Bollywood

As a semi-reply to the previous post about American Culture being less prominent I thought I'd just talk about Bollywood Films for a little bit.

I remember growing up and not knowing what Bollywood was. Whenever I heard of it I assumed that it was some kind of "spoof" on Hollywood. Little did I know at the time that it was a serious film industry located outside of the US. As I grew up I found that I heard more and more about movies from Bollywood and started to learn more about it.

Last year I took a course called International Communications and we spent quite a bit of time focusing on Bollywood which resulted in us watching quite a few Bollywood productions. I found that I readily identified with the movies and that there was a universal appeal due to their very successful formula. We discussed how big of an industry Bollywood is and how much it rivals Hollywood especially in places one wouldn't necessarily expect such as African countries.

I think people are starting to look outside their borders more and more. I have heard so many of my friends and fellow students making comments such as "I wish I wasn't such a dumb American with no knowledge of other coutries," or similar things such as that. It seems that my friends, at least, and the people I know in the classes I take, are interested in exploring the rest of the world and they do it in such ways as watching Bollywood films. Although I have no evidence I feel that if one asked a random person ten years ago if they enjoyed Bollywood films they would have no idea what it was, but now a days people will at least be able to list off one Bollywood film that they have heard of or seen.


So, American culture...I think people in America are starting to realize that they need to look outward to other countries. I think that people are starting to realize that America is no longer the global leader that it use to be. We are moving into a period where cooperation is important and there really cannot be just one leader, with this comes more exchange of information and culture.