Bollywood and Indianness
I have time and again pondered over the pitiful situation that we have as Bollywood as a brand name representing Indian cinema to the world outside (just google with “bollywood+jocalling” to see my posts on this topic). For a long time, it used to be the self-styled ambassadors of Hindi cinema who keeps conducting the “Indian” film award functions outside India who are in a desperate need of selling the Bollywood brand in the name of India and Indian culture. But how would you feel when a Minister of State, who is the newest political messiah (after APJ Abdul Kalam – who also was mostly just hype) of our urban upper-middle-class babies, says this in the TED?
The fact is that Bollywood is now taking a certain aspect of Indianness and Indian culture around the globe.
Now think about the greatness of the times we are in – Bollywood being the face of not just Indian film, but also Indianness and Indian culture.
And what exactly happened to the quality of TED Talks? I think their tag line still says “ideas worth spreading”.
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December 2nd, 2009 at 10:12 am
It says, “certain aspect” what’s wrong with that? All Indian cinema carry a certain aspect of Indianness and Indian culture. It’s just that Bollywood movies reach more people than other regional cinema.
However, I completely agree with your broader point of Bollywood eclipsing other Indian cinema. Something needs to be done about it because there is a lot of interesting cinema being made outside of B’wood, even in Hindi. It irritates me when some idiot from another country quips like a wise man, “Indian filmmakers are all copycats”…obviously, what they’re referring to is B’wood filmmakers.
March 5th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Jo,
APJ Abdul Kalam is just a hype?? What was that supposed to mean???