Here is the lecture content:

"Our articles for today where I should say our readings for
today are unlike our readings for other weeks. I already said this, but we
are reading a magazine article, we're kind of reading a newspaper blog-y
type of thing. And then the most interesting piece we're reading today or
we read for today this week is an analysis of Twitter and of Bollywood-
related Twitter. This analysis was done by Agarwal and Pal and Sheyril
Agarwal and Joyojeet Paul. And both of them are are researchers at the
University of Michigan. As far as I know, they love Buckeyes. So you know,
we have no concerns about that. Uh. We are talking about kind of very,
very contemporary topics here. So I'm going to give a lot of background
information about these articles, because they really are very much about
the specific, the specificity of the context of Bollywood in our times. And
for us to understand that specificity, we kind of need a lot of background
information. So let's get there. The first article I'm talking about is The
Atlantic piece. And The Atlantic piece was 'Can Bollywood survive Modi?'
And Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pictured here with a lot of people from
Bollywood, right? This image was taken sometime in 2018-2019 and we
see some very big name people here. So we see of course the Prime
Minister Narendra Modi. We have not seen a film with this person yet but
we see Varun Dhawan, we see Ranveer Singh. My hand is moving in weird
ways on the image, but this is <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON> and our film for week 15 is
with Ranveer Singh. We see Siddharth Malhotra, another Bollywood hero.
We see Karan Johar we've talked a lot about him. We see Ranbir Kapoor.
He's from the Kapoor family who we have talked about. We see Rohit
Shetty here, here this guy is Rohit Shetty. Rohit Shetty is the creator, is the
person who imagined the cop universe. So he's the one who is the
producer of our film for today, Sooryavanshi, of our second film for today.
We see a lot of we see Ayushmann Khurrana, here you have You know,
seen a film with him, obviously. Alia Bhatt, I don't think we've seen- Ohh.
She's actually also in the film for Week 15. Lots of big name Bollywood
people. And this particular image was a result of basically a PR campaign
that was supposed to be an answer to all of the hatred that was coming
towards Bollywood. Now Bollywood has by and large The presence, the
reason for this class is because Bollywood is very present in India. It's a big
deal. But from time to time, the relationship between government and
Bollywood has been complicated. So in the 1970s, for example, a film
came out and the Prime Minister at that time, Indira Gandhi, she basically
banned that film because it kind of, I really have never understood why, but
it kind of looked like her a film on her life. And she basically went ahead
and said no you can't show this film. This is banned. And that film was
called Aandhi (a storm). So, you know, Gandhi was not a fan of Bollywood.
Actually, I said that in an e-mail to you guys in Week 4 and It's a thing,
right? Bollywood is a big presence. Government is also always a big
presence, and the interactions between the two are not always smooth.
The represent-the Bollywood itself, though, as our article tells us, has from
time to time of course represented the relationships between Hindus and
Muslims and interest in, in good ways. But as an industry, Bollywood is one
where the relationship between Hindus and Muslims is a very close one. In
fact, Amitabh Bachchan, who I have talked about enough that I don't need
to, you know, give you any more background than that. Amitabh
Bachchan's writers, Salim and Javed, the ones who like made his dialogues
really stand out and as I'm as I'm saying this, I feel like I want to say a few
dialogues. I'm not going to bore you with that. But, but I could, I really
could. That Salim and Javed, both Muslim writers who wrote those
dialogues, or without Bachchan who made Amitabh Bachchan, Amitabh
Bachchan. So the relationship between people within Bollywood does not
necessarily represent the conflicts that can happen between Hindus and
Muslims in the rest of India. So in that sense Bollywood is really amazing in
that people from different communities, people from Christian
communities, Parsi communities, Muslim communities, Hindus, Hindu
communities really come around this enterprise. Bollywood also has a lot
of inter-religion marriages which work wonderfully well. Shahrukh Khan is
married to a Hindu woman and and we'll see a few more examples as we
go on. But after 2014, when Narendra Modi came to power, a lot of anti-
Bollywood sentiment of started floating on, started floating in general,
people started talking about Bollywood being a problematic place that
needed to be cleaned up. Whatever those things mean. Whoever gives
rights to people to clean other things up. Like that in and of itself is a
problematic idea. But take my word for it. People started saying that. And
this particular, this particular photo shoot was basically a PR campaign to
make Bollywood look better in the eyes of people who were really going
after the industry to kind of cause harm to it in one way or another, right?
