not necessarily nonsense

For all those people who think that the Bollywood industry is a forum of fools, and is just a way of entertaining life when you have no better, please read on. Others interested may kindly do the same.
The first image that would come to one's mind when the word Bollywood's uttered is probably that of a girl running between trees playing catch-me-if-you-can with her boyfriend, while some songs go on in the background, describing the naughtiness, the beauty, the happiness, and love. The scene would be in some hill-station probably. Or perhaps to yet others, the word that would simultaneously ring in their ears along with Bollywood would be 'dhishoom dhishoom'. These are certain commonly ascribed, commonly accepted perspectives.
And yet, just a rethink would reveal what my mother would tell me films are: "samaaj ka darpan", or reflection of the society.
The 50s' films (at least many of them), for example, were characterised by the commonly perceived social problems and issues. While a Raj Kapoor movie would go on to show the image of a village boy, migrating to the city in search of a job and getting lost under the big city lights, films like Naya Daur and Upkar conveyed the aspirations of the youth of a young India. Dev Anand's Baazi shows a guy who takes the other route, since the normal one doesn't promise him a future. The country was poor then, much poorer than it is now; the people still uneducated, unemployed. Social welfare schemes had not set in. Guru Dutt portrayed yet another side of society and urban culture through films like Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool.
Mother India was a reflection of so many issues the society was burning with - absence of banking, lack of faith in the judicial system, landlordism, problems of a panchayat system, lack of education, lack of healthcare, the general status of women, lack of irrigation facilities, social support and so on. Yet the film ends on a note which shows irrigation, greenery, hope.
The 60s were the happy eras, globally, for whatever reason. Though there was the China War, which stirred things up a bit. One just has to see Haqeeqat or Hum Dono or some such film to get that feel.
However, despite such tinges of black and white, we generally see colours, not just on screen but even in the dresses people wore, the songs that were sung. Happy-go-lucky, relatively tension-free times. The youth seemed to be bubbling with a dash of new hope and energy. Those were the days of romance, of Shammi Kapoor and then Rajesh Khanna.
Enter 70s, rather mid-seventies. A term seemed to have entered the Indian social dictionary- 'Naxalism'. A war had been fought with Pakistan, and won. But an internal war was happening, and Mrs. Gandhi had the emergency in force (see Aandhi, 1976). There was now the educated, disgruntled, unemployed youth, born a little before independence, and thinking, "This is what independence has given me?" And therefore, people could so well relate to the term "Angry Young Man" the moment it was coined. Amitabh Bachchan had become a superhero suddenly. Society clung to his character. There is in fact a scene in Deewaar where Shashi Kapoor comments on how the world has turned into a third class compartment, with passengers far outnumbering the number of seats available. The film shows how one brother goes on to become a smuggler and the other a cop; yet both want to fight poverty, howbeit in their own ways.
The hero was now more often than not a police inspector, resolving to fight all evil, all the smugglers, the people who stole away social wealth.
Gloomy? Not always. Those were still days of contentment, with the middle class existing in its own happy world. Hrishikesh Mukherjee never made a movie which was not believable. Amol Palekar was once asked recently, "You were once the image of the middle class guy. Where has that image disappeared these days?", to which he replied, "Where do you think the middle class has disappeared these days?"
The 80s grew a bit darker. The era of art films; people insisted on seeing more of reality, even if it wasn't pleasing. Naseeruddin Shah, Raj Babbar and Om Puri played characters just out of everyday pages of society; footnote: Khandahar, Katha, Sparsh et al. Those were the days of Shabana and Smita. Feminism was beginning to find its niche. Rajesh Khanna pioneered in showing through films like Avtar and Amrit how the middle class man had begun considering his parents a liability. He could not sustain them anymore. His wife was learning to have demands, he loved her. His parents could be sent to an old-age home, because the home now needed place for the washing machine and the television. I just hope that people who've seen those times would relate to what I am writing, and not consider me anti-feminist, and thus read on. Kader Khan and Govinda movies carried this tradition into the late 80s. There was perhaps a need of a superhero too. A different kind. A saviour of mankind from social villains. There was a need for a Mr. India.
The 90s saw the development of the youth. The chocolate boy looks would work this time, since the hero was no longer a man, but a boy, a school/college goer. An Aamir Khan, A Shahrukh Khan. Privatisation was setting in. People had enough. Prices had not risen much. No war had been fought. This was time for love. Society was responding positively to privatisation, Bryan Adams and English movies. College-goers began modelling themselves up as lover-boys. India had been independent for a long time now. Things were probably balanced if you had a job. And college was the hub of love.
Something changed in the middle of this millenium. Something urged society to think on lines it had not explored. In came the issues of globalisation, of nuclear families, gay rights, of Life in a Metro, of the Fashion or the Corporate world. The modern society had to identify itself with the modern DevD. Society would no longer be just cheesy. The youth would be equally receptive to a Rang De Basanti as it would be to Dil Chahta Hai. Three Idiots and Taare Zameen Par held out yet other problems like cut throat competition and parental aspirations. Such is the demand for showing reality that even SRK had to do a Swades, and what's more, this gesture was appreciated.
Offbeat films which show some sense go well with the metro crowd, while the suburb and mofussil areas still identify with lovers and stuntman heroes and cheap humour. Education and realistion of the ill-effects of a privatised economy have not reached a mass that is yet to experience all such effects. Yet the prediction is that all this won't stay for long. But courtesy new problems, new issues like terrorism etc., a new superhero is required, who has all the qualities to be the world's Krissh, to save the world, with absoltely nothing stopping him.
I nowhere suggest that there have not been films which bear no image of the society, and such films could have been made in any era, for entertainment sake. It is just that Bollywood has in its own way, knowingly or otherwise, conveyed social messages and aspirations over the years. It has not been a world of just dhishoom dhishoom and the loser lover.