Using the lecture: "Our first reading for this semester was written in 2013. The
reading is from a book called Bollywood, A guide to Popular Hindi Cinema,
and Tejaswini Ghanti wrote this book. Ghanti is an anthropologist at NYU.
So we are the the reading actually is dated a little bit, right? We are talking
at least 10 years ago, but what does that mean? It means that anything
that she says that is till 2013 is true for us. And after 2013 the picture
actually really changes for for the interaction between human beings and
their screens because we have things like Netflix and Amazon Prime and
Hulu and so many other things kind of come into the picture into our lives.
But, Tejaswini Gunti's point holds because we are kind of talking about
things that are that stay relevant more or less now for the Bollywood film
industry, even though this reading is from 2013. So I want to talk about a
few things. I want to point out a few things that she says this is about a 25
page reading for for you. I will work with the assumption that you have all
read it, but I just want to elaborate on certain points that she makes and
kind of explain certain things that might have been lost. So the first thing
I'm gonna talk about is the people she talks about and I'll elaborate on this.
We'll talk about this guy. We will talk about the idea of film Ballers, and
we'll talk about film production and songs. Let's see if I'm forgetting
anything. Yeah. So as we go through these readings, and this holds true
not just for this specific reading, but for most of the readings we'll do for
this semester. As we will go through these readings, you will see a lot of
names mentioned. Now again, if you grew up with Bollywood, you might
recognize some of those names, but if you did not grow up with
Bollywood, don't get discouraged. It's not, I am never going to ask you who
was the producer of that film in 2024. Well, definitely not going to ask
2024 because we don't know. But I'm not going to ask you that type of
questions. So don't get discouraged by lots of names, lots of translations,
lots of films that are part of Bollywood. We are going to watch about 14
films, but that's the most we can watch. So the readings are going to talk
about a lot more films that we can watch and that's OK. This specific
reading talks about this person called Karan Johar who is becoming an. I
mean I really enjoy him as a human being on on screens. He comes from a
film family. As we are learning, Bollywood is very much about film families.
I mean you saw in the previous video someone Prithvi Raj Kapoor was
acting in 1930s and 1940s. His son acted in 1950s 60s,70s. Raj Kapoor.
Raj Kapoor's sons acted in 80s 90s. Rishi Kapoor is an example. And then
Rishi Kapoor's son <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON> is acting now and then Raj Kapoor had
other sons whose daughters are also doing films Kareena Kapoor and
Karishma Kapoor. So I'm seeing all of these names, whatever doesn't mean
anything. The point is, Bollywood is very controlled by people who are,
who are from the film industries, whose parents are in the film industry or
were in the film industry. And this is not just true for the actors and
actresses. It is also true for who is doing distributing, who is doing sound,
who is doing music, who is doing costume. All of those are kind of carried
from a generation to generation. That's obviously highly problematic
because it kind of keeps privilege within this very small circle of people and
it becomes very, very hard to break the industry. But you know, it is what it
is and a few people have really broke in the industry, although now their
children are part of the industry. So a good example is Shahrukh Khan, the
guy you saw in the DDLJ video, the the culture video that we saw, He's a
very big deal to talk about him a lot and he's not from the Bollywood film
family. So, but when Karan Johar is talking about film fraternity, what he's
talking about is the idea that Bollywood works differently. Bollywood does
not work like other film industries and as we enter a globalized world
where Sony Pictures and Disney and whoever wants to capitalize on the
Indian film market or the Indian Hindi film market, there is this. There might
be a push to kind of call Bollywood and kind of see if Bollywood will form
conform to how Sony Pictures does cinema in LA And Karan Johar says to
us in the reading, we're not going to do that. We do things our own way.
