Bollywood cinema reading reflection

Bollywood Cinema’s Global Reach: Consuming the ‘‘Diasporic Consciousness’’

Amandeep Takhar 1 , Pauline Maclaran

2 , and Lorna Stevens

3

Abstract Using the British Sikh community as its research context, this article explores the influence of the Bollywood film genre on what Vertovic refers to as the ‘‘diasporic consciousness’’ in relation to this community. Bollywood attempts to speak to the diaspora by conveying a new sense of ‘‘Indian-ness,’’ one that is less about citizenship and more about imagined identity and community. The authors investigate what they have termed the ‘‘Indian imaginary’’ and how the values embedded therein impact on the lives of young British Sikhs. The findings discuss three emergent core themes: (1) reaffirming pride in Indian heritage; (2) evoking romance and longing; and (3) reinforcing family values and a sense of kinship within the British Sikh diaspora. The overall contribution of the article is twofold. First, it illustrates how the globalization of Bollywood affects the Indian diaspora at a local level. Second, it shows how Bollywood provides an important space for negotiating and reconciling various tensions between family-based and more individualistic value systems. Ultimately, then, Bollywood offers young British Sikhs a particular, hybridized representation of courtship and marriage that is both romantic and familial, and that serves to reconcile Eastern and Western marital relationship ideals and oppositional cultural discourses.

Keywords Bollywood, British Sikh, film genre, diaspora, romance, love

The Hindi film industry, based in Mumbai, India, is popularly

referred to as Bollywood, a term formed by integrating the for-

mer name of Mumbai (Bombay) and Hollywood (the center of

the United States film industry). Bollywood offers an enormous

production output of approximately 1,000 films a year com-

pared with Hollywood, which released just over 500 in 2010

and indeed it has become an important catchall term for global

Asian popular culture (Kaskebar 1996). Bollywood’s origins

can be traced back to 1913, when the first silent Indian feature

film, Raja Harishchandra, was released by Dadasaheb Phalke

through Bollywood’s film production center, known as ‘‘film

city’’ (Nihalini and Chatterji 2003). Yet, despite this long-

standing history, global recognition, and numerous box office

hits since the 1960s, Bollywood was only officially recognized

as an industry by the Indian state on May 10, 1998. This recog-

nition reflected the fact that India had recently become a valu-

able player in the global market, an ‘‘attractive and safe site for

foreign investment’’ (Mehta 2005, p. 137). The prior reluctance

to acknowledge that Bollywood is a major global industry

probably reflects the fact that as a specific genre of film making

renowned for both its popular appeal and formulaic nature,

Bollywood has had to work hard to be taken seriously. Indeed,

it has often been disparaged by film journalists for its charac-

teristically overwrought and elaborate plots, escapist and

fantastic storylines, exaggeratedly elaborate costumes and

settings, simplistic romantic plots, and soap opera nature

(Dudrah 2006). Significantly, although other smaller film

industries exist in India, such as ‘‘Tollywood’’ (the Telugu film

industry based in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh), ‘‘Kollywood,’’

(the Tamil film industry based in Chennai), and the ‘‘Punjabi’’

film industry, none of these are quite as popular or as dispersed

and pervasive as the Bollywood film industry across the Indian

diaspora.

From a macromarketing perspective, it is important to

understand the societal impact of processes of globalization

(Eckhardt and Mahi 2004; Kilbourne 2004). To this end the

study draws its theoretical framing for this study primarily from

Appadurai’s (1990, 1996) insights into processes of globaliza-

tion and transnational identity production. In particular, it

draws on Appadurai’s ‘‘theory of rupture’’ (Appadurai 1996,

p. 3), which takes media and migration as its twin poles of

1 University of Bedfordshire, Luton, United Kingdom

2 Royal Holloway, University of London, London, United Kingdom

3 University of Ulster, Ulster, Northern Ireland

Corresponding Author:

Amandeep Takhar, University of Bedfordshire, Park Square, Luton, LU1 3JU,

United Kingdom

Email: [email protected]

Journal of Macromarketing 32(3) 266-279 ª The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0276146712441799 http://jmk.sagepub.com

influence on how modern subjectivities are imagined. Appa-

durai (p. 4) argues that electronic media such as the cinema,

offer new resources ‘‘for self-imagining as an everyday social

project,’’ thereby creating ‘‘communities of sentiment’’ (p. 8),

namely groups of people that share the same feelings and ima-

ginings. This is comparable to Anderson’s (1991) concept of

nations as ‘‘imagined communities’’ that can be distinguished

‘‘by the style in which they are imagined’’ (p. 6), and above all,

it addresses the cultural roots of these imaginings. Anderson’s

work, like Appadurai’s, thus emphasizes the historical role played

by the media in enabling communities of readers to spring up that

related themselves to others ‘‘in profoundly new ways’’ (p. 37).

He particularly notes the important part played by fiction, which

‘‘seeps quietly and continuously into reality, creating that

remarkable confidence of community in anonymity which is the

hallmark of modern nations’’ (p. 36). Both Appadurai and

Anderson thus highlight the symbiotic relationship between the

media, nationhood, and geographic dispersal. These latter two

concepts are further elaborated on by Vertovic (2000), who refers

to the ‘‘diasporic consciousness,’’ a sense of relationship across

dispersed domains that give members of a diasporic community

multiple reference points through which to identify with both a

homeland and their country of residence (Weerakkody 2006).

This is characterized by identity negotiation across these different

domains that results in a synthesis or hybridization of cultures.

Using the British Sikh community as the research context,

an exploration of the influence of the Bollywood genre on the

‘‘diasporic consciousness’’ is offered. First, a discussion of the

background to the Bollywood film industry is offered in more

detail with particular emphasis on the genre’s key characteris-

tics and how it creates imagined communities of viewers

(Anderson 1991). Then the interpretivist methodology is

described that sought insights into how the cultural values

embedded in the Bollywood genre play out in the lives of third-

generation British Sikhs. Three key themes emerged as signifi-

cant in Bollywood’s cultural mediation of diasporic tensions that

this group experience, namely: (1) reaffirming pride in Indian

heritage; (2) evoking romance and longing; and (3) reinforcing

family values and a sense of kinship. The overall contribution is

to illustrate not only how the globalization of Bollywood affects

an Indian diaspora at a local level but also how this genre opens up

an important space for negotiating and reconciling various ten-

sions between familial and more individualistic cultures that third

generation British Sikhs find themselves juggling.

An Overview of the Bollywood Film Industry

Perceived as the Indian (Hindi) version of Hollywood, Bolly-

wood is the largest film producer in India and is one of the larg-

est film producers worldwide. Bollywood not only denotes the

large number of films made and viewed in the city of Mumbai

but also the distribution, subtitling, dubbing, and viewing of

these motion pictures worldwide. With the theme of what

Mehta (2005) describes as a ‘‘family love story’’ (p. 139), the

1995 release of Aditya Chopra’s box office hit, Dilwale Dulha-

nia Le Jayenge, affectionately known as DDLJ, has helped to

establish Bollywood movies (and Bombay filmmakers) in

overseas markets. The film was awarded the prestigious film-

fare award (Oscar of India), as it exposed issues that ‘‘migrated

Indian communities may be facing, such as maintaining an

Indian identity and community in a Western environment’’

(Mehta 2005, p. 145). The reach of Bollywood films in India

is estimated at 65 percent of India’s rural population, including

a relatively affluent middle class of approximately 150,

250,000 (Bhatia 2002). It is estimated that India’s 800 cinemas

sell 10 million tickets daily, and have 5 billion visits annually

(four times as many as the United States), generating an esti-

mated income in the region of £500 million and employing

over 500,000 full-time workers (Dudrah 2006, p. 35). How-

ever, it is apparent that in monetary terms, Bollywood comes

second to Hollywood in terms of global film industry status

(Kerrigan, Fraser, and Ozbilgin 2004). The stars of Bollywood

films are extremely popular among their targeted audiences and

are highly paid, considering the budgets of the films. Signifi-

cantly, the influence of Bollywood is so colossal that movie stars

are elected officials, and temples are constructed for some of

them (Venkatesh and Swamy 1994; Rajagopal 2001). The lead

star in a film often receives as much as 40 percent royalties for

a typical film, and stars are sometimes working on ten films at

any one time throughout the country (Gokulsing and Dissanyake

2004). The primary objective of Bollywood movies is to provide

three to four hours of escapism, and the format is often very sim-

ilar for each movie, with a few songs and dances, top stars, a

story between the songs of boy meets girl, lots of action, and

typically a happy-ever-after ending.

However, the Bollywood film industry is more than just

popular Hindi cinema for Indians in India. In many respects,

Bollywood films have become an international obsession with

the Indian diaspora, and these films are viewed across South

Asia, Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, and Russia (Kas-

kebar 1996). Thus, Bollywood is fuelled by a larger audience

eager to consume this genre (Britt 2002) with around 15 million

expatriates accounting for 65 percent of Bollywood’s earnings

(Dudrah 2006). In the United Kingdom alone, there are over

4,000 video shops that cater to the consistent demand for Bolly-

wood movies (Dudrah 2006). Furthermore, mainstream chains

such as the Odeon, UCI, Vue, and Virgin cinemas have been

quick to cash in on the growing demand for Bollywood movies

in the United Kingdom. In fact, the Bollywood hit Lagaan was

entered into the best foreign film category at the Oscars in 2005

(Dudrah 2006), and the film Devdas (by Sanjay Leela Bansali)

was featured at the Cannes film festival in 2002. This marked

the departure from the highly genre specific nature of films that

were emerging from Bollywood to ones that offered wider

appeal and were perceived to have greater artistic merit. Bolly-

wood movies now regularly appear in the UK top 10 and US

top 20 ahead of many big budget Hollywood movies.

