1. Nepotism
When it comes to identifying the wrong in Bollywood, nepotism grabs all eyes. The word itself says everything. Be it Sonam Kapoor who, in the name of struggle, just lost some weight and grabbed a movie or be it Ananya Pandey, who inspite of her extremely bad acting skills, got her second offer even before the release of her first movie. Athiya Shetty, Sooraj Pancholi, Shradhha Kapoor, Tiger Shroff, Janhavi Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Arjun Kapoor…..there is a big list of these starkids who don’t have the required skillset but are still persisting in the industry because afterall, their parents have done great movies in their time.
No doubt, some of them have made a mark (Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Sara Ali Khan) but I think the real struggle in Bollywood starts the day an aspiring actor steps in Mumbai with no connections in the industry at all. I mean look at some of these faces!
How many of them, inspite of their well praised acting in their debut films, have got back to back movie offers?
But for these starkids, there exists some names like Karan Johar and Salman Khan who never fails to give these “so called strugglers” a chance to showcase their hereditary talent.
2. Obsession with fair skin and surgeries
Take a look at the photographs of these actresses before and after their surgeries!
Aint these pictures shocking?
It seems as if you are seeing two different persons in the same photograph. Some have gone for a lip surgery and others for a skin lightening treatment. How ironical it is that on one hand, actors like Kangana Ranaut refused a 2 crore endorsement ad for a fairness cream and on the other hand, she herself has undergone lip surgery to improvise her looks. This obsession with good looks has made the common people think of themselves as inferior, as if they lack something and they try to copy the stars. Bollywood needs to agree to the fact that looks are not everything. An actor is born to act good and not look good!
3. Fake award shows
Almost everyone would agree to this fact about the fake award shows in Bollywood. This is the reason why Mr. Perfectionist Aamir Khan doesn't go to the award shows anymore since 1995.
The fakeness in these award shows could be sensed from this fact. It was the event for Filmfare 2016 and for the best male debut, there were 5 nominations:
- Shashank Arora — Titli
- Vicky Kaushal — Masaan
- Sooraj Pancholi — Hero
- Sunny Singh — Pyaar ka punchnama 2
- Omkar Kapoor — Pyaar ka punchnama 2
And guess who got the award? None other than Sooraj Pancholi (son of Aditya Pancholi). And that too over Vicky Kaushal. If it would have been any of the other three, people would have believed that. But, in case of Sooraj Pancholi, it was a big no!
And even more disappointing was to watch Athiya Shetty bagging the best female debut award!!
4. Objectification of women
Have a look at these songs.
Merely by looking at these pictures, one can start muttering these item numbers but have you ever stopped for a moment and checked into their lyrics?
These item songs are nowhere behind in promoting vulgarity and objectification of a woman's body. Still they exist as they are a promotional necessity for the movie and are prevalent in the film industry since the times of “Helen”. Long time, no?
5. Gender Discrimination
It's a well known fact that women are paid less than men in most of the professions and even Bollywood doesn't deny this fact. For the same movie, females are paid much lesser (sometimes not even half) than their male counterparts.
Not just this, there are so many movies that use women centric dialogues as a source of laughter. Remember the one from Jab we met?
6. Casting couch
Well this is not a new story in this industry. It is happening for almost a decade and many famous actresses have accepted the fact that it has happened to them as well and this practice is still prevalent in the industry. Kangana Ranaut, Tisca Chopra, Kalki Koechlin and Sunny Leone, to name a few. And not just women, it has happened even with some well known self made actors like Ranveer Singh, Ayushman Khurana and Sidhharth Malhotra.
So, you might have got an idea why most of the middle class parents don't support their children to be an actor.
7. Trend of remixes
Remember this song from Delhi 6 composed by the well known singer and music composer A.R. Rehman?
That was perhaps the only good thing in the movie. The song has been remixed recently to a video song Masakali 2.0 starring Sidhharth Malhotra and Tara Sutaria. It has gained much views but is still not as mesmerizing as the original one. A.R. Rahman even tweeted about this showing his disappointment.
Just like this, there are so many Bollywood songs including Aankh Maare, Laila Main Laila and Saara Zamaana that were not effective in getting the same hype that their original ones got.
8. Stealing other's ideas
There is a whole lot of movies that have been copied either from Hollywood or from a South Indian movie. You name it and there exists an exact copy of that somewhere else.
Salman Khan's Bharat is an exact copy of a Korean movie "An ode to my father". Agneepath's concept was taken from a Hollywood movie "Scarface". Kabir Singh was a Xerox of the South Indian blockbuster Arjun Reddy. Even DDLJ that stayed at Maratha Mandir for 23 years was a copy of famous Hollywood movie "The sure thing".
Now you must have got the idea about the originality of these movies.
Some of the recent movies have included the famous Punjabi songs in them. Believe it or not, the original Punjabi song videos are way too better than the Bollywood ones. They just act as an unnecessary part of the movie to increase the popularity of movie even before its release.