The video highlights the phenomenal success of the Indian film "Dangal" in China, surpassing even blockbuster Hollywood releases like "Pirates of the Caribbean." The unexpected resonance of the film's deeply local story with Chinese audiences exemplified the cultural parallels between China and India, particularly regarding familial and societal norms. This success underscores the potential for local stories to achieve global appeal when they tap into universal themes and emotions.

The discussion expands on India's historical instances of cultural penetration abroad, citing examples like Raj Kapoor's films becoming iconic in Russia and Amitabh Bachchan's influence in Egypt and Turkey. However, it suggests that the large home audience in India might have limited the need for Indian cinema to evolve structurally to cater to global viewers, unlike the efforts seen in Korean cinema, which has successfully promoted its cultural exports globally.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. anecdote [ˈænɪkˌdoʊt] - (noun) - A short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. - Synonyms: (story, tale, narrative)

I thought I'd just start with a small sort of anecdote.

2. zeitgeist [ˈtsaɪtɡaɪst] - (noun) - The defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time. - Synonyms: (spirit of the time, culture, ethos)

...the film just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and getting into the zeitgeist of the country.

3. thriving [ˈθraɪvɪŋ] - (adjective) - Characterized by success or prosperity. - Synonyms: (successful, prosperous, flourishing)

The number of theaters are growing. We're finding it hard to get screens for pirates of the Caribbean.

4. commiserate [kəˈmɪzəˌreɪt] - (verb) - To express or feel sympathy or pity; sympathize. - Synonyms: (console, pity, empathize)

...and we had to, on the surface, commiserate with them and say, oh, we had no idea, etcetera.

5. penetrate [ˈpɛnɪˌtreɪt] - (verb) - To pierce or pass into or through. - Synonyms: (pierce, infiltrate, permeate)

Where our culture has managed to penetrate in such a deep way.

6. iconic [aɪˈkɒnɪk] - (adjective) - Widely recognized and well-established. Somebody or something which has attained fame. - Synonyms: (legendary, famous, emblematic)

Raj Kapoor obviously was really iconic.

7. cultural resonance [ˈkʌltʃ(ə)rəl ˈrɛzənəns] - (noun) - The meaningful connections between people's cultural background and certain practices or beliefs. - Synonyms: (cultural relevance, cultural impact, cultural connection)

...with some sort of cultural resonance as well...

8. patriarchal [ˌpeɪtriˈɑːrkəl] - (adjective) - Relating to a social system where males hold primary power and predominantly use it to influence society and its institutions. - Synonyms: (paternalistic, male-dominated)

You do have a patriarchal culture.

9. narrative [ˈnærətɪv] - (noun) - A spoken or written account of connected events; a story. - Synonyms: (story, account, chronicle)

The narrative was very european in that sense, but still very indian in terms of the drama and the emotion

10. colonization [ˌkɒlənaɪˈzeɪʃən] - (noun) - The action or process of settling among and establishing control over indigenous people of an area. - Synonyms: (settlement, occupation, conquest)

We want to tell that definitive story of colonization to the world.

The global impact of Indian cinema - Siddharth Roy Kapur - TEDxJBIMS

I thought I'd just start with a small sort of anecdote. It was 2017, and we were releasing Dangal in China. We'd released it in India already. And, of course, as part of the Walt Disney Company, you put out a list of the releases that you have to the global team just to let them know which films are releasing when, etcetera. And we happened to be releasing, I think, early May 2017. And there was Pirates of the Caribbean five releasing three weeks after us. So, of course, the global team thought not much of it, as they wouldn't. And they thought, okay, the small film from India is releasing simultaneously, sort of three weeks apart from pirates, and it'll come and go, and then pirates will release, and that should be it.

