Cultural Significance of Bollywood

The popularity of Bollywood produced films have steadily increased over the years in Southeast Asia with the economic reforms of the 1990s in India. For all I know, most people in the West are aware of the term with a shallow understanding to it with a few people who have actually studied the facts behind it. In the process of selecting my interviewees, the individuals who decided to proceed with the interview held very broad, generalist views on the first two questions. Many of them have never had the opportunity to experience a Bollywood film. The closest they would consider to be “Bollywood-esque” is Slumdog Millionare. I then shifted my research on four other individuals who came from an Indian background. My participants were Shyla (F), Nitya (F), Shamir(M) and Arun(M), all students of BU. Each individual had different origins, which is what made the results from each interview interesting, to me at least. Shyla and Shamir are both first generation born in the US. Nitya’s family migrated to Africa, where she was born and eventually settling down in the United States. Lastly, Arun and his family reside in Hong Kong, where a big population of Indians lives. All of them had similar responses to the first two questions I asked. To them, Bollywood is the Indian film industry located in Bombay, where specifically Hindu movies are made and distributed to regions of Indian population. Although often compared to Hollywood, Bollywood makes a different types of genres but the most popular are romance. Shyla, who often goes to Bollywood cinemas in the local Boston area, thinks that the movies now are becoming more “sci-fi and tech-related.”

Dudrah provided a very interesting analysis and commentary in her review of the Bollywood film, Pardes. She provides a clear and descriptive summary of the film, capturing the thematic elements and highlighting in depth details of personalities and cultural meanings that may be overlooked by a non-Bollywood enthusiast.