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India Has a Film Industry?
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10834 |
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Section : |
The Arts
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1986 |
2,138 Words |
| Author
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Sanjiv Prakash
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India's film industry is the largest in the world. On an average, Bombay, which is India's Hollywood, turns out 400 full-length motion pictures in a year. Bombay, nestled in the extreme western corner of the country on the edge of the Arabian Sea, is the urban trendsetter of this nation of 750 million people.
To give a real-life example of how much films influence Indian life, one has only to look at the screen to note what the latest fashion is. If a casual approach is in with the motion pictures, then so will India's 200-million-plus regular moviegoers strive to be casual, in the way they dress or in the way they may carry themselves. In the mid-1970s, when Bruce Lee-style kung fu was the martial art of the day, thousands of Indians started enrolling in kung fu training schools run by amateurs, with many unfortunate endings far removed from the slickness being pushed by films inspired by martial arts from Heart of the Dragon.
The Bombay film industry is totally film-based. In other words, it caters primarily to movie theaters and not to television, whose day in the professional programming sense is yet to arrive. Films that are produced in Bombay run in over 10,000 large and small movie theaters in the country. Theaters in India are much different from those in the United States. The average Indian movie theater accomodates two thousand to three thousand persons at any sitting and invariably they run at full house all the time. Movies in India are, in the truest sense of the word, an escape for the masses from the harsh realities of a difficult life. As in any other society, motion pictures enable the viewer to vicariously enjoy the life of his or her dreams. But in India this has more meaning, as motion pictures display the stuff of which dreams are made.
The dreams that emanate from Bombay and descend upon the entire country are made up of pretty women in and out of love; violence; cops chasing criminals; and criminals incurring the wrath and disdain of the audience, which sees itself as part of the scenario. With each changing phase of motion picture writing a society's values and habits are forged. If being a criminal in a Robin Hood setting is in, then cases of young men looting and vandalizing business establishments are regularly investigated by the local police. If a certain type of daredevilry is the calling of the moment, then that daredevilry becomes the fashion of the hour, regardless of the sobering truth that stunts seen on screen cannot be expected to work in real life. For a nation that is so steeped in a constant struggle to keep its head above water, film provides a magical exit through which its masses pass to live in a world present only on celluloid for two to three hours.
The Bombay film industry's profound impact on Indian life is not limited to the razzle-dazzle of screenplay at its unbelievable best. In a society which is both ancient and yet trying to reach out to the twenty-first century, Bombay is a catalyst which is testing the growth of present-day cultures on a 7000-year-old society with its stern and ancient ways.
To illustrate this, one has to look at some innate facets of the society in transition, such as dowry and women's rights. From time immemorial the dowry has been a system under which the family of the bride provided the bridegroom with expensive gifts. More often than not, this system was economically crippling to the bride's family. Gradually the system developed
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