Hooray for Bollywood

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Hooray for Bollywood
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What is Bollywood?

• Bollywood is the informal name given to the
  popular Mumbai-based Hindustani language film
  industry in India. The term is often incorrectly
  used to refer to the Indian cinema as a whole.

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Not Just India

• Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other Islamic
  countries
• Indian immigrant populations throughout the world
• South Asia, the Middle East, parts of Africa,
  parts of Southeast Asia

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Why Musicals?

• Some say that the long tradition of Indian temple
  spectacles, sacred dramas danced and sung, still
  shapes Indian tastes.
• Others point to the linguistic diversity of
  India. Many languages are spoken and there are a
  number of regional cinemas. Only films that
  transcend language barriers have any hope of
  being all-India hits. (The Indian constitution
  recognizes 18 official Indian languages.)

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Yet more reasons

• Limited access to Hollywood political
  resentment of the US/the West
• Upbeat song dance numbers provide escapism to
  those in struggling nations

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A few statistics

• In India, approximately 12 million people go to
  the movies every single day
• Bollywoods films reach up to 3.6 billion people
  around the world a billion more than the
  audience for Hollywood
• In 2003 alone, 877 feature films were released in
  India, as compared to 473 films released in the
  United States
• The average Indian movie ticket costs the
  equivalent of twenty cents, whereas the average
  ticket price in the U.S. in 2005 cost 6.41

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Characteristics of a typical Bollywood production

• usually last two to four hours and often include
  an intermission
• item numbers
• Borrow heavily from popular American musicals of
  the 1930s-50s

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Filmi

• In the beginning, filmi was generally classical
  and folk in inspiration, with some Western
  elements.
• Tamil filmi songs combine Indian classical music,
  including its vocals traditional instruments,
  with catchy tunes and stylings from Western pop
  music
• Now you can even find Indian hip hop, disco,
  rap and gospel music

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• From 1952-1993, the most popular radio show was
  comprised solely of filmi music
• Many Western critics tend to undervalue Bollywood
  movies, which they often criticize as
  melodramatic, sentimental, and formulaic.
  However, through an Indian cultural perspective,
  one can argue that such critics are really
  missing the point

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Dance

• dancing in Bollywood films, especially older
  ones, is primarily modeled on Indian dance
  classical dance styles, dances of historic
  northern Indian courtesans such as the tawaif, or
  folk dances
• Current trend is to blend with the types of
  Western dance styles 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

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Example of Contemporary filmhttp//youtube.com/wa
tch?vV4rmrAg5Hm0
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Issue of Plagiarism

• Constrained by rushed production schedules and
  small budgets http//youtube.com/watch?vvSPvvVfco
  Aw
• The usual target of plagiarism is a catchy
  Western tune with pre-proven audience appeal
• Example one production number in the 1990
  bollywood film Dil is based on Carl Perkins
  Blue Suede Shoes, sung with Hindi lyrics

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Bollywood meets Hollywood

• Moulin Rouge , Bend It Like Beckham, The Guru
• http//youtube.com/watch?v19R4gaOWqAk
• in 2004, a stage version of the Bollywood film
  Hum Aapke Hain Koun played in Londons West End
• A. R. Rahman, a popular Indian film composer, was
  recruited for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams