É muito comum que Bollywood seja usado como um termo genérico pra todos os filmes indianos, assim como costumamos chamar de Hollywood todos os filmes feitos nos Estados Unidos e Inglaterra - e assim ignorando as diferenças entre cada região; comerciais e de arte; de dentro da indústria ou independentes. Muitos dos fãs de filmes ocidentais negam-se a colocar Woody Allen, Micheal Bay e Jean Luc Godard dentro da mesma categoria "Hollywood", e, da mesma maneira, os fãs de cinema indiano recusam-se a chamar de Bollywood tudo o que for de cinema indiano.

A Índia tem várias indústrias de filmes populares - uma pra cada língua regional - mas Bollywood, especificamente, refere-se à indústria de filmes em língua hindi baseados em Mumbai. O termo surgiu na década de 70 com uma mistura do nome Bombay (antiga Mumbai) com Hollywood.

Mas apesar do nome, Bollywood desenvolveu-se paralelamente e quase isolado de Hollywood. Alguns curtas foram feitos na Índia nos finais do século XIX, sendo o primeiro longa tendo sido feito em 1913 (Raja Harishchandra) e o primeiro falado em 1931 (Alam Ara). Inicialmente, havia um punhado de cidades importantes produzindo filmes ao redor da Índia, mas lentamente Mumbai foi se tornando destino de talentosos diretores, escritores, atores etc de toda a Índia - o que se intensificou após a Independência, em 1947, quando muitos preferiram ficar na Índia ao invés do Paquistão. Um dos exemplos mais importantes são os Kapoors, a mais famosa família de Bollywood, feita de quatro gerações e reis das bilheterias. Eles são originalmente da região do Punjab que pertencia ao Paquistão.

Mas além de Bollywood ter sido um centro de talentos, há outro importante fator que separa Bollywood do resto das outras indústrias regionais de cinema indianas: a língua hindi, que é a língua da capital indiana, Nova Délhi. Após a Indendência, houve um movimento pra tornar o hindi a língua nacional e os filmes falados nessa língua tornaram-se a indústria nacional, apesar de haver um imenso número de pessoas que não falam o hindi. O papel do hindi da Índia ainda é muito controverso e existem extensas partes do país em que Bollywood não é assistido. Ainda assim, Bollywood continua sendo considerado representante do cinema indiano e onde há a diáspora indiana é Bollywood que é distribuído, assim como nos países em que filmes indianos têm mercado, a saber: África, Ásia Central, Oriente Médio e Europa Oriental (incluindo Rússia).

Então, resumindo, está correto chamar o indicado ao Oscar Lagaan um filme bollywoodiano, já que ele foi feito pela indústria hindi, mas não é correto chamar Quem Quer Ser um Milionário? um filme bollywoodiano. Quem Quer Ser um Milionário? baseou-se na índia, mas foi feito por ocidentais para um público ocidental. Da mesma forma, é correto chamar Anil Kapoor, que atua em Quem Quer Ser um Milionário?, um ator bollywoodiano, já que ele estrelou em inúmeros filmes de Bollywood, mas não é correto chamar Dev Patel, protagonista do filme, um ator bollywoodiano. Ele é descendente de indianos, mas nunca havia atuado em filmes falados em hindi. Herança indiana sozinha não faz dele parte de Bollywood.

A palavra Bollywood pode ser ofensiva quando usada indiscriminadamente, como na música "Carmensita", de Devendra Barnhart, em que Natalie Portman faz a princesinha bollywoodiana e que Bollywood é representado como algo super exótico. Por causa da associação da palavra Bollywood com imagens de atrizes brancas como Natalie Portman dançando com cobras sedutoras, há um movimento dentro de Bollywood querendo renomeá-lo para HiFi - sigla pra Hindi Film Industry (Indústria de Filmes Hindi) - o que separaria os filmes hindi completamente dessas conotações negativas. No entanto, apesar disso tudo, o importante é que Bollywood vem se tornando internacionalmente reconhecido e, se nada for feito pra educar as pessoas que não conhecem esse cinema, então Bollywood será sempre representado com imagens de uma Índia exótica e seus verdadeiros tesouros serão sempre desconhecidos dos críticos ocidentais, que seguirão chamando os filmes bollywoodianos de cópias bobas.

O que faz um filme de Bollywood?

Lá nos começos da história do cinema, a indústria estadunidense de filmes desenvolveu um estilo que valorizava o realismo, com o uso de uma câmera discreta. Milhares de quilômetros dali, a indústria de filmes de Mumbai percebeu que uma forma estilizada de drama, que incorporasse músicas nas narrativas, funcionaria melhor com as audiências indianas. As vastas diferenças entre as "linguagens" cinemáticas do cinema indiano popular e o do estilo ocidental são, provavelmente, a grande causa das zoações sobre Bollywood na cultura popular ocidental.

