Why isn't Bollywood canon?

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Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by Bhagwan Shammbhagwan »

If quiz bowl is willing to ask about obscure Hungarian movies like Satantango and others, why is Bollywood so unpopular? I understand there is a general stigma towards Bollywood movies, but not all of them are bad! They do merit exposure! After all, Bollywood is even bigger than Hollywood!
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by Carlos Be »

Pascal Plays Poker wrote: Thu Dec 20, 2018 9:46 pm obscure Hungarian movies like Satantango
Sátántangó is hardly obscure. Also, it has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by Smuttynose Island »

Directors such as Satyajit Ray are occassionally clued and asked about. As is often the case with more niche topics, Indian film content is naturally limited by a lack of exposure as well as the small space occupied by film in the distribution. There is certainly room for intrepid writers to change this!
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

If you mean Bollywood as in "Indian popular film", the Satantango comparison doesn't really hold water; they'd be in different parts of the distribution (art vs. trash). I'd also be interested in seeing an expansion in Nollywood content but recognize basically no one would convert that.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

Satyajit Ray IMO comes up more frequently than Krasznahorkai, but at the rates we're comparing it's definitely just subjective. (With all due respect to Justin) they're both fairly arcane to even regular college playing levels, and _definitely_ to high school level players.

I actually tried to do significant research on Bollywood for when I was writing FILM, and I just had a lot of trouble finding good academic film to write about that wasn't obscenely difficult for the playing audience I desired. There's more popular Bollywood that's easier to write about it (and which I did include!), but then that's more trash-type content, not academic.

It may be a natural question to ask then, why is East Asian film so popular in comparison? And for that you'll have to ask the Academy, it's not really a Quizbowl centric issue at that point.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

An Economic Ignoramus wrote: Thu Dec 20, 2018 10:30 pm I'd also be interested in seeing an expansion in Nollywood content but recognize basically no one would convert that.
And excuse me, but someone (I think one of the Kirk-Davidoffs?) first lined my FILM Nigeria tossup, so don't count your chickens!
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by AKKOLADE »

Pascal Plays Poker wrote: Thu Dec 20, 2018 9:46 pm If quiz bowl is willing to ask about obscure Hungarian movies like Satantango and others, why is Bollywood so unpopular? I understand there is a general stigma towards Bollywood movies, but not all of them are bad! They do merit exposure! After all, Bollywood is even bigger than Hollywood!
Satantango is one of the 100 greatest films of all time, per They Shoot Pictures' amalgamation rating. Also, the length of the film provides an easy hook.

I only get six results for Satantango on AseemDB, four of which focus on the film version at a glance (2016 MYSTERIUM, 2016 MUT, 2015 ACF Nationals, and 2013 Fernando Arrabal). Meanwhile, I get 22 results for Satyajit Ray searching the DB there.

The inclusion of Bollywood under the pop culture distro is a separate issue, which will likely be inhibited by the lack of accessibility to those films as a part of mainstream American culture.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by Carlos Be »

Smuttynose Island wrote: Thu Dec 20, 2018 9:55 pm Directors such as Satyajit Ray are occassionally clued and asked about.
UlyssesInvictus wrote: Thu Dec 20, 2018 11:33 pm Satyajit Ray IMO comes up more frequently than Krasznahorkai
AKKOLADE wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 1:14 am I get 22 results for Satyajit Ray searching the DB there.
TIL there is only one Indian director.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by AKKOLADE »

Ray does have 5 of the 11 Indian films listed on TSPDT. For the other directors:

Guru Dutt - 1 results (Scattegories '13; Pyaasa was mentioned without Dutt's name at the 2018 NSC)
Ritwik Ghatak - 0 results
Mehboob Khan - 0 results (Mother India was clued in Scattegories 2)
Ramesh Sippy - 0 results
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by Cody »

I think there is room for Bollywood in the trash film category in college qb, as Bollywood is important. But it's pretty obvious why Bollywood does not come up much at any level: it is quite difficult. If you were to toss up the most popular Bollywood film ever, it would have much lower conversion rates than a run of the mill recent-ish Hollywood film.

