Episode Transcript
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Sounds, music radio podcasts.
1:23
Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me,
1:25
the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history
1:27
seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public
1:29
historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are
1:31
buying our tickets, popping our popcorn and settling
1:33
into our cinema seats to learn all about
1:35
the history of Bollywood. And to
1:37
help us, we have two very special guest stars. In
1:40
History Corner, she's an academic and the
1:42
author of both nonfiction and fiction books,
1:44
including the novel Hotel Arcadia. She's
1:47
professor of creative writing and inclusion in
1:49
the arts at London Metropolitan University in
1:51
London. And luckily for us, she's also got
1:53
a fantastic new book out all about Indian cinema.
1:56
It's called A Bollywood Slate of Mind and our guest
1:58
is Professor Sunny Singh. Hello,
2:00
good to be here and thank you
2:02
for having me. My pleasure. And
2:05
in comedy corner, she's a broadcaster, BAFTA
2:07
nominated documentary director and award winning podcaster.
2:09
You might have seen one of her
2:11
TV documentaries, including rescuing ex-Muslims and queens
2:13
of rap, or listen to
2:15
her BBC Asian network show, Group Chat. And
2:18
you'll definitely know her from co-hosting the fantastic
2:20
and funny Brown Girls Do It Too, which
2:23
is about love and sex and dating and heartbreak and friendship
2:25
and all the good stuff. And it had a fantastic stage
2:27
show spin-off. Mama told me not to come. So who is
2:29
it? It's none other than Poppy J. Welcome to the show
2:31
Poppy. I've got to steal that bio. What an
2:34
intro. My God. Hi. Thank you so much
2:36
for having me. I would like to have you here. Poppy,
2:39
first time on the show. Yeah. I'm
2:41
a big fan of your podcast, but I want to know, do you
2:43
like history? Is this out of your comfort bay?
2:45
I love history. A few. And
2:48
one of my biggest regrets is, I wish I'd done history
2:50
at A level and I wish I'd picked
2:52
history as my degree, because the one
2:54
thing that put me off is, I learned
2:56
so much about the Second World War. And
3:00
I wanted to know more about the empire and colonialism,
3:02
and I was far more interested in the American Civil
3:04
War. So that put me off because I thought, it's
3:06
going to be another two years of Winston Churchill chatting
3:09
breeze. So I was like, allow that. So that was my
3:12
biggest regret. So I'm so happy to be in this room,
3:14
and I'm going to be learning and listening and probably being
3:16
a bit of a clown. And hopefully this
3:18
is a no-brainer. Are you familiar with Bollywood? Bumpasai. Of
3:22
course I have 90s Bollywood though, Professor Sunny Sink. 90s
3:25
Bollywood is the best Bollywood. I'm just putting it
3:27
out there. Everyone has their favorite.
3:29
What would be your classic 90s Bollywood movie that
3:33
you would use to introduce someone to the genre?
3:36
Oh God, that is such a good question. And
3:39
unfortunately for me, I don't know the names of any of them.
3:41
The files are so long. Kabi
3:43
Kabi Kushi Kabi Kam is a bit of a
3:45
classic, isn't it? Kabi Kushi Kabi Kam is a
3:47
classic. It's also something quite funny because the tagline
3:49
goes, it's all about loving your parents. So it's
3:51
quite funny because it's also part of my book
3:53
because the book's dedicated to my mum. Awwww.
3:57
There we go. What's the one with the Hindi
3:59
laga? Get it? No, that's my all day.
4:01
DDLJ. OK. Basically, you
4:03
come over to our summer party, you get
4:05
D.D. It'll be like a Lord of the
4:07
Rings trilogy like DDLJ. Come
4:09
because you can't be coming in. So I put you on there. Could
4:11
you shot that head? Done. There we go. There you go. That's
4:14
that's about a week and a half of your life. So
4:17
what do you know? Well,
4:23
that brings us to the first section of the podcast. So
4:25
what do you know? This is where I have
4:28
to go at guessing what you are. A lovely
4:30
listener might know about today's subject. And Bollywood is
4:32
the world's most popularly watched cinema. It is the
4:34
biggest film industry on the planet. Yeah, I think
4:36
it's fair to say Indian films are not as
4:38
well known in Europe or North America. Film
4:41
buffs may know the work of mid-century
4:43
director Satajit Ray, I think is often
4:45
critically hailed. But there's not a huge
4:47
amount of name recognition on some of
4:49
the other great filmmakers and actors. Although
4:51
in 2022, the Bollywood spectacular RRR made
4:55
a global smash. Won an Oscar, Golden
4:57
Globe, two Critic Choice Awards. It went
4:59
viral on Twitter because it's incredible stunts.
5:01
And yes, some Bollywood stars are
5:03
now Hollywood famous too, like Priyanka Chopra, Jonas,
5:05
who as well as being one of the
5:07
highest paid actresses in India is also the
5:10
wife of pop star Nick Jonas. But
5:12
what about the historical origins of Bollywood? How
5:14
is it tied up with the history of
5:17
modern India? And what exactly
5:19
is an item number? Let's find out.
5:22
OK, so why is it called Bollywood? And is that a
5:25
useful title for this episode? I
5:27
think we need a bit more nuanced thinking.
5:29
So it's a useful term for this episode
5:31
because it's a kind of catch all name
5:33
that is also really familiar in the West.
5:36
But it is a name that is given
5:38
to respectively. And it implies
5:40
that Indian cinema is a kind of
5:42
knockoff, cheap version of American cinema. OK.
5:45
So I don't use it in
5:47
India or even places like Jordan
5:49
or Malaysia or Russia where Indian
5:51
cinema is already very popular. So
5:54
Indian cinema is a useful umbrella
5:56
term. But India makes movies
5:58
in 17 languages. Wow. And
6:00
so what we call Bollywood is Bombay cinema
6:02
because that's where the films are made. And
6:06
Hindi cinema is also an option,
6:09
although many filmmakers speak other languages as
6:11
well, even though they work in
6:13
Hindi. So actually, RRR
6:15
that you mentioned, in the introduction,
6:18
is a Telugu language from. It's
6:21
not really Bollywood. Sometimes
6:23
we also use Masala movies, which
6:26
is kind of more about the structure. It
6:28
means spices and applies to all kinds of
6:30
films that are suitable for every kind of
6:32
occasion. So the three films we mentioned earlier,
6:34
those kind of work. Those are Masala movies.
