This article examines the representation of Nomi as the Black 007 in this film, focussing on the cultural politics of race, gender, and Black Britishness, alongside the postcolonial and diasporic qualities of her character that the film embraces

Special issue introduction: Craft Economies and Inequalities

Craft as a creative industry has received increased public, academic and policy attention in recent years. However, this tends to centre on a Westernised, white, middle-class version of craft practice associated with values of authenticity, the valorisation of the handmade, and ‘hipster’ culture. At the same time, despite a rich body of work on inequalities in the cultural industries, some of which is published in this journal, little attention has been given to craft. These matters are addressed in this special issue which interrogates the character and workings of the contemporary craft economy and provides much needed insight into experiences of inequality in the sector, drawing on research from the Global North and South. It also includes Cultural Commons contributions from Susan Luckman, Carol ulloch and Saskia Warren which reflect on various aspects of contemporary craft

A Bollywood Commercial for Ireland: Filming Ek Tha Tiger in Dublin

The spectacular representation of overseas locations has traditionally been a generic trope of Hindi cinema (AKA Bollywood). Notably, stunning places unfamiliar to Indian audiences are constantly featured in commercial Indian films, mostly for their visual qualities, in order to add a further element of entertainment to the story

The Geri-Actions of the Aging Amitabh Bachchan

Geri-action as a term within film studies describes a subgenre of action cinema in which, largely though not exclusively, men in their middle ages partake in narratives of action and spectacle, whilst simultaneously dealing with issues of aging bodies that participate in a move, or not as the case might be, towards some sort of an idea of retirement. This article explores how we might make the term work for us critically and discernibly in film, media, and cultural studies, especially in the non-Hollywood and global cinematic context. It uses the example of the Indian actor and star Amitabh Bachchan, aged 79, one of the country’s most iconic and longest serving entertainers in its cinema and related media industries. The case of Bachchan allows us to think about the notion of geri-action as not just a universal cinematic subcategory but one that we also have to make nuanced for local and global cultural contexts