http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Notable-highlights-of-the-decade/articleshow/5380691.cms
Before Danny Boyle made the movie, nobody had heard the word 'slumdog' .
Reason: it didn't exist. Now, eight Oscars and $377 million worth of business
later, it is a bona fide word in the English language. For Slumdog Millionaire
(2008) wasn't just a movie; it was a cultural marker across the globe. When a
movie is viewed in 99 countries and sells tickets worth $1.7 million even in
Venezuela, there is no other way to describe it. In the UK, it was the biggest
box-office hit of the time, beating even Twilight and Star Trek.
Make no mistake. Slumdog wasn't a Bollywood production. But its storyline, the
travails of two brothers taking two divergent career paths, and denouement -
that there's a great girl and a pot of gold beyond every pile of shit,
literally in this case - is what Bollywood has been doing for the past century
or so. Even though its narrative style was western, Slumdog's DNA was strictly
Bollywood.
So was its original story, locale, actors and the magical words the world
grooved to, Jai Ho! The three Oscars won by A R Rahman, Resul Pookutty and
company and the consequent media euphoria further helped India appropriate the
firang flick. Now, over a year later, when Jai Ho is played at the Indian
section of the Cairo Film Festival, the appropriation is complete. Slumdog
isn't the best Discover India advertisement ever made; but it definitely has
raised curiosity about India and its movies. But to over-emphasise Slumdog
would be to undermine the great global narrative that Bollywood has crafted
over the last decade.
Once a marginal revenue source, the overseas market commands centrestage these
days. Trade experts say that over the decade collections abroad have grown 10
times and can range from 20 per cent to 80 per cent of a film's overall
collection.
In 2006, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna grossed Rs 46.4 crore in India and collected Rs
44.5 crore abroad. In 2007, Om Shanti Om amassed $26 million at home; another
$10 million came from overseas. Still, no set of statistics can fully
encapsulate the enormous gigabyte of mind space that Bollywood has come to
occupy in Euro-rich and dollarfriendly homes across the world. And not all are
brown-skinned immigrants. Forget Africa, which thrives on pirated Bollywood.
Forget West Asia where New York (the Bollywood take on being a Muslim in the US
post-9 /11) is a super hit. In New York (the megapolis), Bollywood movies are
the second most requested genre with one million digital customers of Bodvod, a
leading movies-on-demand service. In Helsinki, dance schools teach Aishwarya
Rai jhatkas . In cities as far apart as Berlin, Bangkok and Boston, Shah Rukh
Khan and Akshay Kumar are like hotlines to heaven for both teenage girls and
their mothers. And every Indian tourist
abroad has a tale or two about the crazy Hindi film addict they met at an
airport or in a pub.
Under steady construction for a decade, Brand Bollywood, with a leg up from
Slumdog, has emerged as India's most feelgood global signature, its brightest
sunshine export. And this is just the beginning.
