Headline March 19, 2018/ ''' *BOLLYWOOD'S* HOLLYWOOD '''

''' *BOLLYWOOD'S* HOLLYWOOD '''

BRITISH COLONIZERS - with shaved heads and icy-blue eyes; decadent feudal landlords; drug Kingpins with amber-tinted sunglasses-

Corrupt politicians in starched white kurtas; and, naturally terrorists of every single stripe.............. India's Bollywood at its supremacist best.

The Bollywood's villain is the new embodiment of what India believes ails India. The Bollywood villain's master story is always a parable about a society trying to assimilate an onslaught of foreign influence.

India is all -get set and go- of refashioning itself in the image of the West.

Bollywood films capture the violence and humiliation -and very much the rage- that accompanies an old society remaking itself to fit the mold of another.

On a burning hot afternoon last month, I found myself bawling my guts out in a Times Square  movie theater.

I was watching ''Sultan'', a nearly three hours long Bollywood extravaganza that was released last July and is already one of the highest grossing Indian film.

I am forever second-guessing my relationship with Bollywood. The films are simultaneously operatic, commercial and jingoistic.

I fancy myself a connoisseur of more subtle emotions, so it's natural that I recoil from these melodramas that try, as Salman Rushdie once said, ''to contain the whole of life.''

And yet there I was, swallowed up in the middle of the afternoon by this behemoth of a film - with rollicking dance numbers - about a former Olympic wrestler from a small town trying to make a comeback in the big-city as a fighter on TV.

Three hours later, I was spat out an overwrought wreck.

When I told the writer friend the story, he tried to console me. ''How much of your bawling during  'Sultan' was just about missing India?''  he asked.

None, sadly. I had been away only a few weeks. Besides, I bawl at Bollywood films when I'm in India, too.''

''They affect me,'' I wrote back. ''I can't help it.''

There is something about a big, popular art form that dramatizes a society's deepest tensions that I find desperately moving,

In the West, this is a kind of a heavy lifting that was once the preserve of the novel - think of Dickens and Balzac. But in India, Bollywood alone deals with our society's inner tension, its fault lines and frictions.

Beneath the overlay of Song and Plot is the vein of something deadly serious. The place to look for this is not in the face of the hero but in the face of the villain.

The Bollywood villain is the embodiment of what India believes ails India. Over the years, the cast of villains has included  British colonizers with shaved heads and icy blue eyes; decadent feudal landlords; drug kingpins with amber-tinted sunglasses-

Corrupt politicians in starched white kurtas; and naturally, terrorist of every stripe.

But in a spate of recent films, the villain has taken the form of India's own inner demons as the country negotiates an anguished transition to global modernity.

In ''Sultan,'' the villain, if there is one, is the culture of franchises and brands that has brought the outline of a modern society to India over the past 25 years.

The eponymous protagonist and his story about a televised mix of martial arts league functions as a parable about a society trying to assimilate an onslaught of foreign influence.

In every area of life from a sporting events to television channels, retail to restaurants, and even think tanks, magazines and publishing houses, modernity arrives in India ready-made. 

The country is in the process of refashioning itself in the image of the West. Bollywood films capture the violence and humiliations - and very much the rage - that accompanies an old society remaking itself to the mold of another.

Yes, India's film industry reflects global South's troubling transformations in a way few other art forms can.

The Honor and Serving of the  latest ''Operational Research'' on Entertainment, Bollywood and the World, continues. And with many thanks to author and researcher, Aatish Taseer.

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Grandparents, Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers of India, and then the world.

See Ya all register on !WOW! - the World Students Society and........ and.....Twitter-!E-WOW! - the Ecosystem 2011:


''' !WOW! & BOUNCE '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless