I'M GOIN' BOLLYWOOD!
This one goes out to Klaatu.
I love Bollywood movies. I love the pagent of them. I love the romance,
and the acting and the singing and the dancing. No, I don't generally
understand them without subtitles, since I'm monolingual; and I don't
fool myself into thinking they are being subtitled with such deft skill
that I'm actually catching all the nuances of the dialogue and the
lyrics. So what is there for me to love?
Well, before I start into this, there are likely a lot of people who've
never actually seen a Bollywood, or Bollywood-style movie. For such
listeners, a tar.gz description might be in order: in a nutshell,
Bollywood refers to that particular segment of the Indian film industry,
centered in and around the city of Mumbai, that specializes in mostly
Hindi-language films; films which often feature lavish musical numbers,
formulaic plots, beautiful actors and actresses, and a general focus on
escapism and pop fantasy. Now, that is a hideous over-simplification. So
much so, that those who ARE familiar with Indian motion pictures are
strongly encouraged to ignore what I've just said, in favor of what they
already know. I'm not going to analyze, critique, or explore the very
rich history of Indian cinema, here today. I'm not going explain how
this industry as a whole, and certain bright gems released by it over
the years, have been incresingly embraced by filmgoers the world over,
and film MAKERS right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. No, MY goal is
much more modest: I'm going to tell you why I like them -- and why I
think you should too.
First though, bare with me. Bollywood movies are big, big money. And
individual performers from within that sphere are some of the most
popular and well-known people in the history of the human race. That is
not hyperbole. Shahrukh Khan, likely the biggest Bollywood star of all
time, has, according to Wikipedia, but I've heard it from other sources
as well, a fanbase that numbers in the billions. Think about that for
just a second: this one man -- still living, still acting, NOT a leader
of nations, NOT a religious figure -- is adored and could be recognized
on sight by one sixth to possibly one third of the population of the
planet right at this moment. If Arnold Schwarzenegger could win the
govenorship of California after throwing his hat into the ring only two
months before the election, imagine what THIS guy could do in India and
other countries, if he so chose; imagine what his fanbase would support.
There are politicians and tyrants all over the world who would give
absolutely anything to have that kind of influence. So I heartily reject
any offhand dismissal about the presumed unimportance of the Bollywood
industry to the world as a whole, and even to mainstream America:
because if something matters to a enough people, then it inevitably
matters to EVERYONE on some level or other.
But, I digress. This is supposed to be about me. Why do I like them?
Being an American, growing up immersed in American culture as I have
been, growing up as a fan of the movies, and therefore, as a fan of
Hollywood, fantasy has been my meat and drink. Oh, I was a reader, too,
certainly. Much of this applies to novels and comics and even radio
shows -- all things I love dearly in their own ways. But it's the magic
of the movies that I'm talking about here: the idea that you could
escape the mundanity of the world, simply by buying a ticket, or turning
on a machine in your living room; that you could follow particular
characters across entire franchises of filmed stories; that you could
chart a beautiful starlet's rise and fall through the expression of her
art; or be catipulted into a night of eager talk and inspiration with
friends who watched the same movie with you, waxing 'til dawn on the
mysteries of the world...it is this essense, this modern answer to the
sorcery of old, to the eternal questions of, "Who am I?", "Who would I
like to be?" This is cinema to me.
But, of course, it ain't ALWAYS this way. In fact, if you've been fed on
the bland diet of mainstream American media, it ain't been this way for
a really long time. If you turn on that machine in your livingroom, and
all there is to inspire you on that screen are has-beens and wanna-be's
dancing, and please-won'tcha-make-me-a-stars singing their very little
hearts out, or even idiots closed inside a box with a camera turned on
them...if these things are how your hours -- your irreplaceable hours --
are spent...then your dreams are enemic, and you are dying inside
without even noticing.
I ask you this: what is wrong with a better way, a better life?
Obviously nothing, right? It's laudible. So, then, isn't the dream of a
better life, perhaps a different life -- maybe one a little foreign to
us -- isn't that better than the dream of an empty one perfected? Better
than being a "star" in a place devoid of culture or true importance?
Better than wanting, needing to be the biggest fly on the pile of rancid
crap that is modern American media? We are stale. We are day-old. We are
hard and brittle and crumbling. We look at endless remakes on the big
screen starring generic blonds with fake boobs and botox cheeks, or
fools on the small screen, chasing monsters and phantoms, and we call
that entertainment. But that's the ironic part right there -- because
those fools already caught them. They HAVE the ghosts ensnared, week
after week after week.
