Bollywood: Just a Dream?

A lot of people have tried to define Bollywood in many ways, and yet lines blur when we talk about what kind of cinema it is: regressive, idealistic or escapist?

Big budgeted movies that have been so popular in the UK show rich and opulent houses, but the reality remains that more than half of the population of India are below the poverty line. A young girl waiting for her man for 10, even 20 years is a common sight in Bollywood, but the fact is that the Indian youth is like any other, with break-ups and flings, marriages and divorces being fairly ordinary.

“People don’t realise that what we portray in our movies is how the rest of the world looks at us. While we’re still more traditional than the west, it is a lie to say that the young Indians don’t even kiss!” says Michael Earnest, a film director who has recently moved to UK to make a film.

Siddharth Singh, a Bollywood blogger, thinks Bollywood it is neither regressive nor escapist. “I think Bollywood is very idealistic. It takes emotions and feelings and distils them down to the essentials. So being in love means being madly in love; love & respect for your parents takes it to extremes. I think it's about idealising human relationships and experiences.”

Sunny Singh, an Indian novelist who also writes on Indian cinema, thinks that these terms over-simplify what Indian cinema stands for. “Idealist probably comes a little close to describing what Bollywood is but I don’t think we should define the whole industry with a particular genre of film” she says.

But what remains a fact is that Bollywood is the biggest film industry in the world, with a pwer to influence billions. The concern then becomes if whether the film industry itself utilizes this power correctly.