Western influence on Bollywood Industry

India as a nation has evolved tremendously over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Due to the effects of colonization, economic liberalization and globalization, India has been influenced by western principles of politics, society and commercialism. One of the major ways in which western influence has affected India is through its films. While Indian cinema encompasses a wide variety of film genres, this paper will be primarily focusing on Bollywood which may at times be referred to as Hindi films or masala films. In this paper I will be discussing how western influences are existent in film advertisement, film settings and brand placement in Hindi films and how these influence have all attributed to the westernization of Bollywood films. In order to understand how these three factors have attributed to the westernization of Bollywood films, I will provide historical background on India and Hindi films. Then I will provide information regarding what role each factor had on westernizing Hindi films.

To begin, India is a country in South Asia and was under British rule for a long period of time until its independence in 1947 (Shedde 25). After attaining independence, western culture got entrance into Indian culture in the form of cinema. Cinema’s origin in the West was shortly followed by its origins in India, with its first cinematography films shown in 1896 in the city that would become known as the center for the national film industry, Bombay (Dwyer and Patel 13, 19). Indian cinema was the result of the new public culture that arose from the nineteenth century; a hybrid that brought together traditional Indian images from indigenous performing traditions with industrial technology. India’s first films were of traditional Indian theater performances of Hindu mythological stories (Dwyer and Patel 13 ). It was during this time that