From Indianization to Globalization: Tracking Bond in Bollywood

Abstract

This chapter uses Bollywood Bond “adaptations” to chart the shifting relationship between India and the West, from the Cold War era to the neoliberal present. It examines how elements of the Bond films were incorporated and “Indianized” in earlier films and how these elements, and the Bollywood film itself, subsequently became more globalized, as can be seen in contemporary Bond adaptations like Farhan Akhtar’s Don (2006) and Don 2 (2011). Whereas previously the Bond figure was “Indianized” and elements of the Bond film similarly indigenized via the Bollywood masala formula, what one witnesses in the ensuing transition leading to the contemporary era is how the Bollywood film has become more aligned, both aesthetically and culturally, with contemporary Hollywood film forms.