There are good arguments to be made for including popular foreign film in the trash category. "Bollywood is even bigger than Hollywood!" is an empirically false statement for the areas in which quizbowl is played, and is not one.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

AKKOLADE wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 2:13 am Ray does have 5 of the 11 Indian films listed on TSPDT. For the other directors:

Guru Dutt - 1 results (Scattegories '13; Pyaasa was mentioned without Dutt's name at the 2018 NSC)
Ritwik Ghatak - 0 results
Mehboob Khan - 0 results (Mother India was clued in Scattegories 2)
Ramesh Sippy - 0 results
Taking the use of TSPDT to go on a tangent, can some of the other film buffs here comment on how applicable its canon is to like, actual academic film canon. To clarify, when I was doing FILM research, I really loved TSPDT because it was a great jumping off point for finding new films, but I had a lot of trouble finding similar "literature" (for lack of a better word) that jived with how highly ranked some of the TSPDT films were, which felt odd to me because its rankings are statistically generated from other rankings. Do film buffs/students feel like TSPDT accurately represents how well-studied some of those films are, or is it just that when you're searching things on the internet, it's going to be really pop culture biased?
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by A Dim-Witted Saboteur »

AKKOLADE wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 2:13 am Ray does have 5 of the 11 Indian films listed on TSPDT. For the other directors:

Guru Dutt - 1 results (Scattegories '13; Pyaasa was mentioned without Dutt's name at the 2018 NSC)
Ritwik Ghatak - 0 results
Mehboob Khan - 0 results (Mother India was clued in Scattegories 2)
Ramesh Sippy - 0 results
I've seen Mira Nair come up quite frequently in film-related literature I've read; where does she figure into all this? It's also probably okay to have at least a few trash questions that straight white men are not the target audience of, and some Bollywood question content should be part of that.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by Auroni »

AKKOLADE wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 1:14 am The inclusion of Bollywood under the pop culture distro is a separate issue, which will likely be inhibited by the lack of accessibility to those films as a part of mainstream American culture.
I suppose this might be true of mainstream American culture as it is conceived of by white American audiences, but quizbowl at every level is played by a lot of people of South Asian descent, to whom this stuff is very accessible, and people who have been reached by the global appeal of the pop culture from certain countries (such as South Korea, Japan, India, and the UK, to name a few examples).
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by Bhagwan Shammbhagwan »

The OP was mostly facetious, but to expand seriously upon my argument:
  • The idea behind listing "an obscure Hungarian movie like Satantango" was based upon the impression that Indian film directors seemed to be under-asked when compared to European, Iranian, and east Asian directors. Other than Satyajit Ray, none of the other directors that Fred listed seem to come up at all.
  • However, the main argument for this OP was trying to include more Bollywood movies in the trash distribution, as I don't know much about Indian art film in the first place. The other thing that was also on my mind yesterday was the India film tossup at NSC that included Lagaan along with Apu Trilogy. If Lagaan, was considered to be famous enough to be included on that list, why so? I could be wrong, but Lagaan doesn't necessarily have more publicity than a Don or Sholay would.
  • Yes, Bollywood will be extremely hard for non-Indian audiences to get. But if quiz bowl is willing to ask questions about food and other aspects of culture leaning on the obscure side, then I believe it should also be willing to include more Bollywood in "Mixed Academic." People already get exposure through Netflix.
  • The final thing that kind of upsets me is that there seems to be a general stigma towards Bollywood movies. Yes, the industry is inundated with a lot of sappy, crappy movies with impossible action scenes. But there are a lot very well-made movies too.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

Bollywood is an interesting case because it's a huge industry but is very underdiscussed in Western film criticism and therefore underrepresented in canons like TSPDT. (Ignoring Ray and Ghatak, who worked outside of the popular Bollywood tradition, there are only four Bollywood films on the current list.) There's a lot of artistically interesting work done in Bollywood, but even hardcore Western cinephiles tend to be mostly unfamiliar with it. (Or to dismiss it: even pinnacles of Bollywood like Pakeezah or Amar Akbar Anthony can be hard to reconcile with the aesthetic principles we use to judge, say, European art film.)

