Interesting topic. Here are my observations-
One reason why K-pop has gained so much popularity is because it is heavily westernised. The tunes, the costumes , the style is heavily western and only the language is Korean. It's not like they are promoting traditional Korean culture through their pop music! This is unlike India where we still follow our own traditional music style ..and people of the west don't exactly relate to it, and they are too wary to try to learn a new culture, hence they dismiss it off.
Secondly, India's general image in the western world isn't really great. We are looked down upon as a third world country and people associate India with slums, poverty, snake-charmers etc which is a heavily stereotypical image ...sad but true. The same is not true for Korea. It is a developed nation, is posche, and is the hub of some technological giants (Samsung, Hyundai, etc). The image of the country matters a lot in how the world perceives it! We have failed to create a , for the lack of a better word, "polished" image of our country and culture..hence the ignorance of the world towards us.
Thirdly, I don't agree that Bollywood has deteriorated in content ever since the 2000s (as many have been saying). Infact, it actually got a lot better and churned out much better cinema that would appeal to larger global audience after the 2000s. Please don't bring up DDLJ, K3G, HAHK as benchmark of great cinema that made Bollywood popular. Although I do agree that they were immense blockbusters, it's a fact that it was the NRI population mostly that made those films blockbusters and not the average white westerner. Films like these hardly had a genuine great story, great acting, etc which makes these appealing to a white population.. they were aimed at Indian diaspora in the west and were heavily "Indian" in nature , i.e., emotional quotient >>> logic. This hardly works for a westerner. He /She would get no head or tail of a film like HAHK /DDLJ and the entire thing will be lost on them (and it has been too.. as I follow a few reaction channels on YouTube and have noticed this) .
On the contrary, the films made more recently, like say TZP, 3 idiots, Barfi, ZNMD, English Vinglish, Queen, Kahaani, Dangal, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, PK, Uri, Gully Boy, Andhadhun, etc are much more "global" in nature...in the sense that they are genuinely good films with good story, good acting, direction, screenplay, etc which appeal to people across cultures. Infact Aamir 's films 3 idiots, PK and Dangal got Bollywood noticed and helped in the change of the general perception of the western audience that Indian films are all just mindless songs and dance.
Here comes the problem. While we Indians love our "escapist" cinema, full of beautiful songs and dance sequences, high emotional connect, even at the cost of logic , Western audience don't appreciate it. Our culture is entirely different from theirs so the way we connect with our films such as DDLJ, KKHH, K3G, HAHK etc is something that they can never do. So to get a larger worldwide audience, we have to align our style of cinema with the west.. and that's the sad truth. While I miss that pure Bollywoodness in our films, I can't deny that it won't work anymore.
So yes , while we are lacking original content and music in the recent years , I don't think our films have gotten worse with time as people say. There have always been up and down phases for our cinema, and currently we are going through a low. But I will say that we still manage to churn out one/two great films a year!
I also don't think that we lack talent. We may cry nepotism but Alia is actually talented and westerners really love her acting! The current mainstream actors Shahid, Ranbir, Ranveer, Nawaz, Rajkumar Rao, Ayushman are all equally if not more talented (talking purely about acting TALENT and not charisma, etc) than the older gen of SRK, Salman, Aamir, Ajay, Akshay, Hrithik. What they lack is the immense popularity and blind fan following that the latter enjoyed/still enjoy..which is not possible to replicate anytime in the future IMO as the age of superstars and megastars is gone. Our nostalgia is making us feel like everything at present is trash and everything "old was gold" .. π
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