ABSTRACT
The variance and unpredictability of global cultural drifts entail that Hollywood’s dominance over the world’s cultural industries is being challenged by myriad local talents and production companies that inspire, entertain as well as employ local populations, while also harboring hitherto unthinkable ambition of capturing audiences and revenues from markets in the West. The case of the Indian film industry’s emergence as a leading cultural production center, notwithstanding the fact that Western audiences harbor a general disregard toward its particular form of storytelling, presents a unique example of counterflows. Bollywood as a space for complex negotiations with modernity is inevitably tied to a scenario wherein Indian values have an upper hand and Indian protagonists are rightful inheritors of the moral universe. Parents in India and China make enormous sacrifices for the success of their children, and the family is the bedrock on which individual success stories are built and constructed.