6:36
Yeah, they're not proper Masala. But yeah, I've
6:38
never heard of Masala movies. I'm going to use
6:40
that now. It's great. So Bollywood, I mean, it's
6:42
the title of your book. So obviously it's the
6:45
moniker we all kind of know. But it's
6:47
not hugely useful. And Bombay now is
6:49
known as Mumbai. But Bombay
6:52
is where the B comes from and the
6:54
Bollywood. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, so
6:56
we'll keep saying Bollywood for now, but I'm going
6:58
to put big old air quotes next to it.
7:00
Every time you hear me say it, listener, big
7:02
air quotes on the Bollywood. And we're talking about
7:04
a 20th century art form, cinema 1896, that usually
7:06
mention the camera, but it's a 20th century art
7:08
form. Funny, you want to start the
7:10
subject in the second century BCE, 2200
7:12
years ago, what? Hang on. Yeah,
7:16
because we've been doing this stuff for
7:18
a while. So to really understand these
7:21
films, we have to actually
7:23
start with the history of theater in
7:25
India, and the principles and theories of
7:27
performance and drama. And these
7:29
are laid out in something called the
7:31
Natyashastra. And that's a Sanskrit text. And
7:33
it's written in verse and it's from
7:36
second century BCE. And it has 6000
7:38
verses, which
7:40
explain the principles of every
7:42
aspect of theater, performance, production.
7:45
And it gives an
7:47
overview as well of regional theater
7:49
conventions, which map nicely across much
7:51
of modern South Asia, and
7:54
recognizes variations in style and languages
7:56
across the region. The
7:58
Natyashastra also talks about drama
8:01
as a cultural form that
8:03
is accessible not only to the elite
8:05
but all levels of society. And
8:07
it's been the text that is sort
8:10
of the foundation for all performance and
8:12
art and thinking about all
8:14
of these in India for that long.
8:16
That's amazing. Have you heard of the Natya Shastra
8:18
before? Absolutely not. Not
8:21
until five seconds ago. Writing
8:24
it down. How do you say it?
8:26
Natya Shastra. Natya Shastra. 6,000 buses in
8:28
it. It's not a brief
8:30
little pamphlet. No, it's definitely when you
8:32
compare it to Poetics which is what 36 pages.
8:35
They love a manuscript don't they?
8:38
You've got the Nattya Shastra. We
8:40
like putting stuff down. And
8:42
then we like arguing about it. Yeah. All
8:46
those aunties and uncles on the living room table
8:48
being like, I tell you it's like this. What
8:51
are the key elements? Let me start with
8:53
some of the concept of rasa
8:56
actually. Which is really important. And
8:58
it translates roughly to juicer essence.
9:01
And rasa is the cumulative result
9:03
of all elements of performance. So
9:05
staged, light, actors,
9:08
acting, costume, everything.
9:10
But it's combined with the audience's reaction
9:13
to it. The Natya Shastra also talks
9:15
about how to structure a place, themes.
9:18
So for example separation and reunion
9:20
are really common. This
9:22
space is for dream space, set
9:24
plots. This emphasis is also
9:26
on the role of spectacle. We'll come back to
9:28
that with item girl numbers or
9:30
item numbers. Also how to
9:32
use visual metaphor. You know, whole range
9:35
of things. It's useful
9:37
to know that there are four positive
9:39
rasas and four negative rasas. So
9:42
the four positive ones, ashrungar which
9:44
is love, hasyar which is humor, vir
9:47
which is heroism and courage, adhvut
9:49
that is wonder. And the four negative
9:51
ones, karuna which is
9:53
sorrow, rodr which is wrath, Bhayana
9:56
which is terror and Bhivat
9:58
which is disgust. The. Number how
10:00
that movie or the muscles performance yeah
10:03
will balance each of these out. You
10:05
can just throw everything. an addict can't
10:07
be just one thing. The perfect balance
10:10
is the perfect performance. Okay, and this
10:12
is also why. Not. Just
10:14
Bollywood, but many Indians phones
10:16
don't need li fit into
10:18
the western shoulder categorization. Puppy
10:20
when you are writing your state show with for being
10:22
a mom with helping of the com which of the
10:25
ruff as a using most I mean if we were
10:27
a pie chart of russes it would probably be mostly
10:29
comedy and. Humor, but there's a massive
10:31
did change towards the end of.
10:33
The show cause love not gives you much
10:36
I was sorrow and and heartache. And
10:38
pain that saw the solemn X
10:40
Men as like. A tasty. This
10:42
process witnessing forward now from ancient India
10:44
to the nineteenth century and we got
10:47
plays happening and puppy will kind of
10:49
place you think these are would you
10:51
guess is either Knowing. Indians and
10:53
Asians. Generally South Asians I
10:55
imagine they're about on a
10:58
reputation and to the your
11:00
family happy as into and
11:02
and love Love Love Story
11:04
Delhi We love love. This
11:06
is an instant period in history has always existed
11:08
during the British Raj with the British in a
11:10
controlled Us of South Asia. So what sort of
11:13
play the happening? Who's in them? What are they
11:15
about? So. What's really interesting is
11:17
about mid Nineteenth century, there's
11:19
the rise of what we
11:21
can call modern theater, And
11:23
this is because student communities
11:25
in places like Bombay are
11:27
creating their own productions, and
11:29
these often use Western theatrical
11:31
forms which are actually have
11:33
been brought in by the
11:35
British population in India. Alone
11:38
because they're missing so other
11:40
Shakespeare goods. You're like. There's
11:43
lots of see it are happening in many
11:45
languages and many forms, but this is something
11:47
new. With. The students start
11:49
creating and so it uses
11:51
for the first time the
11:53
Presidium stage for example okay
11:55
since importance but at this
11:57
point Western plays for example
11:59
Shakespeare. are huge, but you wouldn't
12:01
recognize them as Shakespeare because
12:03
they're translated and they're rewritten to
12:05
have much more relevance and appeal
12:07
to the local audience. So
12:10
Verona means nothing, but
12:13
that does mean something. So
12:15
characters are renamed, they're given
12:17
cost and community identities, they're
12:20
given more familiar cultural motivations,
12:23
songs and dance and narrative structures
12:25
are changed to explain this. It's
12:28
still kind of Shakespeare, but it's
12:30
not Shakespeare. We're rounded up.