Se um espectador não sabe como entender as deixas da história que levam às músicas do filme, então ele provavelmente ficará confuso quando os personagens principais começarem a dançar. E se o espectador não entender os paralelos míticos dos personagens arquetípicos, também não entenderá o sentido de muitas cenas ou ainda julgará como irreais. Essa confusão entre culturas é o grande obstáculo pra ocidentais que vêem um filme indiano pela primeira vez.

O principal estilo usado em quase todo o cinema popular indiano, incluindo Bollywood, é chamado masala (em referência ao famoso tempero indiano, que mistura muitas especiarias). Se na culinária masala é uma mistura de cravo, cominho, nós moscada, pimentas e outras coisas, o filme masala é uma mistura de drama, romance, comédia, valores familiares, música, sexo e violência.

Pense em algo como Glee (música, drama, comédia, romance) ou Segurando as Pontas (Pinneaple Express - violência, comédia, valores familiares), pra ter uma ideia de como isso funciona. Cenas de comédia são usadas pra quebrar um momento de tensão; violência enfatiza a suavidade de um romance; e os valores familiares pode mesclar isso tudo. Quando um masala é bem feito, as mudanças de tom no filme podem conduzir as emoções da audiência como um maestro em uma orquestra.

Outra marca muito visível do cinema indiano é a forma estilizada de atuação, o que pra um espectador ocidental pode parecer muito exagerado. Essa forma estilizada de atuação tem raízes no teatro tradicional indiano, mas enquanto nós no ocidente não estamos acostumados a ver isso em filmes hoje em dia, isso pode ser encontrado em filmes antigos de Hollywood, assim como nas óperas, em musicais de teatro, e ainda nas peças de Shakespeare - em outras palavras, é a atuação que é experienciada em um teatro lotado.

O público indiano de um filme masala bem popular será um tanto barulhenta e irá interagir com as imagens da tela - assobiando pras suas atrizes e atores favoritos, dançando ou jogando moedas na tela durante as músicas favoritas - e então as atuações tem que ser exageradas o suficiente pra dar conta dessa multidão barulhenta.

Ainda que esteja ficando menos comum, filmes de Bollywood às vezes são feitos pra atingir as populações do interior que não fala hindi ou que não sabe ler uma legenda - e pra esses casos, a atuação exagerada dá conta de contar a história mesmo que o espectador não entenda o que os atores estejam dizendo. E mesmo hoje, diálogos importantes são ditos em inglês no meio do filme, porque se um espectador não entende hindi, existe grande chance de ele entender inglês.

A música e o local onde elas entram na narrativa são também marcas importantes dos filmes indianos populares. Os filmes não são "musicais" no sentido que estamos acostumados no ocidente, porque eles não representam um gênero separado. Se todos os filmes usam músicas na narrativa, então as músicas são apenas parte da forma com que a história é contada. Geralmente não são os atores e as atrizes que cantam suas próprias músicas, essa tarefa fica a cargo do que chamamos de cantores de playback.

Os cantores de playback acabam sendo tão conhecidos quanto os próprios atores, até mesmo pelo fato de seus trabalhos serem feitos por trás das câmeras, o que faz com que suas carreiras durem muito mais que a de um ator e atriz pra quem eles cantam. Como exemplo, a super amada cantora de playback Lata Mangeshkar começou a cantar nos seus vinte e poucos anos e está até agora, já nos 80.

Não são somente as músicas e essa mistura de tons que separam o cinema popular indiano do estilo de cinema ocidental; a estrutura de narrativa de um filme popular indiano é totalmente diferente. Ao invés de o filme ser construído em três atos, o cinema popular indiano é estruturado em dois atos de formas livres, separados por um intervalo.

Ao invés das narrativas serem levadas pelo formato dos três atos, a estrutura do cinema popular indiano vem do uso de personagens super arquetípicos, que remetem aos mitos religiosos e ao teatro folclórico. O público indiano espera ver esses personagens arquetípicos, ainda que os limites de alguns desses papéis tenham mudado em anos recentes - sobretudo dos papéis das atrizes, que se tornaram muito mais independentes.

http://www.cinemaindiano.com/2011/03/bollywood-pra-iniciantes-licao-2.html

Bollywood Character Archetypes: The Hero

By far the most important figure in Bollywood films is the hero. At his most basic, the hero is the leading man of any given film but more importantly, he is a mirror for the audience. Bollywood fans don't ask a favorite genre, they ask who your favorite hero is and your answer tells a lot about your identity as a film fan.

The hero takes the audience on a journey from childhood to adulthood, from order to chaos. This means he is always a young man - although the actors who play heroes often aren't, leading to the quintessential Bollywood phenomenon of 40+ actors playing college students and naifs. Fans take it in stride that these men play characters who still live at home with their mothers or who are a good 20 years older than their college classmate/romantic interest. (You actually do get used to it.) The hero's journey can be one of addressing past wrongs, addressing current inequalities, vanquishing evil, or a simple playing out of fate through romantic love. He will always get the girl and he will always triumph over wrong-doers, even if that triumph is purely moral. Most importantly, the hero learns his place in the community and how to be a productive member of the wider world. He's like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo combined into one incredible man. This may all sound very formulaic, and it is, to an extent, but there are hundreds of shades of hero - as many as there are actors to play him.