So, I say, hooray for Bollywood. Why? Because it ain't THAT shit.
Sure, it's fake. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone can sing and dance like
an angel. The pathos is heavy, the comedy is forced, the romance is
thick enough to cut. And I say hooray. The production values are
sometimes low, but the energy is high, and we can wink and nod our way
past the continuity problems until the credits roll. Hooray. It's
fantasy, like it used to be. Like Hollywood used to be. It's a better
world, where it all works out in the end...or, maybe not, but don't we
look GOOD, looking sad? Style, class. They used to mean a lot. A man in
a well-cut suit used to be something to LOOK at. Something to admire.
Something YOU really wanted to be -- at least until the lights came up.
All that's gone now if all you watch is modern American media. If you
study film history, you can feel it again, but that kind of fantasy is
locked in time, forever out of reach of the present life. But Bollywood
is alive and well and growing. And the men are sharp. The women, oh the
women are classy and fine. And they sing and they dance and they fall in
love -- and for a time...'til the lights come up...so do we.
It's old fashioned, and brand new. It's familiar, and strange, and
exciting, and tragic, and silly -- and one HELL of a way to spend a
couple hours, when the alternative is game shows labelled as reality;
and talking heads puking up partisan poison; and big budget CGI
extraveganzas lacking heart and soul and plot. It's a better world.
They're better movies. By and large. In general. There's lots of trash
too. No perfection on Earth, and all that. But when they fly, Bollywood
movies soar. They scrape the stars, and they take their fans along for
the ride. They sweep you away. You don't sit and wish they were
something else, that the makers had done something else, something more
entrancing, more interesting. But good lord, I think like THAT nearly
every time I see a new Hollywood movie.
You need to watch indie cinema in this country now, to feel that old
magic. You need to look at low-budget film making, because it is
constraint -- mostly of the purse strings -- that tends to free the mind
of the cinematic artist. And one could say, therefore, that the
constraints of Indian life, the clash of the old with the new, of the
foreign with the hereditary, of the best and the worst of a nation just
stepping up as a world power; you could point to these things and see
lots of fodder for fertile imaginations.
But maybe I have one myself. Maybe I'm deluded, and damaged by my love
for movies, by the very fantasies I cherish. But if I am, I'm not alone.
Oh, man, not even close!
This one goes out to Klaatu.
I love Bollywood movies. I love the pagent of them. I love the romance,
and the acting and the singing and the dancing. No, I don't generally
understand them without subtitles, since I'm monolingual; and I don't
fool myself into thinking they are being subtitled with such deft skill
that I'm actually catching all the nuances of the dialogue and the
lyrics. So what is there for me to love?
Well, before I start into this, there are likely a lot of people who've
never actually seen a Bollywood, or Bollywood-style movie. For such
listeners, a tar.gz description might be in order: in a nutshell,
Bollywood refers to that particular segment of the Indian film industry,
centered in and around the city of Mumbai, that specializes in mostly
Hindi-language films; films which often feature lavish musical numbers,
formulaic plots, beautiful actors and actresses, and a general focus on
escapism and pop fantasy. Now, that is a hideous over-simplification. So
much so, that those who ARE familiar with Indian motion pictures are
strongly encouraged to ignore what I've just said, in favor of what they
already know. I'm not going to analyze, critique, or explore the very
rich history of Indian cinema, here today. I'm not going explain how
this industry as a whole, and certain bright gems released by it over
the years, have been incresingly embraced by filmgoers the world over,
and film MAKERS right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. No, MY goal is
much more modest: I'm going to tell you why I like them -- and why I
think you should too.
First though, bare with me. Bollywood movies are big, big money. And
individual performers from within that sphere are some of the most
popular and well-known people in the history of the human race. That is
not hyperbole. Shahrukh Khan, likely the biggest Bollywood star of all
time, has, according to Wikipedia, but I've heard it from other sources
as well, a fanbase that numbers in the billions. Think about that for
just a second: this one man -- still living, still acting, NOT a leader
of nations, NOT a religious figure -- is adored and could be recognized
on sight by one sixth to possibly one third of the population of the
planet right at this moment. If Arnold Schwarzenegger could win the
govenorship of California after throwing his hat into the ring only two
months before the election, imagine what THIS guy could do in India and
other countries, if he so chose; imagine what his fanbase would support.
There are politicians and tyrants all over the world who would give
absolutely anything to have that kind of influence. So I heartily reject
any offhand dismissal about the presumed unimportance of the Bollywood
industry to the world as a whole, and even to mainstream America:
because if something matters to a enough people, then it inevitably
matters to EVERYONE on some level or other.
