The New “Emma”: Clueless in Bollywood

Of all the unfortunate products spit out by the furiously spinning Jane Austen Corporate Gyre, those that repurpose the author’s 1815 novel, “Emma,” seem the least obtuse. “Emma,” is, after all, plainly a comedy of manners; lighter fare, and thus perhaps less sacrosanct.




In this spirit, “Aisha,” the new Bollywood adaptation of “Emma,” should be viewed with a bit of patience. The novel has been filmed several times in the past fifteen years: Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Beckinsale, and Alicia Silverstone have each played the role of Miss Woodhouse—well, in Silverstone’s case, it was as Cher Horowitz, a Jeep-driving, Paul Rudd-loving Southern California version of the classic heroine, in Amy Heckerling’s “Clueless.” Sonam Kapoor, the new film’s star, tells the BBC that contemporary India may be a perfect setting for Austen’s story:

Victorian society’s rules and regulations, and the class system is still prevalent in our country and I think is prevalent all over the world. It’s about having the right address, the right cars, wearing the right clothes, getting married to the right guy, having enough money. …I think you can relate to it, because these are situations you can never get rid of.

Kapoor laments the prominence of these class signifiers, but based on the movie’s trailer, it is these very objects that form the basis for the film’s appeal: we see hot, young folks at polo matches, dinner parties, and the mall. The movie looks more like a Bollywood adaptation of “Clueless” than anything else. (The film’s Web site, for example, let’s you tour Aisha’s house, check out her mail, and eye her bright-yellow VW Beetle, all while enjoying a modern Hindi pop song.)

Still, though, we should remember the Austen source material, which opens with the fine sentence: “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” It’s a story about love, yes, but it’s really a story about money.

It seems that the filmmakers here, as often is the case with repackaged Austen goods, have chosen to focus on the “handsome, clever, and rich” components of their protagonist, and of the material more generally. A similar thing happened with the English-language Bollywood rehash “Bride and Prejudice,” from 2004, which kept Austen’s story, but opted for radiant opulence tempered only by heavy-handed moralizing. It doesn’t need to be said that audiences respond to wealth and luxury. We laugh at the rich—at the shallow consumerism, the obsession with absurd elements of status, at the whole glittering, ridiculous mess of it all. Yet that laughter, which makes us feel superior, also hides envy and a bit of shame, mostly at the fact that we’re watching, but also because it looks as though they’re having such fun.

A modern Bollywood production leaves little space for subtlety; so there will be group dance numbers, Hindi pop, fast cars, and plastic-smooth, well-groomed Indian movie stars. But at least there won’t be zombies. Or sea monsters.

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