Bollywood: How Indian Cinema Has Kept the World’s Attention1

By Adam Troudart, Jan 23, 2012 in Pop Culture

Take some fennel seeds, add ginger powder, green and black cardamom and grind the whole lot together. The result? Dum ka Masala, a version of the spicy mix you probably tried the last time you ordered an Indian takeaway.

Now, what happens when you pick a story about star-crossed lovers, a devious villain, and angry parents, and mix it up with a few daredevil thrills, a bit of comedy and drama, and over-the-top dance and musical scenes in picturesque locations? Well, if you’ve followed the Bollywood filmmaking recipe, you might end up with a new Masala Movie (this is what Bollywood films are often called for their diversity of film genres.) And, if you were lucky enough to have an acting role in such a movie, you could become a megastar in India and be admired by hundreds of millions of adoring fans around the world.

Aishwarya Rai

One such notable Bollywood fan is Asim, a fair-skinned boy who recently relocated to Los Angeles from Pakistan in the pursuit of happiness. His name is pronounced “Ah-Sim” but everyone seems to mispronounce it as either “Aseem” or “Awesome.” Asim didn’t bring any friends or a girlfriend to L.A., so for fun he gives his attention to watching romantic Bollywood films starring Shahrukh Khan, and he longs to find the love of his life. In the laugh-out-loud Internet TV comedy series That’s So Awesome, Asim works at Fair House Bank where he becomes friends with a teller and banker, Mark and Sue. After a mishap at the Bank, Asim finds himself making new friends and doing things he’s never done before. Will Asim now find Bollywood-style love and happiness in America, or will he simply end up working the night shift at 7-11?

That’s So Awesome – Holy Cow

The term Bollywood dates back to the Seventies. It is derived from the words Bombay (the Indian city now called Mumbai) and Hollywood (center of the American film industry.) The name Bollywood represents the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai. Together with other Indian film industries such as Tamil and Bengali, Bollywood is considered the largest film industry in the world. It produces around 1,000 movies a year and attracts an audience of around 3 billion, mainly in India and within the Indian Diaspora.

Mumbai, India

The first color film in Hindi, Kisan Kanya, was made by Ardeshir Irani back in 1937. The next year, Irani created a color version of Mother India. In the late Fifties, romantic musicals and melodramas became the mainstay of Hindi cinema, and so did color features. Film historians consider the period between the late Forties to the Sixties, following India’s independence, the Golden Age of Hindi cinema. This period saw the release of various critically acclaimed films, mostly dealing with working class urban life in India. Some examples are Pyaasa (1957) by Guru Dutt and Shree 420 (1955) by Raj Kapoor. Mehboob Khan’s epic film Mother India (1957) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Famous actors at that time include Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand and Guru Dutt. Actresses include Nutan, Nargis and Mala Sinha. The social realist film Neecha Nagar (1946) by Chetan Anand won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, paving the way for more Hindi Cannes glory throughout the Fifties and early Sixties.

While the late-Sixties and early-Seventies were dominated by romance and action films, the mid-Seventies gave way to violent and gritty films about gangsters and bandits starring actors like Amitabh Bachchan and actresses like Hema Malini. Commercial cinema was gaining momentum in the Seventies with crime classics such as Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay and Yash Chopra’s Deewar, both released in 1975.

Amitabh Bachchan

Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! received great international acclaim, winning the Camera D’Or at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. The late-Eighties and early-Nineties brought back family-orientated romantic musicals and comedies alongside arthouse and independent films while a new generation of actors such as Amir Khan and Salman Khan emerged.

Bollywood’s worldwide popularity reached new heights at the turn of the century. As a result, filmmaking improved dramatically in terms of quality, cinematography, innovation, special effects and so on. More multiplexes in big cities and more Bollywood films released abroad meant more box office hits both in India and abroad. Some examples are:

• Lagaan (2001)
• Chak De India (2007)
• My Name is Khann (2010)

The new commercial hits made a new wave of actors famous. Some popular actors include Hrithik Roshan and actresses Preity Zinta, Rani Mukerii and Kareena Kapoor. Recent Bollywood productions such as The Dirty Picture, Bodyguard, That Girl in Yellow Boots and Zindagi Na Milegi Doabara challenge traditional family values and taboos such as sexuality. Free use of English dialogue and Hollywood genres, such as thrillers combined with special effects, reflect Western influence. And Zindagi Na Milegi Doabara even takes place in Spain.

Preity Zinta

That Girl in Yellow Boots

Bodyguard

Most Bollywood films today are musicals and have at least one song and dance number. The popularity of the soundtrack can make or break a movie’s success. Therefore, the soundtrack and music videos are often released before the film for promotional purposes. There are a few reasons why dance and music are so popular in Bollywood films:

• Indian audiences expect full value for their money when going to the movies. They won’t settle for less than a three-hour extravaganza with love, comedy, daredevil thrills, song and dance.
• The dancing is based on classic and historic Indian dance styles, folk dance and theater, Parsi theater and Sanskrit drama.
• Hollywood musicals, popular from the 1920s to the 1950s, had their effect on Bollywood as well.
• Western dance styles – as seen on MTV and in Broadway – influence Bollywood and today it’s not uncommon to see Western pop or hip-hop numbers alongside traditional dance sequences.

The movie plots are often melodramatic and follow a certain formula. As Pooja Makhijani, author of Mama’s Saris, beautifully summed it up: “Bollywood is wonderfully escapist, and completely comforting, as nothing really changes. Every blockbuster has at least one of the following: a wet sari scene, an over-the-top dance number with hundreds of mustachioed extras, an overbearing patriarch, pehla pyar (first love), and a wonderfully choreographed fight sequence in which the police show up the second the bad guys are down and out.”

The Bollywood film industry has influenced the Western world in various ways:

• In the wake of the 21st century, Bollywood started influencing Western musical films. Baz Luhrmann’s critically acclaimed film Moulin Rouge! (2001) was directly inspired by Bollywood musicals and sparked a revival of the Western musical genre with films such as Chicago, Hairspray, Enchanted and Mamma Mia!
• Academy Award-winner SlumDog Millionaire (2008) is considered “an homage to Hindi commercial film” and is directly inspired by Bollywood films.
• The theme of reincarnation was popularized in Western pop culture through Bollywood films. The Hollywood film The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975) was inspired by Madhumati (1958), and the film Hitch (2005) was probably inspired by the 1975 film Chhoti Si Baat.
• Bollywood filmi music (Indian popular music as written and performed for Indian cinema) has influenced popular music worldwide. Some examples include: Devo’s 1988 hit song Disco Dancer, inspired by the Bollwywood film Disco Dancer (1982.) Don’t Phunk with My Heart (2005) won The Black Eyed Peas a Grammy Award and was inspired by two Bollywood songs from the Seventies: Ae Nujawan Hai Sub from Apradh (1972) and Ye Mera Dil Yaar Ka Diwana from Don (1978.)
• Bollywood has influenced the fashion world as well. As Bollywood films became popular, Indian garments, accessories, footwear and jewelry – previously considered old-fashioned and unattractive by many – made their way into mainstream culture as they were worn by Indian movie stars. Bollywood fans would also copy the way the garment is worn by their favorite actor/actress. Fashion terms such as Sari (an unstitched cloth draped around a woman’s body) and Salwar-kameez (a traditional women’s suit) were brought into mass awareness.

Now, it’s easy to understand how Bollywood has kept the world’s attention!

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Adam Troudart is a blogger who is obsessed with words, people, and helping people succeed by using words.