12:34
This modern theater also pulls together
12:37
scripts and ideas and stories from
12:39
Persian and Sanskrit theater. A lot
12:41
of it is financed by Parsi
12:43
entrepreneurs. These are a very
12:45
small minority in India. They're
12:47
descendants of Persian immigrants
12:49
who practice Zoroastrianism. And
12:52
these plays are written for large
12:54
parts by Zoroastrians, but also Muslims
12:56
and Christians. And in general, it becomes
12:58
known as Parsi theater. And this is
13:00
the forerunner of Indian cinema. It's
13:04
performed by actors of many
13:06
religious, linguistic, ethnic backgrounds, but
13:09
it's aimed actually at a largely Hindu
13:11
audience. And I think that's really the
13:13
interesting part because that's the root of
13:16
Bombay cinema. So in 1895, Poppy,
13:18
along comes France's famous Lumiere brothers, and
13:20
they invent the camera, the film camera
13:22
and projection technology. So that's the birth
13:24
of cinema 1895. How quickly do
13:27
you think it ends up in India, from Paris 1895
13:29
to India, Mumbai?
13:32
Oh, god, it's 7000 kilometers away. I'm
13:35
going to hazard a guess and say 2024 1924,
13:37
you think or are you
13:40
saying 24? No, 1924 from 1895. So you think you think like
13:46
30 years? Yeah. Six
13:49
months. Yeah, well, terrible guess. That is quick.
13:51
I mean, the
13:53
moment they invent
13:56
the camera, they pop it on a ship and off it goes. I
13:58
think it's really great because Lumiere brothers
14:00
in Paris present the
14:02
film camera at
14:04
a room that's called the India Room.
14:06
Sounds everything. Yeah, it does. Yeah. So
14:09
it's in Mumbai in 1896. So initially these are short films. These are
14:11
like really, really short. Kind of what
14:13
you see on TikTok these days. Yeah, yeah. Like silent
14:15
TikToks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
14:18
yeah. You just got the captions. You're in the toilet and you're
14:20
like, oh, well done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Greg, one quick thing.
14:22
BFI is a very, very, very important thing. It's a very important
14:24
thing. It's a very important thing. It's a very important thing. I
14:30
have spent a lot of these on YouTube, so look
14:32
them up. Yes. Okay. Yeah,
14:35
you're right. Yeah, there's amazing stuff in the 1890s on YouTube from Asia and
14:37
from Europe. So how long are they typically? These are
14:39
short. I mean, they're often 40, 50 seconds long.
14:41
Oh, they really are. They really are. Really, really.
14:43
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But
14:45
they're good. So funny that we've done like a full
14:48
circle back to, yeah. Okay. The first
14:50
feature film, 1913 in India. It's
14:52
really early. It is. And film
14:55
making just zooms through
14:57
the land in such fast ways
15:00
people are immediately love watching this
15:02
marvelous new thing. The
15:04
first feature lens silent film is Raja
15:06
Harish Chandra. Okay. It
15:08
begins development in 1911 and it's released in 1913.
15:12
Wow. It takes two years to
15:14
make the first film. I mean, that's impressive, right? You
15:16
have to learn how to make it. But
15:19
it's directed by Dada Sabfalke, who was a
15:21
photographer. And it's actually based on a very
15:24
popular play from 1875. And
15:27
the plot centers on an exiled king
15:30
who experiences poverty and the death
15:32
of his son. And then his wife
15:34
is falsely accused of murder and
15:37
he is ordered to execute her. God.
15:40
Yeah, I know. It gets really heavy stuff. Yeah,
15:42
it's heavy stuff, isn't it? Yeah. And
15:44
they're saved by the deity Shiva who shows
15:46
up and restores justice and the kingdom and
15:48
resuscitates his son. And it
15:50
was hugely convenient. Yeah. It
15:52
was hugely successful to the point they
15:54
had to create more new prints
15:57
for it. Okay. Yeah.
16:02
even as the first feature film can
16:04
be considered a multilingual film because
16:06
it had intertitles. Yeah, because it's a silent film
16:08
but it's a multilingual silent film. Exactly.
16:10
So the intertitles, which is the
16:13
onscreen text which would show up in the
16:15
quote unquote dialogues, were in
16:17
English, Marathi and Hindi. And
16:20
Falke had actually traveled to Britain
16:22
to learn filmmaking and had imported
16:24
equipment from Europe in order to
16:26
make the film. That's why it
16:28
took two years. So, Poppy, Falke
16:31
spent time in London learning filmmaking,
16:33
a modern filmmaking degree, usually three
16:35
years, give or take. How
16:37
long do you think he had to learn filmmaking
16:39
in London? Before he made this film
16:41
that took two years. Yeah. Well, if it took six
16:43
months to get the camera from ship from Paris to India, I
16:46
want to say something ridiculous like a day,
16:48
not a day, obviously. I don't know, months?
16:51
Yeah, two weeks. Okay. Yeah.
16:53
Good instinct. Yeah. I can't learn anything.