Another thing that keeps the hero from becoming stale is the fact that actors' off-screen lives often bleed into their on-screen personas. In fact, leading men are usually just referred to as heroes instead of actors in the press. For example, in this quote, producer/director Subhash Ghai is discussing the casting of some new films:

My film will be shot in a 40- day schedule and finished by Jan 2007 for a March release. I am introducing a new hero Anurag Sinha, a trained actor and diploma holder from FTII. Anil Kapoor will play the stellar role in the film. The film is titled Black and White, a small budget movie under Mukta Search Light. I will also direct a big -budget movie with Salman Khan and two heroines and one more hero to go on the floor in May 2007.

(Taken from this 2006 piece; emphasis added by me - and that first film Black and White is actually really good.)

These men are heroes, they don't just play them on-screen.

Bollywood has developed a whole vocabulary for dealing with heroes. The ideal hero is the masala hero, who is supposed to be good at everything from fighting to being patriotic to romancing the leading lady to busting out some fresh dance moves, but just like regular people, heroes all have their specialities. A young, fresh-faced hero who specializes in romantic roles is called a chocolate hero (or sometimes chocolate boy.) The term comes from a time when handsome pictures of men used to decorate boxes of chocolate and there is a bit of a negative implication to it. A chocolate hero may be popular with the ladies but he is usually seen as nothing more than a pretty face and any film starring a chocolate hero is going to have a heavy romance focus.

Other heroes you will encounter are the evergreen hero - referring to a hero in his 40s (and possibly even his 50s and beyond). The most famous evergreen hero is Dev Anand, who is often just referred to as Evergreen Dev Anand. The man is in his 80s today and still making movies with nubile young actresses. There is also the Angry Young Man, a phrase originally applied to Amitabh Bachchan (aka The Big B) for a series of films he did in the 1970s where he played an angry young man who extracted vigilante justice on mob bosses and government officials. An art-house hero does mostly what we in the West call indie cinema and you can also find a tragic hero, who is very similar to our own Western tragic heroes like Hamlet and Macbeth.

Not just any Average Rajesh can wander in off the street and audition for a role, a hero must be launched - not like a rocket ship but like a brand - and a lot of money and promotion goes into a new hero launch because the bigger a splash the hero makes, the quicker he can win a fan following and start generating massive profits for his backers. And depending on how powerful an actor's father is, if a launch flops he will get re-launched with a new persona. A good example of this is the launch and re-launch (and re-re-launch) of Harman Baweja. Harman Baweja is the son of Bollywood producer Harry Baweja and in 2008, Harman was launched in a film called Love Story 2050, a big-budget sci-fi extravaganza. The film was designed as a showcase for Harman as a masala hero and, thanks to daddy's money and connections, he was hyped and promoted as the next big thing, even signing on to other projects before the film had even released. Unfortunately for the Bawejas, the film failed to connect with audiences and Harman was quietly dropped from many of the films he had signed. Fast forward one year and Harman - who had changed his name to Hurman for numerology reasons and then back to Harman when Hurman didn't prove any luckier - had another chance to make a splash with an artsy romantic comedy titled What's Your Rashee. Sadly, this re-launch as a chocolate boy also failed but Harman is getting one more chance this year with It's My Life.

Less well-connected actors can get their starts as the secondary hero which is sometimes softened to parallel lead (meaning the actor isn't the protagonist but isn't going to admit that he's playing a supporting role). Sometimes the secondary hero provides comic relief and sometimes he is just there to amp up the action, give the ladies a pretty face to look at, or to add emotional resonance by dying at the right time. Films with two heroes are called, yes, two hero films. Add another hero and you get a multi-starrer.

The 1970s were a golden age of two hero films and multi-starrers. One of the most beloved is a film called Amar Akbar Anthony which stars three of the biggest heroes of the time - Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, and Vinod Khanna - as brothers who are separated at a young age and who, through the course of the film, find girlfriends, reunite with each other, save their parents from evil doers, and kick some bad guy butt. The secondary hero tag isn't a kiss of death, although some actors ego's might disagree and many charismatic secondary heroes and parallel leads have stepped up to become solo heroes.

Tune in next time to find out about the hero's girlfriend... the Heroine!

http://filmigirl.blogspot.com/2011/01/bollywood-for-beginners-post-3.html

Bollywood Character Archetypes: The Heroine

While popular Indian cinema is very much focused on the hero, this doesn't have to mean that his female counterpart, the heroine, is doomed to a career of smiling and looking pretty. The best heroines go toe-to-toe with the heroes and can even steal scenes right out from under their noses. And every Bollywood film simply must have a heroine; she doesn't need to be on screen very long but she must be there.