So the article talks about a lot of tax rates, a lot of other types of hassling,
but this particular campaign was done to kind of clean all of that up, clear
the air, right? Bollywood has now developed an interesting relationship
with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The other interesting thing about this
photo, before I forget, is ,there is not a single Muslim person in this image
even though Bollywood is a very multicultural, multi religion, multi ethnic
enterprise, right? So there is no Shahrukh Khan here. There is no Aamir
Khan here. There is no Salman Khan here. There is no there is no one who
is not Hindu in this particular image. In and of itself, says something about
who was, says something about the presence of religion in the image and
the desire to clean up the relationship between government and between
Bollywood. This is an image of an interview that the Prime Minister did
with Akshay Kumar, our hero for Sooryavanshi. This interview was about
Ohh, I don't wanna misquote, but I think an hour and 15 minutes or so,
maybe even a little bit longer. And this is one of the very few interviews
the Prime Minister has given during his tenure as Prime Minister. The
tenure started in 2014. Narendra Modi is not one to be, to talk to media. He
does not engage with the media. And that for the premiere of a democratic
country. That in and of itself says something. It doesn't say positive things
when the premier denies to talk to the media or refuses to talk to the
media. But this is an interview he did with Akshay Kumar. And in this
interview, I should say the topics were really ridiculous. Like whether or not
the Prime Minister likes mangoes and they spent a good minute and 1/2
talking about mangoes. So not an interview on policy. Lots of people, lots
of political leaders do that, right? It's not like Obama or somebody else
never talks about what they like, the colors they like or whatever, whatever
the music they listen to. Nothing wrong with that. But when when the
premier of a country does one interview in five years and in that interview
they talk nothing about policy, they talk nothing about international
relations. They only talk about really flippant topics like do they like
summer? Do they like mangoes? Makes a statement. So I wanna talk a little
bit about some of the ways in which, some of the examples that the the
hindu right- that the article gives of the hindu right coming after
personalities in Bollywood. All of these media personalities that they have
come after are pretty big name people. So Deepika Padukone, she's an
actor, you will watch a film with her I want to say in the next week. In
Week 13. And she is one of the highest earning actors in Bollywood as of
now. And she played a role in a film that did not sit well with some
members of the Hindu right. And they declared that they wanted her nose.
So they declared that they basically wanted to physically and violently
harm this human being. Amir Khan who is a very big actor, big name actor,
a Muslim actor. He was the producer of Peepli Live. You have seen Peepli
Live. We have not watched any film with Aamir Khan but there are many. I
can- a good film by Aamir Khan if you would like to watch one is Lagaan.
Lagaan and I think it's on Netflix. In an interview, Aamir Khan said that
there is intolerance in the country, meaning people as a whole in the
country are becoming less tolerant towards minority communities. This
particular statement made him the, kind of made him a target for the Hindu
right who has come after him for every film he has done, for everything he
has, said. Aamir Khan is also married, or was married, to a Hindu woman.
Well, generally coming after Shahrukh Khan, coming after Shahrukh Khan
movies at a time when those movies had not even been released. So they
have come after, in 2022 they started calling for boycotting Shahrukh
Khan's movie Pathaan which came out in January 2023. So they were kind
of like pre-hating on him for a movie that was about to come out. Saif Ali
Khan, another Muslim actor, and Kareena Kapoor Khan, she's a Hindu.
They married each other. The Hindu right was very upset about the
marriage and they were very upset about the names that these two
individuals gave to their two sons. And like, and you know, these are kind
of examples but they're silly examples in the sense that they're not. You
know, Deepika Padukone is is again one of the highest earners. Probably
one of the highest female earners in Asia, if not India- in India, if not Asia.