The Bollywood Film Genre

According to Sarkar (2008), ‘‘Bollywood is a signifier that

celebrates the uniqueness of Indian cinema in terms of certain

Takhar et al. 267

essential, even reified features, including song and dance

sequences, an overarching melodramatic mode, epic structures,

storylines derived from mythologies and Sanskrit dramaturgy

that usually lead to feel-good resolutions that intimate a set

of structures that uphold a civilizational moral universe’’

(p. 4). Sanskrit drama is based on music, dance, and dramatic

gestures. Other influences on Bollywood include folk theater

and Parsi theater, which contributes to its melodramatic flavor,

namely that there is an exaggerated plot and characters in order

to appeal to its audience’s emotions. Hollywood, particularly

its musicals, also has had a part to play in the development

of the Bollywood genre. Sanskrit, the ancient religious and

Indian language of the Vedas and of Hinduism, has been a par-

ticularly strong influence in Bollywood film genres, and indeed

ancient religious scriptures of Sanskrit and its mythology

provide the basis for numerous Bollywood films.

Similar to the Hollywood film industry, the Bollywood film

industry has identified various genres of movies, such as

‘‘devotional films, social films and topical films’’ (Dudrah

2006, p. 33). However, unlike Hollywood movie genres, nearly

all the famous Bollywood films have been of the romance

genre. This ancient genre has its roots in the concept of fantas-

tic and romantic adventures, often featuring a hero with super-

human qualities who goes on a quest to rescue a damsel in

distress. According to Dudrah (2006), ‘‘romance and eroticism

have always featured highly across the spectrum of Indian

cinema and romantic films have been popular from the very

beginning of Bollywood movies in particular’’ (p. 179). Each

movie will have a core story and numerous small stories that

are built around it, and this can include some comedy, action,

and pathos. Nihalini and Chatterji (2003) suggest that, regard-

less of genre and themes, Bollywood movies have to be pro-

duced in such a way as to appeal to the masses and to all age

groups, from a five-year-old child to an eighty-five-year-old

grandfather (Miller 1975). They are required to have impres-

sive stories, amazing and heart touching performances, lovely

music, breath-taking locations, elaborate dance sequences, and

perfect looking actors and actresses in the leading roles.

Unlike the Hollywood film industry, Bollywood movies

have until recently largely been musicals, and indeed the

success of them often depends on the quality of the music. Bol-

lywood movie producers tend to release the movie soundtrack

before the movie itself in order to increase the audience and

movie sales. In this respect, Bollywood films are clearly very

different from Hollywood films, as Gokulsing and Dissanyake

(2004) suggest, and, unlike Hollywood films, Bollywood films

typically consist of ‘‘songs, dances, love triangles, comedy and

action all mixed up in a three to four hour long extravaganza

with an intermission’’ (p. 18). These particular types of Bolly-

wood movies are typically referred to as ‘‘masala’’ (Indian

spice mixture) movies (Ganti 2004).

A familiar and basic feature of Bollywood movies is the

theme of a boy-meets-girl love story, which is set against a

backdrop of binary oppositions, such as East and West, tradi-

tion and modernity, rich and poor, and so forth (Dudrah

2006). Similarly, conforming to the integration of ‘‘binary

oppositions,’’ Bollywood movies uphold the beliefs of love

mythology, where love conquers all and individuals only attain

completeness or a full identity by marrying for love (Harring-

ton and Bielby 1991). However, Bollywood movies must also

uphold family values and traditions, and reconciling these two

potentially conflictual aspects often creates considerable ten-

sion in Bollywood films. This tension is illustrated throughout

the family love story films genre and is exemplified by films

such as Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum (K3G), (sometimes happi-

ness, sometimes sadness), or Hum Saath Saath Hain (we are

together and support each other).

More recently, British-born, Sikh filmmakers such as Gurin-

der Chadha have established a new hybrid genre of ‘‘Indian

English Films’’ (Chatterji 2007), such as Bride and Prejudice,

a Bollywood adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane

Austen. This used a mixture of English, Punjabi, and Hindi dia-

logue and music. She also produced films such as Bhaji on the

Beach (1993), Bend it like Beckham (2002), and It’s a Wonder-

ful Afterlife (2010). This genre of films tends to be about Sikhs

who have grown up or lived abroad for a long time, typically in

the United Kingdom. Interestingly, Britain seems to be the

favored film location for some of the most renowned Mumbai

filmmakers such as Karan Johar (Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum

2001) and Aditya Chopra (Mohabbatein 2000). However,

according to Chatterji (2007), the issue remains as to whether

Bollywood has been redefined by Western sociocultural influ-

ences, or whether it has become a hybrid genre that holds its

core values but has absorbed certain aspects of other influ-

ences, such as Hollywood. And indeed, Dudrah (2006) claims

‘‘the fascination for all things Bollywood has seeped into main-

stream Western music, theatre, fashion, television and the high

street department stores of the West’’ (p. 17). Lord Lloyd

Weber produced the West End production Bollywood Dreams

with Preeya Khalidas, and Bollywood has inspired a number of

Hollywood musicals in recent years, including Moulin Rouge

and Mama Mia.

Despite the many and complex influences that the Bolly-

wood film genre draws on in its quest to emulate and compete

with Hollywood, Rajadhyaksha (2003) argues that above all,

the Bollywood genre conveys a ‘‘new sense of Indian-ness’’

(p. 32). Rajadhyaksha (2003) describes this new sense of

Indian-ness as a ‘‘freer form of civilizational belonging, expli-

citly delinked from the political rights of citizenship’’ (p. 25).

The objective is to understand a particular ‘‘Indian imaginary,’’

and how the values embedded therein impact on the lives of a

‘‘community of sentiment’’ (Appadurai 1996), namely young

British Sikhs. This study explores the view that the consumption

of Bollywood films ‘‘facilitates and mobilizes the transnational

imagination and helps to create new ways for consumers to think

of themselves as Asian’’ (Cayla and Eckhardt 2008, p. 216).

As part of this exploration, the research unpacks how the

reception of Bollywood is mediated by social (Gentry and

Commuri 2009) and cultural dynamics, and to do so it draws

on Fish’s concept of interpretive communities that emerge in

response to particular genres. Similar to communities of senti-

ment, members of an interpretive community share the same

268 Journal of Macromarketing 32(3)

emotions and fantasies, but also understand the mores and

codes of a particular genre and thus interpret such genres in a

common way.

There have been a number of key studies of interpretive

communities in relation to nationalism and identity. Gaines

(2005) study explores the difficulties of being an American

doing ethnographic research on Indians in India and highlights

how the concept of an ‘‘exotic other’’ is communicated in this

process. Elsewhere, Murphy and Kraidy (2003) discuss how

‘‘orientalism’’ is a two-way process, whereby the East may

‘‘exoticize’’ the West and the West may ‘‘exoticize’’ the East,

thus creating mutual objectification in relation to the ‘‘exotic

other.’’ Murphy refers to this process as the ‘‘negotiation and

definition of Self-through-Other.’’ In a study of TV viewers

in Mexico, Murphy (1999) discusses audiences’ decoding pro-

cesses, including ideological incorporation and resistance

(Fiske 1998) as well as the ritual and performative aspects of

television viewing. His study underlines the fact that interpre-

tive communities exist at both an institutional and semiotic

level. He also emphasizes how the family provides ‘‘a locus for

understanding how dominant social interests . . . are articula- ted . . . reproduced and reflected discursively and materially through the expression of taste, social class, and gender.’’

Similarly, Parameswaran’s (2001) study of Indian middle- and

upper-class Hindu women’s reading of Mills & Boon romances in

Urban India explores the interpretive strategies employed by this

community of women readers in order to negotiate and reconcile

the many conflicts and contradictions between their own lives and

this Western romance genre. Hence the power of interpretive

communities to create particular imaginary worlds that are

adapted to their own cultural contexts. This is again well illu-

strated by O’Shea’s (1998) study of traditional Indian dance that

explores how two interpretive communities in India developed

two distinct styles of dance, ‘‘with divergent notions of their pasts

and futures’’ (p. 57). These different interpretive communities

ultimately created ‘‘two discrete sets of aesthetic standards and

choreographic conventions’’ (p. 57).

Each of these examples emphasizes the importance of fram-

ing consumption of particular genres within an interpretive

community context. This is particularly important for this

study, given that Bollywood films are consumed in social, col-

lective groups in specific communities and often in family

gatherings and settings (Gentry and Commuri 2009). Undoubt-

edly, then, the authors are studying ‘‘communities of readers,’’

to use Parameswaran’s (2001) phrase, and this knowledge

informs their interpretive study of Bollywood.

Methodology

The data for this article was accumulated as part of a larger

study investigating the use of Internet dating by the Sikh com-

munity. As part of this research project, interviews were con-

ducted with individuals from the British Sikh community.

