Movies have been dramatically evolving, starting from the silent movies ending up with the astonishing special effects. Many genres were established by creative writers who had the courage to write these movies, and then hand them to directors and producers to make them. Yet, Bollywood movies still have the same routine in every movie no matter what was its genre. What one find not shocking is that Bollywood movies use the song-dance routine in all their movies. Also the actors are mostly white with colored eyes, and they use this song-dance routine to break down the way they feel towards the other person or the society. The song-dance routine is a way for actors to express their feelings. Bollywood movies usually last for a long period of time and that is because of the climate. Because of the low wages and the hot weather, people tend to go to a 3 hour movie just to prevent being outside in the hot weather, and enjoy a nice movie from their culture. Are Bollywood movies the same as Indian movies? The answer would be no. India a country that has many different cultures and Bollywood is one of them.
In sociology, Bollywood movies are a way to convey a message to others using the song-dance routine, and as mentioned above it is a way to express the actor’s feelings without having a dialog. We can say it is a musical movie. Last Thursday, I grabbed my camera and went to the Student Center at Education City to interview some people and see what they know about Bollywood movies.
I was shocked that only few people thought that Indian movies are different than Indian movies, but one of them mentioned that Bollywood movies are what define India as a unique country with a unique culture. I think the people of Qatar are not really interested in Bollywood movies because the songs take a long time. People here tend to admire dialog and action scenes. Based on my previous experience, there was a cinema theater in Qatar – Gulf Cinema - that shows Bollywood and Indian movies or if I may call them Desi movies. One would go and see the theater jammed with workers who are fighting over to have an admission ticket. It might seem weird, but unfortunately the cinema theater was shut down for no specific reason. Every single one of us has a different taste of what movie they want to watch, and that what creates diversity among us.
The Middle East is going through a bit of a cult now. Arabs watching Turkish dramas like it’s the only thing that makes sense. It all started with Noor, the infamous drama series featuring the Middle Eastern Brad Pitt and the beautiful young Arab-looking lady.
Those Turkish dramas became famous after they were dubbed in Arabic and aired on channels such as MBC. People were like, “Omg, they speak Syrian, they look pretty and they have love stories that suit our cultural and religious background. That’s dope!”
And dope it was. People couldn’t stop watching Noor when it came out. It was a family event. They would gather around the TV around 10 pm when it aired and just sit there for a whole hour. Nobody questioned as to why they are doing this or why do they find this show to be so attractive. When the theme song played in a mall, people would automatically turn their heads and look for the source. It was that hilarious.
After the success of Noor, the Turkish film industry decided to make more of “this show” and target the Middle Eastern audience. The Middle Eastern Brab Pitt almost appears in every new Drama and the ones he stars tend to be the most popular. Mirna and Khalil was the second biggest hit on TV and that was back in 2008-2009.
Now everyone expects to see a new Turkish Drama on TV. It became so much a part of the Arabic television program that it is unnatural if it ceases to exist.
What I find interesting from a sociological point of view is to know what elements made these Turkish dramas really successful. So let’s compare it to the movies made in Indian Cinema because those are popular in Southeast Asia.
Bollywood cinema features a blend of genres in different films such as comedy; action, musical and they call it the “masala.” Turkish TV series, on the other hand, appear to have the same exact safe combo of themes: Drama/Action/Romance. Every story has to have the main characters who are in love, a gun shooting and of course the messed up families and the sad sad sub-stories. The reason why all the dramas have the same theme is because it is one strategy that the Turkish film industry use to minimize risk and because it is the definition of what a Turkish drama is in Arab’s mindsets.
Bollywood films are popular for their song-and-dance-sequences that allows the film to exist beyond its plot and allows the characters to be more internal. Turkish dramas use a different technique but for the same exact purposes. They have a lot of slow motion shots that features the characters’ facial expressions when something dramatic happens on screen. And to add more drama, they insert a really sad musical track that makes the audience’s eyes water. Here is a scene from Meran and Khalil when Khalil discovers that the love of his life is being forced to marry this other guy (Skip to 9:42):
If you haven’t seen a Turkish Drama, you certainly should. It’s a great experience. You don’t even know why you enjoyed it, but you will.
