Bollywood, is India’s take on Bollywood. They have their own style of film and cinematography, and is very independent compared to Hollywood films. There are plenty of reasons why Bollywood is what it is today.

People associate Bollywood with ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, when in reality, it was actually co-produced by two UK film companies. It’s a western Hollywood film with Indian and Hindi themes and a strong cultural presence. It promoted Bollywood and Indian culture unintentionally throughout western civilisations.

Firstly, the economics behind the industry is always important, because it creates the drive and the incentive to create films and work in the field. The Indian economical Liberalization in 1991 strongly affected the film industry, and the first major films to come out of Bollywood were created around this time. The Indian government can be thanked for this, because they created economic relationships with other countries around the world, and they created global networks, which involuntarily promoted and created funding, as well as the demand for Bollywood style films.

With all this talk of economics, who is actually profiting from Bollywood? Well I hypothesise that Indian culture is profiting, because regardless of what industry it is, Indian culture is always profiting. It’s hard to say which industry is actually profiting off Indian style films, because more than one industry create them.

Filmmakers act as Bricoleurs, so they essentially mix global and local elements to appeal to most audiences’ tastes and trends. This is a marketing technique used by Hollywood to seem more international, and to appeal to that demographic.

Bollywood has emerged as a large media entity because of the economics, the associations from already performing media industries, and the role of filmmakers. They produce more films than Hollywood per year, and is quickly becoming a large competitor for Hollywood.

Sources:

Schaefer & Karan, DS & KK, 2010, ‘Problematizing Chindia: Hybridity and Bollywoodization of popular Indian cinema in global film flows’, Global Media and Communication, p.309-316