At her most basic the heroine has two jobs - to look pretty and to fall in love with the hero. But if the actress is popular enough (or lucky enough), she may also get her own storyline and motivations. She can be attempting to solve the murder of her beloved sister (Teesri Manzil, 1966), running away from a murderous husband and joining a gypsy clan (Caravan, 1971), following her dream to become a famous dancer (Rangeela, 1995), or just dealing with life in the big city (Wake Up Sid, 2009).

Indian culture is still more sexually conservative than Western culture and until fairly recently, heroines were neither expected nor encouraged to be overtly sexy. They were expected to be pretty, yes, but they had to appeal to both the men and the women watching in the audience and a Megan Fox-type of girl would not fly with grandma. Sometimes films would skirt around this convention by having a girl be somewhat sexy at first only to renounce her jeans and (through subtext) loose Western ways when she falls in love with the hero. The classic example is the 1970 film Purab aur Paschim (literally translated to "East and West") where heroine Saira Banu flits around in a blond beehive and mini-skirt for most of the film but then switches to a demure sari once she gives herself over to the hero. It's only been within the last 10 years or so that heroines have really become as sexualized in films as leading ladies are in Hollywood and only in the last two or three that they have been expected to have that time-honored American institution - the bikini body.

Heroines are launched just like heroes are but they don't have the same expectations weighing on them because they don't stay in the industry for as long. A popular hero can stretch his career well into his 40s and even into his early 50s before switching over to character roles but heroines tend to have an expiration date of about 30. While this seems a bit unfair, it has to do with the way popular Bollywood films are structured. The heroine is almost always a young, unmarried girl and a 30+ year old woman can't be expected to retain a virginal and girlish aura. For whatever reason, audiences are able to swallow a 40+ male naif but can't buy a 30+ female virgin. But this doesn't mean that there are no roles for women over 30 in Bollywood. There are the time-honored roles of saintly mother and her evil counterparts - the mother in law and the stepmother. Plus, there is the sexually desirable vamp - and her close kin the item girl - who is almost always an older woman. To give a recent example from Dabangg (2010), heroine Sonakshi Sinha is 23 but Malaika Aroa Khan, the item girl who drove all the men crazy with lust, is 37. I'll discuss all of these archetypes in later posts.

Because the lifespan of a heroine is so much shorter than that of a hero, most heroines do not loom as large in the popular imagination as heroes do. There are exceptions like the tragedy queen Meena Kumari who played the leading lady up and until her death from cirrhosis of the liver at age 39 but they are few and far between. The flip-side of this is that if a pretty but only mildly talented girl catches the public attention in a hit film, she can string a short career out of it and then marry a wealthy businessman. Pretty but talentless heroes don't make it further than a single flop.

One other interesting point about heroines - while the public image of the heroine on film has to be immaculate, the profession of acting has traditionally had a seedy undertone related to both rumors of the casting couch and prostitution. While there has been a long tradition of popular heroes passing the torch to their sons, daughters were not encouraged to enter the film industry. And on the occasions when heroes married their heroines, the heroines were strongly encouraged to retire. Again, within the last few years or so, this has been slowly changing. Among other things, Bollywood now has two or three daughters of famous heroes taking up the family business and one of the most bankable heroines in Bollywood is a married woman whose biggest hits are with heroes who are not her husband.

Because I know that discussion of women's roles in media can be a tricky subject, let me emphasize that this post is talking about mass entertainment. There were and are a variety of different and sometimes excellent roles for women in films with less mass appeal, such as middle class socials and art house films - but those women aren't heroines, they are actresses. Actresses may try their hand at playing heroine every once in a while but with rare exceptions, the skill sets needed to be a popular entertainer don't really overlap with those needed to be a good actress. The same is true for actors, too, of course, but I find that media critics don't often complain about hero's role being one-dimensional or silly but will complain about the heroine's.

To be sure, no matter the film, there is a good chance the heroine is going to be subject to some regressive gender politics but coming from outside the Indian culture it's important that we Westerners make sure not to impose our ideas of women's roles on Bollywood. That's not to say that we should excuse really awful tropes - like the old chestnut of having a woman kill herself if her honor (izzat) is ruined - but that we try to put aside our cultural ideals when settling in to watch a film. I'll give an example, I'm sure we're all familiar with the idea that Indians have arranged marriages. Now, our first instinct is be indignant - our culture tells us that marriage is supposed to come from a place of romantic love instead of the romantic love growing afterwards as is the ideal in an arranged marriage. There are films where a heroine gives up her romantic suitor in order to have an arranged marriage with a man she doesn't know - and these films can have happy endings. It is the opposite of how it would happen in Hollywood but keep an open mind and you can come to appreciate that these heroines usually end up very satisfied to have made the choice for family over romance.

The nature of the role of heroines in Bollywood films sometimes seems like one step forward and two steps back but she will always be here and she will always be smiling.

http://filmigirl.blogspot.com/2011/01/bollywood-for-beginners-post-4.html

Character Archetypes: MOM and POP aka MAA-BAP

One of the biggest differences between Bollywood films and Hollywood films is the inclusion of family. Evil stepmothers, power-mad uncles, greedy brothers-in-law, frivolous sisters-in-law, and good-for-nothing siblings all have their place in the Bollywood pantheon. Looming large over them all, however, are the parents. While maa (mom) is usually fairly saintly, pita-ji (respected father) can be anything from cold and calculating to a benign layabout to a well-loved patriarch.

