Breaking Out in Bollywood Dance Sequences
How would life be if the dance sequences we see in Bollywood movies was an everyday thing? It’s amazing how influential popular culture is and how it can affect different cultures. Today in America, most Hollywood movies aren’t like the musicals of Bollywood, which is both a good and bad thing. Good and bad because everyone’s definition of the two is DIFFERENT.
I typically like the “shortness” of Hollywood films because some plots are not meant to be dragged another hour. However, the brevity does short change great movies that would benefit from another hour, and it short changes the movie watcher, the writer, the director… basically everyone. It benefits our imagination and creativity, however at the same time it leaves us in an abyss of darkness. Like all things in life there is a good to every bad and a bad to every good.
If you can look past the “Americanizing,” the goofy jokes, the (sometimes) horribly long run time, etc, there are some advantages. Can you imagine opening up a movie soundtrack market? I’m not talking about the score, but actual songs… with lyrics. How much revenue would that increase? How much more of a cult classic can a movie become? The possibilities are endless, we see this in many of the older Bollywood movies: Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Diwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, etc. The list goes on and on, and why? Because of the songs—tailored specifically for that movie, for that scene, for those actors—the film’s impact on us heightened. I’ve seen plenty of pre-blog era posts (think myspace) which includes the following information: date, time, “current song”, and the body text. Music can have a profound affect on thoughts. We rely on our senses, but we sometimes fail to realize that our senses are interconnected. Movies have limitations; we see and hear. There is no smell, feel, or taste… so to get the most out of the situation you crank up the audio and visual aspects.
This is where Bollywood and Hollywood begin to draw their differences. Bollywood, used to, and I mean USED TO lean a bit more towards the audio aspect of film. I can go ahead and claim that all of the Hindi movies considered classics had GREAT songs. Hollywood seems to be relying heavily on CGI, special effects, etc. nowadays. Western culture has always seem to have been about imagery. Using powerful imagery to invoke certain feelings has been characteristic of many great novels. Implementing that same technique into movies shows that there has been a shift in how American culture has moved from the books to the box office.
Books allow the imagination to run wild; however in movies, the imagination is limited to boundaries set up by the director. The more control you have over an aspect, the more meticulous you have to be in order to induce the particular feeling you have in mind. Reading a book allows the reader to relate themselves to the characters and situations. We often like to sympathize with characters from books; in our minds we give them faces and qualities similar to those of our family, friends, and acquaintances. Movies remove that feature as far as “story telling” goes, so you have to compensate.
Great movies should be more than just an intriguing story line, they should be an experience. We go to weddings, but can you imagine a wedding with “Bollywood style” dancing? Synchronized dance sequences, although extremely cliche in Indian culture, are FUN. They are exciting because you really only see them in the movies, but imagine seeing them at weddings, receptions, engagements. Hell, maybe will get common enough that it will be something you can experience in the quad in-between classes, but who knows?
