The best Bollywood memes
What are the funniest Bollywood memes? How does Bollywood consistently produce such top-drawer memes? And why aren’t movies from other cultures as colourful, eager to please and culturally lighthearted as the output of Bollywood?
If you’ve never sat down to watch a Bollywood movie, man alive you are missing out. This vivid, kaleidoscopic alternate universe of colourful, melodramatic, easy-on-the-eye cinema from the Indian subcontinent is an artform like no other.
And as you’d expect, Bollywood has inspired some truly world-class memes. Here’s a look at Bollywood culture, and some of the coolest memes out there.
BOLLYWOOD MEME BASICS
The name ‘Bollywood’, in case you didn’t know, is a portmanteau – that is, a joining together – of the words ‘Hollywood’ and ‘Bombay’, which is the old fashioned name for the Indian city of Mumbai.
India has the largest film industry in the world, producing anything up to 2,000 movies a year across 20 languages. That’s way more than Hollywood, since you ask.
Other smaller regional film industries use the same trick of substituting the first letter of Hollywood. So Tollywood makes Telegu-language ovies, based in the city of Hyperabad. Kollywood is Tamil-language sector, based mostly in Chennai.
Outside India, Nollywood refers to Nigeria’s film industry, Trollywood is Sweden’s and, hilariously, Y’allywood is Atlanta’s growing production hub.
It’s worldwide baby.
BOLLYWOOD PLOT MEMES
What does Bollywood stand for? Melodrama. An over-the-top, larger-than-life operatic sensibility. Pure entertainment.
Although, there’s so much more to it than that. India is rapidly becoming a modern, progressive, literate society. But Bollywood movies are still the primary way through which India reflects on its own culture.
In much the same way that, for instance, the novels of Charles Dickens in 19th century London extracted drama from the pressing issues of the day – child poverty! religious hypocrisy! – Bollywood holds a mirror up to the modern Indian state.
BOLLYWOOD FORMULA MEMES
That’s not to say all Bollywood movies are rich, inspired, layered cultural documents. The outlandish musical numbers, the occasional gratuitous wet-sari scene, the ludicrous plots pegged to amnesia or twins separated at birth are just as prominent in the field.
Like Hollywood, Bollywood puts out just as much nonsense as it does Oscar-worthy brilliance.
Some argue that ‘new-Bollywood’ has gone a bit too commercial, a bit too poppy, and has forgotten its simple romantic roots.
BOLLYWOOD SONG MEMES
Traditionalists also gripe that modern Indian cinema audiences are less inclined than previous generations to ‘really get into it’ and dance in the aisles during screenings.
If you’re judging the musical song and dance numbers – outrageous colours, exaggerated facial expressions and all – by the standards of Hollywood, then you’re getting it all wrong.
The aesthetic owes more, if you’re interested, to the classical Parsi theatre tradition. Just nowadays it’s shot through with mammoth budgets and kickass 21st century filming technology. What’s not to like?
BOLLYWOOD PLOT MEMES
The hero is always noble, and never puts a foot wrong. He is dashing, funny, and great at fighting. The leading lady is always pure and chaste, but also somehow knows a few saucy dance moves. What’s up with that eh.
The villain, and the ‘bad girl’, will always, always come to a sticky end. A best friend may end up sacrificed.
If directors deviated from this winning formula, audiences would never forgive them.
Big stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra have amassed vast fortunes and colossal followings off the back of this formula. People love it and it works.
BOLLYWOOD VILLAIN MEMES
The villains in Bollywood often reflect wider anxieties in Indian culture. In the past, you could expect the typical villain to resemble lumpen, arrogant British colonialists.
Later movies make terrorists, or drug dealers the bad guy.
Nowadays, the bad guy more often than not stands for insidious corporatisation – the invasion, real and imagined, of India by western culture via the internet.
There’s a lot to learn from Bollywood. And a whole bunch of joy to be had while you do it, with movies that are funny, exciting and above all moving.
Why not join the conversation around Bollywood by creating your own custom GIF memes on Memix.
They’re pretty moving too.
Hey, IS STEALING MEMES ILLEGAL?
While we’re here, does anybody know IS IT PRONOUNCED GIF OR JIF?