In the pre-social media era, Bollywood movies about Bollywood movies were more concerned with the culture of film-making.
Shah Rukh Khan’s elder son, Aryan Khan, is all set for his directorial debut with The Ba***ds Of Bollywood. The much-awaited show is finally released on Netflix, and fans can’t wait to see what it has to offer.
Ahead of the big release, the Khan family hosted a premiere, which saw attendance from many Bollywood celebrities, including Alia Bhatt, Ranbir Kapoor, Kajol, Vicky Kaushal, members of the Ambani family, making it a truly star-studded affair.
Now, early reviews are pouring in on social media, and they suggest the series might be the perfect pick for a fun weekend binge.
Be it the spoofy excesses of Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om or the playful curiosity of Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance, the Bombay industry — creative cameos, self-referential dialogue, colourful characters, on-set adventures — was merely a stepping-off point for the stories.
However, this genre is very different in the digital age. It’s now concerned with the industry and the average viewer’s perception of it; it’s more alive to the internet than the world we live in.
The storytelling rides the coattails of reddit-coded gossip, controversies, self-aware humour, sly potshots and guess-the-celebrity rumours. So the N-word (nepotism) and the M-word (meta) become everything. The problem is that this gimmick is hard to sustain in the long format. Shows like The Fame Game and Showtime stumbled after the winks wore off.
