Covid, cinema and censorship – The siege of Bollywood | Books & arts – The Economist

THEY SAY that Bollywood is where Indias dreams are made. But at the moment it is not romantic reveries, fantasies of vengeance or snappy dance moves that preoccupy its film-makers. It is instead a dystopian nightmare, as two simultaneous epidemics threaten a century-old industry that produces more movies than its closest rivals, in China and America, put together.

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One of these scourges is relatively new, and wreaking havoc in plain sight. For six months last year, covid-19 kept Indias 10,000 cinemas completely closed. The screens have since begun to open, but mostly at half-capacity andbecause spooked producers have postponed their hoped-for blockbustersshowing only second-run fare. As a result ICRA, a credit-rating agency, anticipates that box-office revenue during the year to April will tumble by a crushing 80-85%. By last September these direct losses were already reckoned at $1.2bn; then there is the ripple effect along an entertainment-industry food chain that employs perhaps 300,000 people, as hundreds of productions were delayed or cancelled.

The other scourge is older and more subtle, though it seems suddenly to have grown more virulent. This is the chronic disease of interference, as various outsiders seek to bend, shape and influence Bollywood to their liking. Such creeping pressures take many forms, from the blunt obstruction of state censorship, to financial squeezes, to legal challenges that can lead to labyrinths of litigation, to the threat of audience boycotts or even violence.

The blow from covid might seem to be the bigger peril. But although traditional feature production has indeed been hit, and cinemas themselves bruised, in a sense the challenge has accelerated a transition that was already under way. As in Hollywood, the ebb of money from big screens to smaller ones, specifically towards on-demand streaming video, known in India as OTT (over-the-top), has turned to a flood as millions of households enlivened their lockdowns with new subscriptions. Revenue from OTT in 2019 was less than half the $1.5bn earned from movie tickets, but by 2024 it could be twice as large, industry insiders believe. Small wonder that global firms such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney poured some $520m into streaming production in India last year. For the first time, dozens of Indian feature films chose to launch on OTT rather than in cinemas, a trend that will stick now that big-name stars have eschewed their doubts about small-screen roles.

Yet while the shift to OTT has helped keep Mumbais studios working, it has also invited scrutiny. Politicians long ago developed a habit of using Bollywood to score points. Such overweening concern has successfully tamed traditional cinema and television: producers are all too aware how many ways there are to wreck a production, or for them to go broke. Top actors have boosted careers by fawning over ministers, and been rewarded with sinecures as MPs, among other perks. Unregulated and largely foreign-financed, OTT has proved a refreshing exception. In a few years it gained a reputation for punchy realism and politically daring allegory. It was like the teacher is not in class, so go have some fun, explains Tanul Thakur, a film critic.

This is where the meddling plague has come into play. Powerful people were not amused by portrayals of police, politicians and religious figures as corrupt, brutal and hypocritical in OTT series such as Mirzapur and Sacred Games. More alarmingly for many in the industry, which historically has adopted the broadly secular, liberal leanings of cosmopolitan Mumbai, official displeasure has been backed by noisy and highly organised public campaigns, an often compliant press and approving judges. Compared with past episodes of bullying, such as in the 1990s when local parties in Mumbai rallied emotions by attacking specific films, this time something wider is at stake. The driver now is control of Bollywood, and it is indeed very vulnerable, says Shakuntala Banaji of the London School of Economics.

Pressure has been mounting since the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took power in 2014, thinks Mr Thakur, accelerating after the landslide re-election in 2019 of Narendra Modi, the prime minister. The heat reached OTT platforms last year. Following complaints, among them that a kissing scene in A Suitable Boy, a British serialisation of an Indian novel, encouraged intimacy between people of different faiths, in November the government decreed that OTT production would fall under the supervision of the Ministry of Broadcasting and Information.

This January the screws tightened, particularly following the release of Tandav, an edgy thriller produced by Amazon Prime that contrasts the viciousness of politics with the idealism of student activism. NewsLaundry, an investigative news website, revealed the workings of a social-media campaign to attack the series, spearheaded by a BJP politician. As soon as Tandav aired he ordered 20,000 followers to demand that it be banned for disrespecting the police and Hindu religious feelings. Half a dozen lawsuits assailed the show (which received mediocre reviews). Its director and producer quickly apologised, agreeing to cut an ostensibly offensive scene in which a student in a play acted the role of a Hindu god. They appealed to Indias Supreme Court to protect them from prosecution, but in a perturbing ruling a bench of judges refused, holding that even actors should be held accountable for any offence their roles might cause. Not surprisingly, several scheduled OTT releases were soon postponed or cancelled.

Had this been an isolated case, there would be less worry in the industry. But the particular interest in Tandav reflected another trend. Two of its main actors happen to be Muslim, as many of Indias leading stars have been since the birth of Bollywood. Only in the past decade, however, has religious affiliation become much of an issue. Now legions of social-media trolls see the three Khans, a trio of top-billing he-men, as fair game for attack as alleged Pakistani sympathisers, or promoters of love jihad. For instance, a Twitter account called Gems of Bollywood smears the industry as a tool of Muslim propaganda; Urduwood is the term used, a reference to the language predominantly spoken by South Asian Muslims. It recently accused Salman Khan, one of the celebrity trio, of having one missionto convince Hindus to be circumcised.

They are going after a few big names to teach them a lesson, says Ms Banaji. And also to install their own heroes instead. According to Mr Thakur, anyone who stands up against the pressure is liable to be cold-shouldered by their peers. But it is not just critics who are worried for Bollywoods future. In a blog post, Siddharth Roy Kapur, president of the Producers Guild of India, a lobbying group, urged Indias government to protect a vital industry by breaking its silence and denouncing witch-hunts. Producers should be overseeing films, not running helter-skelter between police stations and courts across our vast country. You cannot run a business, he added, which is subject to veto by every one of Indias 1.3bn people.

This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "The siege of Bollywood"

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Covid, cinema and censorship - The siege of Bollywood | Books & arts - The Economist