> Fashion, like movies is exactly the kind business you would expect to attain a global reach.
Why is that so? Fashion is often local to the culture, with different cultures appreciating different, if not opposite things. Eg, tanned skin tone. Tanned skin is popular in America, to the point of having tanning salons - it means you have the leisure time to spend it outside. In China, the opposite is true: tanned skin means you're so poor, you work outside. Fairer skinned people have the money to not go outside to work. Thus, what's fashionable isn't been the two countries isn't going to be the same because of similar differences in culture, so it's hard for me to take that for granted that fashion should be movies. And then even then, movies have the similar problem. How many Bollywood hits are global hits?
Ok, so we have decades of US company policies trying (to less or more effect) to combat the black/white discrimination - quotas, tribunals, edication, Hollywood movies etc.
What, besides Bollywood, should a US (tech) company do? Remove the surname field on the internal company address book? Prevent Indian nationals hiring / interviewing /managing other Indian nationals?
I do ask seriously - my utterly uninformed instinct says that we are close to the equivalent of 1950s US - southern blacks left the USA to fight and came back with tales of drinking warm beer in British pubs and people being amazed by their accents not their skin colour. India is seeing a second generation leaving to work in global markets and there will be an effect.
I agree, not all of Europe is the same and moving to London, Berlin, Amsterdam, or similar would’ve worked almost as well. Mainly you find that wherever people go to rather than being primarily born there is full of ambition.
But the scale is different. The amount of capital in SFBA dwarfs all other markets combined. And while you can make great indie films anywhere and even have a runaway succes or two, blockbusters happen in Hollywood and Bollywood. There’s a whole industry and ecosystem that knows how to make them.
Same with startups. If you want to be in a place with dozens, even hundreds, of people who know how to take an idea from $10mil to $100mil at every level of a company – that’s SFBA.
Meanwhile Slovenia just announced an innovative new govt pre-seed startup fund investing up to a whopping $100k if you have strong revenue. Our entire GDP is less than Apple’s quarterly profits.
And I figured if I’m moving out of country might as well go all the way to SFBA. I can always come back later with lessons learned.
>Colorism, the bias against people of darker skin tones, has vexed India for a long time. It is partly a product of colonial prejudices, and it has been exacerbated by caste, regional differences and Bollywood, the nation’s film industry, which has long promoted lighter-skinned heroes.
>Ms. Narayan, who recently published a book on how women are treated in India, said Bollywood had contributed to these prejudices.
>"Every heroine and now heroes, too, are whitewashed," she said. “And the villains are dark.”
> It is partly a product of colonial prejudices, and it has been exacerbated by caste, regional differences and Bollywood, the nation’s film industry, which has long promoted lighter-skinned heroes.
How weasely of the NYT. Colorism exists all over the world and pre-dates British colonialism in India. (Although the British certainly leveraged that phenomenon in dividing and conquering the continent, just as it leveraged preexisting linguistic and religious differences.)
> Hindi and Urdu, by any reasonable linguistic definition are not separate languages.
For any non-Indian person reading this, please note that this statement is 100% false. I am an outsider to Hindi speaking and Urdu speaking region. I have no dog in any political fight here but I have studied Hindi all my academic life and can assuredly tell you this statement is utter rubbish.
But this might not be a fault of OP. A lot of people have this feeling because of Bollywood. Both Bollywood and Hindustani music is a cross of both Hindi and Urdu. If you never study Hindi or Urdu but watch a lot of Bollywood movies you will end up learning a bit of both the languages. But that does not mean they are same.
Yeah totally, from the moment when they realize I am from India, they say they watch bollywood in Netflix to which I say "I do not speak much Hindi and I seldom watch bollywood movies"
Lets compare Hollywood movies with bollywood, two genre and two locations. Historically, a Hollywood movie is a movie made in Hollywood for an american audience, and bollywood is movies made in Inida for an Indian audiences. However, film makers in Hollywood has done Bollywood movies in Hollywood, and Indian movie makers has made Hollywood movies in India.
Can a male director make a "film by female director"? if not, then its not a genre. female directed and male directed style of movies could become a genre, and then we would see female directors make male directed styled movies, and male directors make female directed styled movies. The question is how we would define that style, specially if we want to avoid sexist generalization.
Bollywood genre is categorized by a movie with a lot of songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills are all mixed up in a three-hour extravaganza with an intermission. Bollywood plots have tended to be melodramatic.
How would you describe the female directed genre as?
> Really? To me it seems to be more American than anything else. There are guys dancing and pretty girls and special effects. That seems pretty much like an outgrowth of MTV culture, rap videos, etc. which are of American origin. I'll grant it has a unique sense of humor.
I would like to differ. People dancing, pretty girls as eye candy is a universal trend that definitely didn't start out of the MTV generation. See for e.g. Bollywood movies.
Hacker Cinema
11 comments on Hacker News
> Fashion, like movies is exactly the kind business you would expect to attain a global reach.
