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Mumbai is the center of India's huge Hindi film
industry, producing 120 feature films a year. Much of the glamour associated
with the city stems from its celebrated position as the dream-factory of the
nation. The local film industry is known as Bollywood. It's a ragtag
speculative trade, flush with black money and low on innovation. The films
it produces tend to be spectacular melodramatic fantasies. They are known
disparagingly as 'masala movies' because they are made to an established
formula that mixes a variety of ingredients - action, violence, music,
dance, romance and moralizing - into one outrageous blend. While plenty of
thought- provoking 'artistic' Indian films are appreciated in the west,
masala movies are largely viewed with contempt. It's not hard to figure out
why. Stock characters, exaggerated acting, self-conscious editing,
implausible, narratives and heroines who burst into song every five minutes
are just the beginning of a long list of unlikely features that you are
going to have to accept at face value if you want to enjoy a Bollywood
flick. Despite being dismissed as escapist claptrap, plenty of masala movies
get their narrative drive from social issues like communalism, ethnicity and
caste. Many also address the effects of modernization and urbanization on
traditional Indian institutes such as the family and marriage. As you'd
expect from any vibrant cultural form, masala movies are a reflection of
India's social and political milieu. This doesn't diminish their appeal or
(thank goodness) unduly imbue them with profundity, but it does mean
they have an astonishingly direct feed into the lives of their audiences
that outsiders may find hard to fathom. On the surface it may be Rambo,
Romeo and Robin Hood, but the subtext is likely to be the Mahabharata,
dharma, and social justice. In this context , it's not surprising that
masala movies have been one of the most potent forces shaping Indian ideas
of nationhood. |
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