 Bollywood
is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based
film industry in India. Though some purists deplore
the name, it seems likely to persist; it even has its
own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Bollywood is also commonly
referred to as "Hindi cinema", even though
a strong case could be made that the language of the
films is actually Hindustani. Songs often use Urdu vocabulary,
and English is increasingly heard in dialogues and songs.
Rich, jet-set Indians these days seem to speak only
English as a fashion statement, while a majority of
the urban middle-class are educated in english schools
and are as much at home speaking it as their mother-tongue.
It is not uncommon to find bi-lingual or tri-lingual
Indians in the cities and a mixture of English and an
Indian language (usually Hindi) is often the mode of
conversation at workplaces; Bollywood films set in this
milieu often feature dialogues studded with English
words and phrases, even whole sentences.
Bollywood and the other
major cinematic hubs (Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil,
Telugu) constitute the broader Indian film industry,
whose output is considered to be the largest in the
world in terms of number of films produced and, possibly,
number of tickets sold. Bollywood is a strong part of
popular culture of not only India and the rest of the
Indian subcontinent, but also of the Middle East, parts
of Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, and among the South
Asian diaspora worldwide. The word Bollywood was created
by blending Bombay (the city now officially called Mumbai)
and Hollywood, the famous center of the United States
film industry.
Genre conventions and artistic
merit
Bollywood films are
usually musicals. Few movies are made without at least
one song-and-dance number. Indian audiences expect full
value for their money, with a good entertainer generally
referred to as "Paisa Vasool", literally,
"money extracted": songs and dances, love
triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills -- all are
mixed up in a three hour long extravaganza with an intermission.
Such movies are called masala movies, after the Indian
spice mixture masala. Like masala, these movies are
a mixture of many things.
Plots tend to be melodramatic.
They frequently employ formulaic ingredients such as
star-crossed lovers and angry parents, corrupt politicians,
kidnappers, conniving villains, courtesans with hearts
of gold, long-lost relatives and siblings separated
by fate, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient
coincidences.
There have always been
films with more "artistic" aims and more sophisticated
stories (for example, many of the films of Satyajit
Ray, Mrinal Sen, Guru Dutt, Shyam Benegal, Hrishikesh
Mukherjee and Gulzar among others). They often lost
out at the box office to movies with more mass appeal.
However, Bollywood is changing. Current films are increasingly
likely either to break the mold or to ironically subvert
it. There is now a significant audience of young, educated,
urban Indians who want to watch Indian films but demand
a different presentation.
It should also be said
that a fair number of films with mass-appeal are either
estimable simply as well-crafted amusements (which is
no small matter in an anxious world) or even artistic
achievements in their own way. Any fan of Bollywood
movies will be able to list films that he/she regards
as transcending the run-of-the-mill masala movie.
Bollywood song and dance
Film music is called
filmi (from Hindi, meaning "of films"). While
most actors, especially today, are excellent dancers,
few are also singers. Songs are generally pre-recorded
by professional playback singers with actors lip-synching
the words, often while dancing. One notable exception
was Kishore Kumar who starred in several major films
in the 1950s while also having a stellar career as a
playback singer. There were K. L. Saigal, Suraiyya and
Noor Jehan before him but they weren't required to do
the gravity-defying, body-bending dance moves that today's
actors are expected to perform on screen. Of late, a
few actors have again tried singing for themselves.
Aamir Khan took a turn singing "Kya Bolti Tu"
in Ghulam but only because "the character had attitude
that only Aamir could do justice to", according
to director Vikram Bhatt. Amitabh Bachchan, who started
the trend of non-singing stars at the mike with the
runaway hit "Mere Angane Mein" in "Lawaaris"
in the mid-80's, continued his toe-dipping in singing
with turns in "Silsila", "Mahaan"
"Toofan" and more recently in the movies Baghban
and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, as well as doing a duet
with Adnan Sami in the song Kabhi Nahi (Never). These
forays, while well-received at the time, have not led
to real singing careers for either actor.
Playback singers are
prominently featured in the opening credits and have
their own fans who will go to an otherwise lackluster
movie just to hear their favorites. The composers of
film music, known as music directors, are also well-known.
Their songs can make or break a film and usually do.
The dancing in Bollywood
films, especially older ones, is primarily modeled on
Indian dance: classical dance styles, dances of historic
northern Indian courtesans (nautch girls), or folk dances.
In modern films, Indian dance elements often blend with
Western dance styles (as seen on MTV or in Broadway
musicals), though it is not unusual to see Western pop
and pure classical dance numbers side by side in the
same film. The hero or heroine will often perform with
a troupe of supporting dancers, usually of the same
sex. If the hero and heroine dance and sing a pas-de-deux
(a dance and ballet term, meaning "dance of two"),
it is often staged in beautiful natural surroundings
or architecturally grand settings.