What happened with Dangal in China was actually quite extraordinary. We knew that Aamir Khan was a big star in China. We'd had three idiots there, NPK, etcetera. But still within the construct of what a foreign language film would do in that market as compared to Hollywood, obviously, there was no question about what scale we were at and what scale they were at. But week one came, and week two came, and week three came, and the film just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and getting into the zeitgeist of the country. And suddenly, I think my team had to field all these anxious calls from their colleagues in Burbank saying, guys, what's happening? Because we're releasing Pirates of the Caribbean, and Dangal is just not leaving the cinemas, the number of theaters are growing. We're finding it hard to get screens for pirates of the Caribbean. And, of course, we had to, on the surface, commiserate with them and say, oh, we had no idea, etcetera.

But secretly, inside, obviously, everyone was thrilled, because just the idea that this small film from India in a Haryanvi dialect, that too, talking about a wrestler in a small town village in Haryana who has daughters, when he actually wanted sons to live out his dream, and then realizing that he can live his dreams through his daughters, could actually take on a Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean five, and end up doing $200 million as compared to pirates, which didn't do too badly, but it did 175 million. So it was a little less, was actually quite, quite astounding. And I think I say this because sometimes it does boggle the mind that something that you believe is so unique to your situation, so what you believe locally relevant only could not possibly appeal to a wider audience around the world because they are not from that cultural ethos as you are, can just break through the clutter completely and do something that you would never have imagined, which is touch the hearts and minds of audiences who have no cultural context and no cultural similarity to the context in which the film is set.

And later, of course, there is 2020 hindsight. And we can all take credit for this success. But let's be honest, none of us ever imagined that it would do this kind of business. But what we did realize was that the chinese cultural context and the indian cultural context is very, very similar. You do have a patriarchal culture. You do have fathers believing that their sons will take on their legacy. The girl child often has to struggle to be able to prove that she can also take the legacy of her family forward. And just the fact that that audience could relate so instinctively to this story that felt so locally indian purely because their family context was the same, was the biggest learning that we took away, right? Daughters were taking their families to watch it. You had women thronging the cinema halls and actually cheering by the end of the film.

And that told us that there's no reason why we can't do what Hollywood has done so successfully over the last 120 years with their cinema taken it to the world, made Americana something to aspire to. McDonald's, apple pie, you know, the whole Charlie Chaplinde, Marlon Brando, all the cultural icons of America that have so infiltrated the rest of the world and taken their soft power forward are not out of reach for us. If I just had to now rewind back into history and look at from the start of indian cinema, right? You look at the eras in which our cinema has managed to do this in some way. For those of you who might have been to eastern european countries or maybe Russia, right, one is always amazed by the fact that people start singing a song from a Raj Kapoor film. They start singing Awara hum and you're like, but how do you, like 30 years old, how do you possibly know this song? And they're like, we've grown up watching Raj Kapoor films.

Or they start singing Jimmy, Jimmy from disco dancer. And you're like, how the hell do you know Mithun Chakravarthi, a song sitting here in Moscow, right? But it's sometimes what happens is that you just break through and there are some stories or some artists that just have the ability to be able to appeal in such a deep way. Now, obviously the USSR India friendship goes back a long way. Our movies were distributed there in the thirties, forties and fifties. And Raj Kapoor obviously was really iconic. He was our version of Charlie Chaplin. His unique combination of tragedy and comedy, managed to, you know, touch heart, such beautiful music in his films. So that, I mean, Raj Kapoor, I think, was the symbol of cinema, at least in most of Asia at that point of time. You then go on to Mister Bachchan. You look at Egypt, right? The way that he was mobbed when he went to Cairo was unbelievable. You look at Turkey. They know Sholeh in Turkey, like Sholeh, is one of those films that they've grown up on. So these are things that actually, we as Indians have not even realized where our culture has managed to penetrate in such a deep way.

I guess the point I'm making is you see a lot of these examples from the past, but because we've been, in a sense, victims of our own success, which is that we've had such a massive captive audience, which is our indian and south asian diaspora. You have your audience in India and you've got your south asian diaspora. We haven't had to reach out to the world in the way that probably french cinema or iranian cinema or italian cinema or japanese cinemas had to do, because they haven't had very large home markets, right? And therefore, they've had to take their films and appeal to the rest of the world in a very direct way. Whereas we in India have such a large audience already that our interval and our six songs and dances and our three hour films have been something that we have reveled in and not really felt like we have to change that format. And that format can sometimes hold us back.

