All work or all play? Consumption, leisure, and ethics under globalization inZindagi Na Milegi Dobara

Abstract

In Zoya Akhtar's movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), three friends embark on a road trip that is in fact a journey toward globalization. While the trip is meant to partly cure Arjun, a stock trader, of his workaholism and is ostensibly a critique of India's adoption of Western corporate culture and consumerism, Akhtar's slick framing of Europe glamorizes a late-capitalist ideology by catering to a scopophilia of Westernized leisure that that ideology makes possible. She promotes images of travel and the pleasures associated with the Mediterranean (including carnivalesque festivals and uninhibited Western women). Immersing themselves in this romanticized Europe, the men set aside the ethical demands of their individual histories. The movie serves to highlight a new value system in Hindi cinema, a shift away from traditional norms to ones that align fluidly with the signs of a consumerist utopia in a multinationalized world.

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