16:55
What could you master in two weeks? I
17:00
mean, nothing. I mean, during COVID I
17:02
learned nothing. People were learning languages, learning to
17:04
knit, learning an instrument. I was like, I've learned how
17:06
to eat more. So Falke, he's learned
17:10
some techniques in London. He returned
17:12
home. He invents the feature film in the
17:15
Stemification Market. It's called Araja Harishchandra. Is
17:17
that right? Yeah. And the God Shiva
17:19
comes out and sort of deus ex
17:21
machina. It's good sort of special effects,
17:23
by the way. Right. And that's the
17:26
other thing, right? Already film is doing
17:28
trickery and fun stuff, which is cool. And there
17:30
is a sort of back and forth between theater
17:32
and film. It's not like a new genre, a
17:34
new art film has been invented film and everyone
17:36
goes, right, that's it. Ditch the theater. We don't
17:38
need it anymore. There is a sort of constant
17:40
dialogue that they're informing each other. Yes. So many
17:44
directors, writers, actors begin
17:46
to work in film and some
17:48
of them actually still continue to work
17:51
in theater as well. And of
17:53
course, as Falke had done, many of
17:55
the early filmmakers find ready-made
17:58
scripts and popular. scripts
18:01
in the Parsi theatre. Interestingly, as
18:03
Parsi theatre, you would use a
18:05
mixture of languages. Filmmakers
18:08
also continued this approach. So the
18:10
intertitles on silent films would
18:13
be in multiple languages, as would be
18:15
dialogue once sound was
18:18
introduced. This also leads
18:20
to the emergence of Filmi Hindasani. Hindasani
18:22
itself is a combination of Hindi and
18:24
Urdu, popularly spoken. But
18:28
this Filmi Hindasani drew
18:30
on vocabulary from various
18:32
languages, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali.
18:35
And Filmi Hindasani then becomes a
18:37
kind of lingua franca through
18:40
Indian cinema. It's really interesting that
18:42
you touch on that actually, because
18:44
I'm Bangladeshi and I understood Hindi
18:46
from watching Bollywood films. Really interesting
18:48
to hear that the multilingual element
18:50
is so fundamental to film so
18:53
early on. You know, we're in 1913 here,
18:55
we're talking about it. To be fair, it
18:57
also goes back to thousand years ago, because the
18:59
nazi shastra is very clear. You should just
19:01
let people speak whatever. Right. And
19:04
it also means Greek characters. Greek
19:06
characters could show up in a
19:08
classical play and speak Greek. Amazing.
19:10
And that would be acceptable. You can't do that in
19:12
Hollywood now, can you? Okay, so you mentioned sound coming
19:15
in. So in Hollywood, that's the jazz singer. This is
19:17
the first sound motion picture in 1927. And
19:20
I'm guessing the Indian cinema, given
19:22
that it took six months for the camera to show up,
19:24
presumably they're sort of straight on it. Yeah, we'll have that, please.
19:27
Thank you very much. So how quick are we talking? We're
19:29
talking really quickly. Any technology that comes
19:31
up goes immediately to Indian cinema. We
19:33
love it. So yes,
19:35
the arrival of sound is very,
19:37
very quick. And the first Indian
19:39
film that sound was Alomara.
19:42
It means light of the world. And it comes
19:44
out in 1931. But
19:46
here is the singing in the rain moment. Not
19:49
all silent movie actors were suitable for
19:51
talkies. The silent film
19:53
superstar was Sulojna, a female
19:56
actress. And she was from
19:58
India's Iraqi Jewish community. Yeah,
20:00
was she called Ruby Myers? Yes, Ruby
20:02
Myers was her name. And
20:04
she did not speak in Dasani, which was
20:07
not a problem in Salantira, and could not
20:09
be cast in Alhamara. So
20:11
guess what, she takes a year off
20:13
to learn the language, and then comes
20:15
back to the talkies in 1932. Wow.
20:18
And becomes becomes another star now for
20:20
the talkies, a superstar. Two things happen,
20:23
the introduction of sound also means Alhamara
20:25
included songs, seven songs,
20:28
immediately. Oh, we love a number. We
20:30
love a number, don't we? Okay, now we're talking
20:32
or now we're singing rather. Yeah. Yeah. And
20:35
of course, that's also the start
20:37
of all the other cinema industries
20:39
in India, because films can now
20:41
be splintered along linguistic lines and
20:43
kind of be made in multiple
20:45
languages. Okay. It's no longer
20:47
just focused in one city. Yeah,
20:49
that's fascinating. So okay, we're
20:51
singing. We're singing now. We're ready. We're here.
20:54
I'm not going to stop singing. Never. I
20:56
mean, can you imagine a Bollywood film without
20:58
song and dance? Because it's so intrinsic, isn't
21:01
it? Are there any Bollywood films without any
21:03
song and dance numbers? I'm sure there must
21:05
be. I don't know. In the last 120 years,
21:10
I have, I think,
21:12
identified about that. experimental.
21:15
Yeah, they're very, they're
21:17
very experimental. Yeah,
21:19
it must be really hard. Well, to
21:21
be fair, they are the art house
21:24
cinema, which is but, but commercial cinema.
21:26
I don't think no, no, no, no.
21:28
Yeah. So everybody would film from the
21:30
films that I've watched. It's basically a
21:32
musical, effectively.
21:35
We're so informed by Bollywood. It's in our
21:37
DNA. It's kind of we grew up, it's
21:40
formed such a big part of identity. We talk
21:42
about it in the podcast, we give homage to
21:44
it in the show. And I've not seen any
21:46
films without any at least eight musical. And it's
21:48
such a such a part of the culture as
21:50
well. Because I remember these cassette tapes. What's
21:52
that? That company's called tips? TPS?
21:55
Yes, tips. Also T series. They're
21:57
everywhere. T series. Yes. Mad,
22:00
mad. And I would be our
22:02
equivalent of people swapping records. Right.
22:06
Like, my uncles would go to the shop,
22:08
get these cassette tapes, and we'd all be
22:10
listening by the hi-fi or the stereo to
22:12
like the latest tracks. It was so
22:14
magical. I mean, now everything's all digital and stuff.
22:16
No, I like that. The
22:19
analog swapping of stuff. The analog, yeah, yeah. You swap
22:21
tapes with the, you know, the uncle from number
22:23
54 and you take yours and you take his
22:25
and... And there's so many different types of songs, there's
22:28
so many sort of genres. I mean, I know producer
22:30
Emmy and her mum, Namrita, are suckers for a big
22:32
romantic number sung on top of the Swiss mountains, which
22:34
apparently is a sort of real thing in Bollywood now.
22:37
Like a lot of stuff gets filmed on mountains. Oh, the Swiss mountain jokes. Yeah,
22:39
yeah. Like the Swiss mountain jokes, yeah.
22:41
Yeah, it must be quite chilly up there. It is,
22:43
it is. But there is a logical reason
22:46
for it because starting about late 80s,
22:48
because of the political issues in
22:50
Kashmir, it became impossible to film
22:53
there. And there's the whole
22:55
mountains as a romantic space for love.