The overall approach taken was interpretivist, and data collec-

tion followed a multi-method design, which was a combination

of netnography (i.e., online interviews; Kozinets 2002), with

offline semistructured interviews. In keeping with a netno-

graphic research approach, one of the researchers was actively

immersed in the research process and acted as both an observer

and participator in the study. She herself is a third-generation

British Sikh, and as such she belonged to the particular inter-

pretive community being studied. She engaged and interacted

with other members of the Sikh dating community via a Sikh

dating website called Shaadi.com for a two-and-half-year

period (see Kozinets 1997, 2002; Maclaran and Catterall

2002). In accordance with the recommended research ethics for

online research (Sharf 1999) and the European Society for

Opinion and Marketing Research (ESOMAR) code of conduct,

this researcher announced her presence prior to any direct inter-

action with informants and she assured them of the anonymity

of all informants’ disclosures to her. Given this multi-method

approach, the netnography produced substantial fieldnotes,

which documented the researcher’s observations on the interac-

tions between members on the site, as well as the researcher’s

own thoughts and feelings about the research process taking

place and her personal reflections and experiences on

Shaadi.com (2010). This approach conformed to Charmaz’s

(2000) advocacy of a deep understanding of the situation that

influences respondents. The first Sikh families (i.e., first and

second generation) came to Britain in the 1950s from India, and

the key informants for this current research are the sons

and daughters (third generation) of the second generation.

The study was carried out longitudinally over a period of

two and a half years, and the final data set included transcripts

from fifteen online interviews, fifteen offline interviews, and

copious fieldnotes from participant observations. It adopted a

theoretical sampling approach, which requires continual com-

parisons being made as the data are collected, and seeking

informants on the basis of emergent constructs (Cresswell

2007). To illustrate this process, several young British Sikh

users were interviewed online, and subsequently in-depth inter-

views were conducted with them offline, in order to explore in

detail their ‘‘live’’’ experience of using the site, their percep-

tions of its role in their lives, and their interpretation of Sikh

courtship. A key issue that was explored in the interviews was

the influence of the Bollywood medium, and informants were

encouraged to explore how the consumption of Bollywood

films influenced, impacted, and implicated their hybrid identity

projects as third-generation young British Sikhs with an Indian

heritage, as they searched for marital partners. Given that the

emphasis was on considering the influence of these forces in

the context of informants’ day-to-day lives, an interactive

approach to interviews was adopted, in order to facilitate a

more authentic conversation between informant and

researcher, as recommended by Maxwell (2005). The infor-

mants for the online interviews were recruited through the

Shaadi.com website’s online community. The informants for

the offline interviews were recruited through interaction within

the Sikh community and through networking at the Sikh temple

(Gurdwara), which enabled the researcher to identify users of

Shaadi.com. The third-generation participants were all single

and aged twenty-two to thirty-five, as this was the age group

Takhar et al. 269

that had been identified as experiencing particular tensions

between parental values and those of their British non-Sikh

contemporaries as they approached the milestone of marriage.

Data collection was conducted in several phases, as befitted

the nature of the sampling method. The data collection, analy-

sis, and interpretation progressed in an iterative and interrelated

manner as the researcher moved between the online and offline

environments. This data analysis process was in keeping with

the principles for the analysis and interpretation of qualitative

data recommended by Spiggle (1994) and others (Arnould and

Wallendorf 1994; Strauss and Corbin 1990).

A key factor to emerge early on in the interviews was the

influence of Bollywood as an important cultural reference point

for enabling them to understand more about their Indian roots

and gain a sense of ‘‘Indian-ness’’ and belonging. Although

actors in Bollywood films largely speak Hindi and perform

Hindu traditions, there is a perceived affinity with Sikh culture

due to the fact that Sikhism emerged from the Hindu religion

and culture. Bollywood was thus seen as exposing informants

to distinctive Indian courtship rituals that had been lost in their

adopted country of residence. The focus on Bollywood

increased in the later phases of data collection, as it emerged

as a key area for discussion during researcher probing. This

is in accordance with the interpretive stance and its emphasis

on respecting the emergent patterns of qualitative data (Van

Maanen 1983). Much of these data emerged from the interac-

tive phases of data collection. Such was the richness and depth

of informants’ discussions on the consumption and interpreta-

tion of Bollywood films that it warranted further development

and explication, and this rich seam of data came to form the

basis for this present article. The core research questions are:

how do cultural values embedded in the Bollywood genre

influence young British Sikhs’ perception of courtship and

marriage; and how does the consumption of Bollywood films

mediate tensions they are experiencing at this important time

in their lives? In the next section, the authors present around the

three key themes that emerged in answer to these questions: (1)

reaffirming pride in Indian heritage; (2) evoking romance and

longing; and (3) reinforcing family values and a sense of kinship.

Findings

Reaffirming Pride in Indian Heritage

In accordance with Dudrah’s (2006) study of the effects of the

Bollywood film medium on the Indian diaspora in the United

Kingdom and the United States, Bollywood emerged as a key

medium through which pride in Indian heritage is reaffirmed and

transferred intergenerationally. Immigrant Sikh parents used

Bollywood as a favored means of entertainment (and, we might

add, education) in order to give their children a sense of ‘‘Indian-

ness.’’ Pritam, a third-generation male, describes how his family

encouraged him to watch Bollywood movies from a young age:

We (the family) grew up watching Hindi (Bollywood) films and

we learnt a lot from them, but I think that’s why my parents

used to make me watch them because they made us think about

being an Indian. Actually that’s probably why they used to

make us go to family events too! Lol. (Pritam, Sikh Male,

Online)

Pritam is aware that his parents used Bollywood movies to

maintain links with their homeland culture, and he associates

it with other taken-for-granted influences in his childhood such

as family events. For Pritam and other young Sikhs like him

who have grown up in the United Kingdom, Bollywood is a

tool that teaches him about his ethnic identity. While Bolly-

wood is a film medium with the values of the Indian nation

state deeply embedded in its ideologies (Mehta 2005), it

affects the Indian diaspora in very individual and local ways,

according to their specific interpretive frameworks. Through

consumption of Bollywood films, young British Sikhs can

identify with ‘‘both a homeland and current conditions of resi-

dence’’ (Koppedrayer 2005), or what Clifford (1991) describes

as ‘‘discrepant cosmopolitanism’’ (p. 312), whereby individu-

als experience existential presence and participation here

(United Kingdom) as well as there (India). Thus, the third gen-

eration of the British Sikh community may draw on Bollywood

movies to learn about Indian culture and integrate it into their

identity projects (Ustuner and Holt 2007). Exposure to Bolly-

wood enables young Sikhs like Pritam to self-monitor their

own behaviors (Harnish and Bridges 2006), as well as enabling

them to ensure they are conforming to traditional Indian values

when necessary. Informants frequently mentioned that they

found it easy to identify with Bollywood actors and actresses,

because they had the same skin color as them, as Pip explains:

I could say Bollywood doesn’t influence me, but it does! And

they’re [Bollywood actors and actresses] like us and look like

us, well no I wish we looked like that, but you know what I

mean? They’re Indian too and look like us, like skin wise and

speak like us. (Pip, Sikh Male, Online)

Pip is constructing ‘‘collective social meanings’’ (Dudrah

2006, p. 18) from his identification with Bollywood actors and

actresses. It is evident, exposure to Bollywood is encouraging

him to reflect on his Indian identity and to attempt to conform

to these idealistic images of what being Indian means. This is

an imagined sense of ‘‘Indian-ness,’’ one that is constructed

by Bollywood and bought into by its viewers, who interpret

these constructions in relation to their specific circumstances.

Indeed, an onus to conform to the mother country’s values is

conveyed in the Bollywood genre by representing India as ‘‘the

exotic other,’’ in marked opposition to the values of a British,

Western society. These themes were recurrent throughout

interviews, with other informants referring enthusiastically to

Bollywood both as a mechanism to keep them ‘‘in touch with

their culture’’ and to ‘‘learn how to be’’ in terms of behavior

and the various role enactments that their (perceived) Indian

culture dictates. This resonates with Mankekar’s (1999) obser-

vation on the significance of television production and ‘‘its

conscious deployment .. to construct a pan-Indian culture based

270 Journal of Macromarketing 32(3)

on hegemonic ideologies of community and identity’’ (p. 113).

Jaya is conforming to such ideologies when she explains how

she learnt about gender-based roles and the appropriate court-

ship behavior and rituals:

Well I learnt how to be in certain situations, like when the boy’s

family comes to see the girl and then I watch that and think, OK

maybe that’s how I should be. And it keeps me in touch with

who I am. (Jaya, Sikh Female, Offline)

Through her consumption of Bollywood movies, the reader can

see how Jaya is going through a reflexive questioning of both

her behaviors and her identity, and this reflexive process is

triggered by the values embedded in the genre. Although this

may seem naive, it should be remembered that the informants

are engaged in a search for marriage partners and at an espe-

cially vulnerable and receptive stage in their lives. For Jaya and

the other young British Sikh informants, the traditional and

idealized scenes portraying Indian customs and tradition within

Bollywood movies evoke a longing to search for this sense of

Indian-ness. However, her consumption of Bollywood films,

while offering her a template on which to model her behavior

and expectations, also serves to unsettle her, as she knows it

is an idealistic representation of courtship. Thus Jaya suspends

her disbelief as she consumes Bollywood films, but she does

not totally accept the gender-based differences that she is

exposed to either, and acknowledges the ambivalence she feels,

while ultimately accepting the double standards that exist:

My grandmother never tells my brother, right go and take care

of this or go and do this. It was always my responsibility

and that’s purely because I’m a girl and nothing else and it’s

kind of accepted in our families and if the girl doesn’t do it, it’s

kind of like oh gosh, she’s rebelling, there’s something wrong

with her. There’s a lot of pressure on the girl and I think because

of that we tend to rebel against our parents and I guess these

films don’t always help, but at the same time I do think a girl

suits being in the kitchen more so than a boy and I do kind of

shoot myself in the foot! (Jaya, Sikh Female, Offline)

As young Sikhs such as Jaya negotiate the competing pressures

in their lives, the diasporic consciousness emerges as a way to

resolve cultural tensions and create a hybridized culture. Bolly-

wood films are influential from early childhood for these young

British Sikhs as a favored means of entertainment. This inter-

generational transference of ‘‘Indian-ness’’ represents what

Vertovic (2000) describes as ‘‘diaspora as a mode of cultural

production’’ (p. 153), whereby a form of diasporic conscious-

ness emerges in the next generation members of diasporic com-

munities. This is clearly the case with third generation British

Sikhs whose grandparents emigrated from India.