She has, I am sure she has a security detail for somebody to say, oh, I want
her nose. First of all, it's ridiculous, but it's also like it's just silly. However,
for somebody to object to what a celebrity couple names their child?
Ridiculous. For somebody to say, Oh, boycott that movie? Ridiculous. Like,
just silliness, general silliness. However, when you have a repetition of
things that are coming from the same sources and going after the same
types of people, those types of people who stand for a more tolerant India,
who stands for representation of the country in a certain way, of the
representation of the people within the country in a certain way. When it
starts happening very regularly, that is when it becomes problematic. That
is when it becomes discourse, meaning that is when it becomes a pattern
of hatred. And that pattern of hatred kind of gathers some type of
momentum. We will actually see that with our Twitter article for today,
how this pattern of hatred has kind of gathered some social media
momentum. So we saw this picture here of the Prime Minister with these
cast of people. And again, I'm telling you guys that these are all, actually
every single one of these people is, is a pretty big deal, a big deal
personality. They're all celebrities. They've all done lots of cinema, lots of
popular cinema. Not one of them is Hindu- is Muslim. I'm going back in the
slides, OK. This image though is of the three, plus one, Khans. The Khans
basically ruled Bollywood in that they are the most successful heroes in the
Bollywood film industry. Here you see a picture of them together. We have
a we have seen Shahrukh Khan and I have talked about Shahrukh Khan so
much. We have seen Salman Khan. He was the hero in Hum Aapke Hain
koun. We have not seen anything by Peepli- by Aamir Khan, but we saw
Peepli Live, which he produced. Shahrukh Khan again. is married to a
Hindu woman, Gauri Khan. Again these are, Shahrukh Khan is the 4th
richest celebrity actor on the planet. So he is. These are very very wealthy
people. They are not like they are not lightweights. And they are the most-
their movies, these three people. Their movies make the most money in
Bollywood. I also have an image for us of Saif Ali Khan, who we talked
about. He and his wife Kareena Kapoor. He's a Muslim, she's a Hindu.
Interestingly enough, Saif Ali Khan's mother was also a Hindu woman. She
also was an actor and she married a Muslim man. But he is not considered
a half Hindu, half Muslim person. He's considered a Muslim person.
Nothing to do with gender there, by the way. And. Just to be clear I was I
was joking. It has a lot to do with gender. And Kareena Kapoor, their
children's names is what became a problem. We actually saw Kareena
Kapoor and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. She's Poo. So we have kind of seen
films with these people. These are the reigning people in in Bollywood
right now. They are the kings. They are the three Khans and they're called
that. So Bollywood is not an industry that does not work with Muslims.
Where Muslims don't have a big presence and a big wow factor, big
entertainment value, lots of things to add to the discourse of film.
However, they are completely absent from any type of outreach by the
government. If the government outreach happens, it happens for with
Muslim actors and producers and things like that. So when we look at the
Boycott Bollywood article, our second article for today and actually kind of
wrapping up the first article, Can Bollywood survive Modi. The article really
gives us a lot of examples of what is happening in Bollywood cinema and it
kind of ends with this note of what is going to continue to happen in
Bollywood cinema. Are we going to kind of continue this trend of making
cinema like Sooryavanshi, like one of our films for today, that's really very
nationalistic, very patriotic in a lot of ways, but also has this mixed
message thing going on? Or are we going to kind of rise up to this moment
where we can kind of either say, leave Bollywood alone? Or we can kind of
speak truth to power in some ways. And of course our article doesn't give
us a conclusion. Neither am I going to do that. But. But something for us to
think about. The Boycott Bollywood post, sorry, piece from First Post, tells
us a few more examples. It gives us a scene from the movie PK which stars
Aamir Khan, which became a sensational scene. Lots of noise was made
about it. It said it was being really mean to Hindus and I mean I've of
course seen the film and it's really a hilarious film. Another film maybe you
should watch. I mean, if it were up to me, all you would do is watch
Bollywood films, right? But it's a really fun film to watch. It's really a satire
on religion. And Aamir Khan plays an extraterrestrial person. He just
basically ends up on a train track and he's just there. And then he kind of
learns somehow a very sweet dialect of Hindi, which is what he speaks
throughout the film. And he just is trying to figure out where the remote
control for him to go back to his space planet is. And in that process he
encounters religion and different forms of religion. And in one of those
scenes he is kind of following, he sees a person playing a Hindu God and
he's like, oh you are the God, you must know where my remote control is.