22:57
It's a very long standing trope. Swiss
23:00
mountains became the stand in. The hills are
23:02
alive with the sound of Bangra. I don't know.
23:05
It works, right? It's a beautiful thing,
23:07
but also I guess it's an
23:10
exotic location. But I mean... It
23:12
is chilly. And if you think that's chilly, you
23:14
haven't seen the song shot in Antarctica. You
23:16
can see the actresses lips turned
23:18
blue. Oh, it was. It did a musical
23:21
number in Antarctica. Wow. That's hardcore.
23:23
I mean, so we've identified really that there's
23:25
no such thing. Well, you said there are
23:27
10 movies without music. So my
23:29
favorite movie is Singing in the Rain, which is
23:31
a musical, an MGM musical. But there's no such
23:34
thing as a musical in Bollywood. It
23:36
is. It just is. It just is.
23:38
Exactly. There is no distinction between
23:41
sort of films and musicals as separate categories. And
23:43
song and dance are essential. Films
23:46
can't even, I think, operate effectively without
23:48
them in many cases. Sometimes
23:50
up to 25% of a film
23:53
budget can depend on the sale
23:55
of the music rights. From the
23:57
30s, that means soundtracks have become
23:59
a... and resource of income for
24:01
films. Interesting. And songs are
24:04
also used to promote films ahead of
24:06
their release. Plus, also
24:08
going back to the Nazi Shastre, song
24:11
and dances serve specific narrative,
24:13
visual, emotional purposes within the
24:15
film. They can introduce the
24:17
main star, they can enable
24:20
character exposition, they reveal key
24:22
themes as the narrative
24:24
unfolds, they establish mood and
24:26
anticipation, they allow for debate
24:28
and moral dilemmas, they make
24:30
political statements. Songs do a
24:32
lot of stuff. And they provide
24:35
levity and emotional relief for the audience. And
24:37
I think going back to the item song,
24:39
the Glamorous Spectacle, which is often a
24:41
song that can feature an actress or
24:43
a star who's not actually in the
24:45
rest of the movie, but
24:47
comes in to do a really cool glamour
24:50
appearance. A cameo appearance. Yeah. But
24:52
it's not just a cameo. The job is to show
24:54
up and just look fabulous and
24:57
do a number which is glorious and everybody will
24:59
dance to and it will continue to be
25:01
a huge hit forever. And
25:04
that's the role. There's a film from
25:06
1932 called Indra Saba, which translates into The
25:08
Court of the Gods. Poppy,
25:10
how many songs were in it, do you think? Given
25:12
that the first Bollywood songs had seven songs, how many
25:14
by 1932 are in this film? I'm
25:17
going to double and say 14. It's a
25:19
very sensible guess. 71 songs. My
25:24
God. It's insane. At what point?
25:27
How long was the film? Four hours. At
25:31
what point does that song just turn into one big song?
25:33
I mean, I don't think I know 71 songs. You
25:35
know, it's really interesting because also like the
25:38
way Asian people watch cinema and watch plays.
25:40
So when we did our show, I totally
25:42
forgot, we actually did a, we
25:44
had a dance routine to a very famous
25:46
song, I'm sure Sunny will know, called Dola
25:48
Redola from Devdas. You need
25:51
music to give you pause and music
25:53
is great because it informs
25:56
the culture, the fashion, but
25:58
after a while, it just kind of
26:00
blends into one. And the way
26:02
we watch films as well, I remember we told
26:05
Soho Theatre staff that Asian people will talk during
26:07
the show. We want them to talk. We want
26:09
them to discuss. They're not talking about what they're
26:11
having for dinner, so don't shush them. We don't
26:13
want anyone to be shushed. So we had late
26:16
comers galore and people were talking and whispering and
26:18
they were talking about what's happening on stage. I
26:20
remember Rubina saying when I'd never been to a
26:22
cinema in in Dira Bangadish, I'd love to go,
26:24
but she said when she went with her mum,
26:27
it was just like, I was like, how can
26:29
you stand four hours of cinema when
26:31
you're just constantly talking? And she's like, it just
26:33
turns into six hours. It's a day
26:35
out. So my
26:37
favorite, favorite movie ever is
26:40
not for the movie itself. It's Lagan. Lagan.
26:42
Oh my God. Yeah, I watched it
26:44
in Delhi and we went to the
26:47
American American and the cricket. Yeah, yeah.
26:49
Last half of the movie is a
26:51
cricket match. We got to the parking
26:53
lot. There were people with drums and
26:55
flags. I did not hear a word
26:57
that was. It was like being
27:01
in a stadium for the last half
27:03
of the film. You've got to love the way out. That's
27:05
amazing. That is amazing. It
27:08
was brilliant. It was the best film ever. That's a
27:10
proper experience.
27:13
Yeah, that is amazing. Funny, the practicalities
27:15
of filming these movies. If
27:18
you've got all these choreographed scenes,
27:20
dancing, singing, acting, four hours worth
27:22
of plot, are all the actors sort of
27:24
superstars you can sing, they can dance, they can act,
27:26
they can do stunts. Are they everyone's a triple threat
27:28
or what? Well, they
27:30
do have to dance. Okay. Although
27:32
sometimes body doubles are used for
27:34
dancing, often in very, very
27:36
famous sequences. But no,
27:38
thankfully, actors don't have to
27:41
sing. Since the 1940s, singing has
27:45
been dubbed by playback singers. And these
27:47
singers are actually often huge stars in
27:49
their own right. So people like Mohammed
27:51
Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, and they still
27:53
have decades later huge fan
27:56
followings. Lyrises and composers
27:58
are also highly valued. and
28:00
they often have their own star status. So
28:03
lyricists will have big
28:05
billing on all the material and
28:07
these have often actually been very
28:09
well respected poets who also
28:11
appreciate and understand the role of song
28:13
in a movie. So song
28:16
should not repeat what dialogue has already
28:18
said, it should enhance the
28:20
mood or emotion, how is it supposed
28:22
to phrase it, phrase these
28:24
ideas. So all of this is quite
28:26
literary in fact and I think that
28:28
is also quite different and quite unique.
