Comparative study of Old Bollywood Movie and New Bollywood Movie

 Assignment Topic: Comparative study of Old Bollywood Movie and New Bollywood Movie.

 Paper Name: Mass Communication and Media Studies

No: 27

Batch Year: 2013-15

Paper No: 15

Enrolment No: PG13101036

Email Id: Sejal.vaghela43@gmail.com

Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Introduction:

          Bollywood is the name of the Hindi language film industry, Based in Mumbai, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema however; it is only a part of the large Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing films in multiple languages. Bollywood is one of the largest film producers in India and one of the largest centers of film production in the world.  It is more formally referred to as Hindi Film cinema.

Raja Harishchandra (1913), by Dadasaheb Phalke, is known as the first silent feature film made in India. By the 1930s, the industry was producing over 200 films per annum. The first Indian sound film, Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara (1931), was a major commercial success. There was clearly a huge market for talkies and musicals; Bollywood and all the regional film industries quickly switched to sound filming. The 1930s and 1940s were rowdy times: India was rocked by the Great Depression, World War II, the Indian independence movement, and the violence of the Partition. Most Bollywood films were unabashedly escapist, but there were also a number of filmmakers who tackled tough social issues, or used the struggle for Indian independence as a backdrop for their plots.

In the early 2010s, established actors like Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar became known for making big-budget masala entertainers like Dabangg and Rowdy Rathore opposite younger actresses like Sonakshi Sinha. These films were often not the subject of critical acclaim, but were however major commercial successes. While most stars from the 2000s continued their successful careers into the next decade, the 2010s also saw the rise of a new generation of actors like Ranbir Kapoor, Imran Khan, Ranveer Singh, and Arjun Kapoor, as well as actresses like Vidya Balan, Katrina Kaif, Deepika Padukone, Anushka Sharma, and Parineeti Chopra.

The Hindi film industry has preferred films that appeal to all sections of the audienceand has resisted making films that target narrower audiences. It was believed that pointing for a broad range would exploit box office receipts. However, filmmakers may be moving towards accepting some box-office segmentation, between films that appeal to rural Indians and films that appeal to urban and international audiences.

Hollywood, where musicals were popular from the 1920s to the 1950s, though Indian filmmakers departed from their Hollywood counterparts in several ways. For example, the Hollywood musicals had as their plot the world of entertainment itself. Indian filmmakers, while enhancing the elements of fantasy so universal in Indian popular films, used song and music as a natural mode of articulation in a given situation in their films. There is a strong Indian tradition of narrating mythology, history, fairy stories and so on through song and dance. In addition, whereas Hollywood filmmakers strove to conceal the constructed nature of their work so that the realistic narrative was wholly dominant, Indian filmmakers made no attempt to conceal the fact that what was shown on the screen was a creation, an illusion, a fiction. However, they demonstrated how this creation intersected with people's day to day lives in complex and interesting ways.

Bollywood films are mostly musicals and are expected to contain memorable music in the form of song-and-dance numbers woven into the script. A film's success often depends on the quality of such musical numbers. Indeed, a film's music is often released before the movie and helps increase the audience.

Indian audiences expect full value for their money, with a good entertainer generally referred to as paisa vasool,  Songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills are all mixed up in a three-hour extravaganza with an intermission. They are called masala films, after the Hindi word for a spice mixture. Like masalas, these movies are a mixture of many things such as action, comedy, romance and so on. Most films have heroes who are able to fight off villains all by themselves.

The dancing in Bollywood films, especially older ones, is primarily exhibited on Indian dance: classical dance styles, dances of historic northern Indian courtesans, or folk dances. In modern films, Indian dance elements often blend with Western dance styles. Though it is usual to see Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in the same film. The hero or heroine will often perform with a troupe of supporting dancers. Many song-and-dance routines in Indian films feature unrealistically instantaneous shifts of location or changes of costume between verses of a song. If the hero and heroine dance and sing a duet, it is often staged in beautiful natural surroundings or architecturally grand settings. This staging is referred to as a "picturisation".

Bollywood films have always used what are now called "item numbers". A physically attractive female character, often completely unrelated to the main cast and plot of the film, performs a catchy song and dance number in the film. In older films, the "item number" may be performed by a courtesan dancing for a rich client or as part of a cabaret show. The actress Helen was famous for her cabaret numbers. In modern films, item numbers may be inserted as discotheque sequences, dancing at celebrations or as stage shows.

Cinematic language, whether in dialogues or lyrics, is often melodramatic and invokes God, family, mother, duty, and self-sacrifice liberally. Song lyrics are often about love. Bollywood song lyrics, especially in the old movies, frequently use the poetic vocabulary of court Urdu, with many Persian loanwords.[66] Another source for love lyrics is the long Hindu tradition of poetry about the amours of Krishna, Radha, and the gopis, as referenced in films such as Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje and Lagaan.