The stereotype of the saintly Indian mother is that she can do no wrong and if she does do wrong accidentally - such as the mother of the hero in Trishul (1978) who has a baby out of wedlock because the father was weak-willed and refused to go through on his promise to marry her - you can be sure she will be redeemed with a saintly death. Mothers, dressed in demure white saris, haunt the lives of Bollywood heroes. A hero will do anything for his mother because he knows that his mother will do anything for him, including give up her life. Mothers will work their fingers to the bone to support their sons and then use those same fingers to feed their sons dinner. Mothers will always stick up for their sons and even if they will ultimately defer to the patriarch on important matters, you know that a Bollywood mother can be counted out to sneak food or money to her good-for-nothing son. Even when the saintly mother is not present, her absence will be used to explain why the hero is a rough-edged as he is - because if a man doesn't have his mother, he doesn't have anybody.

Although Bollywood, like Hollywood, can be hung up on feminine youth and beauty, the inclusion of a mother character in so many films has led to second and third winds in the careers of former heroines (and former vamps). The actresses age with their audience and women who grew up seeing Jaya Bhaduri woo the big heroes of the day, now see her playing the mother to sons much like their own.

Saintly maa does have an evil counterpart: the evil stepmother. Sometimes, this is softened to just an evil female guardian, such as an evil aunt. Like their fairytale counterparts, these selfish women will stop at nothing to ruin their charges' lives - whether it is forcing them into terrible arranged marriages, stealing their inheritances, or even murder. One thing to watch out for with evil family members is that they tend to be brought back into the fold at the end of the film. The love of a son (or less often, daughter) can and will melt the coldest of hearts. While this may seem a bit odd to people raised in Disney fairy tales like Cinderella, where the evil stepmother is punished, I find the idea that nobody - not even the shrillest of evil stepmothers - should be thrown away as worthless to be very refreshing and, dare I say it, heartwarming.

Fathers can be good or bad. Bumbling fathers who make bad business deals or who get caught up in gambling and debt are the plot movers for a whole spate of films. These incompetent fathers force daughters into performing cabaret or into joining a gang to earn money or they can force sons to try and clear the family name. In recent years, the theme of generation clash has entered the Bollywood father-child relationship. Sons and daughters who had been willing to sacrifice true love for an arranged marriage are now standing up to their parents, who don't understand the new-fangled ways of their children. This generation clash is usually played out in the greater NRI (non-resident Indian) community and usually ends with either the parents coming around to respect the choice of the children or with the children finding that their parents are right and falling in love with their arranged match. Sometimes both happen in the same film, such as the trend-setting multi-starrer Dil Chahta Hai (2001).

The inclusion of parents (and extended family) in Bollywood is so expected that not having parents in the film is a noteworthy thing. The marketing campaign for 2005's Salaam-Namaste featured the two lead actors Preity Zinta and Saif Ali Khan having a discussion about what the film was about:

Saif: [To Preity] Do you want to say a few things about this one that make it different? Preity: Well, it's a love story. Saif: [sarcastically] Oh. That's different. Preity: It's the story about a boy and a girl. Saif: [sarcastically] That's even more different.

[They bicker for a few seconds about who will be talking.]

Saif: What kind of promotion is this? You're saying girl and boy meet. They fall in love. Pehle milte hai [first they meet] and then they hate each other initially. And then they sing a song. Then they start liking each other. And then they want to get married and the families get involved and the mother and fa- Preity: No, wait! There is no family. There is no mummy, no papa… Saif: No Sass-Bahu [mother-in-law-daughter-in-law], Maa-Bap [mother-father] Tension? Preity: No. Saif: Then where is the drama?

Even though the Hollywood-inspired romantic-comedy genre has taken off in recent years, that maa-bap tension is still very much a part of a lot of the films and you should expect that the parents' wishes will be respected in the end. So, if you remember nothing else from this section, remember this: in Bollywood, mother is always right and father's permission will be gained in the end.

http://filmigirl.blogspot.com/2011/01/bollywood-for-beginners-post-5.html

Character Archetype: The Vamp

While heroines are like mayflies, living for brief bursts of glory and maa is in the background standing stoically in her white sari, vamps demand the audience's attention with their brazen attitudes, revealing outfits, and what can politely be called the oomph factor. The vamp is the funhouse mirror image of the heroine and is not much used in Bollywood anymore although she is alive and well down South (just click on the link above for a look at one of my favorite vamps). Before the heroine become so sexualized, the vamp, traditionally, was the woman who used sex to tempt the hero away from the righteous path laid out for him. Vamps, ironically, have a much longer lifespan than their good twins the heroine because while virginity is lost early, sensuality knows no age limits! (Helen, considered the best of the best, vamped her way through three generations of heroes before turning to character roles. She performed one of her most famous songs, "Yeh Mera Dil," when she was about 40 years old.)

