Impact of Indian cinema on culture and creation of world view among youth: A sociological analysis of Bollywood movies

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Subhra Rajat Balabantaray
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2405

ACADEMIC PAPER

Impact of Indian cinema on culture and creation of world view

among youth: A sociological analysis of Bollywood movies

Subhra Rajat Balabantaray

Department of Economics and International

Business, School of Business, Kandoli Campus,

University of Petroleum and Energy Studies,

Dehradun, India

Correspondence

Subhra Rajat Balabantaray, Department of

Economics and International Business, School

of Business, Kandoli Campus, University of

Petroleum and Energy Studies, Premnanagar,

Paundha, Dehradun, Uttarakhand 248007,

India.

Email: subhrarajat@gmail.com

The purpose of this paper is to document the impact of movies/cinema on Indian cul-

ture and to investigate the ongoing cultural transformations that have happened over

a point of time in India owing to the contributions made by Indian cinema. Moreover,

an attempt is made to understand how Indian movies have initiated various changes

with regards to thought process on one hand and lifestyle on the other. A purposive

sampling of 20 young individuals from various universities were selected. Methodol-

ogy adopted is qualitative in nature, based upon structured and in-depth interviews

which enabled the respondents to opine regarding their understanding of the change.

There has been changes with regards to the institutions of marriage and instances of

live in relationships have come of age and there has been a constant and continuous

shift from joint families to nuclear families. Elaborating on the changes in the cultural

practices; preferences have changed with regards to food habits, clothing, choice of

career options and belief system. The distinctive contribution of the present paper is

to offer an understanding of the impact of movies on Indian culture especially on the

youth extracting information from the structured and in-depth interviews. This paper

also tries to document the behavioral changes in the youth as a bi-product of films.

Moreover, the present study attempts to view youth from cultural film theory per-

spective for India in general and on youths in particular.

1|INTRODUCTION

Bade Bade Deshon mein Aisi Choti Choti baatein hoti rehti hai,

Senorita!

Said Raj to Simran, in the ever-famous love story of 1995-Dilwale

Dulhania Le Jayenge. Ever since, whenever something unexpected hap-

pens to any of our friends, at least once, we have used this dialog to

them in order to console them because we have developed an under-

standing that whatever/however problematic the situation might be, it

will eventuallyfade away thereby bringing joy and happiness. This cre-

ates a mind-set that all willbe well at the end, can be attributed to the

role playedby the Bollywood movies in shaping, reshaping andmanipu-

lating our worldview. Understanding develops through the things indi-

viduals see, observe, witness and experience; Indian cinema clearly

plays thatpart which happens to put thingsin order at the end.

Human beings are so very conditioned to believe that all is well

that ends well, manipulates us to believe that everything will fall in

place right at the end and the same is depicted in almost all the

Bollywood movies. However strenuous and difficult the journey might

be for the positive characters, but always it ends with –HAPPY END-

ING, thereby manipulating the thought process and making individuals

believe that everything will fall into place at the end. Similarly, there

are various aspects in lives of individuals where they tend to believe

that they can replicate the happenings in the movies thereby trying to

emulate the characters depicted in the movies. This is because of the

fact that we as individuals tend to associate ourselves with the char-

acters of the movies.

Movies happen to be the most influential tool of communication

(Abbas & Zohra, 2013; Itoo & Nagar, 2017) and society happens to

learn a lot of things from films (Ghosal, 2018).

Received: 10 July 2020 Accepted: 15 August 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2405

J Public Affairs. 2022;22:e2405. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1of7

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2405