what does bollywood mean?

Answer 1

as far as i know..it's what the movie industry in India is called..it's like their sort of Hollywood..

Answer 2

Indian Movies

Answer 3

Bollywood is the name of indian film industry.

Answer 4

It's supposed to be like an Indian Hollywood. Lots of Indians jumping around and singing and not even remotely acting. I really don't get it. Based out of old Bombay, now Mumbai.

Answer 5

A poor copy of hollywood as the name of the indian film industry

Answer 6

same as hollywood. Hollywood makes english films and bollywood makes hindi films{Indian}films.

Answer 7

Bollywood (Hindi: बॉलीवुड, Urdu: بالیوُڈ) is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry in India, but has largely become synonymous with Indian cinema in general.

The name is a portmanteau of Bombay, the old name of Mumbai, and Hollywood, the center of the United States film industry. Though some purists deplore the name (arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood), it seems likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Bollywood and the other major cinematic hubs (Tamil - Kollywood, Telugu - Tollywood, Bengali, and Malayalam) constitute the broader Indian film industry, whose output is the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced and in number of tickets sold. Bollywood is a strong part of popular culture of not only India and the rest of the Indian subcontinent, but also of the Middle East, parts of Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, and among the South Asian diaspora worldwide. Bollywood has its largest diasporic audiences in the UK, Canada, and the U.S., all of which have large Indian immigrant populations.

Bollywood is also commonly referred to as "Hindi cinema", even though use of poetic Urdu words is fairly common. (Linguists would call both Hindi and Urdu variants of Hindustani. This is a political debate; see the articles on the various languages/dialects.) There has been a growing presence of English in dialogues and songs as well. It is not uncommon to see movies which feature dialogues with English words and phrases, even whole sentences. A few movies are also made in two or even three languages (either using subtitles, or several soundtracks).
Bollywood values
Many Bollywood movies have a moralistic tone belied by their shameless portrayal of the very things they pretend to condemn. Storylines pay lip service to the exalted status of woman as mother (even as personification of the Mother goddess), but many millions of rupees have been earned through a salacious exhibition of women's bodies with the most revealing clothes and vulgar dance movements. In this context, a particular subclass of suggestive dance sequence, which is specifically designed to appeal to the blue-collar male in the front-row, is called an item number.

The aged mother is a semi-permanent fixture in most stories, and a major influence on her son, the Hero. Puzzlingly, aged fathers are not half as common, though this may be attributed to a cultural focus on sons protecting/respecting the women of the family.

A recurring theme is the undying friendship between male friends, to an extent that would have Western audiences suspecting homosexuality. But no, the sentiment is genuine, if corny. Friendship is more important than love, Bollywood would have us believe, and more than one movie portrays one protagonist sacrificing his love for a woman for the sake of his friend.

An irony is that most popular movie plots glorify couples falling in love and battling all sorts of odds to be allowed to be together, yet Indian society largely rests on arranged marriages, sometimes even forced ones.

Bollywood is, however, true to one particular value that it projects through its movies — communal harmony and the peaceful coexistence of several religions (e.g., the film Amar Akbar Anthony is the story of three brothers, separated at birth and raised by foster parents of different faiths, who finally unite to defeat the bad guys). The phenomenal popularity and success of many film stars from the minority Muslim community vindicates Bollywood's secular credentials. Today's reigning superstars include Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Saif Ali Khan, whose names reveal their Muslim background. John Abraham is another rising star of Christian and Zoroastrian parentage. The noted film journalist Bharathi S. Pradhan has written a book celebrating Bollywood's secularism titled "Cola, Cars and Communal Harmony: A Doff to Bollywood".

Answer 8

the Indian version of Hollywood !

Answer 9

It's India's Hollywood -- where they make Indian movies.

Answer 10

it dosent mean anythingits just the indian version of hollywood