As you may have guessed, in the early years of Bollywood, the Madonna/Whore dichotomy was very much on display in women's roles. Vamps were in all ways were the opposite of the wholesome heroines and one important marker of that in the early years of Bollywood was that vamps were not Indian. Not only were the actresses who played vamps fair-skinned and "exotic" looking (like half-French, half-Burmese Helen or Jewish Nadira) but heroines had homespun names like Sana, Pooja, and Asha, vamps were often given names like Miss Ruby or Miss Kitty - exotic and decadent Western names. This allowed filmmakers to add razzle-dazzle without sexualizing the Indian woman, who, for better or worse, was one of the symbols of the Indian Independence movement (see the 1958 film Mother India for the most famous example). So, heroines wore traditional outfits like saris and salwaar-kameez and kept fully covered from collar bone to ankle; vamps wore spangly tights and miniskirts or elaborate, brightly colored evening dresses and accessorized with peacock feathers, glitter, and blond wigs. Heroines pined stoically (sometimes through song) for the heroes to realize their true feelings while vamps actively seduced. A heroine might do something bad for the sake of her family - like infiltrate a gang of thieves - but vamps do bad things for selfish romance or for personal profit.

Vamps are creatures of fantasy - for men to drool over and for women to vicariously live through - but in the end, the vamp's selfish and non-Indian ways always result in her downfall. As cultural mores have loosened, the vamp has remained a favorite character in popular imagination. The weeping, demure heroines may have won the men in those old and earnest films but it's Helen the H-Bomb who has become the national icon. And quite a few films would have been totally forgotten without the cabaret set pieces called "item numbers" performed by the vamps or the vamps' close relative, the item girl, who appeared in films solely to dance in skimpy and outrageous costumes.

And let me give a brief word on item numbers, which I'll discuss in fuller detail in a later post when I get to the different song styles. One of the many things that can confuse beginning Bollywood viewers is this idea of the item girl who saunters in for one song and then leaves. The easiest way to understand it is to think of these songs like the guest spots that bands sometimes do on TV shows, for example, Jesse from Full House calling up the Beach Boys to come in a play a song. Item numbers are like that - songs that zazz up a movie without having anything at all do to with the main story or characters. The Beach Boys never stick around to see how DJ and Stephanie resolve a fight and item girls are similarly unconcerned with the plot of the film.

While the vamp is not much used these days, she does make an occasional appearance as the bitchy and high maintenance third point of a romantic triangle or even more rarely as a femme fatale. But the high-quality vamping petered out during the 1980s and 1990s 1970s as a casualty of the growing acceptance of a heroine's own sexual identity.

Miss Ruby and Miss Kitty may have lost to the homespun Pooja yet again but somehow this time I don't think they would mind.

http://filmigirl.blogspot.com/2011/01/bollywood-for-beginners-post-6.html

Character Archetype: The Comedian

A big part of paisa-vasool (filmi speak for getting your money's worth) is comedy and the comedian is there to provide it. Remembering Bollywood's roots in popular folk theater, you can think of the comedian as the jester of a film. Masala films have what is called a "comedy track" - a comic subplot that may or may not intersect with the main story. A recent example is the 2008 blockbuster Race, which had a comedy track that followed a wacky fruit-obsessed policeman in his attempts to catch the heroes. But along with vamps, this comedy track has mostly vanished from contemporary Bollywood films (although it's still very much present in contemporary South Indian mass market films) but it still does pop up from time to time in current films (like Race) and is very present in films from before the 2000s, so it's still worth our time to understand the whys and hows of the comedian.

Comedians are a special type of actor employed especially in the comedy track. Their job is to make you laugh and to provide some levity in what might otherwise be very serious or violent or sappy films. Humor is subjective and some humor found in Bollywood films is not subtle by any means and contemporary Western viewers might find some of the humor to be too crass. For example, yesteryears comic actress Tun Tun, whose main gag was being fat, might show up as the daughter of the gardener who is in love with an equally unusual-looking gentleman such as a little person or, always my favorite, the secondary hero. While there is nothing subtle about having a mystery woman pull back her veil to reveal… Tun Tun, comedy tracks don't have to be stupid, even if there is a tendency in Bollywood films towards broad humor that relies on physical comedy, sight gags, and riffing on ethnic stereotypes.

A comic subplot squeezes around the main narrative, like if The Dark Knight had a running bit featuring comic actor Danny McBride as a mechanic who sported a plumber's crack and was always comically annoyed at the state the batmobiles were returned in. While it seems like an odd fit on the surface, the presence of comedy doesn't detract from serious topics and having a buffoon crack a joke at the right time gives the audience a chance to rest before plunging them into more despair. Comedy is the tool used to prevent fatigue so audiences can enjoy a 3 hour film on a serious topic without getting burned out - like I did during The Dark Knight.

