bollywood banter

So for no reason at all, I pulled an all-nighter. I stayed up till 4am watching Bollywood movies again-- yes, Hindi movies! And now I can't sleep. I just keep thinking about the movies, interpreting and reinterpreting them in my head.

You might ask when I became interested in my old country's film industry, and the answer is, like a few weeks ago. I decided on doing my long-term project for my honors program at school on Bollywood, even though I have never really cared for them. I always thought of them as silly movies banking on the audience's desire for escapism. I hadn't seen any real meaning, and the industry pumps out what seems like a movie per baby that pops out in that country. But since doing some academic reading on the subject I've realized that you can come up with an endless barrel of commentary about India based on Bollywood alone. It's incredible. Where can I start? The films depict internal social struggle through the caste system, through Muslim-Hindu relations, through women and women's rights, love versus arranged marriages, violence, and it goes on. But I'll start where I situated my project. I'm looking into how Bollywood has constructed the West (America, Europe, Australia) and how it imagines India in relation to these industrialized, culturally dominant nations. Phew!

So anyway, as part of my project, I get to watch movies and find all these subtexts and undertones that most movie-goers wouldn't really see. For example, I'm currently working on Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. It's pretty much the most famous Indian movie ever and it apparently still packs the house in theaters today. It's a good movie, so that makes sense.

I can't vouch for all movies, though. There's this other movie called Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Wow, that movie is effing retarded. Personally, all movies containing Aishwarya Rai offend my delicate ears because that skank knows how to scream. And then she puffs up her big, haughty, fake-hazel eyes and screams some more. Spare me. And really, there's a limit to these Shakespearean dialogues on love. In this particular movie, the hero (played by Salman Khan, veteran douchebag) does NOT waste time getting into it. "Do you believe in love at first sight," he yaps. She yaps right back. Sorry if I got the quote wrong, I was laughing hysterically. The only thing that redeems the film is that you could write a great paper on it. Basically, Aishwarya Rai's character Nandini (what a beautiful name!) falls in love with Sameer, played by the hopelessly unattractive Khan. But her daddy makes her marry an even uglier but totally loaded guy named Vanraj who finds all her love letters AFTER marrying her. Oops! He gets pissed, but he doesn't beat her up like I thought he would. He takes her to Europe to find Sameer. They eventually find him, but she's all like, "I'm in love with my husband now. He loves me so much he was willing to give me up so I could be happy with your poor musician ass." So she runs back to Vanraj, the end. First off, the director could have cut like, 40 minutes from the movie if he had this brilliant couple look the man up in The White Pages. Secondly, why did this movie win so many awards if she just ends up with the husband like she was supposed to in the first place? I would have liked to see her tell Vanraj "Peace out," and have Vanraj go back to India and like, explain the whole deal to his relatives and have him slowly descend into alcoholism and marry her sister, or something. I don't know. I guess I don't like happy endings.


It's just that I've finally found this mode of understanding Indian people and how they view (I'm going to use that pronoun just because I identify as an American) the rest of the world, and how these views are evolving through this slow, symbiotic process of movies churning out ideas and people evaluating themselves and society. It's helping me understand more about where I came from and how to negotiate my identity. SO COOL.

Also the other reason I couldn't sleep is because I got this wicked idea for a short story. You see, I've always wanted to write a short story like Jhumpa Lahiri, but that lady seems to come up with great little plots that are pretty ordinary but she makes them feel significant. She writes about all these little things and somehow they add up to make a poignant story. Anyway, the themes in the plot are pretty dark but it's going to be told from the point of view of a little girl so there's going be this crazy, thematic clash. Truth is, I'll probably never show anyone any piece of fiction I ever write. I don't understand how authors ever get the balls to do that. Kudos to them. I'm sure it's like giving birth to a baby and putting pictures of it all over the neighborhood and worrying about people calling it ugly (and that it looks like its mom.) I've also never written fiction, although I frequently come up with ideas that would be really great. This will be the first time that I've come up with a beginning, middle and end.

It's now 6:45 and my bathroom needs to be cleaned. Who knew I was such a talker this early in the morning?