Thus, third-generation British Sikhs, through their con-

sumption of Bollywood, buy into a ‘‘transnational imagined

community’’ (Cayla and Eckhardt 2008, p. 216). As previously

noted, Anderson’s (1991) concept of nationality in terms of

imagined communities is highly pertinent in relation to Bolly-

wood. Drawing on his work (1983), this article suggests that the

world portrayed by Bollywood can be envisaged as a social and

cultural construct that enables its audience to connect with the

India of their collective imagination, a connection that replaces

actually living in India. Anderson’s concept of ‘‘print capital-

ism’’ is also relevant here, because he emphasizes the power

of the media in creating a common forum or discourse that

ensures maximum coverage and exposure for a particular

media text. The massive scale of Bollywood is an excellent

illustration of this power.

Fish’s (1976) concept of interpretive communities is also

very relevant in this context. Readers learn how to read and

interpret the values and meanings of a particular text according

to a common sense of identity. They are informed readers who

possess both the linguistic competence and the semantic

knowledge to interpret a text in the required (socially con-

structed) way (Fish 1976). Bollywood can therefore be envi-

saged as a textual construct that upholds and reinforces the

cultural values of the Indian homeland. Thus, young British

Sikhs form both an imagined community and an interpretive

community; they are a social group united in their search for

a Sikh marriage in the Bollywood-style, despite the fact that

they live in a Western, British culture that contrasts with the

‘‘imagined homeland’’ of India and the interpretive community

they belong to (Djelic and Quack 2010).

Kuldip, a second-generation British Sikh parent, analyses

Bollywood’s cultural role in her children’s lives:

I think they learn something good from every film and it’s their

culture and they can identify with that. I think it also helps them

in how they decide on their own identity.

They can relate to Bollywood films more than they can

relate to Hollywood films. I would die for my religion and

culture, just like our gurus did, I love it that much.

(Kuldip, Sikh Female, Parent, Offline)

Kuldip clearly uses Bollywood as a socialization mechan-

ism and a reinforcement tool for her children. Through the fam-

ily scenes portrayed in Bollywood films, second-generation

British Sikhs hope to evoke a desire for kinship and family

values in their offspring. The certainty in Kuldip’s tone as she

describes how her children can relate to ‘‘Bollywood films

more than they can relate to Hollywood films’’ demonstrates

the way in which she uses Bollywood movies to influence them

to adopt Indian values. Kuldip’s behavior is representative of

collectivist behavior (Capozza, Voci, and Licciardello 2000),

reinforcing values that the older generation try to feed down

to the third generation through their own teachings and Bolly-

wood movies. Educating ‘‘Indian nationals, both at home and

abroad, in Indian traditions’’ (Mehta 2005, p. 145), the Bolly-

wood film industry invokes, celebrates, and propagates the

‘‘Indian imaginary,’’ ensuring its audiences retain their

‘‘Indian-ness’’ (Rajadhyaksha 2003, p. 32), regardless of geo-

graphic location and dispersal. With happy endings that conti-

nually reinforce the Indian joint family system, the process that

underpins this imaginary can be seen as one that erases any fac-

tors that may undermine this idealized picture, such as

Takhar et al. 271

intergenerational dissension or external cultural influences

(Uberoi 2001). Although sometimes informants like Jaya expe-

rienced dissonance with this idealization in the light of their

everyday realities, by and large the informants, like those in

Uberoi’s (2001) study, believed that the ideal was possible and

worth striving for.

Evoking Romance and Longing

Bollywood narratives revolve around a love story, and it was

evident during the interviews that informants’ imaginations

were fired by Bollywood’s highly wrought stories of love and

romance, reinforcing Derne’s (2008) suggestion that the pri-

mary influencing factor on younger viewers is the concept of

love. The centrality of an ideology of romantic love clearly

resonated with informants, despite this being at odds with other

cultural values that are valorized in Indian culture, such as

collective, familial responsibility and duty. Thus, somewhat

paradoxically, although Bollywood celebrates Indian culture

and conveys a deep sense of pride in being Indian, the Bolly-

wood film genre challenges and even undermines traditional

Indian views of courtship and love, namely that love comes

after marriage. Showing a marked similarity to the Hollywood

musical genre, the love story has always been prominent in

Bollywood films (Mehta 2005), and over the last decade the

focus on idealized love has become increasingly appealing to

Bollywood audiences (Punathambekar 2005), striking a partic-

ular chord with third-generation British Sikhs in search of a

marital partner. Indeed, informants showed a willingness to

suspend their disbelief, to paraphrase the romantic poet

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s phrase, in order to embrace the

romanticized discourse embedded in Bollywood films, a will-

ingness that is well illustrated by Kulsum, a young Sikh

female:

Bollywood, that’s perfect isn’t it? It’s perfect people, perfect

situation, true love constantly. That would be perfect and good.

It influences you to seek a guy that would do that, but then you

look at these mere mortals sitting in front of you and think. I

mean obviously what they do in films encourages you to seek

a person like that. I think subconsciously we are programmed

to seek this film star guy, you know this Mr. Dynamic, fighting

man, who is so loving, so caring, self-sacrificing. So yes it does

influence me and that’s why I’m probably not actually happy

with a mere mortal. (Kulsum, Sikh Female, Offline)

As the above quote so aptly highlights, Bollywood love and

romance is being idealized in Kulsum’s eyes. She begins by

uncritically reflecting on the perfection of the Bollywood world

and how ‘‘good’’ it is, demonstrating a very positive attitude to

the love story and admitting that she is influenced by these

plots to search for a perfect man in the real world. She then

takes a step back, however, acknowledging that she is aware,

as a young Indian Sikh female, that she is ‘‘programmed’’ to

respond in this way, to go along with the storyline and know-

ingly believe in it. In fact, while she demonstrates that she is

aware that she is being manipulated by the Bollywood film fac-

tory, nevertheless she acknowledges that the idealistic world of

Bollywood spills over into her real world and makes her resist

accepting a man who is ‘‘a mere mortal.’’

The ability to willingly suspend disbelief is particularly cru-

cial when readers are consuming texts that have strong fantasy

elements, as readers are required to go with the emotional flow

of the narrative and suspend any skepticism or cynicism they

might have for such fantastic and implausible tales. This recalls

Parameswaran’s (2001) study of Indian women’s reading of

Mills & Boon romances. They took from the genre what they

wanted, namely a romantic plot, virginal heroines, and sexual

tension, but recognized that this genre bore little resemblance

to their everyday lives. Kulsum also underlines the conundrum

posed by such genres, as an interpretive community negotiates

the commonalities and contrasts with their own lives.

Other informants wax lyrical about the perfect love por-

trayed in Bollywood films. Saira, a young Sikh female,

describes the kind of love she longs for:

I just love it when we watch these (Bollywood) films and they

have the couples and the love they have is so perfect and wins

against all odds. It’s so intense and so romantic, especially with

the love songs that they have in the films, they are so perfect. I

just watch these films and they kinda make me yearn for the

guys in the film. It’s a bit weird, but I really do just love them

and want that kind of love. (Saira, Sikh Female, Offline)

Saira also shows awareness that this is an idealized world

that is different from the real world, but nevertheless, like

Kulsum, she finds herself being both absorbed by and

unsettled by this ‘‘perfect,’’ imaginary world, entangled in

the irresistible fabric of the Bollywood cinematic experi-

ence, and yearning to be the heroine who is loved by the

kinds of men portrayed in the films. She acknowledges that

it is somewhat weird for her to allow her two worlds to col-

lide, so that she contemplates having such expectations, but

once again it is evident that a willing suspension of disbelief

is a key part of the consumption experience of such films.

This response is consistent with the consumption of other

forms of media consumption too, such as books and maga-

zines (Belk 1987, 1989; Hirschman and Holbrook 1992;

Hirschman and Thompson 1997; Parameswaran 2001).

Similar to Kulsum, Saira’s notion of a ‘‘perfect’’ Bollywood

love represents the ‘‘good life’’ (Belk and Pollay 1985) to Saira,

and influences her expectations of her marital partner. Saira

constructs her longings for love and romance around the idea-

lized fantasy-based images that she sees in Bollywood movies.

