By Mayank Chhaya
There has been a surfeit of reports lately in the Indian media about the growing popularity of Hindi cinema worldwide to the extent of not just rivalling Hollywood but even replacing it some day soon. Of course, there is no compelling evidence to suggest that either claim is true yet.
While it is hard to quantify and compare something as abstract as popularity of individual film stars in terms of Hollywood versus Hindi cinema, statistics do not bear out the exultant claims being made by a section of the media and quite conveniently endorsed by many Indian film stars and filmmakers.
If one considers box office receipts as a tangible and justifiable measure of success of any genre of cinema, then Deepa Mehta’s much acclaimed “Water” with its modest $5.2 million earnings is being regarded as the highest grossing Indian movie ever in North America.
It is another story that “Water” is projected as a Canadian film and is, in fact, that country’s official entry to the Oscars in the best foreign film category.
One of the main reasons why the hype about the rising international popularity of Hindi cinema has caught on and acquired the proportions of gospel is because of the mass hysteria that Hindi movie stars generate among the 20 million-plus Indian Diaspora and extended South Asian Diaspora worldwide.
One of the most frequently employed comparisons is to juxtapose the international celebrity of Tom Cruise – or at any rate before he shot himself in the foot with his near fanatic espousal of the church of scientology and engaged in sophomoric antics over his love life on the Oprah Winfrey show – with that of Shah Rukh Khan.
Increasingly many Indians, and even Shah Rukh himself with his tongue firmly in his cheek, like to believe that Shah Rukh is by far the bigger star among the two.
The uplifting impact of that claim notwithstanding, there is no real proof of that. One simple way to disprove is to ask the question whether as many people know Shah Rukh within the mainstream American audience as they do Cruise in India among a comparable audience or for that matter anywhere else.
It is not altogether unlikely that Cruise would win that poll.
One of the typical yardsticks employed by the proponents of the rising influence and stature of Hindi cinema and its practitioners is the sheer numbers of fans they enjoy. Yet again that is an inaccurate benchmark because with a population of a billion-plus people can there be any doubt that Khan is the bigger star in terms of the sheer number of people who follow the ups and downs of his life more than they do their own in India?
The question is about the international consequence of a movie star and by that it would be stretching the truth to claim that Shah Rukh takes precedence over Cruise or Brad Pitt. Surely, within demography- specific – especially South Asian – parameters, Shah Rukh would win hands down.
Even the evidence about the draw of Hindi cinema and stars among other Asian and African countries is more anecdotal than scientific. It is true that Amitabh Bachchan would get mobbed on the streets of Marrakech or Cairo or may be even Khartoum (Sudan) but it is equally likely that a Pitt and Cruise would generate a similar response in Tokyo or Taipei.
In the absence of any scientifically conducted poll about who is more popular – a Shah Rukh or a Cruise – the only other way to establish a rational standard is to look at the box office returns of Hindi cinema and Hollywood cinema internationally.
Considering that both have existed for roughly the same length of time – both Indian and Hollywood cinema industries are about eight to nine decades old – it is instructive that their spread and impact are so unequal globally. Even if one factors in the linguistic barrier that Hindi cinema faces, the inequity in the spread and influence between Hollywood and Hindi cinema is striking.
One credible way to settle the Hollywood versus Hindi cinema debate is to look at the external earnings of both. According to experts, between the 1950s and 1970s only 30 percent of Hollywood’s earnings came from foreign markets. But since the 1980s the number began to rise and today more than 50 percent of the earnings come from foreign markets.
There are estimates that in the next 20 years it could go up as high as 80 percent.
Conversely, according to some estimates not more than 20 percent of Hindi cinema’s earnings come from the overseas market.
Of course, expatriate favourites such as Shah Rukh and occasionally Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt do manage to make a killing in specific foreign territories such as Britain or North America but the gross of their films do not add up to a significant percentage of the overall receipts of Hindi cinema within India.
According to some estimates, the annual revenue of Hindi cinema is estimated to be $1.5 billion, and it is expected to grow 16 percent per year over the next five years to over $3 billion. Compare this with between $8 and $10 billion that Hollywood makes.
It is true that while Hollywood’s market within the US appears to be levelling off, the Indian market of Hindi cinema is set to grow exponentially with a population of over 500 million people below the age of 20.
Notwithstanding all this, Hindi cinema still remains a marginal player. All things being nearly equal, including the length of their existence, access to technology, quality of technicians and histrionic abilities of their stars and actors, the contrast between the two in terms of the money they make is simply too glaring to be disregarded.
(Mayank Chhaya is a Chicago-based writer and commentator. He can be reached at chooki6@yahoo.com)