There's some room to correct for this, I think, just as we can deliberately push against the male-dominated nature of the canon in various fields, as long as we're responsible with difficulty. As always, novelty should be balanced with what the field is actually likely to know. Scattergories is a bad example because it's a hard vanity tournament, but the reason I wrote a tossup on "Dutt" for Scattergories 2 was so I could clue several of the most famous Bollywood movies of all time (Awaara, Pyaasa, Mother India, and Kaagaz Ke Phool) in the same question, so people only familiar with a handful of Bollywood films would have multiple entry points into the question.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by AKKOLADE »

women, fire and dangerous things wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 10:21 am Bollywood is an interesting case because it's a huge industry but is very underdiscussed in Western film criticism and therefore underrepresented in canons like TSPDT. (Ignoring Ray and Ghatak, who worked outside of the popular Bollywood tradition, there are only four Bollywood films on the current list.) There's a lot of artistically interesting work done in Bollywood, but even hardcore Western cinephiles tend to be mostly unfamiliar with it. (Or to dismiss it: even pinnacles of Bollywood like Pakeezah or Amar Akbar Anthony can be hard to reconcile with the aesthetic principles we use to judge, say, European art film.)

There's some room to correct for this, I think, just as we can deliberately push against the male-dominated nature of the canon in various fields, as long as we're responsible with difficulty. As always, novelty should be balanced with what the field is actually likely to know. Scattergories is a bad example because it's a hard vanity tournament, but the reason I wrote a tossup on "Dutt" for Scattergories 2 was so I could clue several of the most famous Bollywood movies of all time (Awaara, Pyaasa, Mother India, and Kaagaz Ke Phool) in the same question, so people only familiar with a handful of Bollywood films would have multiple entry points into the question.
This is a good post and breaks down my feelings on it pretty well.

I went on Box Office Mojo and since I'd already found this data, I wanted to share it anyway. Here's what I think are the top grossing Bollywood films are from the past three years in the U.S. market. There's no way to filter by country (as far as I can tell), so I just went by titles and definitely missed any that were translated into English.

2018: Padmaavat, 111th, $11.8 million
2017: Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, 105th, $20.2 million
2016: Dangal, 129th, $12.4 million

At least regarding the 2017 list, I wouldn't have thought too much of a trash set having answer lines on the two movies surrounding Baahubali's placement, CHiPs (a semi-notable failure) and The Circle (another failure notable for being a rare Tom Hanks turn as a villain). I can't say the same for Dangal (The Light Between Oceans and Fifty Shades of Black didn't register much with me beyond the latter being the Wayans project I expected from the title).
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by yeah viv talk nah »

AKKOLADE wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 10:48 am
women, fire and dangerous things wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 10:21 am Bollywood is an interesting case because it's a huge industry but is very underdiscussed in Western film criticism and therefore underrepresented in canons like TSPDT. (Ignoring Ray and Ghatak, who worked outside of the popular Bollywood tradition, there are only four Bollywood films on the current list.) There's a lot of artistically interesting work done in Bollywood, but even hardcore Western cinephiles tend to be mostly unfamiliar with it. (Or to dismiss it: even pinnacles of Bollywood like Pakeezah or Amar Akbar Anthony can be hard to reconcile with the aesthetic principles we use to judge, say, European art film.)

There's some room to correct for this, I think, just as we can deliberately push against the male-dominated nature of the canon in various fields, as long as we're responsible with difficulty. As always, novelty should be balanced with what the field is actually likely to know. Scattergories is a bad example because it's a hard vanity tournament, but the reason I wrote a tossup on "Dutt" for Scattergories 2 was so I could clue several of the most famous Bollywood movies of all time (Awaara, Pyaasa, Mother India, and Kaagaz Ke Phool) in the same question, so people only familiar with a handful of Bollywood films would have multiple entry points into the question.
This is a good post and breaks down my feelings on it pretty well.

I went on Box Office Mojo and since I'd already found this data, I wanted to share it anyway. Here's what I think are the top grossing Bollywood films are from the past three years in the U.S. market. There's no way to filter by country (as far as I can tell), so I just went by titles and definitely missed any that were translated into English.