Satellite TV, television and imported foreign films are making huge inroads into the domestic Indian entertainment market. In the past, most Bollywood films could make money; now fewer tend to do so. However, most Bollywood producers make money, recouping their investments from many sources of revenue, including selling ancillary rights. There are also increasing returns from theatres in Western countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, where Bollywood is slowly getting noticed. As more Indians migrate to these countries, they form a growing market for upscale Indian films.

Historically, Hindi films have been distributed to some parts of Africa, largely by Lebanese businessmen. Mother India (1957), for example, continued to be played in Nigeria decades after its release. Indian movies have also gained ground so as to alter the style of Hausa fashions, songs have also been copied by Hausa singers and stories have influenced the writings of Nigerian novelists. Stickers of Indian films and stars decorate taxis and buses in Northern Nigeria, while posters of Indian films adorn the walls of tailor shops and mechanics' garages in the country. Unlike in Europe and North America where Indian films largely cater to the expatriate Indian market yearning to keep in touch with their homeland, in West Africa, as in many other parts of the world, such movies rose in popularity despite the lack of a significant Indian audience, where movies are about an alien culture, based on a religion wholly different, and, for the most part, a language that is unintelligible to the viewers. One such explanation for this lies in the similarities between the two cultures. Other similarities include wearing turbans; the presence of animals in markets; porters carrying large bundles, chewing sugar cane; youths riding Bajaj motor scooters; wedding celebrations, and so forth. With the strict Muslim culture, Indian movies were said to show "respect" toward women, where Hollywood movies were seen to have "no shame". In Indian movies women were modestly dressed, men and women rarely kiss, and there is no nudity, thus Indian movies are said to "have culture" that Hollywood films lack.

The latter choice was a failure because "they don't base themselves on the problems of the people," where the former is based socialist values and on the reality of developing countries emerging from years of colonialism. Indian movies also allowed for a new youth culture to follow without such ideological luggage as "becoming western."

The Hindi film industry was not widely known to non-Indian audiences, who would not even be aware that their material was being copied. Audiences may also not have been aware of the plagiarism since many audiences in India were unfamiliar with foreign films and music. While copyright enforcement in India is still somewhat lenient, Bollywood and other film industries are much more aware of each other now and Indian audiences are more familiar with foreign movies and music. Organizations like the India EU Film Initiative seek to stand-in a community between film makers and industry professional between India and the EU.

One of the common justifications of plagiarism in Bollywood in the media is that producers often play a safer option by remaking popular Hollywood films in an Indian context. Screenwriters generally produce original scripts, but due to financial uncertainty and insecurity over the success of a film many were rejected.

Screenwriters themselves have been criticized for lack of creativity which happened due to tight schedules and restricted funds in the industry to employ better screenwriters. Certain filmmakers see plagiarism in Bollywood as an integral part of globalization where American and western cultures are firmly embedding themselves into Indian culture, which is manifested, amongst other mediums, in Bollywood films. Vikram Bhatt, director of films such as Raaz, a remake of What Lies Beneath, and Kasoor, a remake of Jagged Edge, has spoken about the strong influence of American culture and desire to produce box office hits based along the same lines in Bollywood. He said, "Financially, I would be more secure knowing that a particular piece of work has already done well at the box office. Copying is endemic everywhere in India. Our TV shows are adaptations of American programmers. We want their films, their cars, their planes, their Diet Cokes and also their attitude. The American way of life is creeping into our culture." Mahesh Bhatt has said, "If you hide the source, you're a genius. There's no such thing as originality in the creative sphere".

The awareness of Hindi cinema is substantial in the United Kingdom, where they frequently enter the UK top ten. Many films, such as Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001) have been set in London. Bollywood is also appreciated in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. Various Bollywood movies are dubbed in German and shown on the German television channel RTL II on a regular basis.

Additionally, classic Bollywood actors like Kishore Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan have historically enjoyed popularity in Egypt and Somalia.[87] In Ethiopia, Bellwood movies are shown alongside Hollywood productions in Piazza theatres, such as the Cinema Ethiopia in Addis Ababa.[88] In the Maghreb, Bollywood films are also broadcast, though local aesthetics tend much more toward expressive or auteur cinema than commercial fare.

Conclusion:

 The changing style of Bollywood has begun to question such an acceptance. The new era features more sexually explicit and violent films. Nigerian viewers, for example, commented that older films of the 1950s and 1960s had culture to the newer, morewesternizedpasteurizations. The old days of India avidly "advocating decolonization ... and India's policy was wholly influenced by his missionary zeal to end racial domination and discrimination in the African territories" were replaced by newer realities. The emergence of Nollywood, Africa's local movie industry has also contributed to the declining popularity of Bollywood films. A greater globalized world worked in tandem with the sexualisation of Indian films so as to become more like American films, thus disproving the preferred values of an old Bollywood and falling Indian soft power.

 The Mumbai underworld has been known to be involved in the production of several films, and is notorious for superior several prominent film personalities. So here we can see many differences between old Bollywood movies and New Bollywood movies, Like in Dressing, Music, Stories, Timing, influences etc.