Bollywood

Bollywood,  its unique adaptation and styles of popular Indian culture, even though heavily influenced by Western cultures and movies provide a refreshing scene to the movies section. While on one hand, the clearly notable references and storylines from American movies are clearly present, this form on cinema adds to it its own spice and spin-offs to the original stories.

The consciousness of the producers to make their productions "something for everyone of the family" has embedded a heavier focus on "family" rather than "the individual". This has in turn offered to create a more complete picture of the protagonist and allows us to greater understand the character's background and immerses us completely in the world of the movie, providing us an escape from reality.

The song and dance items in Bollywood productions are a compulsory part of this type of indian film. They are sometimes provided to express subtlety in romantic scenes and often hint at sexual references without being too explicit for the children of the family to watch, or provided to express joy and happyness, or even sometimes be completely irrelevant to the plot and act as a catalyst for the imagination and an escape from reality for the viewers. This in turn makes the sets of these dance and song items to be set in exotic places or places which are related to relaxation and a general uplifting tone.

Sadly, the Bollywood industry, due to large cultural differences is not very popular in Western or Eastern countries. But because of cultural proximity of some Middle Eastern countries, such as Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries with similar cultural values, such as Russia, Bollywood has become a sensation and is widely popular within those countries.

Asian Popular Culture

Asian popular culture is a phenomenon that is currently sweeping across all of Asia, slightly adapted and modified by each region, but still keeping its main values and themes in common.

This culture is generally passed around and spread throughout the world via mass media and multimedia mediums such as television, music, movies and computer games.

Many of  this new pop culture is heavily influenced by westernisation ie. the U.S. and this can be seen in many of the styles of music and the use of the english language in many of its modern media.

I am looking forward to learning and understanding more about Asian popular culture in this course.