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F R I E N D S O F I N D I A |
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B O L L Y W O O D
Bollywood is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry in India. The name is a conflation of Bombay, the old name of Mumbai, and Hollywood, the center of the United States film industry. Bollywood and the other major cinematic hubs (Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada, and Malayalam) constitute the broader Indian film industry, whose output is the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced and in 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. Bollywood is also commonly referred to as "Hindi cinema", even though use of poetic Urdu words is fairly common. There has been a growing presence of English in dialogues and songs as well. It is not uncommon to see movies which feature dialogues with English words and phrases, even whole sentences. Most Bollywood films would be classified as musicals. Few movies are made without at least one song-and-dance number. However, they do not fit easily in the "musical" category as defined by Hollywood movies; they usually contain a great deal more in the way of plot and action than is found in the typical Hollywood musical. Indian audiences expect full value for their money, with a good entertainer. 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 Hindi word for a spice mixture, masala. Like masalas, 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, love triangles, 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 Indian films with more "artistic" aims and more sophisticated stories, both inside and outside the Bollywood tradition. 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 or even artistic achievements in their own way.
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