We distribute films our own way, we make films our own way. Our film
production is not done the way that it is done in other parts of the world
and that's how we do it. So. So that's an interesting thing to note about
about Tejaswini Ghanti's reading. The other thing that stood out to me is
this category of film-wallahs, right? So within within the context of let's say
Mumbai, where Bollywood film is made. Of course it's a cosmopolitan
country. Lots of people from all over India live there. And if you live, if you
are from other parts of India, you of course speak different languages,
speak, eat different food, wear different clothes possibly and do different
things, celebrate different holidays, worship to different gods. So you have
all of those identities, right? The the idea of film wallahs is there is this
Bollywood film industry identity that is separate from other forms of
identity. Which means that if we are saying culture is the knowledge of
being part of a society, film wallah is a different type of knowledge, right?
It's a different type of rules. Because that knowledge about culture is about
rules, right? If we are saying that within the society I have to perform, I
have to be in a certain way, we're also saying that those other ways that
are possible are not okay, right. So within the film wallah, a category of
people that Ghanti is creating for us, we are seeing this, We are learning
that there is different ways of being in the film industry that are that are
not the same as being, let's say, from generally from Mumbai. And why is
that relevant? It is relevant because it's kind of creating an identity around
Bollywood film and that is in some ways special and it's in some ways kind
of a comment on how different identities are part of different cultures. I
hope we get back to that as we talk about, as we talk more about culture
and identities and things of that nature. You also read a good 10 pages
about film production in Mumbai. And that's also really interesting stuff
because it really tells us how how film is made differently in Bollywood and
things that really stand out is it's so hierarchical. Not that the world is not
very hierarchical, but the producer goes to the hero if the hero is a really
big deal, but the hero goes to the producer If the producer is a really big
deal and they don't meet at the office, they meet at the house. The hero
has more power than the heroine, the hero decides what script, the hero is
like "Oh, I have an idea." And we are talking like, I don't want to throw
more names at you, but we are talking these big male actors, big not in
size, but in persona. who have, you know, who've had a lot of success in
the Bollywood film industry. Who're just like, hmm, I wanna play a cop in
the next movie. Let's make a movie, right? So it's different than how
perhaps we think about cinema in other contexts. It's fun, right? It's really
fun to read about this. It's really fun to learn about this. But more than that,
it is kind of telling us that this is not, this is not an interaction with cinema
in the ways that we have previously interacted with cinema. This is, this is
different and learning this different in and of its difference in and of itself is
useful. So we've kind of talked about the names that I will throw at you
and the readings will throw at you. And not to worry about it, we've kind of
talked about Karan Johar, part of the film fraternity, comes came up with
the word film fraternity, indicating this big umbrella family of people who
are part of film making in Bollywood. We've kind of talked about the
category of film wallahs, this category of people that are from the film
industry and that have the knowledge of being from the film industry in a
specific way. We've talked about differences in film production, and the
last thing we'll talk about is songs. I want to give you a thing about songs,
a story about songs first. So a lot of times when I'm cooking, I'll just start
some random, I'll ask Google to play something for me and and Google will
play a song, a Hindi song, a Hindi film song. And last week I found myself
asking Google Play a song or play this and that song. I don't remember
which one. Then Google went and you know, I was cooking it for for a
while and it kept on going. And what I realized was I knew each song and I
did not know which film the song was from, but I knew the song. So the
point here is songs are a big deal in Bollywood film. Songs are what kind of
make Bollywood a very different type of of cinema than other forms of
cinema. Saying that Bollywood films are musicals is a kind of problematic
thing because it is looking at Bollywood film, film from the lens of
Hollywood. Hollywood films, when they have music call themselves
musicals, good for them. I congratulate them. Bollywood films are
Bollywood films and they have songs, and that is what a film is for us. And
that's OK, right? So a song is kind of part of the Bollywood experience.
