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Is Bollywood an imitation of Hollywood?
By: Nandita Puri
November 8, 2002
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Shabana Azmi
| Shabana Azmi finds the term
Bollywood infuriating, because according to her it suggests a pale
imitation of Hollywood, which is not true. “We produce many more
films than Hollywood and perhaps India is the only country, and
particularly Hindi cinema, which has resisted Hollywood. Hence the
term Bollywood is a great disservice to the Hindi film industry,”
says the actress.
What she says is true. The term was in fact
coined as a bit of a joke by the media somewhere around the late
seventies. According to Gulzar, the term has emerged as the way the
press looks at Hindi films. He feels the term is derogatory as it is
borrowed. Besides it did come to denote a certain kind of Hindi
cinema, an inferior version of Hollywood films. “When we say
Bollywood we definitely don’t include the cinema of Shyam Benegal or
Govind Nihalani. It only denotes the popular Hindi cinema. But now
it includes a wider genre of films and has come to
stay.”
According to Amit Khanna, who claims to have coined
the word in one of his columns way back in the late seventies, says
it arose from a certain situation. “The new wave or parallel cinema
was emerging those days and it would have been wrong to group this
kind of cinema with the prevalent popular cinema which the Bombay
film industry represented. That of song, dance and melodrama, unlike
the realistic cinema of new wave filmmakers. Hence Bollywood emerged
as a term to describe popular cinema.
“Today of course the word
Bollywood has got international recognition. It has become a brand
name like Darjeeling tea or Basmati rice. Besides, it is easy to
roll out.”
Agreed, Mr Khanna, but then Basmati rice does not
include all varieties of rice, nor does Darjeeling tea include all
varieties of teas. They mean a particularly fine quality of a given
product. Bollywood, I’m afraid doesn’t hence people find it
derogatory.
Like for Govind Nihalani, it doesn’t give a happy
feeling. “It is second-hand. It is derivative and not original. We
may justify the misnomer by one reason and that is that 90 per cent
of the films are inspired by Hollywood and that is hardly any
consolation.”
Surprise. Surprise. David Dhawan, who makes a
living, and a successful one at that, on Bollywood films, however
doesn’t really agree with the term. “It is not fair to simply use a
derivative term like that. Bollywood implies a silly imitation and
Indian cinema or for that matter Hindi cinema has contributed more
than soppy romances and melodrama.”
Another surprise. The
un-Bollywood actor and the face of serious Indian cinema, Om Puri,
on the other hand feels the term “Bollywood is jolly good as it
always ends happily. How does it matter what you call it as long as
it comes easily? And the term Bollywood sounds derogatory not
because of the name but because of the films they produce. If a
majority of the films the industry churns out is rubbish, why just
blame it on a name.”
Yes, Bollywood is merely a media
coinage. Just like the media had dubbed Rajiv Gandhi Mr Clean.
Some names are easy on the tongue and one gets hooked to it.
Also the NRI population has had a lot to do with the popularisation
of this word. It is the Hindi blockbusters which are popular with
the NRIs in the UK and US and not the Tamil or Telugu blockbusters.
So it was with a very patronising attitude that the NRIs dubbed
popular Hindi cinema as Bollywood films which the foreigners found
stylish and easy on the tongue.
But how it is projected is
totally up to us. Take the example of the word Mughals. The
so-called Mughals were actually known as Temurians or as those
belonging to the Temuria khandan. Earlier the word Mughal was
derogatory, meaning rowdies. But now it means the great Mughals.
Similarly several years from now, the term Bollywood may not be so
infuriating after all. It is just a matter of usage, attitude and
time. |
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