More Than Musicals: Growing Nerd/Geek Culture In India?
We all know Bollywood musicals. If you’ve seen even a few of the good ones – or even mediocre ones – you pretty much come to the conclusion everyone else can stop making them. India wins. Come to think of it, if you’ve ever seen Korean Drama, everyone else can stop making soap operas as well (Ok, America kind of has).
I like to follow international nerd/geek/fan/otaku news because it tells us a lot of things. It tells us about markets. It tells us about culture. It tells us what’s big. It tells us what we’ll be reading, watching, cosplaying, and reading fanfic about. It tells us about the world.
If you’ve been thinking India’s influence in the world culture may be just musicals and food, then you’re missing it’s comics industry and general nerddom.
India just had its Comics Con. Like the ones here, it sounds pretty multimedia.
50,000 people attended, 3 times more than last year.
Apparently there was specialty merchandise for multinational properties as well as local properties.
There’s a growing interest in comics in the country.
Now yes, this is all well and good. Major economy, etc. Sure we can nod and be glad that, in the years to come, more people will be randomly dressing as Naruto across the globe. Nothing brings us together closer than the assurance someone will have spiky blond hair and be wearing emergency orange.*
Except remember, this is India.
- One billion people.
- A high level of multilingual people in the population – yes, you may joke about tech support in India, but its multilingual nature means that its easier to consume and produce media.
- An ever-growing world power.
- One already highly successful media endeavor – the powerful Bollywood (properly called Hindi cinema, by the way).
- As we know, comics lead to other properties, which you can realize by looking at American films for the last . . . well long time.
We nerds and geeks had better start paying attention. India’s ever-growing power also means ever-growing media power. It also means an ever-expanding market – one that’s multilingual.
I can see a future where the Indian market is more and more targeted by companies, though lately it seems like that’s well under way. Comics are big there, so any comic work you do may be targeted. For that matter, any other nerd work you do may need to keep India in mind.
I can also see influence of Indian media and comics becoming prominent. If you told me twenty years ago bookstores would have so much manga I wouldn’t have believed it. What is going to come out of this growing industry that’s going to make its way over here?
I’m paying attention. Who knows, maybe there will be less Naruto cosplayers and more cosplayers of Indian comic/manga/animation characters in the years to come.**
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
* Side note. Naruto is either the world’s BEST ninja or the worst with that color scheme.
** Though I think there will still be lots of Hetalia. It’s everywhere. It’s like Hydrogen with better hair.