A comedian can also be used to poke fun at the hero to reveal other aspects of his personality - so in our example, Danny McBride's good-natured ribbing might have made Bruce Wayne snap in anger, showing us that he takes himself far too seriously. In these cases, the comedian isn't just a buffoon, he or she is a sounding board.

Comedians had their heyday in the 1940s through 1960s but as the 1970s dawned and the two-hero film became more popular, the comedy track was often left to one of the heroes. For example, top hero Dharmendra played the comedian with a well-loved drunk routine in the 1975 two-hero film Sholay. Still, the dedicated comedian didn't die out completely and comedy roles are still an integral if not as visible part of Bollywood today. However, in today's Bollywood, comedic roles today are usually taken by one of the many talented character actors who play all sorts of minor roles in Bollywood instead of dedicated comics.

You do also find straight comedy films in Bollywood but in a nice reverse of the masala trope, these will often have a moment or two of bittersweet pathos to balance out all the comedy.

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Character Archetype: The Villain

Like the comedian and the vamp, the villain is another character mostly on the wane in Bollywood. Even so, he (and they are mostly 'he') has a long and storied history; after all, the hero's triumph is only as big as the villain he defeats.

Villains are tied to the times and different eras will give you different types of villains. Typical villains could be anyone from a capitalist fat cat trying to squeeze every last penny from the hard working village folk to a rural dacoit (bandit) with a penchant for threatening rape to an evil scientist with a lair full of robots and almost anything in between. Recently, as corruption scandals percolate through society, evil politicians have become the go-to villain, featuring in some of 2010's biggest hits.

Sometimes the villains are killed, sometimes they are sent to jail, and sometimes they are reintegrated back into the community. This last ending is one of the things that stands out in Bollywood storytelling and is one of the most difficult for Western audiences to grasp. For a good example of how this can work, take a look at Star Wars: Return of the Jedi where we see the smiling face of Anakin Skywalker aka Darth Vader at the very end, all of his past ills forgotten in the joy of his reintegration into the community. And Bollywood villains, especially when they are family members, are encouraged to re-enter the community. Evil stepmothers become regular stepmothers when they discover how much their stepchildren have always loved and respected them. Evil brother-in-laws become regular brother-in-laws when they recognize the true worth of the hero and the audience is left with a warm feeling of community and forgiveness.

One of the interesting things about the actors who play villains is that they almost always exclusively play villains. This means that once the audience spots a beloved villainous actor in a film, they are almost always guaranteed that the character he is playing is going to be up to no good. So, if an actor like Amjad Khan, who was known for his villainous roles, shows up as a judge, you are guaranteed that the character is going to be a crooked judge, even if that information doesn't reveal itself to the hero right away. So, just by the choices in casting, a filmmaker can give his audience important plot information - information that will pass by an uninformed viewer. Where a Western viewer might see a sudden change of motivation or inconsistent characterization, the Bollywood fan knew from the beginning that the judge was up to no good… because he was played by Amjad Khan! This method of conveying information by the cast alone is just one more of the many reasons that Western viewers can't just jump into Bollywood and expect to understand it.

(The expectation can also be subverted. A crafty filmmaker can mislead audiences on purpose by casting a washed-up hero as a villain or by casting a villain in a role that ends up being "good.")

Like vamps and comedians and other character actors, a scenery-chewing villain can sometimes overshadow a weak or forgettable hero but the greatest villains squared off against the greatest heroes. Here are few of the most memorable - the Darth Vaders of Bollywood:

* In the 1987 film Mr. India stars Anil Kapoor (Slumdog Millionaire) as the mustachioed hero who discovers a secret formula that will turn anybody invisible. He has a big showdown with the ultra-evil Magambo (Amrish Puri, known in the West for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) who has a tricked-out lair, henchmen out the wazoo, and a snazzy catchphrase that will win you a couple of chuckles in any South Asian gathering: "Magambo khush hua." ("Magambo is pleased." Magambo likes to speak about himself in the third person.)

* Sholay (1975) is one of the benchmark films in Bollywood for a number of reasons and one of those is the sadistic dacoit Gabbar Singh (played by the late, great Amjad Khan). Gabbar Singh, prone to wielding his belt like a whip and strutting around like he owns the joint, is the source of numerous popular quotes ("Kitne aadmi thi?") and looms large over the entire film.

· From the 1940s until the early 1970s, when he switched to character roles, there was a big chance that any villain you came across would be played by the actor Pran. He had a regal nose and expressive eyes and enjoyed dressing up in costume. Famously, Pran never took the same look for a film twice. He played preppie blond drunks, greedy brothers-in-law, whip-wielding land owners, gangsters, grifters, and scuzzballs. Any time audiences saw "… and Pran" in the opening credits, they knew they were in for a good show.

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Songs and Music: What's the deal with all those songs in Bollywood?