Descriptions of Bollywood movies or scenes consistently

accompanied her references to love and romance, demonstrat-

ing the significance of love, romance, and Bollywood to the

construction of her own identity as a young Sikh female on a

quest for love, and to her understanding of herself as she envi-

sages the milestone of marriage. Likewise, other informants

admitted to living in their own ‘‘little Heer Ranjha (Indian

Romeo and Juliet) fairytale,’’ reflecting Kozinets’ (2008)

272 Journal of Macromarketing 32(3)

observation that ‘‘ideologies influence consumers’ thoughts,

narratives, and actions’’ (p. 865). Here it is apparent how the

fantasies and ideologies surrounding love and romance por-

trayed through Bollywood films influence the thoughts and

actions of third-generation British Sikhs at an intensely per-

sonal level. One particular young male, revealingly naming

himself ‘‘loveonmoon4u,’’ clearly underlines a willingness to

identify himself with love and romance Bollywood-style. He

describes the intense love and romance that he longs for as a

result of watching Bollywood movies and the associated sus-

pension of disbelief that he engages in:

Watching Hindi films, I think what I want from marriage is this.

We shall meet as true friends, true lovers forever and always

[marriage]. Love is a unique feeling and this is what I’m look-

ing for. Love, trust and commitment can conquer the longest

distance. I want love, life and happiness. Love that knows no

barriers. (Loveonmoon4u, Sikh Male, Online)

As loveonmoon4u describes his longings, he adopts the

melodramatic tone and style of the Bollywood film genre,

showing how personally involved he is, and acknowledging

that Bollywood influences his notions of love and romance,

exemplifying the impact this medium and its attendant ideolo-

gies have on him (Kozinets 2008). His own description of love

is intense and passionate, recalling a love scene from a Bolly-

wood movie. The Bollywood love that young British Sikhs

from the Indian diaspora long for conforms to the beliefs of

romantic love mythology embedded in the Bollywood genre,

whereby love conquers all and individuals only attain comple-

teness by choosing a partner who is their soul mate (Harrington

and Bielby 1991).

Young British Sikhs described being ‘‘mad about Bolly-

wood,’’ and third-generation females such as Shabs frequently

said things such as:

I am mad about Bollywood. It’s all about romance and happi-

ness. People in them have struggles, but believe in love and

romance. That helps them get through everything. Bollywood

films get me through. I just pray my prince would come

and save me! (Shabs, Sikh Female, Offline)

Suspending their disbelief, young British Sikh females similar

to Shabs, consistently referred to searching for the love of this

‘‘prince,’’ paralleling the plots of so many Bollywood movies,

and often they are immersed in the Bollywood world to such an

extent that they see themselves in the narratives, playing the

roles of the heroes and heroines. Shabs conveys her absorption

in and enthusiasm for the Bollywood genre, acknowledging

that the genre gives her a belief in romantic love, and she hopes

that someday her prince will come. Interestingly, the reference

to the ‘‘prince’’ demonstrates the Western influence in the lives

of third-generation British Sikhs, as typically the notion of

being rescued by a handsome prince is a tradition that derives

from European fairytales, romances, and chivalric adventures

dating back to the seventeenth century. Clearly, the plot of a

prince rescuing a damsel in distress resonates across cultures

and through time, and often finds its way into both Bollywood

and Hollywood films.

The romance has historically been at odds with marriage, as

romantic love is perceived as emotive and passionate, whereas

married love is perceived as more companionable and prag-

matic. Its importance in Bollywood films thus underlines a fun-

damental tension experienced by young Sikhs in search of a

marriage partner. The Bollywood love that third-generation

British Sikhs seem to be searching for is compatible with

Illouz’s (1997) notions of romantic love, whereby ‘‘romantic

love is irrational rather than rational, gratuitous rather than

profit-orientated, organic rather than utilitarian, private rather

than public’’ (p. 272). Through the consumption of Bollywood

movies, young informants seemingly embed themselves within

this compelling reading community (Parameswaran, 2001),

aspiring to be the heroes and heroines of their own romantic

narratives, recreating and reenacting the search for true love

and the eventual completion of that search in marriage with the

man or woman of their dreams.

Reinforcing Family Values and a Sense of Kinship

In contrast to Hollywood’s more individualized notion of love

and romance that often focuses on a romantic hero and heroine,

Bollywood love stories are always embedded within a wider

context that maintains Indian social values, particularly the role

of the extended family, its hierarchy, and the collective respon-

sibility for family members. This system ensures that individ-

ual wants are subordinated to the greater interests of the

family collectivity (Das 1976). Indeed, Mehta (2005) describes

these films as ‘‘family love stories’’ (p. 136), reflecting the

Bombay film industry’s long history of producing ‘‘family

films which wove a happy marriage between Indian traditions

and the global market,’’ according to Mehta (2005, p. 136).

Moorti (2003) observes that the Bollywood film medium is

exemplary of the ways in which ‘‘transnational media practices

facilitate such longings and desires’’ (p. 358). Bollywood films

are ‘‘ideological fields’’ (Kozinets 2008, p. 865), where the

ideology of romantic love intermingles with a traditional ideol-

ogy of family-centric values. As Saira rationalizes the role of

the Bollywood film genre in her life, she negotiates tensions

between her desire for romantic Bollywood love, and her desire

to display parental respect, arguably the most important value

in Indian culture. The following extract also shows the impor-

tance in this interpretive community of differentiating them-

selves from the undesirable aspects of ‘‘the other,’’ in this

case British culture. This recalls the elitism and oppositional

discourse noted in other studies of Indian culture, such as Para-

meswaran’s study of women readers of romance fiction in

India, who upheld traditional Hindu values of ideal femininity

in preference to contemporary Western women’s perceived

values. Saira observes:

Bollywood is always all about love and I love that about Bolly-

wood films. It’s so nice to see these perfect love stories and the

Takhar et al. 273

happy ever after, it makes me feel warm inside watching that.

Yet I also kind of learn about the Indian culture and think about

how I should behave as a young Sikh girl and keep my parents

respect in the community and can’t really be running around

with loads of boys like I’m white. (Saira, Sikh Female, Offline)

Although seeking out love or finding your own marital partner

is not always readily accepted in her community, where

arranged marriages are still common, Saira certainly values the

fact that Bollywood goes against such traditions and celebrates

the pursuit of love and romance. In tandem, however, she

equally treasures the familial Indian values that are portrayed.

Again, there are obvious self-monitoring processes taking

place, as she is encouraged to reflect on her own behaviors and

actions as she seeks a marital partner. Interestingly, it is impor-

tant for her to distinguish herself from ‘‘white’’ courtship beha-

viors, which are perceived as being too individualistic and

possibly promiscuous, and disrespectful to one’s parents and

community.

The familial ideologies displayed relating to family and kin-

ship within Bollywood films influence young British Sikhs at

an individual and collective level, affecting both their own

identity construction and that of their family (Price and Epp

2005). Like Saira, Jas also discusses how Bollywood has

played a primary role in maintaining Indian familial values.

I’ve learnt loads from Bollywood films about our culture and

how to behave. I learnt what’s important and what’s not. Espe-

cially from the older films, that we used to watch together. And

now going through the whole marriage thing, I honestly have to

say I realise the importance of tradition and stuff that much

more and think I’ve learnt through Bollywood. I know I need

to respect my parents and behave in a certain Indian kinda way!

Especially as I’ve got older. (Jas, Sikh Female, Online)

In these ways, Saira and Jas exemplify Shukla’s (1999) point

that the ‘‘Indian-ness’’ that is learnt and adopted through Bolly-

wood films is ‘‘at once a language of locality, of serving to

articulate migrants place in society, and of (inter-) nationality,

to shore up their position in a particular notion (and materiality)

of India’’ (p. 21). As such they embrace the ‘‘Indian imagin-

ary’’ that Bollywood celebrates.

As in the Reaffirming Pride in Indian Heritage subsection

and again in Jas’s discussions above, an important aspect of the

Bollywood genre of ‘‘family films’’ and ‘‘family love stories’’

is that it facilitates family consumption from an early age. In

this way, the Bollywood film industry’s attempts to ‘‘reproduce

the Indian nation’’ (Mehta 2005, p. 137) globally through Bol-

lywood are successful. For young British Sikhs, the role of Bol-

lywood in their lives is not simply about the oppositions

between the Western and Indian values, ‘‘but rather under-

scores diasporic identity formation as a negotiation between

cultures and epistemes’’ (Moorti 2003, p. 364). Mehta (2005)

suggests that Bollywood’s representation of Indian tradition

is located within a moral and ethical code, with women playing

a fundamental role in maintaining the patriarchal Indian family.

Similarly, Punathambekar (2005) describes how it is Indian

mothers who watch Bollywood films with their children and

interpret the narratives for them. This was certainly true for

the second and third generation of the British Sikh commu-

nity; the consumption of Bollywood films was a truly collec-

tive family time, as Sanya, a second-generation mother,

describes:

We call ourselves Sikh and we call ourselves Punjabi. Our cul-

ture is the Indian culture and it is according to that, that we live

and teach our kids, and Bollywood films show the kids how to

behave and how our culture works. Sometimes I have to explain

to the kids what is happening when we are watching them and

the things that they don’t understand, but the kids always watch

them with me and we all learn different thing from them about

our culture. (Sanya, Sikh Female, Parent, Offline)

In this way, Bollywood establishes its credibility with this

diasporic group as the bearer of ‘‘Indian-ness.’’ The experien-

tial, collective, and family consumption of Bollywood movies

and the ‘‘Indian imaginary’’ work in different ways, depending

on levels of acculturation to the Western world. Some second-

generation parents such as Sanya endeavor to condition their

children to reject Western culture and the individualism associ-

ated with it, and Bollywood is a tool that they utilize to assist

them in this process. For parents like her, Western media, such

as films, music, soaps, and wider sociocultural trends (e.g., dat-

ing, divorce, etc.) are all evidence of a corrupting Western

influence that threatens familial and traditional values por-

trayed in a Bollywood movie (Punathambekar 2005). There-

fore, Bollywood is a tool that mothers like Sanya use to

balance the acculturation of their children to the West (Prasad

2000) and that also serve to ensure that they maintain Indian

values. Thus, mothers use Bollywood films as a means of

reinforcing long-standing cultural traditions, moral values,

and life lessons (Punathambekar 2005). Uberoi (1998)

explains, ‘‘whether at home or abroad it is the Indian family

system that is recognised as the social institution that quintes-

sentially defines being Indian’’ (p. 308). As such, the idea of

the Indian family becomes a trope for identity maintenance

and resistance to cultural change. It also recalls Murphy’s

(1999) observation that the interpretive community of the

family serves as both an institutional and a semiotic concept

to ensure that social and cultural interests are upheld and

disseminated.