Why is that so? Fashion is often local to the culture, with different cultures appreciating different, if not opposite things. Eg, tanned skin tone. Tanned skin is popular in America, to the point of having tanning salons - it means you have the leisure time to spend it outside. In China, the opposite is true: tanned skin means you're so poor, you work outside. Fairer skinned people have the money to not go outside to work. Thus, what's fashionable isn't been the two countries isn't going to be the same because of similar differences in culture, so it's hard for me to take that for granted that fashion should be movies. And then even then, movies have the similar problem. How many Bollywood hits are global hits?
Bollywood is crazily popular in Asia. Even in India's enemy like Pakistan.
China is investing a lot in Confucius institutes and their own films as well. We'll see more after they wake up from the zero Covid stupor soon.
Ok, so we have decades of US company policies trying (to less or more effect) to combat the black/white discrimination - quotas, tribunals, edication, Hollywood movies etc.
What, besides Bollywood, should a US (tech) company do? Remove the surname field on the internal company address book? Prevent Indian nationals hiring / interviewing /managing other Indian nationals?
I do ask seriously - my utterly uninformed instinct says that we are close to the equivalent of 1950s US - southern blacks left the USA to fight and came back with tales of drinking warm beer in British pubs and people being amazed by their accents not their skin colour. India is seeing a second generation leaving to work in global markets and there will be an effect.
So - how do we get on the right side of history?
I agree, not all of Europe is the same and moving to London, Berlin, Amsterdam, or similar would’ve worked almost as well. Mainly you find that wherever people go to rather than being primarily born there is full of ambition.
But the scale is different. The amount of capital in SFBA dwarfs all other markets combined. And while you can make great indie films anywhere and even have a runaway succes or two, blockbusters happen in Hollywood and Bollywood. There’s a whole industry and ecosystem that knows how to make them.
Same with startups. If you want to be in a place with dozens, even hundreds, of people who know how to take an idea from $10mil to $100mil at every level of a company – that’s SFBA.
Meanwhile Slovenia just announced an innovative new govt pre-seed startup fund investing up to a whopping $100k if you have strong revenue. Our entire GDP is less than Apple’s quarterly profits.
And I figured if I’m moving out of country might as well go all the way to SFBA. I can always come back later with lessons learned.
The article has a number of words on Bollywood:
>Colorism, the bias against people of darker skin tones, has vexed India for a long time. It is partly a product of colonial prejudices, and it has been exacerbated by caste, regional differences and Bollywood, the nation’s film industry, which has long promoted lighter-skinned heroes.
>Ms. Narayan, who recently published a book on how women are treated in India, said Bollywood had contributed to these prejudices.
>"Every heroine and now heroes, too, are whitewashed," she said. “And the villains are dark.”
> It is partly a product of colonial prejudices, and it has been exacerbated by caste, regional differences and Bollywood, the nation’s film industry, which has long promoted lighter-skinned heroes.
How weasely of the NYT. Colorism exists all over the world and pre-dates British colonialism in India. (Although the British certainly leveraged that phenomenon in dividing and conquering the continent, just as it leveraged preexisting linguistic and religious differences.)
> Hindi and Urdu, by any reasonable linguistic definition are not separate languages.
For any non-Indian person reading this, please note that this statement is 100% false. I am an outsider to Hindi speaking and Urdu speaking region. I have no dog in any political fight here but I have studied Hindi all my academic life and can assuredly tell you this statement is utter rubbish.
But this might not be a fault of OP. A lot of people have this feeling because of Bollywood. Both Bollywood and Hindustani music is a cross of both Hindi and Urdu. If you never study Hindi or Urdu but watch a lot of Bollywood movies you will end up learning a bit of both the languages. But that does not mean they are same.
Yeah totally, from the moment when they realize I am from India, they say they watch bollywood in Netflix to which I say "I do not speak much Hindi and I seldom watch bollywood movies"
They must be thinking i'm pulling their leg.
Lets compare Hollywood movies with bollywood, two genre and two locations. Historically, a Hollywood movie is a movie made in Hollywood for an american audience, and bollywood is movies made in Inida for an Indian audiences. However, film makers in Hollywood has done Bollywood movies in Hollywood, and Indian movie makers has made Hollywood movies in India.
Can a male director make a "film by female director"? if not, then its not a genre. female directed and male directed style of movies could become a genre, and then we would see female directors make male directed styled movies, and male directors make female directed styled movies. The question is how we would define that style, specially if we want to avoid sexist generalization.
Bollywood genre is categorized by a movie with a lot of songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills are all mixed up in a three-hour extravaganza with an intermission. Bollywood plots have tended to be melodramatic.
How would you describe the female directed genre as?
Bollywood movies are kitsch. Generally they don't deserve any rating.
> Really? To me it seems to be more American than anything else. There are guys dancing and pretty girls and special effects. That seems pretty much like an outgrowth of MTV culture, rap videos, etc. which are of American origin. I'll grant it has a unique sense of humor.
I would like to differ. People dancing, pretty girls as eye candy is a universal trend that definitely didn't start out of the MTV generation. See for e.g. Bollywood movies.