But, I digress. This is supposed to be about me. Why do I like them?
Being an American, growing up immersed in American culture as I have
been, growing up as a fan of the movies, and therefore, as a fan of
Hollywood, fantasy has been my meat and drink. Oh, I was a reader, too,
certainly. Much of this applies to novels and comics and even radio
shows -- all things I love dearly in their own ways. But it's the magic
of the movies that I'm talking about here: the idea that you could
escape the mundanity of the world, simply by buying a ticket, or turning
on a machine in your living room; that you could follow particular
characters across entire franchises of filmed stories; that you could
chart a beautiful starlet's rise and fall through the expression of her
art; or be catipulted into a night of eager talk and inspiration with
friends who watched the same movie with you, waxing 'til dawn on the
mysteries of the world...it is this essense, this modern answer to the
sorcery of old, to the eternal questions of, "Who am I?", "Who would I
like to be?" This is cinema to me.
But, of course, it ain't ALWAYS this way. In fact, if you've been fed on
the bland diet of mainstream American media, it ain't been this way for
a really long time. If you turn on that machine in your livingroom, and
all there is to inspire you on that screen are has-beens and wanna-be's
dancing, and please-won'tcha-make-me-a-stars singing their very little
hearts out, or even idiots closed inside a box with a camera turned on
them...if these things are how your hours -- your irreplaceable hours --
are spent...then your dreams are enemic, and you are dying inside
without even noticing.
I ask you this: what is wrong with a better way, a better life?
Obviously nothing, right? It's laudible. So, then, isn't the dream of a
better life, perhaps a different life -- maybe one a little foreign to
us -- isn't that better than the dream of an empty one perfected? Better
than being a "star" in a place devoid of culture or true importance?
Better than wanting, needing to be the biggest fly on the pile of rancid
crap that is modern American media? We are stale. We are day-old. We are
hard and brittle and crumbling. We look at endless remakes on the big
screen starring generic blonds with fake boobs and botox cheeks, or
fools on the small screen, chasing monsters and phantoms, and we call
that entertainment. But that's the ironic part right there -- because
those fools already caught them. They HAVE the ghosts ensnared, week
after week after week.
So, I say, hooray for Bollywood. Why? Because it ain't THAT shit.
Sure, it's fake. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone can sing and dance like
an angel. The pathos is heavy, the comedy is forced, the romance is
thick enough to cut. And I say hooray. The production values are
sometimes low, but the energy is high, and we can wink and nod our way
past the continuity problems until the credits roll. Hooray. It's
fantasy, like it used to be. Like Hollywood used to be. It's a better
world, where it all works out in the end...or, maybe not, but don't we
look GOOD, looking sad? Style, class. They used to mean a lot. A man in
a well-cut suit used to be something to LOOK at. Something to admire.
Something YOU really wanted to be -- at least until the lights came up.
All that's gone now if all you watch is modern American media. If you
study film history, you can feel it again, but that kind of fantasy is
locked in time, forever out of reach of the present life. But Bollywood
is alive and well and growing. And the men are sharp. The women, oh the
women are classy and fine. And they sing and they dance and they fall in
love -- and for a time...'til the lights come up...so do we.
It's old fashioned, and brand new. It's familiar, and strange, and
exciting, and tragic, and silly -- and one HELL of a way to spend a
couple hours, when the alternative is game shows labelled as reality;
and talking heads puking up partisan poison; and big budget CGI
extraveganzas lacking heart and soul and plot. It's a better world.
They're better movies. By and large. In general. There's lots of trash
too. No perfection on Earth, and all that. But when they fly, Bollywood
movies soar. They scrape the stars, and they take their fans along for
the ride. They sweep you away. You don't sit and wish they were
something else, that the makers had done something else, something more
entrancing, more interesting. But good lord, I think like THAT nearly
every time I see a new Hollywood movie.
You need to watch indie cinema in this country now, to feel that old
magic. You need to look at low-budget film making, because it is
constraint -- mostly of the purse strings -- that tends to free the mind
of the cinematic artist. And one could say, therefore, that the
constraints of Indian life, the clash of the old with the new, of the
foreign with the hereditary, of the best and the worst of a nation just
stepping up as a world power; you could point to these things and see
lots of fodder for fertile imaginations.
But maybe I have one myself. Maybe I'm deluded, and damaged by my love
for movies, by the very fantasies I cherish. But if I am, I'm not alone.
Oh, man, not even close!
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