Spend enough time on the internet and you are bound to come across a humorous video or two thousand involving an excerpt from a Bollywood film. They’re almost as much a staple of the internet as cute cat videos and they’re usually pretty hilarious, especially to those of us in the world who do not have much of an idea about India and modern Indian culture.
India is a well known culture of the world and most people have a general idea of their significance in history. Columbus was searching for a new route to India and is somehow responsible for the moniker of “Indian” being attached to the indigenous people of the Americas. India was known as the “jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. Spices from India were coveted by the rest of the world for centuries. The Taj Mahal is possibly the greatest monument to love in the world. The Kama Sutra is an ancient secret sex manual. Gandhi and Mother Teresa showed the world how to be tolerant and compassionate. Two of the World’s major religions were born there (Buddhism and Hinduism). Their Himalayan Mountain range is world famous. Their food and musical culture is very complex and respected in both fields by masters all over the globe as being more nuanced than most traditional cuisines or musical theories.
The list goes on and on. Most of us know these things without having to think too hard and this long list is full of reasons to respect India and its cultural contribution to humanity. Yet, show us one video of a little person breakdancing to antiquated dance music on a big boombox and we might find ourselves losing all decorum and respect for these bizarre people and their strange culture.
When I moved to India, the thing that consumed the most of my luggage besides clothes was a massive collection of DVDs. I had a small idea of Indian cinematic culture and I wanted nothing to do with it! In fact, I lived there for half a decade before I really gave Bollywood movies a chance.
The term “Bollywood”, for those who don’t already know, is a play on the word “Hollywood” (duh!) with the “B” coming from Bombay, where most Hindi language films are produced. Bollywood is a general term used in the west for Indian cinema but there are actually so many different languages spoken in India and so many different cultures that there are a number of “ollywoods” like “Tollywood” (South Indian Cinema) and “Kollywood” (Bengali Cinema) and so forth. Each of these cinematic cultures also have quite different uses of humour and other conveyances of emotion that directly correlate to their different cultural preferences. Still Bollywood reigns supreme and people all over South Asia likely understand enough Hindi, the language spoken in Bollywood films, to enjoy Indian cinema throughout the region.
Many of the hilarious moments highlighted on the internet for all of us to laugh at are actually from older films. It is easy to laugh at the things that were supposed to be cool 20 years ago. Watch a Hollywood film from the eighties or nineties starring someone like Kurt Russell or some B movie actor like Frank Stallone and it easy to cringe and crack up. Watch a true B movie like The Toxic Avenger or any other film shown on the USA network in the nineties and chances are you would actively destroy all evidence of such cinematic treasures if they were the chosen films to represent American culture to the rest of the world in the 21st Century. Anyone who has seen these films knows there is an element of tongue and cheek. Somehow, we can easily understand the way our own entertainment is meant to be appreciated but we have a difficult time understanding another culture’s reason for enjoying their own style of entertainment.
Okay, I get it, but what about all the singing and dancing? I am happy to report that there are less and less musical numbers in Bollywood films these days. At one time, and still today, the music industry and the film industry were more or less one and the same. This is definitely something difficult to comprehend in the West where the two industries are very much separated. The songs people love to listen to in India are the songs that are featured in indian films. While this might seem strange at first glance, it isn't much different than the feeling you get when listening to “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” by the Rolling Stones if the first time you heard that song was from the intro to the movie “Blow”. It is hard to separate the association with the film scene that featured some of our favorite songs if we were first introduced to these songs from a film’s soundtrack.
Another thing to consider that isn’t as much of an issue to the extreme degree that it is in India is poverty. There is extreme poverty in India. Affording a ticket to the theatre to see a film is not as simple as doing your chores for the week as a kid and spending your allowance at the local Regal Cinemas. With such poverty, you can imagine the number of households that go without televisions or playback devices like VCRs, DVD players or Blu Ray players. So, when all you get is the sparse chance to see a movie at the local theatre every once in a while, you want the full spectrum of entertainment to stretch your rupee. You want a spectacle! You want music. You want dance. You want drama, tragedy and comedy all rolled into a three hour extravaganza!
Lastly, something I was so happy to learn is that the things we find funny in Indian Cinema, those quirky weird things that are shared across the internet that make us all laugh, are funny to Indians too! One of the best traits of the Indian people is that most of the time they do not take themselves so seriously as many cultures do in the West. Indians are very lighthearted most of the time and, though the times they are a changin’, most of India will have a better joke to tell about themselves than you could ever think of. Witt is very nuanced in India and everything from subtle British style humour to slapstick comedy is appreciated. Indians are quite intelligent, even when uneducated (think Slumdog Millionaire), and their humour is, more often than not, quite clever.
So, the next time you watch a video online that is meant to be funny involving clips from Indian Cinema, feel guiltless when you laugh. Laugh from your gut and enjoy it for what it is. Chances are all of India is laughing with you.
