CASTE INFLUENCE IN BOLLYWOOD CINEMA
Submitted by:
Leora d’cunha
BA (J&MC) 5TH Sem
INTRODUCTION
Caste is one such factor in India where many controversies have been revolving around it. The notion that cinema is being developed in order to entertain people is been very critical. Films are more of political and ideological objectives. Hence, films are more biased and secure a negative position amongst the Dalits perspective during the past one century of the film world. Caste as a typical reality of India is a fact that is widely accepeted but it has been given a negative approach by the Bollywood film makers.
As with so much in India, caste is a olden institution that prevails in everyday life, the mechanics of which remain
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The decorative and bulging style of the city rich, Western attire, foreign locations and cosmopolitanism gripped the narratives making Shakti Samant and Pramod Chakravarthy household names. (Gooptu 2012) The bourgeois hero was a romantic lover, good hearted and indulged mainly to satisfy the burning emotional quench. In the times of Shammi Kapoor and Rajesh Khanna as the spokespersons of Bollywood, it was difficult to assume that popular cinema could notice the other wretched world. Caste was completely blacked out as if the socialist dreams were already fulfilled within the first decade itself. However the upper caste names, brahmanical cultural rituals and Hindu aesthetics were portrayed as the natural assets of the entire …show more content…
In the mid-90s, the novelist Arundhati Roy vilified the makers of Bandit Queen, the most realistic and politically challenging film ever made about caste. The heroine was the real-life Phoolan Devi, whose gang-rape by the men of a higher-caste village turned her into a mass-murdering vigilante. Roy objected to Devi's sexual abuse being shown (albeit very inexplicitly) on screen while Devi was alive – despite the fact that Devi had given her express consent. Roy's hyper-sensitive Indian sexual mores dominated the larger debate on caste.
"But gender and caste could not be separated," says Farrukh Dhondy, who wrote the film. "The fact is that Devi was raped because she was lower caste and those men thought they could get away with it. A woman's life in India is very much defined by caste."
After 60 years of Indian democracy, lower castes have now established themselves as powerful voting blocs, leading to the rise of Mayawati, the first dalit woman to be elected to India's parliament and chief minister of its largest state, Uttar Pradesh – one of the most powerful figures in the country, able to make or break a
Thousands of years ago, Indian society developed into a complex system based on different classes. This system is known as the Caste System. It separated Indians into different castes based on what class they were born into. As thousands of years went by, this system grew larger and became further complex (Wadley 189). This system caused frustration for the Indian citizens because they were receiving inequality.
It is these ideas that that sometimes promote the wrong image to Indian society. By promoting the ideas of caste people may be influenced to do the same in real life which can result in an array of situations. People may run away from home, or even commit suicide as a result of not being allowed to be with whom they please.
Globalization is often misrepresented as the growing influence of the western culture in the world and so we tend to state that Hollywood is influencing Bollywood to a great extent. An argument can be made to justify the validity of that statement. However, this paper aims at presenting the influence of Bollywood on Hollywood in terms of music, dance and visual representation. This paper deals with a specific part of globalization, providing evidence that it is not only related to the spreading influence of the western culture but also of eastern culture. Feature film produced in 2009 Courtesy: UNESCO Indian movies began production in the beginning of the 20th century and were, much like American films, in black and white.
Also, the film revealed women empowerment and how superior they can be compared to men. While demonstrating sexual objectification, empowerment, there was also sexual exploitation of the women, shown through the film. Throughout this essay, gender based issues that were associated with the film character will be demonstrated while connecting to the real world and popular culture.