For our Cinema and Society class this week, we discussed Bollywood films and the conflict between tradition versus modernism. In "The Bollywood Reader," Rajinder Dudrah and Jigna Desai argue that the evolution (therefore the inevitable modernism of Indian cinema) is part of the evolution of their culture as well. In essence, Bollywood is so much a part of traditional Indian Cinema that these two concepts is defined as an extension of the other. The authors explain that in sociological
terms the idea of erassing or further dividing a country across the chaism
of modernism is one that has always been in question. "Arjun Appadurai's
famous formulation of 'modern at large', modernity cleansed of the
mechanics of georgraphical belonging by the diaspoea ansd the
cyrber-neighbourhood, certainly offers the terrain on which this
insiderism is acted out." (Appadurai, 1997)
This concept got me thinking of my trip to
Mecca for Umrah (pilgrimage) during spring break and the difference I saw from the more
traditional description of the Holy Ka'aba (pictured above) from my family. Coincidentally, the same time I was in Mecca, a web-article came out in AlJazeers English on Mecca's removal of Muslim History by expanding the Grand Mosque.
The article writes, "Construction plans to expand the Al-Haram mosque in the holy city of Mecca are underway. The project began in 2011 and and will outfit the mosque with air conditioning, electricity, and a new raised walkway around the
Kaaba, or the stone structure that Muslims face during prayer. To make way for the new renovations, parts of the existing space, which
include Ottoman-era construction, are being bulldozed over."
The first image above is from 1850 as compared to the image I took while in Mecca. Relating back to the benefits of modernism, definitely an argument can be made that although the benefits sometimes outweigh the costs (in concerns to developing Indian cinema through Bollywood), that certain takes on modernism can be more destructive to history and tradition. To further support my argument, this following video shows the amount of contruction happening to expand the Grand Mosque:
This Hindi word for “land tax” became a household name in 2001 with the release of a namesake Bollywood movie. Lagaan, Once Upon a Time in India takes the viewer on a very believable time-travel to the Indian subcontinent of the Victorian Era. The movie revolves around poor villagers coerced to pay backbreaking taxes to the British and their struggles to rise above the oppression.
Lagaan instantly turned into a box office hit, grossing a considerable $9009043. It was hailed by Britain’s Empire magazine as one of the “100 Best Films of World Cinema” (Top Earners 2000-2009, retrieved from BoxOffice India.com).
This 3 hour 40 minute historical fantasy was described by the New York Times as “a carnivalesque genre packed with romance, swordplay and improbable song-and-dance routines” (Somni Sengupta, New York Times, retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagaan)
Using Lagaan as an archetype for all Bollywood movies, this blog is about the “improbable” and how it has become an integral part and parcel of Hindi cinema.
The “musical drama” Lagaan owes much of its length to a varied assortment of songs and dances, as do most Bollywood movies-- a concept that a western audience is not very comfortable with.
Consider, for example, the following love song between the leads Bhuvan (Amir Khan) and Gauri (Gracy Singh), with particular focus on Elizabeth (Rachel Shelly), the easily discernible British actress.
When Amir Khan was asked about the reaction of Londoners to this particular song, he flashed an amused smile at the camera and said, “I heard that audiences in the theatres began to laugh. They just didn’t expect to hear Elizabeth sing.”
One important characteristic that sets Bollywood movies apart are certainly the tedious and elaborate song and dance sequences. It is particularly peculiar seeing a bunch of well-choreographed dancers twirling around the leads. “I don’t get it,” says American student and avid-movie watcher Kathy Rivera, “The songs merely attach an unrealistic quality to the movies. What’s the point?”
The answer is rooted in a number of influencing factors, from varied levels of production and musical style to commercial life and audience reception.
That previous sentence was not intended merely to to add to my word count. Though it may sound complicated, the whole idea boils down to the way society is reflected in these movies. Indian culture is profuse with color and movement, hype and activity, as is evident in most festivals, like Diwali (festival of lights) and Holi (festival of colors), to name a few.
Holi:
Diwali:
These aspects of society are mirrored in Bollywood movies through the highly ”improbable” dance and music. Such vibes and moves are best illustrated in the following song clip that shows Bhuvan and Gauri in a traditional Dandiya Ras dance.