Dialogues and lyrics
The film script (frequently
credited as "Dialogues") and the song lyrics
are often written by different people.
Music directors often
prefer working with certain lyricists, to the point
that the lyricist and composer are seen as a team.
Many would say that
the dialogues are written in Hindi; others would say
that they are actually Hindustani, the colloquial dialect
spoken in North India and Pakistan. Descriptive linguistics
here becomes mired in nationalism and Hindu-Muslim antagonism;
see the Hindustani article for clarification.
Bollywood song lyrics,
however, have a definite lean towards the Urdu or Hindustani
vocabulary; they tend to use many elegant and poetic
Arabic and Persian loan-words.
Dialogues are often
melodramatic and invoke God, family, mother, and self-sacrifice
liberally.
In the ____ film _____,
a wounded hero calls out to the villain:
"Agar apni ma ka doodh piya hai to baahar aa, saaley!"
"If you have drunk the milk of your mother, come
on out, you <mild expletive>".
In the 1975 film Deewar, a dialogue between the gangster
brother Vijay and his policeman brother Ravi:
Vijay: Hum dono ek hi jagah se apni zindagi ki shuruwat
ki thi -- aaj main kaha hoon aur tum kahan ho. Mere
paas gaadi hai, bungalow hai, daulat hai -- kya hai
tumhaarey paas?
We both started our lives from the same place -- look
where I am today and where you are. I have cars, bungalows,
wealth -- what do you have?
<short pause>
Ravi: Mere paas ma hai.
I have mother.
Song lyrics are usually about love. Here's a sample
from the 1983 film Hero, written by the great lyricist
Anand Bakshi:
Bichhdey abhi to hum,
bas kal parso,
jiyoongi main kaisey, is haal mein barson?
Maut na aayi, teri yaad kyon aayi,
Haaye, lambi judaayi!
We just got separated, only a day or two back,
How am I going to live this way for years?
Death doesn't come, but your memory does;
Why?
Cast and crew
Bollywood stars (see Indian movie actors) tend to be
light-skinned performers from the northern (Hindi, Bengali,
or Punjabi-speaking) regions of India. It is a common
criticism that subcontinentals harbor a preference for
light skin, a bias shown in matrimonial ads and the
predominance of light-skinned matinee idols. Though
a few darker-skinned actors or actresses have had minor
successes in Bollywood (Tabu, Sunil Shetty), most have
been comics like Govinda or Johnny Lever.
Models and beauty queens
continuously replenish the pool of talented hopefuls
aiming at stardom. The potential rewards are great:
stars are well-paid, live lavishly, and are adored by
their fans. While some stars rise and fall like rockets,
some, like Amitabh Bachchan, become national icons.
Directors compete to hire stars, who are believed to
guarantee the success of a movie (though this belief
is not always supported by box-office results). Some
stars make the most of their fame by making several
movies simultaneously, criss-crossing Mumbai by limousine
from one set to another. However, one contemporary star,
Aamir Khan has been notable for his insistence on doing
quality films and making one at a time.
Traditionally management
and crew consisted mostly of northern Indians (Hindi,
Punjabi, and Bengali etc), but Bollywood now draws talent
from all over India, especially behind the cameras.
The music director of the moment is A.R. Rahman, who
got his start in Tamil films. South Indian director
Mani Ratnam also directed a few hit movies in Hindi.
Bollywood is the largest of the Indian regional cinemas
and attracts those who have proved themselves in the
smaller industries.
Finances
Bollywood budgets are
usually modest by Hollywood standards. Sets, costumes,
special effects, and cinematography were less than world-class
up until the mid-to-late 1990s. But as Western films
and television gain wider distribution in India itself,
there is increasing pressure for Bollywood films to
attain the same production levels. Sequences shot overseas
have proved a real box office draw, so Mumbai film crews
are increasingly peripatetic, filming in Australia,
New Zealand, United Kingdom, continental Europe and
elsewhere. Nowadays, Indian producers are drawing in
more and more funding for big-budget films shot within
India as well, such as Lagaan, Devdas, and the current
production The Rising.
Funding for Bollywood
films remains hit-and-miss. There are few large studios
and until recently, Indian banks were forbidden to lend
money to film productions. Thus funding often comes
from private distributors, and sometimes from illegitimate
sources.
