Here is the lecture content:

"We're going to talk a lot about K3G Kabhi Khushi Kabhi
Gham in this lecture, but I want to mention one last thing about Karan
Johar brand of cinema. We see it has something to do with globalization.
We see it has something to do with diaspora. We see that it's something
to do with our bringing back the family unit and becoming a family unit and
parents being part of the family unit, of course at the head of the Family
unit, but becoming people who are not the people who are reinforcing
discipline, although K3G cannot say that. But they are the people who are
kind of collaborating with the younger generation. The younger generation
is the one that kind of realizes, oh, this cultural artifact that I'm supposed to
preserve, I'm not preserving it well enough. Let me go back and preserve it.
But everyone, the new thing I'm saying here, everyone in Karan Johar
cinema is wealthy. Where everyone is wealthy and they are not just a little
bit wealthy. They are fantastically wealthy, right? Everyone is wearing
really beautiful clothes. Everyone lives in these amazing homes. Yet it's a
collaboration between culture and capital. So people with money, capital or
living with a lot of culture. This artifact that Karan Johar cinema tries to
preserve, or our authors says, Karan Johar Cinema tries to preserve. It's
something really to keep in mind as we look at more and more, as we look
at film that was speaking to the diaspora, right? Every film we have looked
at that is speaking to the diaspora has been a film that has, that has
showed us a lot of wealth. And a lot of comfort with wealth. That is not
what Hindi cinema was doing in the 1960s and 70s. Wealth was not a
good thing then. Wealth was in fact always about corruption and about
bad values and about not being Indian enough. That has all gone away.
Before we talk about K3G though, and we are going to talk a lot about it,
we also have an optional film for today and our optional film for today is Dil
Dhadakne Do. This film which means 'let the heart beat', this film came out
in 2015 and was directed by Farhan Akhtar who is again from a Bollywood
family. We have been learning that a lot of people who produce Bollywood
film, act in Bollywood film, direct Bollywood film, write Bollywood film- a
lot of them have Bollywood ties. In fact, something Karan Johar talks about
a lot. Actually talks about in our first reading for this semester. So I want
you to go ahead and watch a scene from this film. This is a really short
scene. This film is on Netflix and I really, it's a great film. It does not read as
a very Bollywood film because it has it has some grittiness to it. It is not as
whitewashed as Bollywood cinema tends to be, but it's it's a good film. I
recommend it even for those of you who are suffering through Bollywood
films, so go ahead and watch this if you have time. But I want you to go
ahead and watch this scene from this film and then we'll talk about it and
then we will try to compare this film, juxtapose this film with our film for
today.
Film Clip Subtitles
Journalists make such a big deal out of everything. Big deal? Really? Ya,
seriously. Look at what you’re writing. You make it look like women are
unsafe all the time. Every survey seems to say that. And it’s not just about
safety. It’s also about equal rights. Precisely, things are changing. Slowly
but surely things are changing. Look at my family. No woman worked
during my dad’s generation. But I allowed Ayesha run her business. You
allowed Ayesha? Yes! And why does she need your permission? You know
what I mean. No, I don’t know what you mean. Allowing someone means
you are in a position of authority. And that is not equality. But thank you.
You just proved my point. Cheers. I love you.
Lecture Video Transcript (cont.)
Dil Dhadakne Do is definitely about wealth. It is about an extremely
wealthy family, the Mehras. We see all four Mehras here. This is basically
the last shot of the film, and this is a family where we have- the film
touches on a lot of things, including the negative side of wealth, including
massive patriarchy which affects our our female protagonist for our film
Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And we see our hero who suffers the constraints
of having to marry a Hindu girl or having to marry a girl who is as wealthy
as his family, who also suffers at the hands of patriarchy, because he's
supposed to take over the family business and he has no desire to. He just
wants to fly a plane. We see in this film as well, we see body image issues,
we see issues with infidelity. We see issues with people not
communicating with each other. And ultimately, the resolution in the film
comes when people start communicating with each other. When this
patriarch played by Anil Kapoor in this film, he realizes that he's being, you
know, not very good, and he starts doing good by his wife and and both
his children. He was keeping his daughter out of business because she's a
woman and she's the one in the family who really has this sense of running
a business. 2015 is when this film comes out 14 years after after Kabhi
Khushi Kabhi Gham. The scene you saw from this film is one where we
kind of have this, and I again hope that this is kind of a little bit old news
for us here, but this is a scene where we see the protagonist, the female
protagonist, Priyanka Chopra Jonas's character, the person who plays her
husband basically saying, yeah, I have allowed my wife to work. And her
love interest from before the marriage, the person she really likes and
wants to be with, he's like so but you had to allow her, which gives you
more power, which means you have more power in the relationship. Don't
you find that to be odd? Something along those lines. So it's a really
wonderful, powerful scene for me and it really kind of again is a film about
family. It is definitely, however, about how a family needs to be reigned in