According to Mehta (2005), the global recognition of the

Bollywood film industry and the way in which it is able to

control the contents of its family films enables the Indian state

to control the specific messages and ideologies that it wants to

transmit. Third-generation British Sikhs repeatedly described a

modern Bollywood film that significantly influenced them

known as Kabhi Khush Kabhi Ghum (Sometimes happiness,

Sometimes Sadness/K3G). Simran and Baz in particular

seemed to be influenced by this Bollywood family love story

and the Indian family values that they portray, as they both felt

it was a film that enabled them to reconnect with Indian culture

and its collective values:

274 Journal of Macromarketing 32(3)

‘‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum, that’s the one film that I rate and

love, oh and Dilwale Dulhania. But K3G, it’s got everything in

it. It’s about family, loyalty, understanding, relationships, lots

and lots of emotions and love on every level. This is one film

that I can watch over and over again. It’s kinda made me think

a lot about marriage and what’s important, and you don’t really

see what it’s like for your parents either, but from that film

I could see, I learnt about how traditions are important.’’

(Simran, Sikh Female, Online)

Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum is a good film, I love that film, and

I never used to watch films that much until that film came out.

When I watched that film I realised the importance of my mum

and family and how much we should do for each other and

sticking together and stuff. But then I also like the love story

in it as well and how she is such a nice, sweet, innocent girl.

I think watching that film so many times I have taken some-

thing new from it every time, and am more sensible and know

about more traditions and stuff now. (Baz, Sikh Male, Online)

Both Simran and Baz evidently value the considerable role that

Bollywood plays in their lives. The scenes from Kabhi Khushi

Kabhi Ghum have evoked a state of self-reflexivity, whereby

they reflect on their own lives and identities. They each expe-

rienced the consumption of this particular Bollywood movie

repetitively, and through this process the importance of family

values and family feelings are reaffirmed (Mehta 2005). Kabhi

Khushi Kabhi Ghum is a family love story that is significant in

the revival of the Bollywood film industry across the Indian

diaspora, as it is located in both India and the United Kingdom.

For example, the father of the hero, Mr. Raichand (Amitabh

Bachan), consistently conveys the significance of upholding

family values at any cost, as well as gaining a good education

from a Western institution. This is a good example of the dual

pressures that parents exert on their children. In fact, it is ‘‘the

Indian diaspora aspect of globalisation that has been best

expressed in film, and the experiences of Indians in the United

States and the United Kingdom dominate’’ in Bollywood films,

according to Singh (2004). Significantly, in Dilwale Dulhania

La Jayenge (DDLJ), Raj (the hero) living in the United King-

dom repeatedly tells Simran (the heroine) that they cannot

elope, but their union must be blessed by their families. This

is exemplary of the combination of the Hollywood love ideol-

ogy with the traditional Indian values that constitute Bolly-

wood movies. While Simran (the heroine) also a nonresident

Indian (NRI) based in the United Kingdom conforms to the

Hollywood love ideology, Raj the hero conforms to the ideals

of the Indian community. Scenes such as these encourage

young Sikhs to identify with the tensions that are being nego-

tiated because they are experiencing similar conflicts in their

own lives.

Discussion

The findings, have highlighted three key themes around nation-

ality, the love quest, and the family. In reality, however, these

themes intertwine and overlap in compelling and powerful

ways, to reconcile the conflicts surrounding Indian-ness for

third-generation Indian Sikhs in Britain. Uberoi (2001) writes

that Indian popular cinema highlights conflicts between

dharma (social duty) and desire, and between freedom and des-

tiny, all of which must be reconciled before a happy ending can

be attained. This can be seen clearly in the present study. In

Bollywood films, the intergenerational conflicts and differing

expectations are erased or hidden, subsumed under an over-

arching narrative strategy that offers a solution to these three

aspects for this particular community of sentiment: an idealized

view of Indian national identity, the triumph of romantic love,

and a celebration of the joint family system, a system that is

increasingly challenged by changing social, cultural, and glo-

bal processes.

This study extends previous research in two ways: first, it

demonstrates how the global Bollywood film medium affects

the Indian diaspora on a local level and reinforces familial and

traditional Indian values. Second, it identifies how this wide

reaching and unique genre of cinema has become an important

yet overlooked tool in the identity negotiation of a particular

interpretive community and Indian diasporic group, namely

British Sikhs.

Consuming the Indian Imaginary within the Indian Diaspora

The study extends previous theories relating to the Indian

diaspora (Moorti 2003; Punathambekar 2005, Lindridge and

Dhillon 2005) by analyzing the local effects of consumption

of the globalized Bollywood film medium on young British

Sikhs. The research findings elucidate the link between the glo-

balised Bollywood film medium and the quest for love and

romance that is evoked within this interpretive community.

Whereas previous research has tended to focus on the Indian

diaspora in the United States and Canada, this study has

focused on the localized effects of Bollywood within an ethnic

group in the United Kingdom. The study shows how the ‘‘trans-

national communities imagined within Bollywood films find

their locus in private, domestic and intimate spaces’’ (Moorti

2003, p. 357), and how they influence the third-wave Indian

diaspora by invoking the ‘‘Indian imaginary’’ and reinforcing

a sense of ‘‘Indian-ness’’ in their audiences. Importantly,

third-generation British Sikhs described films by Bollywood

producers such as Karan Johar or Yash Chopra, not films with

a Sikh or Punjabi context, for example, Bride and Prejudice

by Gurinder Chadha. Bollywood cinema thus appears to be

exporting ‘‘Indian nationalism itself a commodified and

globalized product’’ (Rajadhyaksha 2003, p. 37). As such,

Bollywood speaks to an imagined community that is simultane-

ously restricted and sovereign, to draw on Anderson’s (1991)

work in relation to national identity creation.

In addition, much of the previous research has tended to

focus on the localized affects of the Bollywood film medium

on those of the second-wave (second generation) Indian dia-

spora (Punathambekar 2005; Dudrah 2006). This study has

focussed on the localized affects of the global film medium

Takhar et al. 275

in relation to the third-generation of British Sikhs. The findings

indicate that young third-generation British Sikhs represent a

‘‘diaspora as a mode of cultural production’’ (Vertovic 2000,

p. 99), where diasporic communities are placed in a context

of transnationalism and globalization and participate in the

production and reproduction of social and cultural phenom-

ena. In this respect, it is clear that the Indian diaspora

becomes highly self-reflexive through the consumption of

Bollywood films, and this process stimulates a path of cul-

tural reinforcement, whereby familial Indian values are

strengthened.

By focusing on third-generation young British Sikhs who

are experiencing dual cultural influences, it became clear that

through the consumption of Bollywood films a desire for a

specific type of love and romance emerged, one that defied tra-

ditional Sikh notions of courtship and marriage, but also

opposed Western notions of love and courtship which is framed

within an individualistic discourse. This dualism creates a

hybrid ideology of love that is simultaneously romantic and

familial. As members of a diasporic community, they are able

to ‘‘shift between and negotiate among the different domains

and conditions that constitute his or her identity’’ (Koppedrayer

2005, p. 100). Typically, as with any Bollywood love story, the

quest for true love does not run smoothly, and as young British

Sikhs search for romance, Bollywood helps them negotiate

these dualistic tensions by creating ‘‘a specific affective mode’’

to evoke ‘‘amatory desires’’ (Jha 2007, p. 109).

As members of a transnational diasporic community, the

consumption of Bollywood films enables them to construct a

‘‘community of sentiment that is articulated in the domestic

idiom’’ (Moorti 2003, p. 356), one that emphasizes the signifi-

cance of pride in their ‘‘Indian-ness,’’ the significance of their

familial Indian values, and the longing for a uniquely hybri-

dized kind of love. This community of sentiment provides a

constructive and personalized way to conceptualize the long-

ing for a sense of Indian-ness. As members of this transna-

tional diasporic community, they encourage one another to

collectively feel a sense of pride in their Indian heritage and

culture via Bollywood films, which serves as a normalization

discourse to transmit Indian traditions and values (Jha 2007).

Given that the consumption of Bollywood films takes place in

a family setting, it seems that the Indian family system is a

‘‘social institution that quintessentially defines being Indian’’

(Punathambekar 2005, p. 160), regardless of geographical

location.

