The show biz industry and Bollywood Offer Equivalent Doses of Realism along with EscapismPosted by Stokes Field on March 12th, 2021 Bollywood's elder statesman, actor Amitabh Bachchan, spectacular daughter-in-law, actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who has had many crossover success in the West, would be the two Indian movie stars most often interviewed by foreign growing media, and condescending Western reporters often ask them why Bollywood doesn't make "serious" or "realistic" films, to which many people tiredly reply that Bollywood is "escapist cinema. " I can't blame them regarding giving reporters the answer they need to hear. The Bachchans are probably trying to be polite and also diplomatic because they'd love to gain new fans under western culture. Or maybe they're just sick and tired of explaining what appears to be the baffling concept to American critics: entertainment is supposed to end up being entertaining. But Bollywood motion pictures aren't all fun and frivolity. What could be more serious and grounded in the reality of the majority of people's lives than locating love and making associations work? Or how about struggling to resolve domestic problems as well as religious differences that rip families and communities away from each other? The clash between history and modernity is another beloved Bollywood theme, as is the expertise of Indian emigrants. Indians are generally fiercely proud of their traditions and they want to protect their own values-just as American ideals are important to us-and motion pictures are vehicles for asserting the meaning of those values and exploring their relevance. Hence the claim that Hollywood is realistic because it focuses on the marginalized and degenerate and that Bollywood is not because it focuses on several social realities doesn't produce any sense. And natural or not, on a basic level, most entertainment is escapist-otherwise, precisely what would be the point? If the motion picture, The Wrestler, for example , is realistic, then I'll have to take Hollywood's word for it due to the fact I don't know any washed-up professional wrestlers, and I have no clue if Anne Hathaway's depiction of a narcissistic drug abuser in Rachel Getting Married is actually spot-on because I don't hang out with anyone like this. And yet, I watch these kinds of films and enjoy them-but certainly not because of their realism. Rather, could possibly be a departure from our normal, ordinary existence. And likewise, the reason I love Indian shows is because they're so completely different from my American life. That kicks off in august 2003, Time magazine reporter (and Bollywood fan) Rich Corliss wrote: "Movies provide audiences what they don't have. In website . S., an financially comfortable nation, films frequently deal with life on the borders: danger and deprivation are usually glamorous to those who have almost everything. The same, upside down, applies with India: it's a poor nation, so the movie image is actually of the middle, upper-middle as well as fabulously-rich classes. " I know the latter-why would poor people want to watch movies about interpersonal injustices they experience everyday? But the former, while evidently true, is unsettling if you ask me. Finding deprivation glamorous-and fancying ourselves hip and educated for it-says what to the deprived?Like it? Share it! More by this author |