This essay explains the journey of Bollywood (Indian Film Industry) and how it has changed itself and its audience’s perspective on Hindi Cinema. Applying the key features from Dennis McQuail’s “Normative Theory”, the relationship between Bollywood and the audience, controlled by the censorship board will be explained; and how both, the Bollywood industry and Censor Board are responsible for bringing changes to each other in the terms of rules, regulations, audience’s attitudes and their demands, in every period of time. According to McQuail (2010), a normative theory is adopted to clear the confusion prevailing in the information industry, that has become self-centred in modern days; and also to examine if the information created is to serve own self or the government. There have been endless debates by the contrasting individual ideas on how the media should be controlled from displaying unethical contents, and normative theory helps in guiding the individuals (theorists, writers, society and general public) to produce suggestions and ideas that media should follow, for the benefit of society and media (McQuail, 2010). The Indian Film Industry was established in 1913 but began to be known in 1920 (Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 2010). Bollywood, since then, was and is still controlled by the censor board, however the censor board went through a few transformations, from being independently owned by police heads of every region, to Bombay Board of Film Censors, and finally to the Central Board of Film Censors in 1952 (Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 2010). Cinema rules were reedited in 1983 and the censor board was re-named to the Central board of Film Certification (Indian Ministr...
From beginning to end, the novel, “The God of Small Things”, authored by Arundhati Roy, makes you very aware of a class system (caste) that separates people of India in many ways. This separation among each other is surprisingly so indoctrinated in everyone that many who are even disadvantaged by this way of thinking uphold its traditions, perhaps for fear of losing even more than they already have, or simply because they do not know any other way. What’s worse, people seen as the lowest of the low in a caste system are literally called “untouchable”, as described in Roy’s novel, allowing, according to Human Rights Watch:
The pleasure of watching a great cinema or conversely the disappointment and frustration of watching a poor film, is familiar to most of us. Cinema is one of the most popular and vibrant cultural practices reflecting a plethora of social, economic and cultural phenomena in modern societies. Cinema sometimes is the cultural reconstruction of our daily lives, sometimes an entree to a different time or place or idea that otherwise is difficult or even impossible to access. They remix the real, the unreal, the present, real life, memory, and dream on the same shared mental level. Cinema has the power to move people; it has been a very successful medium with a global reach and speaks the language of universality. It has entertained and influenced people across the spectrum in places as diverse as Jakarta, New York, Tokyo and Mumbai. This paper will try to look into the mass appeal and popularity of Indian cinema.
Radu Ban and Vijayendra. (2007). The Political Construction of Caste in South India. Working paper
India as a nation has evolved tremendously over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Due to the effects of colonization, economic liberalization and globalization, India has been influenced by western principles of politics, society and commercialism. One of the major ways in which western influence has affected India is through its films. While Indian cinema encompasses a wide variety of film genres, this paper will be primarily focusing on Bollywood which may at times be referred to as Hindi films or masala films. In this paper I will be discussing how western influences are existent in film advertisement, film settings and brand placement in Hindi films and how these influence have all attributed to the westernization of Bollywood films. In order to understand how these three factors have attributed to the westernization of Bollywood films, I will provide historical background on India and Hindi films. Then I will provide information regarding what role each factor had on westernizing Hindi films.
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Mahesh Dattani writes on the burning issues that beset the post-independence Indian society, whether it is communal discord, politics and crime, growing homosexuality or the gender bias. He uses stage to condemn many of the drawbacks prevailing in society. His plays depict marginalized groups of society, people who are considered misfits in a society where stereotyped attitudes and notions reign supreme. His plays have varied content and varied appeal.
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The study is about the cultural representation of the society in the local films and its impact on the society’s behavioral change i.e. Pakistani films or in Lollywood films, various researcher
Vijay Tendulkar’s seminal play ‘Kanyadaan’ is a ruthless criticism of this caste-ridden Indian society.But what is interesting is that Tendulkar highlights here caste system,rather he pinpoints how all attempts of social amelioration prove fruitless in our progressive post independent society.This article shows the predicament of Nath Devalikar,the protagonist of this drama when he confronts hazards in real life in his effort to abolish caste system.Side by side with this ‘dalit’ and ‘elite’ issue, this play also shows foolishness of a theorist who keeps his daughter’s life at stake to prove the supremacy of his theory.The play also obliquely hints at the pathetic condition of women in a patriarchal society.
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