The colorful songs are “firmly embedded in an Indian popular culture and are an integral feature of the genre, akin to plot, dialogue and other parameters” (retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Bollywood). Hindi cimema, in other words, not only shows you singing and dancing, it is about singing and dancing (Sociology Goes to Movies, Rajendra Kumar Dudrah, p48).
The many “disparate modes of story telling are bound in a coherent whole by songs” (Sociology Goes to Movies, Rajendra Kumar Dudrah, p48). Thus, they serve the dual purpose of stringing various movie elements together. It would not be wrong to say that songs are to Bollywood what a soliloquy is to a Shakespearean play-- they confer a certain metaphorical voice to the character’s actual emotions and sentiments.
Consider for example, the song Mitwa (Friend), from Lagaan:
When translated it means: Mitwa, O Mitwa Friend, O friend
Tujhko kya dar hai re Why do you fear?
Yeh dharti apni hai This earth is ours
Apna ambar hai re Ours is the sky. Tu aa jaa re You come on…
The lip-synced song brings Bhuvan's sentiments to limelight as he calls upon fellow farmers to stand up against the subjugations of the British. Through the song as a medium, he reminds them that the country is theirs and they needn’t be intimidated by any outside forces. It coherently pieces the movie together, as the next scene shows the villagers responding to his call and following his lead.
Furthering the storyline, the next song “Chale Chalo” (Keep Going) shows Bhuvan and his friends perspiring away as they ready themselves to face the British in an upcoming match of cricket, a challenge that will decide their fate.
But these filmi songs continue to be "derided" in Western movie circles, often being blamed for “unrealisticity.”
I chanced upon an interesting comeback on a Sociology blog site (http://thesocietypages.org):
"I still hear Western film buffs argue that lip-synced songs somehow make a film unrealistic. Let’s get one thing straight — the use of music in Western films is no more realistic than in Bollywood films. We don't walk around hearing music matched to our mood in real life, but Westerners accept the fantasy because it is familiar."
Although Bollywood takes it one step further, often heavily peppering movies with songs, the dance and music are “essential aesthetic elements of the film… that draw on a stock of Indian cultural and social references and elaborate them through aural and visual spectacles” (Sociology Goes to Movies, Rajendra Kumar Dudrah, p63).
A well respected industrialist with the perfect family of three sons and a daughter, a palace to house that family and an army of servants to follow their every bidding. Such is the image of a well off Indian extended family that the movie Hum Saath Saath Hain(1999) (We Seven Stand Together) portrays on the silver screen in front of the billion or so viewers.
For the 178 minutes, the audience witnesses this family going through their lives with at most luxury. They are left drooling with the hope that they too could be like the ones in the movie. The hope then fades away to burning jealousy that at this very moment there is such a family that lives in the exact same conditions as portrayed in the movie.
The Indian movie-making machine is notorious for showcasing such abnormalities. I call them abnormalities because no such family in the Indian subcontinent with enough money to live in a palace can be free from legal disputes and other ugly internal confrontations. As my proof for this statement, I take the example of the Ambani Brothers whose father owned the Reliance Industries with the net worth of over Sixty Billion Dollars. The Ambani family disputed over the distribution of wealth for years. This even lead to various court cases that finally resulted in a settlement.
Here is my proof that Bollywood sticks to a fantastical depiction of the Indian rich. This is again because the people want to see the way the rich live and imagine themselves in such a situation. The people want to see how the rich saahabsspend their days. To satisfy this voyeuristic pleasure, Bollywood keeps the fantasy alive.
As I sat in sociology class last week viewing random clips of Bollywood movies and dances, I realized that dancing and singing were extremely vital for a Bollywood film. In about every few minutes of a scene, the stars burst out into song and flash mob dances.
My focus is on a musical number preformed in the Bollywood movie ‘Love Aaj Kal’ titled “Aahun Aahun.” The title of the song has no specific meaning, however the song lyrics themselves hold more meanings to love than you could think of.
The movie’s plot is of finding your soul mate. Where the two lead characters were a couple and then decided upon a mutual separation and then to remain friends. As Meera, the female lead goes to India and Jai, her boyfriend remains in England they seem like they have both moved on.