and sometimes leave these ideas, these these kind of constraining ideas
about who should run the family business and who should marry whom
and how should, whether or not you should marry a person from the same
religion, whether or not you should marry a person from the same class. All
of those ideas are kind of presented to us in this film. So the reason I chose
this film as one that I wanted to, wanted you to watch with with K3G if you
had time. It's an optional film after all. It's because it's really very different
from K3G. Yet it is very similar in that it still is about family, it's still about
this really wealthy family. We'd see wealth having a downside here
because we see that this very extremely wealthy family, their whole
purpose becomes to have even more wealth than they already have as
soon as they start losing just a little bit of it. So it's a really interesting, fun
film. I also assigned it because, you know, I love it. And why shouldn't I
have you guys watch films that I love? But it's a good film to watch a
watch with with K3G because it kind of still shows the family, but in far
more complicated ways. But we have to talk about K3G. So let's go ahead
and do that. Again, a very popular film. A film that became a really big deal
because of these six people. All of them are major names in the industry. It
was I I remember how big of a deal it was that Amitabh Bachchan and
Shahrukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan, the three males in the film would share
the screen. So Amitabh Bachchan, of course, the 1970s, big, Big deal. I
don't know if I have told you that. I think I might have. Shahrukh Khan
who's again a big deal. And then we have Hrithik Roshan, who was
becoming really big. In one of our lectures early on in the semester, we saw
that there's a physicality. The body of the hero started changing in
Bollywood film. I could say that this progression was very clear, very
obvious in the physical appearance of these three people from three
different decades, from three different time periods of Bollywood film. So
anyway, that's an aside, but it was a big deal that these three people were
going to share a screen together. That Shahrukh Khan was going to play
Amitabh Bachchan's son. And Hrithik Roshan was going to play Shahrukh
Khan's brother and also Amitabh Bachchan's son. So I want to talk about
this film with respect to three characters in the film. The character of the
patriarch Amitabh Bachchan. The character of the son, the older son
Shahrukh Khan. And then the character of of Nandini, the mother. So let's
do that in this order. We see Amitabh Bachchan's character. He's the uber
patriarch in the film, of course, right? So he's the one who is, of course,
fantastically, fabulously rich. He is you know, at at at the height of his
career, he is in in one of these really funny very Bollywood moments in the
film. He gets off a helicopter and looks back and he's like we should order
more of these. Like, you know, you're you're just ordering more helicopters
because why not. And, but there is a dark side to this character, right? He's
just very interested in the cultural artifact, in a state that we are now not
comfortable with, right? So he assumes that he is at the head of the family
and everyone in the family is going to listen to him, which takes me to
Nandini's character, his wife, who is also his wife in real life, Jaya
Bachchan. Jaya Bachchan plays the mother in this in this film and she's this
really quiet, lovely looking female person, matriarch in the family, one could
say. And she basically has to stand behind her husband who at least three
times in the film shuts her down. He's basically like, I have spoken, right?
Those are three critical moments in the film when he's basically like, yeah,
no, I'm done, we're done talking. I have spoken and I have the last word.
And of course we can fill in the blanks. I have the last words because I'm a
dude. So that Happens in the film and she kind of keeps suffering that.
However the reconciliation in the film comes when she says, you know,
that's not a good thing that you have the last word. You're being not very
nice here. And when she speaks to that, when she speaks truth to power,
so to say, the film ends. It's done, right? The reconciliation happens.
Rahul's character, the character played by Shahrukh Khan, is the one that
kind of proves- actually Shahrukh Khan's character in conjunction with
Kajol's character who plays his wife Anjali- they are the ones who kind of
prove the point that our reading is making. In Karan Johar brand of cinema
the the generation that is not the parents, or the ones who kind of bring
the parents back or bring the family back as a unit. The other interesting
thing in Karan Johar Cinema, which is kind of not really true for the lived
experience in India or other types of cinema in India. This generation. Rahul
for example, in the film is thrown out of the family because he marries
Anjali, Kajol's character. And they go and live in London and they are also
fabulously rich. They are thriving. They're doing their thing. They're they're
living in London. She's making faces at her neighbors. She's like doing this
whole thing and they're very happy. They have a huge home and cars and
like they're doing this, they're doing their thing. They are not lacking for
anything, as we see in the film, as we are shown in the film. So the
generation here, as far as our reading is concerned, is not needing the
parents for for monetary stuff, right? They don't need, the hero doesn't
become poor because his father is not supporting him anymore, as used to
happen actually in previous cinema. And in in fact there there's a very
popular film and I think you have seen the poster in in one of our classes,
Maine Pyaar Kiya (I have loved), where the son is thrown out of the father's
house and he becomes completely poor. That is not happening in Karan
Johar cinema anymore. The son is successful in his own setup, right?
