Dear cinephiles: break free from Eurocentric film diets and watch Bollywood

I still remember the white-knuckled revulsion that wracked my body, nearly tearing the “Understanding Film” syllabus in my grip into halves, like it happened yesterday. The syllabus required us students watch a new movie each week over the sixteen-week semester — and every single one of those movies, save two of the Japanophile professor’s pet Japanese flicks, were European or American in origin. Trudging through the class anyway, I assured myself that perhaps it was my mistake for expecting Texan collegiate education to platform even one of the films from some of the world’s biggest cinema industries, such as those of Nigeria and India, and surely movie fans the world over loathed these educational oversights and incorporated a diversity of national origins into their cinema diets regardless. Then I actually started talking to cinephiles. 

Unfailingly, most self-described movie-loving white Americans — and even some people of color or those with immigrant heritage — clam up when I bring up non-Western cinema. They’ll never have heard of even the biggest titles and actors coming out of South Asia and will often outright dismiss Bollywood as a “genre” or “style” not worth caring about. The movies are too long, too cheesy, too childish with their dramatics and constant dance numbers. Polished, cerebral Western cinema has thought-provoking stories to tell and emotions to impart, while South Asian cinema — of course incorrectly called “Bollywood,” though the term only refers to India’s Hindi flicks — is shoddily-made slop not worth wasting time on. But South Asian cinema and its Hindi-language microcosm are both breathtakingly diverse, and even the loathed dance-and-romance “masala” formula that “Bollywood” has become synonymous with is rich with meaning, stark political relevance, and narratives just as beautiful, challenging and worth remembering as any Hollywood classic. 

The singing and dancing characteristic of masala films traces back to centuries of narrative theatrical performances in South Asia, where religious stories were told through dance by purpose-trained troupes. The importance dance has held in the region ever since is a natural, if not necessary, accompaniment to storytelling — much like opera, ballet or theater in Europe. If you know the symbols and allusions to look out for in a dance scene, even the corniest choreography will reveal itself as developing the story, deepening character arcs and providing well-timed moments of emotional reprieve. For instance, “Student of the Year’s” standout song “Radha” not only elevates the complicated love triangle for viewers familiar with the Hindu story of Radha and Krishna, but subtly humanizes and explains the thought processes of both male protagonists without having to force a trite conversation or character moment, while beautifully splitting the movie into halves. Not every dance is meaning-packed — see “Mauja Hi Mauja” tacked awkwardly onto the end of “Jab We Met” — but the best ones, like “Om Shanti Om’s” “Dastaan-E,” accomplish more plot progression and emotional cohesion than some Hollywood blockbusters. 

And while the dances can be discussed for days, the political and cultural ideas behind even Bollywood’s most straightforward-seeming love stories could be dissected academically for a lifetime. Hindi cinema occupies a dual, often-contradictory role of catering to audiences outside India and furthering the Indian state’s nationalist rhetoric and vilification of its enemies, especially Muslims. Hindi cinema loves to make villains and caricatures out of “Pakistanis” or “terrorists,” dressed in generic Islamic garb, and even in feel-good flicks featuring Pakistan-India cooperation like “Main Hoon Na” or “Bajrangi Bhaijaan,” the two countries’ camaraderie is portrayed as nearly as fantastical and unachievable as every other larger-than-life plot point. The balance is delicate — many Bollywood consumers are Pakistani or Muslim — and creates philosophically fascinating cinematic case studies that, around the right crowd, draw out hours of salient, analytical discussion, far richer than the concepts gleaned from most Marvel flicks. 

That’s not to forget the intra-national power structures Hindi flicks confess to: 2010s romcom classic “Chennai Express,” when not flustering viewers with shots of Deepika Padukone in gorgeous outfits, leaves them reeling over the contradiction between the main romance, presented as an equal partnership between a North Indian and a South Indian overcoming mutual cultural barriers, and the wildly biased storytelling that legitimizes North Indian cultural hegemony, paints South India as a crime nest full of either bloodthirsty enemies or noble savages, and literally makes the female lead’s native language the butt of every joke. Similarly fascinating is “Jawaan,” which presents graphic portraits of India’s systemic inequalities that cause mass exploitation and death, demonstrates that these inequalities are caused by corruption only solvable by direct revolutionary action from the country’s marginalized, and still manages to end on the note of “go vote in the next election to fix your country” — as if the previous three hours didn’t just illustrate that voting accomplishes nothing. With India’s very independence tracing to left-wing revolutionaries that lived just three generations ago, the industry isn’t as averse to celebrating direct action as Hollywood tends to be, but the hamfisted touch of “don’t actually cause trouble, dear citizens!” speaks to the country’s political Westernization; a part of becoming developed and respectable as a country is crippling the legitimacy of your left wing. 

People in India don’t get all their politics from movies, of course, the same way those living in the U.S. aren’t usually internalizing the “Top Gun” franchise into their political worldviews. But any good student of cinema knows that a population’s media reflects its thoughts, expectations and current preoccupations, and can sometimes shape those thoughts through repeated, unchallenged messaging. Given how politically, economically and culturally powerful India is on the global stage, the discussions being had in India’s hegemonic media are just as crucial for the good student to understand as the minutiae of, say, how Hollywood backs the military-industrial complex. 

And beyond the jam-packed meanings and messages, necessitating as thoughtful a watch as an avant-garde indie piece, the movies are fun beyond compare. No comedy of errors can outshine Salman Khan’s wonderfully near-incomprehensible “Ready,” and no sentimental, expertly-argued piece about student suicide and the importance of following your passions in college has the right to be as uproarious as “3 Idiots.” Some of my most cherished memories come from my sister and I scolding the characters onscreen as we try a new Bollywood flick, tears of laughter burning in my eyes, and that’s an experience everyone deserves. But through these films’ consistent devaluation, from what’s trendy in cinephile circles to the film curriculums at institutions like UTD — still aggressively Western-focused despite the school’s Asian majority — countless moviegoers will miss out on an entire culture and worldview, and potentially some of their all-time favorite flicks.  

While my personal knowledge lies mainly in Hindi-language cinema, all these considerations still ring true for other developing countries’ media industries, also denigrated as producing trashy, laughable stories often even more aggressively than the shaming around Bollywood, which has seen a bit of a reputation boost in recent decades. For everyone interested in film studies, mass media or simply cultures different from their own, watching classics and new releases from film powerhouses like Nigeria, China and other regional Indian industries like Telugu-language Tollywood should be high priorities. As for Bollywood, I’m partial to showing Hindi film virgins “3 Idiots” or “Taare Zameen Par” first. 

The movies get long, I’ll grant you that. Here’s my advice: Pregame with a full day of work or errands so by evening, you’re ready to relax hard. Gather a bunch of chatty friends and a variety of snacks. Pause for a 10-minute break after the end of a dance number about halfway through the flick. Throw popcorn at the screen, theorize wildly, get invested, get loud — that’s exactly how the movie wants to be watched.