Javed Akhtar is coming to #THiNK2012. Here is an article he wrote from Tehelka Archives on Hindi Cinema
India has a unique relationship with its film industry. No other country can quite mirror this relationship. We are a nation of movie buffs and films provide us two things we love most: we like to worship and we like to listen to stories.
Perhaps one of the secrets of Hindi cinema’s immense popularity is that it is an extremely indigenous form of narration. It is not invent-ed by Hindi cinema; it is inherited by it.
Songs, melodrama, an element of comedy, characters cast in black and white, characters easy to understand — since time unknown, this has been our way of telling stories.
Ancient Sanskrit plays, Ramlila, Krishnalila, the traditional nautanki, even the Parsi theatre of the early 1930s, which was considered highly urban, had all these elements. Alam Ara, the first talkie made in India, had 15 songs. There’s never been any confusion over whether our films should have songs. They are an intrinsic part of our emotional and aesthetic structure.
Hindi cinema is often treated with either contempt or condescension by a certain section of the educated class. That is entirely the wrong attitude. Hindi cinema must be taken very seriously; its significance cannot be overestimated. It is an extremely important socioeconomic phenomenon, a mirror to our social history. Just make a list of Indian villains: you can write the socio-political history of India over the last 60 years through that list. In the 40s the predominant villain was the zamindar; in the 50s the capitalist-industrialist; in the 60s, the urban underworld; in the 70s, the Establishment. Around this time, the urban gangster of the 60s became the hero. By the 80s, you realise the country’s most severe disillusion is with the police and political leaders. By the 90s, gradually a total indifference, a total cynicism settles in.
Another phenomenon becomes evident. The hero ceases to be from the working class.
Through the 50s to the 70s, the central characters always came from the working class: rickshawallahs, teachers, lawyers, unemployed youth, servants, mechanics, labourers. Now our heroes are no longer from the working class. Does it not tell us something?
Cinema in India works at a very intuitive and organic level. It functions as a caliper for society. Its relationship with audiences is like the facing mirrors in a barbershop. Patterns emerge in a society out of socio-political-eco-nomic circumstances. Certain aspirations develop; certain moralities and traditions are nurtured. This is handed over to show business. Show business turns these intangible ideas into icons and images that you can relate to. When you see yourself cast on screen, your belief becomes stronger, and you send a stronger message to the filmmaker. He amplifies it and sends it back to you. Like the mirrors in the barbershop, infinite reflections are set up.
Today, India’s poised at a crucial juncture in its social history. Hindi cinema has instinctively picked up its impulses. If you understand its signs, the messages are alarmingly clear.
In the 70s, when I joined the industry, the mantra for a successful film was the small town. In barely 30 years, that mantra is standing on its head. The new mantra is the niche film. Producers — people who are neither sociologists nor economists nor politically conscious — are instinctively saying they are no longer interested in the small town. Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, the diaspora — that’s all that matters. Unwittingly this man is saying 78 percent of India no longer matters to him. They don’t have a buck to offer. The business has shifted to the multiplexes where tickets range between Rs 200 and Rs 500. To fill the vacuum, different kinds of cinema — like Bhojpuri cinema for instance — are starting to emerge. Different films for different segments; different for rich and poor. Cinema was once a universal, secular sphere of society. It forged a common language and culture; it created collective memories. Today it has started to mirror the deepening fissures around us. As always, you can read its amplified signs first.
The report is not healthy.
We speak of casteism and communalism. These are matters of concern. But at this moment, the growing economic divide in this country is an even graver matter. A cavalier mood has besieged the top 15 percent of the country. We are having a party they are saying. We don’t want anyone to bust it up. Don’t tell us who is dying of hunger; don’t tell us who is committing suicide in Andhra Pradesh. It dampens our mood. This attitude is reflected in Indian cinema.
Apaharan and Gangajal — good films by Prakash Jha – are not what audiences want. The NRI wants Shining India: rich kanjivarams, elaborate weddings, big houses, designer kurtas. His urban counterpart in India wants the same. There are over five lakh towns in India with a population above 50,000. The only way this content will change is if the government or some private party undertakes to build cinema halls in all these places. Multiplexes can only lead to greater insularities from the socio-political realities of the country.
Mainstream Indian cinema holds other powerful lessons for those who understand its metaphors. It is worth asking ourselves, why are there no longer any larger than life heroes and heroines in Hindi cinema? No angry young man, no Nutan, no Meena Kumari. What is a hero? A hero is the personification of contemporary morality and aspirations. Is it that we no longer have aspirations and moralities? Or is that we can no longer own them? Kaun Banega Crorepati can make for a very popular show, but it can’t make for a hero. We can no longer make strong stories along clearly divided lines: the rich versus the poor guy. We don’t have any collective aspiration; we have very little common cause. This is an inevitable fallout of open markets and liberal economies. The idea of a ‘we’ is lost.
Like the villains, a brief history of Bollywood heroes offers a fascinating insight into the story of India. There was a time when the hero drank himself to death out of unrequited love. This melancholy hero then transmuted into a happy-go-lucky man who could seduce his love with charm. This was the era of Dev Ana-nd and Shammi Kapoor. As society slid into an abyss, romance took a backseat: the hero took law into his own hands and rebelled against the Establishment. People everywhere could identify with these magnum images of themselves. They could recognise the social realities they represented.
Devdas was not merely an archetypal romantic hero; he was the product of a feudal system. He could not rebel against his father and marry the woman he loved, neither could he entirely succumb. He could not break the status quo because he was locked into a kind of psychological paralysis, a feudal mindset. His anger was self-directed. Then Nehru’s socialist patterns began to dominate and the heroes of Do Bigha Zameen, Shri 420 and Paigam came into being. They revolted, they sought justice. After that there was a period of hope. Affluence was around the corner. The perfect society was on the next page of the calendar. This was the age of films like Junglee. A space had been created for individual assertion. What Devdas doesn’t do, Shammi Kapoor does. He breaks the feudal status quo; he rebels against parental dogma. He chooses his own love. But it’s not social issues that make the breakpoint; it is personal freedom. In the late 70s, as the State became more imperious, another hero was born: the angry young man, the vigilante.
Today, we have lost the pulse. We have no hero. Of late though, I have begun to see the shape of a new contemporary hero. People are embarrassed by public hypocrisy. They want a person they can trust. We have to make a character who doesn’t wear his principles on his sleeves, a person with a sense of fun, who is tolerant. But a person who knows his baseline and when push comes to shove, does not budge. Perhaps Hindi cinema has begun to intuit this need in people’s lives. Rang De Basanti was a very heartening film.
Finally, one of the best things about Hindi cinema is its secularism. This can often be a shallow, pragmatic thing. A Muslim in Hindi cinema will always be depicted as either very good or very typical: a paan chewing, namaaz offering man. He will never be an ordinary brain surgeon in pant and coat. The same goes for the Christian or Sikh. The burden of secularism always lies with the majority community: it is the Hindu who will save the Quran, never the Muslim with the Gita.
Having said that, in every film unit, you will find people of every community. Bengali music director, Punjabi hero, south Indian heroine, a dialogue writer from UP. People in Bollywood want their pictures to click. To be a hit. This desperation prevents them from being communal. When they move into the world outside, they may join a communal party, but when they come back here, they are secular. One may call it pragmatism. But if our national leaders would adopt this pragmatism, it would be great.
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