Bollywood Escapism

Since coming to India, I have become quite the Bollywood fan.

The other day I saw one of the most recent celluloid products out of Mumbai, Bachna ae Haseeno (Beware Pretty Women). The story is rather simple - boy leaves girl, boy leaves girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl leaves boy, boy apologizes to girls, boy and girl live happily ever after.

Okay, perhaps not as simple a story, but how simple could it be with over three hours to fill up. The cinematography was absolutely spectacular with musical numbers that I haven’t seen in any American film since West Side Story.

We watched two other older Bollywood films on DVD as well, and the combination of all of them made me think deeply about their popularity and what this popularity says about India and indeed all of Asia where they are more popular than their Hollywood counterparts.

Most Bollywood films have a few common traits. All are full of colorful and expertly choreographed musical numbers, seemingly coming out of nowhere in the story line. Despite a great deal of sexual suggestiveness, sex scenes are forbidden, and screen kisses are usually quick and passionless. Violence is also rare, and even in a thriller about an international thief with multiple gun fights, Dhoom 2, the gratuitous blood loss and explosions that define most American films in this category, simply don’t factor in.

For a film connoisseur like me, who usually trend towards the serious, the deeply analytical. I found my booming enthusiasm and foot tapping extraordinary, yet most welcome. I suddenly didn’t care about deep meanings and movies that taught me something -- and best of all it felt great!!

My first two weeks in India had been challenging. The country is growing so fast and the rapid increase in the number of cars is overwhelming to any newcomer. New infrastructure projects abound in any city, but many are not keeping up with their project deadlines causing muddy messes along major roadways in most cities. Though I haven’t been to China, Vietnam, the UAE, or other Asian economic hot spots, I can imagine many of the same growing pains must exist in those countries as well.

This goes a long way in explaining Bollywood’s popularity. This escapism is not new, it was a huge factor in the original popularity of the Hollywood musical in the United States in the 1930s as the U.S. and most of the industrialized world was in the grips of the Great Depression. Check out this clip from the 1930s musical, Gold Diggers of 1933. Could Hollywood have been any more blatantly escapist?

Perhaps Hollywood could learn from Bollywood and adopt some of its lighter, non-violent, and excitable tendencies. As I sat watching the latest news out of my country (McCain/Palin Surging, More Home Foreclosures, 33K Jobs Lost in August), I felt like stringing up my arm and getting yet another Bollywood fix.