Films can tell us a lot about the country in which they were made. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Give specific examples and details to support your response.

Hollywood and Bollywood, the names alone readily evoke antipodean images, the former of western glitz and glam, the latter, of a burgeoning, frenetic eastern entertainment industry. Although many kinds of movies come from the America’s Hollywood, the viewer can easily piece together certain concepts about what the United States is like.

For example, indoor scenes will often show apartments that are huge compared to, say, apartments in the Philippines. Sometimes, a movie purporting to show the poverty of people living in the ghettos has the Filipino viewer wondering what the point is, considering the relatively luxurious environs depicted in the movie. In outdoor scenes, the streets will be wide, the spaces vast, and the vehicles in traffic spaced far apart. Scenes like these tell the viewer that the United States is a spacious country where the people have very high expectations with regard to what they are entitled to.

Bollywood movies on the other hand have a lot of en masse dance scenes with the actors and actresses bursting out into song at every other turn. From this we get the idea that in India, the communal connectedness of people is highly prized. Why else does the entire community have to join in the dancing of a courting couple? And be welcomed?

The sheer number of people involved in the dance scenes also tells us that warm bodies abound. Indeed, India is either the first or the second most populous nation on earth. Through such inescapable clues in the movies we can learn much about the countries in which they were made.