28:30
I want to get back to the item numbers,
28:32
the item girls, because I find that really interesting,
28:34
because you said that these these they're always women,
28:36
is that right? You don't get item boys, item
28:39
champs? Most of the time it's
28:41
most of the times it's women
28:44
although some of the major stars including
28:47
Shah Rukh Khan who will talk about
28:49
it, has done his own take of
28:51
the item number, but so have all
28:54
the stars like Rishikpur. So there has
28:56
been a tradition but mostly it's women.
28:59
I have a question. Yeah, yeah.
29:01
What is an item number? These
29:03
are really incredibly staged,
29:06
spectacular numbers dating
29:09
back to the 40s and really
29:11
these are opportunities for filmmakers to
29:13
create a huge spectacle. So it's
29:15
a grand setting, often
29:17
a stage but not always, this
29:19
great upbeat music for the most
29:22
part. Sad songs or slow songs
29:24
don't make a good item number.
29:26
It's got to be sexy, it's
29:28
got to be fun. There's a
29:30
gorgeous actor, star, beautifully costumed, generally
29:32
often quite over-the-top costuming, so feathers
29:34
and sequins and you name it.
29:37
And over the time they've been used
29:39
to highlight in different
29:41
times the temptations of modernity,
29:43
to distinguish between characters who
29:45
are traditional and those
29:48
who are modern. That is another way of
29:50
showing the difference between the characters. There
29:53
also however, over the
29:55
decades, huge well-known beloved
29:57
stars like Helen who
30:00
We built an entire career decades long of
30:02
showing up in a film just
30:04
for a single musical number. It's
30:06
an amazing idea. Thinking about how I consume Bollywood.
30:09
I liken it to the cameo, but it serves
30:11
a completely separate purpose, like Sunny was saying. And
30:14
you often sometimes forget about the film and you
30:16
remember that song. Right. And you're humming
30:18
that song and you're with your cousins trying to
30:20
reenact moments from that song and you're trying to
30:22
follow the fashion, which is something I desperately tried
30:24
to do. But, you know, it's smart. Indian
30:26
is smart, man. I know what they're doing. I know
30:28
what they're doing. It is a money making enterprise.
30:30
It's cinema, but it's still money making. 25%
30:33
of the kind of budget of the film is made
30:35
by sales of these songs. So you
30:37
need to have a banger tune in the middle to
30:40
find the actual movie. They live on. They live
30:42
on. I remember in
30:44
Asian weddings, film a wedding
30:46
in the 90s, someone's wedding, which would
30:49
also go on for bloody hours, a day,
30:51
the actual video. And then you'd get rid
30:53
of all the sound and you'd just have
30:56
music. And then in a
30:58
little box, do you remember in a little box, you
31:00
could see the video of the song, the item number.
31:02
Right. So it'd be someone's wedding
31:04
and then in a small little screen, you
31:06
could see the video, the music video. At
31:08
your wedding video. On your wedding video. Amazing.
31:11
Yeah. I thought that's the copyright law allows
31:14
that. Well, honey. Very much. Hi,
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32:23
so we're into the 30s now. We're talking
32:26
about sound technology, but also there's another technology comes
32:28
in the 30s. And
32:31
that's a collaboration with German
32:33
filmmakers. So yeah, I think
32:35
that's a really interwar period collaboration.
32:37
It's a very fruitful relationship between
32:39
Indian and German film industries. It
32:42
does end with the outbreak of the
32:44
Second World War. We're back to Hitler
32:46
and Churchill again. Sorry, fudge sake. I'm
32:49
leaving. So
32:51
what happened is Britain expels or inters
32:54
any Germans who are operating in the
32:56
British colonies. So that obviously impacts anybody
32:58
who's working in Bombay and is German.
33:01
But before this, German directors have been
33:03
working in India. Indian
33:05
filmmakers train in Berlin. Wolfram
33:08
Haines leads the first
33:10
Indian cine color
33:13
laboratory. And that also
33:15
means 1933 sees the release of the
33:17
first Indian film in color, which
33:19
is Set Andri by V. Shantaram.
33:22
Although this is processed in Germany. But
33:24
very soon after in 1937
33:27
comes Kisan Kanyan, which is the peasant
33:30
girl. And that's the first film
33:32
in color that is produced entirely in India.
33:35
However, this is a little bit more
33:37
complicated because given the
33:39
fact that color technology had been developed
33:42
in the global north in white countries,
33:44
there was serious difficulty in rendering South
33:46
Asian skin tones on screen. So you
33:48
can see filmmakers struggle with
33:50
this constantly. And this really
33:52
gets fully resolved in the
33:55
1990s with the arrival of digital technology.
33:58
Right. So that kind of racial. structural
34:00
biases in the technology are there. I mean
34:02
and that sort of quite handily leads us
34:04
on to the British in India. Hello, me
34:06
again. Poppy, how
34:08
do you think British colonial authorities reacted to
34:11
this growing popularity of Indian cinema? What era
34:13
are we to? Where are we? Early 1900s,
34:15
sort of 1910s, 1920s. I
34:19
imagine they probably didn't like it, especially
34:22
if there was any descent or any
34:24
kind of Indian cinema that favored sort
34:26
of Indian nationalism or gave Indians
34:30
a sense of their identity. I want
34:33
to say because of the Brits' terrible
34:35
history, they probably just banned it or
34:37
did like they didn't like it or
34:39
if they did allow cinema it
34:41
was how fantastic the British were, you know,
34:45
helping us build railways, you know, and
34:47
you know, teaching us moral values etc. Good
34:50
instincts, Poppy. The British government not keen
34:52
pretty much as soon as there's film
34:55
there are censors, gentlemen
34:57
with mustaches saying, so can you
35:01
tell us about this kind of colonial censorship and
35:03
how does it apply to film? Well
35:06
I think it's important to recognize that
35:08
films were not just a new medium
35:10
but they were a very powerful one.
35:13
So they arrive in India at a time where
35:16
the country has 4% literacy
35:18
levels. Right. And
35:20
Falke, the director
35:22
of the first Indian feature film in 1913,
35:25
was inspired by the writer Rabindranath
35:27
Sagore who had said
35:30
earlier some years before that
35:32
cinema could be a really powerful political
35:34
tool for reaching the masses. But yes,
35:36
British colonial authorities tried to clamp down
35:39
on it very quickly. So
35:41
various regulatory acts are introduced by
35:43
the Imperial Legislative Council. That's a
35:45
bit far worse than.
