Ernest Dempsey - India’s most dazzling film industry (and thanks to none else but the media), the Bombay’s Hindi film giant—Bollywood—has only one letter different to its name than the American film galaxy, the Hollywood. This holds true also for the kind of stuff Bollywood has been producing. Plots and characters and music, better say, hundreds of Hollywood movies have been remade with little or no change in Hindi language by Bollywood. Yet, Bollywood rocks for hundreds of millions of Indians and for millions in Pakistan as well.The climax of Bollywood’s popularity was seen in the 1980s when the average house could afford its own VCR but those that couldn’t could rent it from the numerous video shops that served customers from morning till late at night. Bollywood films had a characteristic appeal, mostly owing to the romantic duets with dance that were essential to the success of a Hindi film. Even many B grade movies had some timeless hits, and were liked widely. At that time, not many knew that Bollywood was just rehashing content from Hollywood and even less known industries like those in India’s south (which collectively produce more films than Bollywood but are not the candy of media’s eye).
With the arrival of the internet, as Hindi film data started collecting and connecting, layers of ignorance about Bollywood’s copying-rehashing business were peeled, and the process continues. Apparently, the copying-rehashing policy of the Mumbai film industry is as old as the industry itself. On the internet, one can easily find records of non-original Bollywood films, from 60s hits like Gumnaam (1965), a Hindi version of And Then There Were None (1945) based on Agatha Christie’s best-selling novel, and all the way down to Salman Khan’s upcoming Bodyguard, which is a remake of a Malayalam (southern India) film by the same director. To get a little surprise, perhaps this list of Bollywood movies speaks how India’s most acclaimed film industry has been starving for adoption of ideas at the least to wholesale features as matter of course.
Then we discover a more daunting fact about Hindi films: the music that has been the pride of Bollywood all along is not quite free of copying-rehashing practice rooted in the industry’s production. A single clip of English pop hits of the 1980s reveals at least three samples copied by Bollywood and made hits in the films like Yudh (1985), Himmat Aur Mehnat (1987), and Main Ne Pyar Kiya(1989). Even Pakistani songs were copied and included in Bollywood movies (and of course, Pakistani films were returning the ‘favor’ generously). How long is the list of musical hits copied from other sources has no quick answer. One can expect it to be an extensive one. This list, however, gives a glimpse of the case.
Cases of copying-rehashing in Bollywood movie-making are the norm rather than exception. We don’t see many original films and the nudity-violence factor is increasing as it never had before. Nevertheless, media’s constant glamorizing of the Hindi film industry makes it popular as ever among hundreds of millions of all ages; young men and women most of all. True, when you have little choice when addicted to artificiality.
