Masala entertainers spicing up Bollywood
Masala is the Hindi word for a mix of various spices, and in the context of an Indian film, it implies the blending of multiple genres including drama, action, comedy and romance along with plenty of song and dance. Masala entertainers have established themselves as a sub-genre of Hindi cinema with their own colorful mosaic of diverse themes, styles and influences. Some of the themes made popular by these movies are siblings separated in childhood that reunite in adulthood, revenge dramas or the rebirth of a character to repair the wrongdoings of the previous birth.
My October column for local newspapers Brattleboro Reformer, Bennington Banner and Manchester Journal is on Bollywood ‘masala entertainers’ and the template these films created that continue to be copied and referenced in future films. Read the full piece below.
It is common parlance when talking or writing about Indian cinema to refer to a film as a typical “masala entertainer.” Masala is the Hindi word for a mix of various spices, and in the context of an Indian film, it implies the blending of multiple genres including drama, action, comedy and romance along with plenty of song and dance. Masala entertainers have established themselves as a sub-genre of Hindi cinema with their own colorful mosaic of diverse themes, styles and influences. Some of the themes made popular by these movies are siblings separated in childhood that reunite in adulthood, revenge dramas or the rebirth of a character to repair the wrongdoings of the previous birth. In this column, I will present an overview of the masala entertainer with some spicy examples from popular Bollywood films.
Themes
Historically, one of the primary goals of Bollywood films has been to entertain and to provide the ultimate escape from reality. For this reason, commercial Indian filmmakers always endeavored to create mass entertainers that could be enjoyed by audiences from all classes and regions.
Sometime around the early ’70s began the trend of making masala films. Several critics agree that “Yaadon Ki Baraat” (1973), translated as a “procession of memories,” was the first masala Bollywood flick. The story is about three brothers who are separated in childhood due to untoward circumstances and are adopted by different people: a classic nature vs. nurture tale, narrated with ample twists, sub-plots, romantic interludes, comedic scenes and chartbuster songs.
Despite a series of serendipitous encounters, the brothers meet in the course of the film but don’t recognize each other and eventually, reunite when one of the brothers, a musician, performs a song at a concert that their mother used to sing to them in their childhood.
The 1977 film “Amar Akbar Anthony” further popularized the lost-and-found theme by attaching a message of religious unity to the plot. The three brothers named in the title of the film get separated in childhood and are brought up in differing conditions as Hindu, Muslim and Christian, who interact for much of the plot as strangers only to find out in the end that they’re related. The theme of lost-and-found allowed writers and directors to create dramatic and suspenseful situations, at the same time getting the audience emotionally involved to eventually feel a sense of catharsis at the resolution of conflict.
Revenge has been another popular theme in the masala genre and the biggest Bollywood blockbuster film, “Sholay” (1975), remains the best representation of the genre as well as the theme. The movie is about an ex-cop, Thakur Baldev Singh, who hires two outlaws, Jai and Veeru, to take down the notorious bandit, Gabbar Singh.
Characteristics of masala films
There are certain staples of style that have come to be strongly associated with and indicative of masala films. One of the foremost such staple is the film’s dialogue. “Sholay” is the most iconic Indian film with the highest recall value because of its memorable dialogues.
Nearly every Indian visiting theaters in 1975 had watched “Sholay” multiple times and could remember its key dialogues. After the film’s continued success at the box office, the makers decided to release a 58-minute record of the film’s important dialogues. The limited copies went flying off the shelves and each time the dialogues were played on the radio, crowds gathered on the streets to listen to it. Iconic dialogues of the film continue to be referenced in pop culture. “Sholay” was recently screened at the Latchis Theater in Brattleboro as part of my annual Bollywood Spotlight Series, which will continue until Nov. 8. More information on the series can be found at vidhiism.com.
Bollywood has always had a strong hero-worship culture wherein the male leads dominate the cinema space. Often in a masala entertainer, a hero’s “entry scene,” meaning the scene with which the male lead makes his first on-screen appearance, is written and executed with much fanfare. An impactful opening scene elevates the status of the actors portraying those characters and their popularity among audiences dictates how grand this “entry” scene will be.
In the ’60s and ’70s, audiences in India went to the theaters with coins in their pockets, and to express their exhilaration, threw coins at the screen at notable moments or songs in the film. A Hindi term commonly used to describe entertaining films is “paisa vasool,” meaning bang for your buck. The trend of having catchy names for villains in masala movies began with Gabbar Singh, the supervillain from “Sholay.” Many such memorable villain characters include Shakaal, Mogambo, Dr. Dang, Teja, Lion and Crime Master Gogo.
The impact of masala films has been massive on the culture of India. These movies have molded future trends in narrative style, subject matter, treatment and even fashion. They have often become a means of exchange among people of different cultures who share the experience of watching these films. Try saying the dialogue, “Mogambo khush hua,” meaning Mogambo is happy, to a person familiar with Bollywood and uncover a whole other language of interaction.
This article appeared in the October 26, 2023 issue of Brattleboro Reformer