35:49
In 1910 you get the press
35:51
act which limits the use of
35:53
literature as a means of disseminating
35:55
anti-colonial ideas. And of course
35:57
in 1918 the cinematogues
36:00
Act sets the
36:02
age restrictions and gives the right
36:05
to the government to suspend any film
36:07
which was quote, likely to
36:09
cause a breach of peace. This
36:12
also means that in 1937, for
36:14
example, you get Dunyan Amani, The World
36:16
Does Not Accept, which is
36:19
actually a film about forced
36:21
marriages and criticizes it. But
36:23
it also included documentary footage
36:25
of the anti-colonial leader, Vala
36:27
Paipatel. So the census
36:29
ordered at the footage be removed. But
36:31
there are clever ways around these rules, Poppy.
36:33
Filmmakers were finding ways to navigate the system.
36:36
Do you want to guess what they might
36:38
be? Maybe some sort of symbolic gesture either
36:40
through the music or
36:42
through traditions and values that are not
36:44
familiar with the Brits, something
36:46
only Indian society
36:50
would understand. These are good guesses, actually. I think
36:52
music is a good one. And I really like
36:54
the idea of a sort of Chipperless
36:56
type code. But, Sony,
36:58
how are people getting around the rules? No,
37:01
you're actually very right. So of
37:04
course, this is all happening in the context
37:06
of the growing independence movement. And
37:09
many films start to focus on
37:11
rebellion against unjust rulers
37:14
and organized action by the people. So
37:18
the 30s also, for example, see the
37:20
rise of these thrilling action movies
37:22
where the heroes defeat the
37:25
villains. And these are generally more
37:27
palatable to the censor so you can get them
37:29
passed because this political
37:31
material is more as
37:33
subtext. Filmmakers
37:36
also use songs to try sneaking in
37:38
political content. So soundtracks,
37:40
and then they come up with this
37:42
grand idea of having accompanying lyric booklets,
37:45
which then reach more audiences and more
37:48
people than films can on their own.
37:50
And these are also harder to control
37:52
and regulate. So
37:54
film music becomes the vehicle
37:56
to spread political messages. freshly
38:00
for films which were at particular risk of
38:02
being censored. Yeah, there you go. So
38:04
don't speak out against injustice. Sing out.
38:06
Sing out, yeah. Smart. Can we have
38:08
a musical section in Brown Girls
38:10
Do It Too maybe? I don't think
38:12
we need a musical section. We're just constantly speaking
38:15
out all the time. We probably need
38:17
a bit of censoring to be fair. We need a
38:19
bit of filtering. And our mouths need washing. It's
38:23
a real privilege, isn't it, to be able to say
38:25
what you want, to be able to protest. You
38:27
kind of take your civil liberties for granted, don't you?
38:29
So that's a very clever
38:31
way that they manage to
38:34
find creative ways to get their political messages
38:36
out. Especially in that time in the 30s,
38:38
right, when we get independence
38:40
in 1948, year seven. Yeah, I
38:42
think it's like it's on
38:44
the horizon, isn't it? Yeah. And there's
38:46
a lot of social change and there's
38:49
a lot of social reform and social
38:51
issues as well. Women's rights, farmer's
38:53
rights, land rights, these are all
38:55
in the mix. So yes, definitely
38:58
all of this has to be put across
39:00
to the people. And some of
39:02
it crosses over to, you know, to bother
39:04
the censors. And we've mentioned partition
39:06
there. So partition is done by the
39:08
British state in 1947. India,
39:11
as it's called, is split in two states, India
39:13
and Pakistan. And you get horrific
39:16
violence. Over a million people are killed. It's obviously
39:18
hugely traumatic. And so how does Bollywood respond
39:21
as an industry, but also in terms of
39:23
the themes it's putting in its films? I
39:25
think the first immediate reaction or
39:28
the impact is some very, very
39:30
prominent Muslims in the Indian film
39:32
industry, particularly in Mumbai, leave for
39:34
Pakistan at the point of partition.
39:37
Equally many Hindu filmmakers who are
39:39
in Lahore leave for India.
39:41
The Bengali film industry, which is
39:44
based around Calcutta and Dhaka, loses a
39:46
vast part of its audience overnight. The
39:48
partition is also reflected in the films
39:50
that are made. Very quickly,
39:53
for example, a trend shows up
39:55
about films that are focused
39:58
on families that are... separated
40:00
forcibly, often by
40:02
fate. And then the storyline is
40:05
about how they are brought together again. Which
40:07
was a theme in the Nadya Shastra, wasn't
40:09
it? That you said that was the separation
40:11
union logic. So it gets kind of gets
40:13
this new life. So you
40:15
get something like Wok, which is time
40:18
by Yash Chopra in 1965, in which
40:20
an actual earthquake divides the family. And
40:22
then they have to find each other
40:24
again. And a popular
40:26
sub-genre of this actually is around
40:28
identical twins who are separated at
40:31
birth. And that is often
40:33
played by one major star. So you get
40:35
Rama Sham, which is about the twins who
40:37
are Ram, who are shy and nervous, and
40:39
Sham, who's brave and are vain. And they're
40:42
both played by the legend, the Libkumar. And
40:44
these are some of the ways they
40:46
start to try and address the traumas.
40:48
That's a very, very interesting response to a huge
40:51
trauma in the 40s. But by the 60s and
40:53
70s, we're talking about the
40:55
Bollywood Golden Age, inverted commerce. Is there a
40:57
change away from that kind of hardcore political
40:59
element, and it's becoming a bit more glamorous
41:02
and glitzy? I think 60s see
41:04
increased budgets. They see
41:06
color films, which then become standards.