2018: Padmaavat, 111th, $11.8 million
2017: Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, 105th, $20.2 million
2016: Dangal, 129th, $12.4 million

At least regarding the 2017 list, I wouldn't have thought too much of a trash set having answer lines on the two movies surrounding Baahubali's placement, CHiPs (a semi-notable failure) and The Circle (another failure notable for being a rare Tom Hanks turn as a villain). I can't say the same for Dangal (The Light Between Oceans and Fifty Shades of Black didn't register much with me beyond the latter being the Wayans project I expected from the title).
Just to clarify a bit, the Baahubali franchise is technically a Tollywood (Telugu film industry) product, not a Bollywood one (though I guess in this thread we are using "Bollywood" as a catch-all for Indian cinema in general).

Somewhat related to this point, I just wanted to mention that other regional Indian cinema industries like the Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, and Malayalam industries also have a lot of great films that I feel could fit into the quizbowl canon (at much higher difficulties of course). Although I can unfortunately pretty much only vouch for Telugu films (e.g., Mayabazar and the art films of K. Vishwanath), there are definitely other landmark films in other regional Indian languages that could find a place in the canon.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

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Pascal Plays Poker wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 9:26 am
  • However, the main argument for this OP was trying to include more Bollywood movies in the trash distribution, as I don't know much about Indian art film in the first place. The other thing that was also on my mind yesterday was the India film tossup at NSC that included Lagaan along with Apu Trilogy. If Lagaan, was considered to be famous enough to be included on that list, why so? I could be wrong, but Lagaan doesn't necessarily have more publicity than a Don or Sholay would.
Lagaan is the only Bollywood movie whose name I could have come up with. Admittedly, I know nothing about Bollywood, and my knowledge of Lagaan is only because we watched it at the end of the year in one class.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by Panayot Hitov »

Mira Nair is more Parallel Cinema than Bollywood. Bollywood really should be canon in quizbowl, but tbf it is really treated as separate from the "western canon" in most film studies classes, so it's not like quizbowl is a glaring outlier. In terms of important directors that should come up more, Guru Dutt and Mehboob Khan certainly come to mind (can we get a tossup just on that facial expression Guru Dutt has when he sees his true love that he knows he will never be able to consummate? best in cinema imho). For actors, I think that a SRK or Bachchan question, at the very least, would work pretty well.

Edit: tl;dr I agree with Will
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

Post by ErikC »

To address the initial point: Bollywood isn't canon because it's not generally studied academically. I'd definitely say part of this is Western-centric attitudes. Academic quizbowl film questions generally draw upon what you might encounter in film studies. In comparison, classic Hollywood has been studied academically for quite a while, even movies made in a studio system similar to what today produces superhero blockbusters.

Straying away from the movies people do read or hear about through the criticism world (which includes plenty of non-Western countries) is a great way to get dead tossups. On Facebook Will Nediger made a good point that even the parts of the "western canon" aren't too easy to tossup for an academic tournament, drawing from consideration data from CMST.

I really think in this case, India is unusually worse off than almost every part of the world, comparatively speaking. While I like Auroni's point regarding the target audience of being quizbowl being diverse, I don't think Indian cinemas have really had their break in the West yet. Parallel cinema really doesn't have too many "canon" films that I would expect to see in tournaments below Nats difficulty.

As usual, the best way to make such a change is to write the questions yourself, and Will and Raynor have started that ball rolling themselves. I do think there will be a limit to how much you can tossup, however, unless Indian cinemas have a break-out moment like countries like Iran or South Korea have.
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Re: Why isn't Bollywood canon?

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Pascal Plays Poker wrote: Fri Dec 21, 2018 9:26 amHowever, the main argument for this OP was trying to include more Bollywood movies in the trash distribution, as I don't know much about Indian art film in the first place. The other thing that was also on my mind yesterday was the India film tossup at NSC that included Lagaan along with Apu Trilogy. If Lagaan, was considered to be famous enough to be included on that list, why so? I could be wrong, but Lagaan doesn't necessarily have more publicity than a Don or Sholay would.
I wrote that question, which clued from The River (by Renoir), Pyaasa, The Apu Trilogy, and Lagaan -- four films that are neither all from the same era nor in the same language. This decision was just a matter of convenience. Lagaan hit the right balance of being famous in the West (more than the ones you mention) and being plausibly arty enough -- although no question, there are better Bollywood movies. It wasn't the most artful question, I admit.
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