Mumbai gangsters have
produced films, patronized stars, and used muscle to
get their way in cinematic deals. In January of 2000,
Mumbai mafia hitmen shot at Rakesh Roshan, film director
and father of star Hrithik Roshan; he had rebuffed mob
attempts to meddle with his film productions. In 2001
the Central Bureau of Investigation, India's national
police agency, seized all prints of the film Chori Chori
Chupke Chupke after the movie was found to be funded
by members of the Mumbai underworld.
Another problem facing
Bollywood is piracy of its films. Often pirated DVDs
arrive before the print for the picture. Factories in
Pakistan and India stamp out thousands of illegal DVDs,
VCDs, and VHS tapes, which are then shipped all over
the world. (Copying is particularly rife in Pakistan,
since the government has banned the import of Indian
films; the underworld has rushed to supply the banned
item.) Films are frequently broadcast without compensation
by countless small cable-TV companies in India and Asia.
Small Indian grocery-spice-video stores in the U.S.
and the U.K. stock tapes and DVDs of dubious provenance;
consumer copying adds to the problem.
Satellite TV, television
and imported foreign films are making huge inroads into
the domestic Indian entertainment market. In the past,
most Bollywood films could make money; now fewer do
so. Balanced against this are the increasing returns
from theatres in Western countries like the United Kingdom,
Canada, and the United States of America. As more Indians
migrate to these countries, they form a growing market
for upscale Indian films. 'Foreign' audiences—in
Asian and Western countries—are also growing,
if more slowly.
For an interesting comparison
of Hollywood and Bollywood financial figures, see this
chart: [1]
Accusations
of plagiarism
Constrained by rushed
production schedules and small budgets, some Bollywood
writers have been known to borrow the plots or even
the scenes of hit Western films; some music directors
have been known to copy tunes or riffs. The copyists
could do so with impunity since the Bollywood film scene
was largely unknown to most people in the West; in addition,
many in the Indian audience were unfamiliar with Western
films and tunes.
How much plagiarism
exists in Bollywood movies is hotly debated. Some would
say that it's sporadic; some that it's frequent. It
is hard to quantify the debate, since plagiarism is
so hard to define. A scene-by-scene remake of a foreign
film is plagiarism, surely. But a complete revision
to fit Indian realities, or mixing and matching scenes
and plots from many different films -- is that plagiarism
or just creativity at work? Hollywood, after all, is
also known for its imitative ways. If one cowboy movie
succeeds, other cowboy movies inevitably follow.
For a discussion of
these issues, see this Rediff article [2] (http://www.rediff.com/entertai/2002/oct/31bolly.htm).
Accusations of plagiarism in filmi music are discussed
at this site, [3] (http://www.iespana.es/i2fs/).
Bollywood awards
In 1953, the Indian
screen magazine Filmfare sponsored the first Filmfare
Awards. These awards were to be Bollywood's version
of the Oscars. Magazine readers submitted their votes
and the awards were presented at a glamorous, star-studded
ceremony.
Filmfare awards are
still awarded and still coveted. Like the Oscars, they
are frequently accused of bias towards commercial success
rather than merit.
Other companies (Stardust
magazine, Zee TV, even a paint company) later entered
the award business. Some of the popular awards are:
Zee Cine Awards
Star Screen Awards
Stardust awards
They all sponsor elaborately staged award ceremonies,
featuring singing, dancing, and lots of stars and starlets.
Various Bollywood websites
also run their own polls and awards, but the celebrations
are all virtual.
Since 1973, the Indian
government has sponsored National Film Awards, awarded
by a government-sponsored Directorate of Film Festivals
(DFF). The DFF screens not only Bollywood films, but
films from all the other regional cinemas and independent/art
films. Bollywood wins some of these awards, but is far
from dominating them. Indian cinephiles feel that these
awards are far more likely to be awarded on the basis
of artistic value rather than popularity.
References and lists
For an encyclopedic
listing of Bollywood movies (and other Indian films),
as well as further details on directors, music directors,
singers, and actors/actresses, consult the Encyclopedia
of Indian Cinema, by Rajadhyaksha and Willemen, Oxford
University Press, revised and expanded, 1999. See also
Bollywood by Nasreen Munni Kabir, Channel 4 Books, 2001.
Foreigners interested
in sampling Indian cinema may wish to consult this List
of popular Bollywood films. These are not necessarily
the best films produced by Bollywood; even attempting
to make a list of the 'best' would be controversial.
Popularity is less open to debate. For lists of the
best, consult the various web sites devoted to Bollywood,
where critics list their choices or readers vote for
their favorites.
See also:
Cinema of India
History of Indian cinema
Indian film directors
Indian film music directors
Indian playback singers
Indian movie actors
source from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
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