But what's happened in the last 20 years, I think, is that a lot of our movies have now managed to break that cultural barrier, because you've had filmmakers who are very uniquely indian, but have grown up on the western grammar of storytelling, right? And therefore, when you look at a film like the lunchbox, right, again, such a uniquely indian story, it's about dabbawalas in Bombay and about a chance dabba going from one person it was meant to. To another person, and two lonely people within a city connecting via food, right? And via letters. Right? Now, the whole concept of that is so unique to us, we believe. But I think the world, especially places like Germany, North America, took to it so beautifully because they were able to identify with. I mean, loneliness is a human emotion. You don't need to, you know, that's not something that you need sort of a different language for. But it was told in the grammar of the storytelling of that film was very western, right? It took its time. It was a slow burn. You didn't have songs and dances. You didn't have an interval point. It was a shorter film. The narrative was very european in that sense, but still very indian in terms of the drama and the emotion. And therefore, that's what really appealed to when you look at examples of other countries as well, and you look at Korea, especially in the last 20 years, and what they've managed to do is so significant.

What they've managed to do is really take the cultural part of that country, whether it is their music, right, with K pop, whether it's their films, films like Parasite, whether it's their television shows like Squid Game or K dramas. You've got women in our country learning Korean in order to enjoy K dramas in the original language, right? So korean food, what they. And this is a very concerted effort. The government has actually backed the korean cultural industry and tasked them with taking forward the story of korean soft power to the world, not in a very direct way, but via their art and via their culture. And I think that's really tremendous. I mean, you've got today so many people interested in engaging with korean culture, visiting Korea because of that. I think that's the massive opportunity we have.

We've had filmmakers coming in and telling our stories to us, right? You had the definitive story of Gandhi being told by Richard Attenborough. He did a wonderful job. But effectively, we had someone from England come here, spend time, effort, use our talented to be able to tell us our story. You've had shows like Jewel in the crown. You've had films like a passage to India. You know, these are all stories that are our stories, in a sense, in some way, but have been told by someone else to us. I think it's time to take control of our own narrative. It's time for us to be able to tell our own stories to ourselves and to the world. And that's why I'll just give you the example of what we're trying to do.

There's a book called the Anarchy. Right. By William Dalrymple, which is about the history of the East India Company in India. We've actually acquired the rights to that, and we intend to tell that story in the way that it should be told as a global series. Right. We're in the process of writing that. We're in the process of developing it, but we want to tell that definitive story of colonization to the world. And again, we believe that any country that's been a colonizer, as well as any country that's ever been colonized, which is pretty much the whole world, will appreciate the story of the East India Company, how a corporation could go out and control an entire world, have its own armies.

Today you talk of Microsoft and Google and Facebook and these companies that are bigger than countries, but this happened 500 years ago. You had a corporation before the crown took over, actually controlling a nation. Right. Literally. And I think that's a story worth telling. That's just one example of what we intend to do. What I think is very important is if the next 50 years, we say, have got to be India's time in the world. We all believe that in some way. However, we are on a scale of realism to optimism. I don't think there's any denying that we are one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

The world is taking notice of us much more. Our voice is that much more significant in sort of the corridors of power and in the places that it deserves to be. And I think that always has to come. If you truly have to make a mark as a country, that has got to come with some sort of cultural resonance as well, because otherwise, the power tends to be just hard power, which is never the way to be able to endear yourself to the global community, especially when you're growing as a nation and you're growing stronger. It's important for them to understand us for who we are. We are not a country of snake charmers anymore. We are not a country of the great indian rope trick anymore.

We are much more than that. And unfortunately, that mindset, or we're not a country on the other side of only tech bros in Silicon Valley. There's a lot more to India than these stereotypes of who we are. And the only way we'll be able to break those, the only way that we'll be able to cut through and be able to talk about who we are as Indians is through our stories. So I'm hoping that a lot of us can be able to get together and tell indian stories to the world in the way that the world deserves to hear us. Thank you.

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