However, the family unit is not complete till the joint family is complete.
And it is the sons who kind of bring the family unit back to where it's
supposed to be. It is Anjali, Kajol's character who's like you know, we are
living without our parents, we must live with our parents. It is Hrithik
Roshan's character who keeps on pressing that oh, well, I have to live with
my brother, I need to do this thing, I need to complete the family. So the
family unit is completed because the younger people in the family are
taking care of that cultural artifact, that cultural artifact of families living
together peacefully with a lot of wealth, right? So it is this this coming
around that is really the benchmark of Karan Johar cinema. In this particular
film, we see that the father's character, the patriarch, is kind of
misbehaving. He is the villain in the film, right? And he comes to his senses
in really bizarre ways and as far as I'm concerned, but he does, finally. But
in other Karan Johar films, the parents are actually the ones who are living
with the children in this very fantastic, there is no problem between us, and
it's the children, and they're actually facilitating the the happiness of the
individual, the second generation, so to say. This film is not doing that.
Amitabh Bachchan's character is definitely not facilitating the happiness of
his older son, but at the end there, they're all together and that is kind of
the point that our reading tries to make. So all of this to say that in a lot of
ways, Karan Johar cinema does this thing about family. And that's unique
to Karan Johar cinema. Not completely unique to the idea of family in Hindi
cinema, because we've seen that in Hum Aapke Hain Koun, which also
represents family in a very central unit, kind of family as a representation of
the nation type of thing. The reading also, of course reads a lot of or sees a
lot of patriarchy in the film. It sees a lot of patriarchy associated with the
family unit. We of course, K3G is full of that. There is no place where
patriarchy is not pressed upon. In fact, also in the house that Kajol and
Shahrukh Khan have established in London, we see at one point a
Shahrukh Khan says, I am the head of the family. This family will do what I
will say. That's patriarchy, right? Like, the dude is not supposed to be the
head of the family. That's not how things should work. So we kind of see
that there. And that's like presented as this yeah, this is how it's supposed
to be. So it's also kind of what our author calls a romance with patriarchy,
right? So we have these fantastic locations, these very good looking
people, as he himself says, really good looking people wearing really
beautiful clothes, teaching moral lessons to their children. So that is really
Karan Johar for us, for you. Let's see. I hope that we have also, if you saw
Dil Dhdakne Do, or even if you didn't, if you saw the scene from Dil
Dhadakne Do in this lecture video, you kind of see the things are different
in some ways. Or we are having deeper discussions about the idea of
family, about the idea of patriarchy, about the idea of men also suffering
the ill effects of patriarchy in that if the expectation of the son is always to
run the father's business or always to do a certain type of thing, that also
doesn't sit well all the time. That's not enough space for an individual
person to grow. How does all of this relate to our class? How does all of
this relate to the broader idea that we are trying to present here? It's really
interesting because we have talked about the idea of a diaspora, we've
talked about the idea of globalization. But in this particular week, with
these two films or one film, if you just saw K3G, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham,
we have not really talked about what the nation is doing, what is the
citizen doing? What is the citizen supposed to be doing? I hope that by this
point in the semester though, a few things are making sense on their own.
Right? If we are working with the assumption that Bollywood film really
speaks to the idea of how an individual is supposed to be, who is
supposed to exert power in the life of the individual, who is the individual
supposed to respond to, these films really do give us an answer to that.
Karan Johar cinema really does give us an answer to that. So it's not super
much about the state. It is not about, you know, the state like Upkar was,
or Amar Akbar Anthony was. But it's still very much about the idea of
India, about how the family unit is supposed to be in India. And more
importantly, it is about the cultural artifact that is the family, and how that
artifact is supposed to be viewed for the diasporic, for the more global
audience. Or by the diasporic and more global audience. How are people
who are not living in India, how are they supposed to interact with the idea
of family? How are they supposed to kind of keep this family as a souvenir
or this cultural idea as a souvenir? Or how they do keep it as a souvenir as
far as film is concerned. So lots going on this week. It's a very interesting, a
little bit difficult reading, but I hope you enjoy it and I hope you watch all of
the films that I showed you posters of today. It's only going to take like, I
don't know, 30 hours."

Using only the lecture content (and if you can't, infer based on the lecture), answer the following in a 150 word response. Use less complex words than usual.
1. How does the character of Poo Pooja (Kareena Kapoor Khan) evolve in the film?
2. What role does London play in the film? (Think about this in terms of Rahul and Anjali, Shahrukh Khan and Kajol, moving away from the family patriarch, Yashvardhan, RaiChand to a different city in India).