Shakespeare and Bollywood: The Difference a World Makes

Abstract

Play this game. Describe the formal elements of Bollywood cinema, but try not to use the references to nation or other historical markers that describe its roots in specific cultural types of theaters or genres. For instance, instead of saying “it is indebted to Parsi theater,” you would have to say “it borrows from the an age-old theatre based in feudal romance and its tropes—realism and fantasy, snide humor, catchy folk songs, feats of daring or heroism from local legends, use of dazzling stage effects.” Describe its use of dance in the same way: instead of saying “northern Indian folk dance,” describe the way it plays off of “festival dancing” noting the separation from the plot, often interspersed free from flow of the narrative. You note that practice of separating the men from the women in this way: “The men dance together in a simple circular pattern while clapping.” Likewise, to describe the uncanny feel of the music due to its being sung offstage in a sound stage and “looped” into the performance, you might say “the music seems altogether metatextual, different performers whose popular songs are stitched—or ‘synched’—into the story in a way that provides a frame for the narrative, a chance to relax but also reflect on the flow of the story.” Now imagine describing Bollywood’s gestures like this to someone who teaches and studies Shakespeare in the university setting, asking them to guess the theater you are defining.

An apple, cleft in two, is not more twin Than these two creatures.

—Twelfth Night, 5.1.223–4.

If art’s products unceasingly cross over into the domain of commodities, conversely commodities and usable objects do not cease to cross the border in the opposite direction, to leave the sphere of usefulness and value behind...

—Jacques Rancière, “Problems and Transformations of Critical Art.”¹ —Crosshatched Shakespeare