And the person who's playing that God, he's like, "Oh my God, ohh God,
save me, save me". And he's like, "No? You're not God? There's a bigger
God than you?" So it's really, it's really funny. I'm not, I'm not doing justice
to it, but it's a really funny scene. And that scene became a problem for the
Hindu right. For reasons I really do not understand. The Hindu right is also
calling for banning of some older Bollywood films, which I also really don't
understand. But I mean you will read- You have read the article I hope or
you will read it shortly after and I mean as someone who has really
watched these films, I don't understand what they're trying to do, but I
guess that's the whole point, right? It's not about whether or not I
understand it. It's about knowing for me and for you that the idea exists.
Uh, the bigger thing happening with Aamir Khan, though, is calling for a
boycott for one of his films. And that film was Laal Singh Chadha. I think
we might have talked about this like in passing in one of the, in a previous
lecture, But if we didn't, this was a film that was a remake of Forrest Gump
and it was an average film. I mean it was fine. It did not do very well in
theaters, but there literally was a huge campaign by the Hindu right on
social media to boycott that film. Why was the film being boycotted?
Because Aamir Khan in a 2015 interview had said that his wife, his Hindu
wife feels unsafe in India because ,India was getting intolerant towards
religious liberties. And because he had said this, the Hindu right said that
this film should be boycotted. The interesting thing that happened or the
even more interesting thing that happened was, anyone who said on social
media that they had seen Laal Singh Chaddha, the film, also became a
target of the boycott. So for example, another actor Hrithik Roshan, again,
big, big star, lots of films, Kabhi Khushi kabhi Gham. He plays Rohan in
Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. Uh so he said 'Ohh, good film. I watched Lal
Singh Chaddha' and the whole Internet brigade, the Hindu right brigade
came after him and they're like , how dare you say Laal Singh Chadha is a
good film? boycott hitting Hrithik Roshan, right? So he becomes a target of
boycott too. So people start getting, and we're talking hundreds of
thousands of tweets, as we will talk about, as we will see in our next article
for this week and our next discussion for this week. So it's not a small thing
that happened with Laal Singh Chaddha and everyone who wanted to kind
of come to support Aamir Khan and his film, right? So we are working
within the context of an environment that is becoming kind of difficult, if
you want to say, if you want to be a citizen that is challenging what is
happening with your government. Ifwe understand democracies, if we
understand how the US government functions or how the Indian
Government functions, we are supposed to question these institutions. We
are supposed to try to figure out what are they doing and what are they
doing for us? And what are they doing that is good? What are they doing
that is bad? These institutions, Government is not supposed to be a system
that is unquestioned, right? So Bollywood is not questioning government.
Bollywood is just a symbol of many religions working together. Many
Hindu men marrying Muslim women. Many Hindu- Muslim women
marrying Muslim men. It's just a multicultural microcosm of what could be
and just by being that, just because these people have large platforms they
have become targets of this vitrio,l of this big violent kind of hate on social
media and beyond. So that's kind of what I'm showing you here with these
examples and with these individuals that kind of are representative of
Bollywood in some way. And we'll learn a little bit more about this in the
next lecture"

Using only the lecture content, write a 150 word response to the following questions:
1. Agarwal and Pal (2022) show that the activity from account that tweeted #boycottbollywood picked up around the release time of films such as Laal Singh Chaddha and Brahmastra. Why is that?