Let's get one thing straight - the use of music in Western films is no more realistic than in Bollywood films. Previously recorded songs used as part of a background score are not only an accepted convention in Western film but soundtrack albums of previously recorded music assembled by filmmakers like Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino earn lots of money and praise. Now, just take a step from those assembled soundtrack albums to songs written for a film - like Henry Mancini's "Moon River" written for Breakfast at Tiffany's. We're still okay with that, right? It's not that far of a mental leap from "Moon River" to a Bollywood score but I've found that the most consistently misunderstood aspect of Bollywood (and, indeed, all popular Indian cinema) is the way lip-synced songs are used within the narrative of the film.

American viewers in particular tend to find this an almost insurmountable obstacle to appreciating Bollywood films on their own merits. While music has always been an essential part of Western filmmaking, the problem that American viewers have with accepting lip-synced songs in a film seems to stem from the American stereotype regarding the genre of 'musicals,' which is our only cultural exposure to the use of lip-synced songs in film. Even though TV shows like Glee are now making an impact on popular culture, musicals are still generally seen as being exclusively for women and gay men and considering the majority of film writers are straight men and the big cultural taboo against straight men liking anything that could be considered even remotely effeminate, you can see why Bollywood has been ignored by the Western film community even as mass entertainment from places like China (kung fu and wuxia films) and Japan (anime) has been embraced. I hope my series can help clear up some misconceptions in this area and make it okay for those musical-haters to reconsider the Bollywood film.

The (much-maligned) American movie musical is a completely different beast from Bollywood film. For one thing, there is some truth to the idea that movie musicals are all sugar and happy endings. Many (if not most) movie musicals are adapted from Broadways shows and unfortunately the heyday of the musical corresponded with the heyday of the Hays Code. This means that most adult content - not just sex but anything considered unwholesome, like social commentary - was expunged.

This is not true of Bollywood. While films do have to pass through a Censor Board (which, despite the name, actually acts like an officially sanctioned version of the MPAA Ratings Board) and explicit references to things like sex are going to be snipped if a film is to have an all-ages certificate, films can and do discuss a wide variety of serious issues - using lip-synced songs. Let me give you a couple of examples, the film Roti Kapada aur Makaan (Food, Clothes, and Shelter, 1974) is, among other things, a tough look at how the drive to stay out of poverty can lead a person to an immoral life. It has songs in which the actors lip sync and it also has a really disturbing rape scene and a bittersweet ending. Dil Se (From the Heart, 2000) is an intense film about terrorism. It has songs where the actors lip sync; it also has explosions and tough social commentary.

So, if we can accept that the content of Bollywood films is not all cheerful or what we might consider 'family-friendly' and the endings to the films are sometimes really unpleasant, that still leaves Western film buffs with a lingering sense that the addition of lip-synced songs somehow makes a film unrealistic and I would like to address that. Hollywood studio heads in the 1930s were concerned that film audiences would not understand the idea of characters expressing their feelings through song, so they made the decision to avoid that trope as much as possible. This mean that most of these adapted Broadway shows I discussed earlier had to be reworked to put the songs into settings where they were being explicitly performed - which led to things like the 'Let's Put on a Show' genre (e.g. Holiday Inn starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.)* But, unfortunately, this also meant that when a character did express themselves through song in a movie musical, that character was actually singing in the reality of the film. Anyone with a passing familiarity with movie musicals can think of scenes where a character stands alone in an empty theater and sings his or her heart out - only to be startled when somebody overhears the song. In other words, in movie musicals, characters do burst into song but Bollywood films do not work like this. **

While some Bollywood songs do take place at festivals or stage shows that show the characters really singing, other songs function more like a soliloquy out of a Shakespeare play. The songs are designed to express a character's inner feelings in a metaphorical way. Where in a Hollywood film, a film might show a couple falling in love using a montage of different scenes set to a classic rock song, in Bollywood, the experience would be shown in a metaphorical way and the couple might be shown singing a duet in a lush meadow in Europe. Indian audiences implicitly understand that the couple has not actually been teleported to Switzerland or The Netherlands. The fantasy location and the song are designed to show how that first blush of love feels to the people involved.

And if you think about it, a lip-synced duet is really no less realistic than a montage of that same couple set to "I Can't Help Falling in Love With You." All narrative film uses unrealistic conventions to tell a story - even Dogme 95. Editing, background scores, special effects… and falling-in-love montages do not happen in real life but we have learned to ignore the artifice of the tools to appreciate the stories told. The only difference between those things and Bollywood songs is that is that Western viewers understand how a montage works but have no experience with the Bollywood song form.

I'll be discussing other aspects of Bollywood songs through this week to help you understand the finer points of the Bollywood song.

*(And for more information on Broadway shows being hacked to pieces for Hollywood adaptations, please consult the amazing book Through The Screen Door by Thomas Hischak.)

** A second note - if you think about Oscar Award winning Chicago, the film went out of its way to show that all the songs were fantasy sequences in the characters' minds. And while made-for-TV High School Musical 1 and HSM 2 were done with a few soliloquy-style songs, when High School Musical 3 was sent to movie theaters, the film very deliberately had the songs set on stage where we could see the characters actually singing.

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