When Will America Wake Up To Hindi Films?



Amitabh Bachchan--The Big B



        

Shah Rukh Khan

                On some evenings the upstairs room in my family's house is aglow with light from old Hindi films on the VCR, generally old Technicolor pictures produced during the 1970s. In the room adjacent is an entire dresser drawer devoted to old films I cadged from a local desi grocery store, lining the insides like prized trophies. Deewaar, Silsila, Sharaabi. I generally watch these films over and over, since I've now got an extensive library of Hindi films from two years of college. But I can't help but feel alienated when my family and American culture hardly know anything about Bollywood and really don't care to know.  And  I feel a sense of loss that they don't have a clue who Amitabh Bachchan is, let alone some of the other giants of the Hindi film industry.

                Bollywood has made a name for itself through globalization in the past half-century, especially in other Third World countries. Instead of remaining in India for the primary Indian audiences, Bollywood films have been exported to other countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan (pirated in because it's illegal), Malaysia, and even Western countries such as Russia and Germany. Though it's more common nowadays to see copies of SRK (Shah Rukh Khan) films like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and DDLJ (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge) in far-flung markets (including America), even before the economic boom of the nineties there were exports of  common Hindi films. Among these films were some of the early blockbusters, generally Raj Kapoor productions. According to Dev Anand in his autobiography Romancing with Life, the Raj Kapoor film Awara was very popular in the former Soviet Union, so much so that there was a Russian soundtrack released to the film. When at a party in Moscow, Anand was asked if he was 'from the land of Awara.' This was even before the market growth for India in the early nineties, when Bollywood production houses started making films for the foreign markets where a lot of N.R.I.s had settled.  In Malaysia, pop music has been influenced heavily by the tunes from Hindi films; I found a duet between the Malaysian singers M. Sharif and Zaleha Hamid, Setia Menuggu, that was the same tune as the Lata and Mukesh duet Main Chali Main. For further proof, there was another song by Salih Yaacob with Malaysian words put to A.R. Rahman's Chhoti Si Aasha, the famous song from Roja. And according to Pankaj Mishra in his book Temptations of the West, the Middle East is also aflame with Bollywood films. Not to mention Suketu Mehta's testimony in National Geographic that while living in Queens, New York, immigrants from countries other than India ( Uzbeks, Greeks, and Pakistanis are specifically mentioned) would turn the Hindi movie show  "Vision of Asia" and sing along to the Hindi film songs being shown. It seems that the whole world is slightly impacted, in one way or another, by the globalization of Hindi films.

                But not, obviously, America. Living here all of my life, I have never heard any white Americans reference Hindi films, or give them any time of day in conversations.  Whenever I try to mention Dilip Kumar or Rajesh Khanna, or even Amitabh Bachchan, I receive strange looks and the annoyed and disinterested response of "Who?” I am talking about something completely foreign.  I was raised in a white family, watching Hollywood movies, and I never heard any talk of famous Bollywood actors. The only people talked about were big modern actors, such as Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Arnold Schwartzeneggar, along with the names of other actors. And for the older times, Humphery Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Wayne, Steve McQueen, and other legends.  I was then surprised, watching Hindi films and reading books and online articles about Bollywood, that Amitabh Bachchan is recognized and revered worldwide (especially after his close shave with death in 1983 when doing stuntwork for Coolie) and that Shah Rukh Khan is a bigger star than Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt combined. How could it be, I wondered, that I had never heard of these celluloid stars?

                I think that an aspect of American ignorance to Bollywood can be found in American attachment to Hollywood, which a recognized brand worldwide of American pride and creativity. It is a major industry in America, something that most Americans revere, and it even has  a sense of identity that Americans cling to; it's a major social shaper of mentality here,  something that preserves (or re-interprets) the American pereceptions of themselves and the world that surrounds them. It also seems that America, being the world's superpower, a dominant trading power in the world, has an expectation that it be recognized, a self-absorbtion with itself despite the tapestry of diversity in the world. Rightly so that it is a superpower, this does not mean that America ought to push this dominance into a kind of hubris (as it already has). With the expectation of recognition, America does not recognize much of the world's offers, promoting itself above the others, much like a group of clique-oriented American teenagers. Another reason for Bollywood's lack of influence in America might be that Bollywod doesn't promote the values that American films portray (pragmatism, lack of conventional morality, etc.), along with their formats. America also does not seem to have a very high opinion of India either. Though it's more common to see exports of things Indian  (or slightly adapted things Indian) in America, a lot of people still view it as a poverty-ridden, filthy country that isn't good for much except for computer coolies who take care of their inconveniences. Indian (and other South Asian) immigrants to the U.S. aren't treated with much respect in many ways either, whether it be by ethnic persecution ( such as the Dotbuster groups in New Jersey in the early nineties who beat and/or murdered "dotheads") or by prejudices in the workplace. If they aren't seen as being very valuable, or even very desirable, by the American public, then the logic dictates that parts of their culture not be held high or dabbled in much, leaving Bollywood ( and the South Indian film industry) mostly in the dust. And, as a last note, few Americans have any knowledge of Hindi (excluding yours truly), and thus the barrier becomes even higher. 

                It looks like Hindi films have about as much likelihood of reaching American audiences as cricket does of replacing American baseball. It may just be Bollywood’s last frontier.