On the world stage

Oscar win will further redefine national cinema

The latest edition of the Oscar proved a big one for Indian filmmakers and performers. Naatu Naatu’s golden run on the international stage continues, clinching an Oscar as well as a Golden Globe for Best Original Song within a span of two months. In the short documentary category, too, Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga bagged the Academy award for their film The Elephant Whisperer. The two winning entries — drastically different as they are in their genre, feel, and texture of filmmaking — both hail from the southern half of India. While the first is a peppy dance number from the mass entertainer RRR, the other is a serene walk through the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu. This clearly reflects the rapidly growing cultural clout of cinema from Southern India, across genres. In the domestic market, a string of blockbusters have helped redefine the very idea of a national cinema. And it’s not just about the KGFs or the Baahubalis either. Films such as Jallikattu (2019) and Kantara (2022) have taken their viewers deep into the micro-cultures and daily quirks of local communities. Others, like Kumbalangi Nights (2019) and Jai Bhim (2021), have given characters that are easily relatable, yet uniquely embedded in their immediate socio-cultural realities.

One reason might be a unique blend of narratives which, while long existent, has become more accessible with subtitles and more thoughtful dubs with the recent boom in OTT presentations. There’s also the sheer spectacle — an aspect more overt in texts such as Baahubali or RRR, but much subtler and fine-grained in titles such as Kumbalangi or Jallikattu. The appeal of these elements has also caught on with the international audience. It is not just the cinematic soul that’s fuelling India’s soft-power flex on the world stage, though. The Oscar hat-tip is in fact also a celebration of America’s India. This is the India of colourful, frenzied dances and over-the-top films — a genre of music and dance which some studios happily conflate and confuse with West Asian custom, as evident in Aladdin (2019). This is also the India of dense and exotic forests, populated with marginalised, indigenous communities, subsisting in harmony with elephants and tigers. This India is still earmarked as the jewel in the crown that fought back. This is the India that hundreds of American YouTube reaction channels peddle to their domestic consumers, even as they benefit from the massive spike in subscribers brought in by Indian netizens; an India that Indian netizens feel proud of when celebrated by the American consumer of pop culture.

India’s two Oscar wins, therefore, while a well-deserved accolade to the beautiful cinematography and delicately woven narrative of The Elephant Whisperer on the one hand and the indomitable energy of Naatu Naatu on the other, is also laced — ever so subtly — with Hollywood’s own guilt. The Academy of Motion Pictures, which has been criticised time and again for the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in its nomination picks, has over the past few years endeavoured to establish landmarks that may allay such allegations. Parasite had been the first foreign-language film ever to win Best Picture in 92 years of Oscar history in 2020. This year, Michelle Yeoh’s win for Best Actress made her the first Asian, and second woman of colour, to be recognised by the Academy in 95 years. The global North is celebrating the cultures of the Global South as it sees fit.