The key part played by the family in the ‘‘interpretive com-

munity’’ of Bollywood reminds us that families are institutions

which provide ‘‘implicit and explicit ‘rules of the game’ that

must be observed’’ (Murphy 1999, p. 12). Murphy’s study of

family TV viewing in Mexico and our this study of family

viewing of Bollywood in the United Kingdom both high-

light this. One is also reminded of Parameswaran’s (2001)

study of Indian Hindu women’s reading of Mills & Boon

romances. Each of these studies underline the importance

of contextualizing readers’ or audiences’ engagement with

media by analyzing other activities that surround particular

genres’ consumption, such as social settings and the day-

to-day lives of these interpretive communities.

How Bollywood Impacts on British Sikh Identity

It is widely acknowledged that issues relating to belonging and

identity are consistently experienced by diasporic commu-

nities. According to the former prime minister of India, Atal

Behari Vajpayee (2003) ‘‘the biggest challenge facing every

immigrant community is to integrate harmoniously into the

political and social life of the host society, while preserving and

cherishing its civilizational heritage.’’ As third-generation Brit-

ish Sikhs face this challenge they ‘‘tap into the warehouse of

cultural images’’ that Bollywood offers, thereby creating ‘‘a

visual grammar that seeks to capture the dislocation, disruption

and ambivalence that characterizes their lives’’ (Moorti 2003,

p. 359). For young British Sikhs, the consumption of Bolly-

wood films is associated with the ‘‘cultural survival of self’’

(Jha 2007, p. 104), as a means to reaffirm the Indian aspects

of a hybrid British Sikh identity. As the ‘‘unofficial ambassador

abroad’’ (Vajpayee, 2003), Bollywood assists in the mainte-

nance of an Indian identity. Significantly, though, this is a

‘‘new Indian’’ identity (Jha 2007, p. 104), an identity that is

hybridized and that challenges both traditional British and

Indian national identities. It is created through and for a diaspo-

ric consciousness that seeks the best of both worlds.

The filmmaker Subhash Ghai suggests that the reason why

the Indian diaspora relate so well to Bollywood films is that

they are about ‘‘Indian souls dreaming Indian dreams in a

vibrant foreign land’’ (2003). Films such as K3G and DDLJ, set

in both India and the United Kingdom, represent this diasporic

community, and the actors and actresses within these films

significantly influence the identity construction of third-

generation British Sikhs because the romantic identities portrayed

are depicted by individuals with similar physical characteristics,

and, importantly, they face the same familial challenges. As mem-

bers of an interpretive community, then, they understand the

terms of reference inscribed in the genre. The love and romance

portrayed within Bollywood films is manipulated to portray a

slightly ‘‘feel good version’’ (Punathambekar 2005, p. 164) of

Indian culture, and its notions of courtship and romance, therefore

making the love stories in Bollywood films more compelling and

emotionally accessible to young third generation British Sikhs.

This reinforces the fact that ‘‘popular cultural products emerge

as a locus for the maintenance and constitution of a shared iden-

tity’’ (Moorti 2003, p. 373). As previously noted, they also serve

to enforce particular social and cultural norms and traditions.

Conclusion

This article has discussed the influence of the Bollywood film

genre as an important cultural reference point for young third-

generation British Sikhs seeking to understand more about their

Indian roots and gain a deepened sense of ‘‘Indian-ness.’’ The

research has shown how Bollywood films have become an

international obsession with the Indian diaspora (Kaskebar

276 Journal of Macromarketing 32(3)

1996), and the British Sikh community in the United Kingdom

are no exception, as they simultaneously derive pleasure and

instruction from Bollywood films. The consumption of Bolly-

wood films ‘‘facilitates and mobilizes the transnational imagi-

nation and helps to create new ways for consumers to think of

themselves as Asian,’’ note Cayla and Eckhardt (2008, p. 216),

and they also create a new sense of Indian-ness. As well as this,

the Bollywood film genre emerges as a key medium through

which pride in Indian heritage is reaffirmed and transferred.

Immigrant Sikh parents use Bollywood as a favored means of

entertainment that also instructs their children on Indian culture

and identity, and thus consolidates their children’s sense

of ‘‘Indian-ness.’’ Moreover, Bollywood narratives revolve

around a love story, and Bollywood offers its audience a hybri-

dized version of love that is simultaneously individualistic and

romantic as well as collectivist and familial in nature, a verita-

ble ‘‘masala’’ of flavors that contains a complex, hybridized

ideology. Above all, these Bollywood love stories are always

framed within a context that reinforces Indian values and there-

fore amalgamates Indian traditions and the global market. The

global Bollywood film medium, therefore, affects the Indian

diaspora at a local level and also reinforces collective Indian

values.

There are many more fascinating avenues that unfold from

this study, such as the role of the Gurdwara in terms of identity

construction of young Sikhs, and how food, music, language,

clothing, and event politics may input on the ‘‘Indian imagin-

ary.’’ More exploration could also be made of representations

of Sikhs in Indian cinema, and the responses of British Sikhs

to these often-stereotypical images. Although these did not

emerge in the current data, a further study could be built around

research questions more focused on these representations. Ulti-

mately, however, what the authors hope they have achieved in

this study is to demonstrate the significant part played by this

wide reaching and unique genre of film in helping young Brit-

ish Sikhs negotiate the complex terrain of personal and national

identity as they engage in quests to find their life partners.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to

the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, author-

ship, and/or publication of this article.

References

Anderson, Benedict (1991), Imagined Communities: Reflections on

the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso.

Appadurai, Arjun (1990), ‘‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global

Cultural Economy,’’ in Global Culture, M. Featherstone, ed.

London: SAGE, 295-310.

Appadurai, Arjun (1996), Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of

Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Arnould, Eric J. and Melanie Wallendorf (1994), ‘‘Market Oriented

Ethnography: Interpretation Building and Marketing Strategy

Formulation,’’ Journal of Marketing Research, 31 (November),

484-504.

Belk, Russell W. (1987), ‘‘Material Values in the Comics: A Content

Analysis of Comic Books Featuring Themes of Wealth,’’ Journal

of Consumer Research, 14 (June), 26-42.

———. (1989), ‘‘Effects of Identification with Comic Book Heroes

and Villains of Consumption on Materialism among Former

Comic Readers,’’ Advances in Consumer Research, 16 (1),

414-419.

Belk, Russell and Richard Pollay (1985), ‘‘Materialism and Magazine

Advertising During the Twentieth Century,’’ Advances in

Consumer Research, 12, 394-398.

Bend it like Beckham (2002), Film, Directed by Gurinder Chadha.

UK: Kintop Pictures.

Bhaji on the Beach (1993), Film, Directed by Gurinder Chadha. UK:

Channel four films.

Bhatia, S (2002), ‘‘Acculturation, Dialogical Voices and the Con-

struction of the Diasporic Self,’’ Theory and Psychology, 12 (2),

55-77.

Britt, Bill (2002), ‘‘Contents, Commerce Deals Offer Answers in

Overseas Markets,’’ Advertising Age, 73 (18), 22.

Capozza, Dora, Alberto Voci, and Orazio Licciardello (2000), ‘‘Indi-

vidualism, Collectivism and Social Identity Theory,’’ in Social

Identity Processes, Dora Capozza and Rupert Brown, eds. London:

SAGE, 487-490.

Cayla, Julien and Giana M. Eckhardt (2008), ‘‘Asian Brand and the

Shaping of a Transnational Imagined Community,’’ Journal of

Consumer Research, 35 (2), 216-230.

Charmaz, Kathy (2000), ‘‘Grounded Theory: Objectivist and

Constructivist Methods,’’ in Handbook of Qualitative Research,

Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds. London: SAGE,

44-68.

Chatterji, Shoma (2007), ‘‘Where East Meets West,’’ The Tribune,

June 30, p. 8.

Clifford, James (1991), ‘‘Diasporas,’’ Cultural Anthropology, 9 (3),

302-338.

Cresswell, John (2007), Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design:

Choosing Among Five Traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Das, Veena (1976), ‘‘Masks and Faces: An Essay on Punjabi

Kinship,’’ Contributions To Indian Sociology, 1 (1), 1-30.

Djelic, Marie-Laure and Sigrid Quack (2010), Transnational Com-

munities: Shaping Global Economic Governance. New York:

Cambridge University Press.

Derne, Steve (2008), Globalization on the Ground: New Media and

The Transformation of Culture, Class and Gender in India. New

Delhi, India: SAGE.

Dudrah, Rajinder (2006), Bollywood: Sociology Goes to the Movies.

New Delhi, India: SAGE.

Eckhardt, Giana. M. and Humaira Mahi (2004), ‘‘The Role of Con-

sumer Agency in the Globalization Process in Emerging Markets,’’

Journal of Macromarketing, 24 (2), 136-146.

Fish, Stanley (1976), ‘‘Interpreting the Variorum: Advance or

Retreat?,’’ Critical Inquiry, 2 (3), 183-190.

Fiske, S. T (1998), ‘‘Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination,’’ in

Handbook of Social Psychology, D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, and G.

Lindzey, eds. New York: McGraw-Hill, 357-411.

Takhar et al. 277

Gaines, Elliot (2005), ‘‘Interpreting India, Identity, and Media from

the Field: Exploring the Communicative Nature of the Exotic

Other,’’ Qualitative Inquiry, 11 (4), 518-534.

Ganti, Tejaswini (2004), Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi

Cinema. New York: Routledge.

Gentry, James and Suraj Commuri (2009), ‘‘Global Family Policy,’’

Journal of Macromarketing, 29 (March), 92.

Gokulsing, Moti, K. and Wimal Dissanyake (2004), Indian Popular

Cinema: A Narrative of Cultural Change. London: Trentham

Books.

