Bollywood film industry is in the process of reinventing themselves as traditional approaches to filmmaking . Economic challenges to traditional filmmaking are attributed to economic and cultural globalization with the expansion of democracy around the world, which brings Western cultural influences and entertainment styles to increasingly economically well-off and educated people in Asian countries. there is a growing Hollywoodization of Asian films – marked by sexual depictions, scantily clad women, and violence-oriented scripts within the framework of a pleasure-seeking culture.
The rising literacy levels in Asian countries and access to Western (mostly American) entertainment offerings are turning media consumers to be more demanding from their traditional cultural and entertainment industries. In his travels to a number of Asian countries,it is observed that pervasiveness of American culture being imported through a variety of media, especially movies and television programming, and increasingly the Internet. India’s film industry, based primarily in the western city of Bombay and nicknamed "Bollywood." India’s movie industry, which turns out more than 800 feature films a year in a variety of languages (Pendakur, 2003, p. 2) compared with about 250 produced by Hollywood annually (Plate, 2002), is the largest in the world. In recent years, movie theater attendance has fallen substantially because the industry’s traditional song-and-dance storylines and hackneyed treatment of love scenes have not produced big hits. As a result, the film industry has started to deal openly with sex or offer generous doses of skin in an attempt to draw audiences
Agence-France Presse reported that the biggest grossing film in 2003 was Jism (Body), which tells the story of a woman who is unapologetic about using her sexuality to persuade her lover to kill her rich husband. The small budget film turned out to be a surprise hit and its star, Bipasha Basu, is now one of the most sought after actresses in Bollywood. "The success of Jism showed that Indians are no longer ashamed of watching a steamy scene in a full house," said leading filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, who wrote the film's screenplay. Bhatt said the film reflected a change in the mindset of the Indian viewer. "Earlier, a steamy film would be shown in small towns and would be seen by men who came for titillation, but now urban women throng upscale halls to watch such films" (Bollywood turns on the steam, 2003). Julie, a Hindi film released in summer 2004, dealt with the subject of prostitution, played by a top beauty queen, Neha Dhupia. Boom shows the three main female leads strut through most of the two-hour film in little more than bikinis and are frequently the target of crude sexual remarks. One male lead asks a woman to perform oral sex under his desk as he works (Menon, 2003). Menon says that elsewhere in the world that might be considered relatively tame stuff, but not in India where even smooching in public can still cause outrage. For many years, Bollywood films shied away from showing even a kiss, with scenes cutting away chastely to shots of birds, bees or flowers. However, a 2003 release, Khwaish (Desire), showed not less than 17 kissing scenes and portraying a young couple who are anything but shy about discussing their sex life. Murder and Andaaz, other recently released films, have generated a lot of buzz over the actresses’ skimpy clothing or kissing scenes rather than their acting abilities.
The new phenomenon for movie making is "Sex sells. And it works well if it comes with a good story. Social critics, however, worry about the likely implications of the new trend in Bollywood filmmaking for the Indian society. Generally, the Indian film industry has not had a background in realism. It has consisted of escapist musicals with common storylines of good vs. evil and boy meets girl. Typically, the films have been family orientated and the plot is kept simple so that even the rural villager can easily relate to it. The new Hollywood-inspired shift in film style is seen to be a threat to the values and culture of the Indian people. The Film Federation of India, a regulatory body that presides over film content, complains that the films made in the New Bollywood are too Westernized and that they are degrading and diminishing India's true cultural identity.
Asian Values vs. Hollywood Values Dialectic
Most academic debates since the New World Information Order movement of the 1970s on the implications of the dominance of Western media for non-Western countries have warned of imminent dangers to indigenous cultures. Although the success of the sex and nudity-oriented Bollywood films confirms that there is a Westernized audience in India with an appetite for such films, India is still largely a rural country and farmers and villagers provide vital contribution to the economy of the film industry. They cannot possibly understand and appreciate the values and issues expressed by the New Bollywood. For now, enough films are being produced in India to serve the traditionalists, but whether that continues will depend on the box office success of such films.
Emerging Asian Movie Markets and Implications for Hollywood
MIT Professor Christina Klein notes that "Hollywood today is going into the business of producing and distributing ‘foreign’ movies. Klein says that Hollywood is finding ways to turn a profit on the desire of local audiences to see local films; rather than trying to beat the competition, the studios are joining it. The second implication of the Hollywoodization of Asian filmmaking is for the future of Hollywood itself. In view of the increasing globalization of filmmaking, and China and India projected to be larger movie markets than Europe, will Hollywood remain immune to Asian influences on its own style of filmmaking? The answers seems to be in the negative in view of the economic factor. Klein says that from 1950s through the 1970s, Hollywood earned about 30% of its money overseas. "That number is expected to grow over time, with some industry figures predicting the foreign share of box office earnings could rise to 80% within the next twenty years. This means that Hollywood is becoming an export industry, making movies primarily for people who live outside the US" (Klein, 2003). Asia alone is expected to be responsible for as much as 60% of Hollywood’s box-office revenue by then. Perhaps a larger benefit from the standpoint of humanity, rather than corporate interests, of moves toward globalization of film industries may be greater understanding and appreciation of world cultures.
CONCLUSION
It is obvious from the foregoing that film industries in several Asian countries are going through a process of reinventing themselves to maintain their economic viability amidst the globalizing media culture of the West, especially the United States. The question is whether it is the cultural dependency theory or the well-established production formula of Hollywood for commercial success that explains the changes happening in Asian film industries. ndeed, "cultural imperialism" or its academic variant called "cultural dependency theory" are terms often used by scholars in international communication and cross-cultural communication to explain negative influences of the West on the cultures and media industries of developing nations. Some have even suggested that "cultural imperialism" is slowly killing off indigenous cultures in some parts of the world.
