Bollywood is India’s greatest invention and endeavor. Forget the number zero, forget sending us to the moon. Shah Rukh Khan is India’s biggest export and ambassador, trumping both the information technology industry and Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. The two-billion dollar dynasty of mirch masala (excitement-inducing) films packed with romance, action, comedy and the nakhre (drama) inherent to any Indian household have cemented the legacy of India’s emerging soft power. In a globalized age of competing media complexes and culture wars, Bollywood is the vehicle that South Asians ride into the sunset.
However, in the 2020s, a striking dissatisfaction with the Hindi film industry has rapidly developed, both in the homeland and abroad. Bollywood films no longer resonate with audiences in the dynamic and revolutionary ways they did in the 1990s and 2000s. Caught up in patting itself on the back, Hindi cinema has forgotten that, in order to survive, we must evolve.
It is hard to deny the beauty of Hindi cinema. The long-standing “masala film” industry has reigned over India since the 1920s through an empire even stronger than the British. With its themes of coming-of-age, family, pyaar (love) and ishq (passion), the intense emotions Bollywood invokes functioned as a catharsis for an Indian audience hungry for art. In a post-independence India that was swiftly modernizing into a capitalistic superpower, Bollywood was integral to defining the identity of the Indian middle and upper classes who had the dime to spend on entertainment.
It is easy to see the appeal in the escapism of content from Yash Raj Films (YRF) or a Dharma Productions, two major Indian film production and distribution companies, with their romantic cinematography and fantastical storylines. Through their blend of music, cinema and emphasis on the core tenets that have always driven Indian society, Bollywood has been the cultural figurehead of South Asia, garnering a love that spans generations. Nothing comes close to the jubilance of “Khabi Khushi Khabie Gham” or the cadence of Lata Mangeshkar’s croon in “Dil To Pagal Hai.” It’s why people still flock in the millions to see “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” screenings or regard “Sholay” with great nostalgia.
But however much Bollywood represents the best of India, it also underlines the worst. It is a stark reflection of Indian society — one we must take a long, hard look at.
Bollywood has often come under criticism for its portrayal of women and other minorities. In its long-standing tradition of “item songs,” female characters — already a rare phenomenon — are sexualized and paraded for the pleasure of men. The songs include lyrics normalizing rape and derogatory attitudes towards women. Moreover, the sparse female characters often play into archetypes that Western cinema in the 2020s has long moved on from, such as the “nerd” who gets a makeover to become the “bombshell.” Even when Bollywood tries to bring in a message of female empowerment, such as in movies like “Sultan,” “Mission Mangal,” “English Vinglish,” “Raazi” or “Queen,” the message often lacks nuance and shorthands the burden of change onto the woman in a move reminiscent of pink-washing and fourth-wave feminism. Nothing underscores Bollywood’s treatment of women quite like one look at its recent box-office hit “Animal,” a story of male vengeance that romanticizes domestic violence like no other.
More disingenuously, most Karan Johar and YRF movies often perpetuate the idea that India is an upper-caste Hindu society run by men. In a study on Bollywood, Professor Lakshmi Lingam of DY Patil University School of Public Health discusses the formulaic storyline as common to Bollywood as a dramatic reveal: a relationship where “the protagonist, a male from the upper caste, falls in love with a female lead that is thin and beautiful, coy and demure, who expresses consent through gestures rather than words, but wears sexually revealing clothing and has to be somewhat modern to allow for her to be in a premarital relationship without transgression.” Moreover, this female lead is often light-skinned, a colonial idealization of eurocentric beauty standards that Bollywood has come under fire for.
In an India undergoing political and economic upheaval, even movies attempting to capture the spirit of Indian youth or depict lower-class or LGBTQ+ struggle — such as “Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani,” “Kho Gaye Hum Kahan,” “Luka Chuppi,” “Gully Boy” or “Badhaai Do” — come across as disillusioned in their idealism and in how fast and easy the solution is. Everything is solved by the powers of friendship, love or family. Bollywood’s appeal, which had been its escapism, is starting to be its downfall. No longer can a Javed Akhtar song fill the holes in Bollywood’s social commentary, which just slaps across a happy-go-lucky bandaid on India’s deeper problems and only pushes a message of consumerism and nepotism. This failing legacy is evident in how streaming platforms like Prime and Hotstar have become preferred amongst Indian Generation Z, where longer-format media such as “Made In Heaven” strive to capture a more diverse and complicated India.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that Hindi cinema can no longer ride on upper-caste, middle-class men. Sure, the profits come raking in at the box office. But art and media are meant to inspire and change, not just entertain. Rather than encourage the patriarchal rape culture of India, Bollywood must reckon with the social movements that have taken the world, including India, by storm. Hindi cinema must put under a microscope the hierarchies that have governed Indian soil for generations, not glorify them. Bollywood must ask the big questions that will define the Indian cultural image in the coming decades rather than remain a leftover product of an age gone by. That is where the mirch masala comes from now.