Harnish, Richard and Robert Bridges (2006), ‘‘Social Influence: The

Role of Self-Monitoring When Making Social Comparisons,’’

Psychology and Marketing, 23 (11), 961-973.

Harrington, Lee and Denise Bielby (1991), ‘‘The Mythology of

Modern Love: Representations of Romance in the 1980’s,’’

Journal of Popular Culture, 24 (4), 129.

Hirschman, Elizabeth and Morris B. Holbrook (1992), Postmodern

Consumer Research: The Study of Consumption as Text. Cali-

fornia: SAGE.

——— and Craig J. Thompson (1997), ‘‘Why Media Matter:

Towards a Richer Understanding of Consumers’ Relationships

With Advertising and Mass media,’’ Journal of Advertising, 26

(1), 43-60.

Illouz, Eva (1997), Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the

Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Berkeley: University of

California Press.

It’s a Wonderful Afterlife (2010), Film, Directed by Gurinder Chadha.

UK: Bend It Films.

Jha, Subhash (2007), ‘‘Bride and Prejudice is not a K3G,’’ (accessed

December 12, 2010), [available at www. Rediff.com/movies/

2004/aug/30finter.htm]

Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum (2001), Film, Directed by Karan Johar.

India: Dharma Productions.

Kaskebar, Atul (1996), ‘‘An Introduction to Indian Cinema,’’ in An

Introduction to Film Studies, J. Nelmes, ed. London: Routledge,

365-391.

Kerrigan, Finola, Peter Fraser, and Mustafa Ozbilgin (2004), Arts

Marketing. Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann.

Kilbourne, William (2004), ‘‘Globalization and Development,’’

Journal of Macromarketing, 24 (2), 122-135.

Koppedrayer, Kay (2005), ‘‘Hindu Disaporic Consciouness: Srinivas

Krishna’s Masala,’’ Psychology and Developing Societies, 17

(2), 99-120.

Kozinets, Robert (1997), ‘‘I Want to Believe: a Netnography of the

X-Philes Sub-Culture of Consumption,’’ Advances in Consumer

Research, 24 (June), 470-475.

——— (2002), ‘‘The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography for

Marketing Research in Online Communities,’’ Journal of

Marketing Research, 39 (February), 61-72.

——— (2008), ‘‘Technology/Ideology: How Ideological Fields

Influence Consumers’ Technology Narratives,’’ Journal of

Consumer Research, 34 (April), 865-881.

Lindridge, Andrew and Kamaldeep Dhillon (2005), ‘‘Cultural Role

Confusion and Memories of a Lost Identity: How

Non-Consumption Perpetuates Marginalisation,’’ Advances in

Consumer Research, 32 (1), 408-414.

Maclaran, Pauline and Miriam Catterall (2002), ‘‘Researching the

Social Web: Marketing Information from Virtual Communities,’’

Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 20 (6), 319-326.

Maxwell, Joseph (2005), Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive

Approach. California: SAGE.

Mankekar, Purnima (1999), Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An

Ethology of Television, Womanhood and Nation in Postcolonial

India. Durham: Duke University Press.

Mehta, Monika (2005), ‘‘Globalizing Bombay Cinema: Reproducing

the Indian State and Family,’’ Cultural Dynamics, 12 (2), 135-154.

Miller, Brent (1975), ‘‘Intergenerational Patterns in Consumer Beha-

viour,’’ Advances in Consumer Research, 2 (February), 93-101.

Mohabbatein (2000), Film, Directed by Aditya Chopra. India: Yash

Raj Films.

Moorti, Sujata (2003), ‘‘Desperately Seeking an Identity: Diasporic

Cinema and the Articulation of Transnational Kinship,’’ Interna-

tional Journal of Cultural Studies, 6 (3), 355-376.

Nihalini, Gulzar and Govind Chatterji (2003), Encyclopaedia of Hindi

Cinema. Encyclopaedia Britannica (India) Pvt Ltd.

Murphy, Patrick (1999), ‘‘Doing Audience Ethnography: A Narrative

Account of Establishing Ethnographic Identity and Locating Inter-

pretive Communities in Fieldwork,’’ Qualitative Inquiry, 5 (4),

479-504.

——— and Marwan M. Kraidy (2003), ‘‘International Communica-

tion, Ethnography, and the Challenge of Globalization,’’ Commu-

nication Theory, 13 (2), 304-323.

O’Shea, Janet (1998), ‘‘Traditional’’ Indian Dance and the Making of

Interpretive Communities,’’ Asian Theatre Journal, 15 (1), 45-63.

Parameswaran, Radhika (2001), ‘‘Feminist Media Ethnography in

India: Exploring Power, Gender, and Culture in the Field,’’ Quali-

tative Inquiry, 7 (1), 69-103.

Prasad, Madhava (2000), Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical

Construction. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Price, Linda and Amber Epp (2005), ‘‘Rethinking Family Consump-

tion: An Exploration of Family Identity,’’ Advances in Consumer

Research, 32 (1), 9-13.

Punathambekar, Aswin, (2005), ‘‘Bollywood in the Indian-American

Diaspora: Mediating a Transitive Logic of Cultural Citizenship,’’

International Journal of Cultural Studies, 8 (June), 151-173.

Rajadhyaksha, Ashish (2003), ‘‘The ‘‘Bollywoodization’’ of the

Indian Cinema: Cultural Nationalism in a Global Arena,’’ Inter-

Asia Cultural Studies, 4 (1), 25-39.

Rajagopal, Arvind (2001), Politics After Television: Hindu National-

ism and The Reshaping of The Public in India. Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University.

Sarkar, Bhaskar (2008), ‘‘The Melodramas of Globalization,’’ Cul-

tural Dynamics, 20 (1), 31-51.

Shaadi.com. (2010), ‘‘shaadi.com,’’ (accessed September 23, 2010),

[available at http://www.shaadi.com].

Sharf, Barbara (1999), ‘‘Beyond Netiquette: The Ethics of Doing Nat-

uralistic Discourse Research on the Internet,’’ in Doing Internet

Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net, S

Jones, ed. California: SAGE, 243-256.

Shukla, Sandhya (1999), India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Post-

war America and England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press.

278 Journal of Macromarketing 32(3)

Singh, Supriya (2004), Sending Money Home: Money and Family

in the Indian Diaspora, St. Leonards, Australia: Allen and

Unwin.

Spiggle, Susan (1994), ‘‘Analysis and Interpretation of Qualitative

Data in Consumer Research,’’ Journal of Consumer Research,

21 (3), 491-503.

Strauss, Anselm and Juliet Corbin (1990), Basics of Qualitative

Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. London:

SAGE.

Uberoi, Patricia (1998), ‘‘The Diaspora Comes Home: Disciplining

Desire in DDLJ,’’ Contributions to Indian Sociology, 33 (2),

305-334.

——— (2001), ‘‘Imagining The Family: An Ethnography of Viewing

Hum Aapke Hain Kaun,’’ in Pleasure and The Nation, Rachel

Dwyer and Christoper Pinney, eds. New Delhi, India: Oxford

University Press, 309-351.

Ustuner, Tuba and Douglas B. Holt (2007), ‘‘Dominated Consumer

Acculturation: The Social Construction of Poor Migrants

Women’s Consumer Identity Projects in a Turkish Squatter,’’ Jour-

nal of Consumer Research, 34 (1), 41-56.

Vajpayee, Atal. (2003), ‘‘Bollywood Abroad,’’ (accessed October 24,

2003), [available from http://www.tribuneindia.com].

Van Maanen, John (1983), Qualitative Methodology. London: SAGE.

Venkatesh, Alladi and Subrumanian Swamy, (1994), ‘‘India as an

Emerging Consumer Society: A Critical Perspective,’’ Research

in Consumer Behaviour, 7 (1), 193-224.

Vertovic, Steven (2000), ‘‘Three Meanings of Diaspora,’’ in Hindu

Diaspora: Comparative Patterns, Steven Vertovic, ed. London:

Routledge, 141-159.

Weerakkody, Niranjala (2006), ‘‘Where Else Have You Been? The

Effects of Diaspora Consciousness and Transcultural Mixtures

on Ethnic Identity,’’ Issues Informing Science and Information

Technology, 3 (61), 710-122.

Bios

Amandeep Takhar is a lecturer in marketing at the University of

Bedfordshire in the United Kingdom. Her research interests focus

on consumption, ethnicity, and identity construction. Recent publica-

tions have looked at the role of computer culture within the Indian

Diaspora and social comparisons to the globalized Bollywood film

medium. She has published in the Journal of Marketing Management

and Advances in Consumer Research.

Pauline Maclaran is a professor of Marketing and Consumer

Research at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research

interests focus on cultural aspects of contemporary consumption. Her

publications have been in internationally recognized journals such as

the Journal of Consumer Research, Psychology and Marketing, Jour-

nal of Advertising, and Consumption, Markets and Culture. She is also

editor in chief of Marketing Theory, a journal that promotes alterna-

tive and critical perspectives in marketing and consumer behavior.

Lorna Stevens is a lecturer in marketing at Ulster Business School,

University of Ulster. She has been in academia since 1994, and prior

to that spent ten years working in the book publishing industry in Ire-

land and the United Kingdom. Her research interests lie in the areas of

feminist perspectives and gender issues in marketing, consumer beha-

vior, consumption, and the media. She is particularly interested in

women’s consumption of magazines and advertising texts, and the

wider social and cultural context that frames women’s reception of

media texts generally.

Takhar et al. 279