Bollywood films can have anywhere from, oh boy, a good like a normal film
would have like 4 to 14 songs and 14 is a big number. So it's also reflected
in the general length of Bollywood films. But the interesting thing about
songs is why do they exist in Bollywood film? They exist for a variety of
reasons. We will talk a lot more about songs as we go, But I want you to
see this example of a film called The Bong. This is from 2010 and I want
you to see this song. It is really ridiculous and it gets stuck in my head. Like
as I was preparing this lecture, I was listening to the song and I I assure
you I'll be listening to. I'll be singing it for the next week. It's a terrible song
and I love it, but listen to it and we'll talk about it. It's really ridiculous.
Film Clip
Fearless. Strong hearted, looks like a rock, always first to fight. Fearless. A
fighter, always willing, looks like the leader. Fearless. He does the
impossible, his roar breaks the deadly silence. Fearless. When it’s a
question of honor, he can even lay down his life. He’s the savoir, the
fearless one. He’s brave, never lets his prey out of sight. Always strikes his
enemy, the fearless one. He does the impossible, his roar breaks the deadly
silence. Fearless. Strong hearted, looks like a rock, always first to fight.
Fearless. A fighter, always willing, looks like the leader. Fearless. Fearless.
Lecture Video
So what we see in this ridiculous song is this guy who is singing about
what it is to be the bong that is brave. Not brave, like a little foolishly brave,
but who does that right? Who goes out in the street and kind of starts
dancing with like hundreds of people about what it means to be the bong.
It is just so beautifully silly and ridiculous. And I just love it. But that's why
the film that that's why the song exists there. First of all, it exists to kind of
say what you cannot say in dialogue. It is, You know, if it is ridiculous to
assume, to see a song that talks about how the hero is really fearless and
brave, it's even worse to have a dialogue about it, right. So you kind of sing
about it and that's that. The other reason the song exists is it's advertising
for the film. You have the song which keeps repeating the name of the film,
the bong, the bong, the bong. And you know, it keeps doing it and you kind
of it gets stuck in my head. And that is that. Like, I mean, to be honest, I've
also seen the film lots of times and it's even more ridiculous than the song.
But anyway, so the the song exists also to advertise for the film and that
tells you also about the power of Bollywood film songs. They are
advertising tools. They are tools that make you want to go to the cinema
not once but multiple times. Ghanti gives us the example of item songs.
These were songs that were. These are kind of a new phenomena in the
last two to three decades where you have this very objectified female body
on which the song is shot and she's moving suggestively, the hero or the
other male leads are moving around her. And that's kind of. And it's a
catchy song. You kind of cling on to it. You can play that song at parties,
you can dance to that song. It's just advertising for the film. Bollywood
song is part of the lived experience of 400 million people who speak Hindi
as a native language. It is also a part of experience of about lived
experience, about 200,000,000 other people who speak Hindi as a second
or a third language. So it's not a small thing, right? It's a pretty big deal and
it does a lot of things in film and and we will learn more about that as we
go. But before I end this lecture, I want to kind of conclude with what we
have learned so far. We have given, I've given you a lot of ideas. We have
talked about citizenship, We have talked about Bollywood, we've talked
about culture, we've talked about cultural identity, and we have talked
about the greeting a little bit and we've talked about this very important
idea of songs. So we will form these connections. We will solidify these
connections and talk about them more as we go. But for now the good, the
thing to note, the thing to kind of understand as we leave this this first
week of of the semester is that there is a connection between Bollywood
and citizenship. Even when we look at a film like Bhakt Wither which was,
which did not even have talking in it, we see that the state has something
to say about what can be shown on screen, right. So there has to be, there
is a connection between how people are part of a community that is a
nation in some ways and what we see on the screen. And we will kind of
learn a lot about that connection. We also learned about culture. Culture is
something that we'll keep exploring. But for now, just to wind up this
lecture, culture is what you know about being in a society, right? So what
do you know about being a society from watching Bollywood, or having it
part of your life, or not be part of your life, etc. So things we will reflect on,
but things that we have broadly learned and covered this week. Do the
reading and I will see you guys next week."

Answer the question ONLY using the lecture information: Why is film-wallah as discussed by Ganti an important category?