Why is Bollywood SO important to Indian people?

Yesterday, the Times of India reported that a Thane resident stabbed and shot his wife after watching the movie Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. He took his wife to see the movie, hoping that she would be persuaded to do what Preity Zinta did: walk off and let him marry his girlfriend! When she refused, he wanted to kill her. Fortunately, she survived and told this bizarre story. In other parts of India, posters of the movie have been torn down and some activists in Madhya Pradesh are demanding that the movie be banned! Despite the fact that the movie has broken all records for an opening weekend and the cash registers are still blazing, the stars and the producers are having to defend themselves from offended viewers and critical reviewers. As we were chatting last night, my husband reminded me that this scenario is all too familiar. The sets of the movie Water were burned down. Back in the early 1990s, the song “Choli Ke Peeche” was controversial enough that people wanted it banned. And there have been countless instances where the depiction of anything other than the mythical, idealistic, and patriarchal families have been met with tremendous resistance.

People claim to be offended because they can’t watch such movies with their families. Yet some of the movies that they DO watch with their families are often totally inappropriate! There are certain unwritten (and totally illogical, if I may say so) rules for what is considered “okay”. Pelvic thrusts by scantily clad women are okay in Bollywood if they are in a “dream” sequence. When the dream sequence is over, a woman must be sari-clad and traditional to be portrayed as “good”. Divorces are okay as long as one person is the “villain” and can either be reformed, or dies. Similarly, rifts between families are okay, as long as at the end of the day, they can get back together and sing some songs and shed tears of joy. So basically, Indians are okay with modern situations and modern problems being depicted in a hindi movie, but only as long as the resolution is purely in line with family values!

Whether it the undisputed success of something like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun or the disputed success of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, one important question arises: Why do Indians take Bollywood movies so seriously? For a culture that is thousands of years old, that has survived colonialism, and absorbed influences from all over the world without sacrificing its identity, why are we so scared that some random movie or the other will ruin our culture, ruin our children’s values and ultimately ruin our identity? We often criticize the West for being a more shallow culture than ours. Yet, it looks like we are often not strong enough to handle even a mere piece of fiction that challenges our values.

To see this more clearly, consider the difference between the reaction to KANK and the Hollywood movie “Closer” (which is very similar). A huge chunk of the American population is Christian and rather conservative. Marriage is the basic foundation of life for most of these people and they are probably as conservative as their counterparts in India who want KANK banned. Yet, they would watch Closer without throwing a fit about their society, their values, and the effect on their children. Most conservative Americans would watch it, and if they didn’t like it, just say they didn’t like it, tell their friends they didn’t like it, and then move on with life without thinking about it again. Why do we Indians react in a way that is so much more extreme? Why do we feel personally threatened and offended by the fictitious story of four people in New York City?????? My husband and I tried to figure out some answers yesterday and came up with a few. For starters, I think Americans don’t take their kids to movies that are not appropriate for kids, and so they don't need to worry about "corrupting the youth". In India, we tend to think it is okay to bring ALL kids to ALL movies. Go to any Indian movie and there will be dozens of kids regardless of whether the movie is Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Main Hoon Na, or KANK. It is really not fair to take kids to inappropriate movies and then say the movie was bad because it wasn't for kids.

A second and more important reason for the difference between the Indian and American reaction to movies like KANK or Closer is that, I think we Indians use Bollywood to help us construct rosy images of perfect families so that we can escape the realities of our own families. National data shows us that 10% of all Indian marriages end in divorce or separation. We don’t need data to know that prostitution is rampant in India. And so is the practice of extra-marital affairs. All of us who have lived there know that a LOT goes on beneath the surface of every family. We all know that Indian marriages and Indian families are full of all the same “normal” issues that people all over the world face. There are also additional problems that come from living in tighter-knit families and inter-generationally extended families. The difference between Indians and Americans isn’t that Indians don’t have family problems, but rather they prefer to cover up their problems and hide them from broader societal views. When divorces occur in America, they often say "hey, it didn't work out". When divorces occur in India, they are rarely discussed and when they are discussed, the person talking about it depicts themselves as a total victim, and the other person as literally a monster of some sort. We have a clannish mentality and tell whatever story we have to for the sake of the reputation of the clan! Indians have loved movies like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun because it somehow validate our denial of real problems, and makes us feel that maybe if we cover things up enough, our family will look like the family in the movie. Indians abroad like Kajol in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge or Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham because again, she helps them believe that their daughters will be similar to Kajol in those movies. They want to believe that they are like the families in these movies---living abroad, but oh so connected to their roots and raising kids like Kajol! Maybe the American’s are less in denial about the difficulties in human relationships, and don’t need Hollywood to give them rosy pictures of perfection so that they can pretend like they are living perfect lives in perfect families?

My husband pointed out that in the US, teenagers take movies to heart, and emulate the characters much as we do in India throughout our lives. In the US though, people grow out of it by the time they are in college! I hope that we Indians can grow out of our tendency to use Bollywood to either educate our children, or validate our own dreams or cover up our own problems. Movies are ultimately works of fiction. If we can identify with a movie or a character, thats great. If we can't, or if things don't work out for us the way they do in a movie, it doesn't mean that we should resort to crazy actions like hurting a spouse, burning posters, burning a movie's set or demanding a ban. I thought this is obvious to all of us, but apparently not?