At the same time, in parallel to Meera and Jai’s love story, Veer, a traditional love believer was narrating his story and how in the olden days they loved with respect.
The song Aahun Aahun is played in the theme of Aam Janta (meaning "common man') and Pratigya, in which Veer Singh represents Pratigya, while Jai represents Aam Janta. Each shows his different way of love, but both conclude that love has never changed. It shows that, even though, people these days try to make themselves believe that love is just an infatuation that goes away with time and that there is no such thing as "true love" or "soul mate", in their hearts they still love each other with that passion.
I guess what I’m trying to convey here is that there is a mix in culture and tradition. The old versus the new in Bollywood is what we’re studying nowadays in Sociology class.
Bollywood is being westernized and that’s what you can see in the clip.
About six or seven years ago, when I lived in Canada, if I spoke about Indian movies to my Canadian friends, they would automatically assume that all Indians wore traditional clothing all the time, or that the people would ride on elephants or run through fields or even live in villages. Although these are stereotypes, Bollywood classics did portray these kinds of images in their movies, that is, before the age of modernization.
Sociology has taught me a lot about the functions of societies, and has also made me more analytical of why and how societies function the way they do.
When I used to watch Indian movies before, I would appreciate the themes of tradition and family values. Although Indian movies have always been “Masala” movies – containing a variety of genres in order to appeal to a broader audience – they would address domestic problems such as arranged marriages, the role of women in their households and issues of status and caste.
At the present though, Bollywood has been pumping out movies with lots of special effects, hyperbolic plots, modernized views of Indian women, and has lost some of its traditional taste. I understand that the Indian movie industry has to keep up its pace with Hollywood and the ever-increasing rate of improvements in technology, but in terms of audiences these industries differ significantly.
While people of all ethnicities, religions, and ages watch Hollywood movies; it’s largely Indians who make up the audience of Bollywood movies. Another thing that differs vastly between Hollywood and Bollywood is the average length of movies. Hollywood’s movies are about an hour and a half, or two at the most, but Bollywood’s movies can last for three hours or more.
Why? The number of songs and dance sequences that are incorporated into Indian movies take up a large amount of time. This creates a distinction between Hollywood and Bollywood.
Modern day Indian movies still do incorporate songs and dances, but they are meant to help narrate the plot of the movie. Nowadays the plot of Indian movies seems to involve a lot of foreign back-up dancers and settings in cities like New York or London. The Indian actresses who are cast in these movies are light-skinned, super-skinny and really don’t represent the majority of Indian women. The same can be said about Indian actors – buff, light-skinned and usually portray men of the upper class.
Along with an evolution to plot, types of songs – which have now started to include lyrics in English – and physical appearance of actors, even the type of clothes that are worn in Indian movies today differ significantly than the traditional garb worn before. Before, saris – a type of traditional Indian garb for women – would be worn fairly modestly; today saris are being designed in a very “modern” way. But to maintain some dignity to the Indian culture, the elders of a household, mothers and grandmothers, are generally wearing saris in a respectable fashion. This also highlights the differences between generations.
An example of a fairly recent Indian movie that I’ve watched with a totally modernized and untraditional plot is Dostana, which means friendship. The storyline focuses on how two Indian men attempt to rent an apartment, but have to share it with an Indian woman, and in order to move in with her they have to pretend to be gay. Eventually both the men fall in love with this woman. The entire movie is shot in Miami, Florida and has the running time of 146 minutes. One of the songs in the movie is called “Desi Girl”; the word “Desi” means the dispersion of Indians in different countries, or away from their homeland. Although this song shows preference to the fact that the woman is Indian, it highlights that she is Desi. She is quite westernized in the way she dresses and thinks. This might be a subtle message encouraging Indian women to move abroad.
Is Bollywood becoming too westernized and degenerating the moral values of the Indian culture? Well, I’ve stopped watching Indian movies mainly because I see a lot of Hollywood mirrored in Bollywood. I used to watch Indian movies because of the unique plots and because of the originality of the stories.
However this is my personal opinion.
Bollywood does seem to be doing well for itself in India, with millions of viewers watching movies everyday. Then again, it could just be people wanting some air conditioning for three hours.
