Gwendolyn Kirk, South and Southeast Asian Studies Librarian with IU Bloomington Libraries, breaks down the pleasures of masala films and why audiences should check out the upcoming More Than Masala series.

At its most basic level, masala means “spice” in several South Asian languages. The term is unsurprisingly most familiar to Americans through their encounters with Indian cuisine. Many will have heard of the dish chicken tikka masala, itself a British invention that hardly makes an appearance on Indian tables. Some might be familiar with the ubiquitous spice blend known as garam masala, which in recent years has made its way onto US grocery shelves not far from lemon pepper and celery salt. In the film world, however, masala has its own set of meanings.

Within the Indian film lexicon, a masala film is one with a little bit of everything, meant to cater to the tastes of all kinds of moviegoers. Masala films must have action, romance, comedy, drama, and of course include songs and dances. They rely on traditional, normative tropes of love, honor, and sacrifice, and count on drawing in audiences with the star power of their lead actors. The term “masala film” is often used dismissively or disparagingly to describe films that are seen as without artistic merit, cheaply and quickly churned out to please the lowest common denominator or audiences. We reject this devaluing of popular cultural forms and firmly believe that such films are not only a critical part of the Indian mediascape, but also a ton of fun! At the same time, when we began to conceive of this film series, we wanted to highlight films that deviate from the brightly colored Bollywood fantasy that Americans are more likely to have encountered. Thus, More Than Masala: Indian Food and Culture Through Film is a series that seeks to present genre-bending films from beyond the Bollywood mainstream, linking them together through the theme of food.