41:09
The politics is still there. The
41:11
wars that lead to the formation of Bangladesh,
41:14
unemployment, right to divorce, even
41:17
the restrictions on civil rights that are
41:19
imposed during the emergency, which is 1975
41:21
to 77, are reflected
41:23
by cinema. In the
41:26
70s, films also capture the
41:28
anger and frustration of India's
41:30
very first post-colonial generation. And
41:33
that's when you see the emergence of Amitabh Bachchan
41:35
as the, quote, angry young man
41:38
who plays these characters who single-handedly
41:40
take on corruption in economic and
41:42
political systems in the country. Interesting.
41:45
Poppy, if you were going to be typecast as
41:47
a type of role in a movie, what would
41:49
you love to be? I probably would be the
41:51
angry young woman. Fighting the system. Fighting the
41:54
system, fighting corruption, which I'm not
41:56
singling out India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, but you
41:58
know, corruption is rife. I
42:01
don't see myself playing the
42:03
main kind of love interest. It will be
42:05
someone with a purpose, someone who's fighting for
42:07
justice. That's kind of my role. Not doing the
42:10
item numbers. You're going to be doing the kind of
42:12
the moral critique. Well, no, I've got two films. So
42:14
in my main film, I'm the protagonist and I'm
42:16
the angry, angry young woman. And then in the
42:18
other film, I make a cameo as the big
42:20
important star in an item number. Good.
42:23
So I'm just like double-dipping. Good to have
42:25
range. Love it. I mean, yeah, I want
42:27
horrible histories. I always be background medieval peasant
42:29
covered in poop. That was my not
42:33
so much item girl. You know you downgrade yourself.
42:35
No, that's literally the role I played quite often.
42:39
So, yeah, not really item girl, more
42:41
sort of irritable bowel boy, really, sort of
42:43
guy who's just covered in species.
42:46
All right, let's get back to
42:48
some proper cinema. I mean, Sonny,
42:50
you've mentioned Amitabh Bachchan, who
42:52
is a star, like a
42:55
proper mega star. The
42:57
film industry is such a huge part of the
43:00
Indian film industry right now. You know,
43:02
the screaming, the love, the adoration is
43:04
enormous, way more so than for Hollywood
43:06
stars. When does that start? Very
43:09
early. And that's because early
43:11
film stars in India are also
43:13
already often theatre stars. So
43:16
they can pull in existing fans. And
43:19
even before film arrives, fans
43:21
would travel hundreds of miles to
43:23
see their favourite theatre stars, favourite
43:25
musicians and dancers. One
43:28
early star we talked about earlier,
43:30
Salochna, we've already mentioned, and she
43:32
was huge. There's another
43:34
wonderful, colourful character in the 30s
43:36
who was Fearless Nadia. And
43:39
she was a white Australian woman
43:41
named Marianne Evans, who
43:43
worked as a stunt woman and an actress
43:45
in many of the 1930s action films. She
43:49
actually has this amazing aura. And
43:52
there was also David Karani, who studied
43:54
actually at Rada and the Royal Academy
43:56
of Music. And that's where
43:58
she meets her husband, Himantu. Shurai.
44:01
Then they went home together via Berlin,
44:03
so worked there, and they set
44:06
up the Bombay Talkies Film Company
44:08
in 1934. And David Karani
44:10
was actually known often as the First
44:12
Lady of Indian Cinema. And she was
44:15
massive and continued to be massive. And
44:17
I think after independence as well, you
44:19
get this almost you get a bigger
44:21
proliferation of stars from the
44:23
50s onwards. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tovica Rani
44:25
is really fascinating. And Mary Ann Evans, you
44:27
know, very cool posters of her sort of
44:30
kicking ass with a full whip. You know,
44:32
she's like sort of Indiana Jones, but you
44:34
know, in the third quarter. Cooler than Indiana
44:36
Jones. Yeah, I mean, she's absolutely, you know,
44:38
okay, so Poppy, what would your fans call
44:40
you? What would be your body with nickname?
44:43
Oh, like, you know, when you get like, Angry
44:45
Spice or Hot Spice or Manager Spice.
44:47
I'm gonna stick within the rage section
44:50
to continue down that theme. And I
44:52
don't mind being type of ass and
44:54
pigeonholed. Justice Spice. Oh,
44:57
oh, I don't know. We let me come
44:59
back to you on that. But like something
45:01
around the revolution. Oh, yes, honey.
45:03
I'll take that. Yeah. You're gonna kick an ass
45:05
and yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing.
45:07
Mostly men's kicking men's asses.
45:10
Hey, you want fearless badia? Yeah.
45:13
Okay. Yeah. Feel as Poppy. Feel
45:15
as Poppy. Yeah. Modern reboot.
45:17
Yeah. Yes, that's kind of where I'd be. It's
45:19
nice. And what about the stars of the 60s and
45:22
70s, Sunny? There is Sartna, who
45:24
was huge and very popular and a
45:26
major fashion icon, which is what I
45:28
love about her. So she popularizes what's
45:30
called the Sartna cut, which has got
45:33
a short Audrey Hepburn like fringe way
45:36
before friends and Aniston
45:38
happened. And she also
45:40
introduces the modern, more
45:43
tight fitting versions of traditional female
45:45
fashion, especially the Shalvarkamese and in
45:47
this case, the Churya Garkamese. Right.
45:49
And she was so influential that
45:51
it won appearance in a
45:54
film. Her first appearance with that
45:57
changed fashion worn by young women
45:59
in India. right away.
46:01
And then there's this incredibly gorgeous,
46:03
very, very good looking male heartthrob
46:06
Darmendra. And he makes this
46:08
film, it's called Pular Patar, which is
46:10
Flower and Stone in 1966. And it
46:12
has this amazing scene where he takes
46:15
his shirt off, which was really big.
46:18
For years, that image that
46:20
still was reproduced of topless
46:23
Darmendra on postcards, on
46:25
calendars, on all the merges
46:27
you can imagine. And it's
46:29
extraordinary because that literally became what he
46:32
was known for. Swoon!
46:34
Yeah, so we've got
46:36
a topless heartthrob, and we've got, how
46:39
do I pronounce the name? Sadna?
46:42
Sadna. Okay. The fashion trendsetter. Yeah. And
46:45
I know you've written about Amitabh Bachchan himself, you know, the
46:47
angry young man who has become an
46:49
absolute icon. His breakthrough movie, if you
46:51
want to call it, is Anjir the Chain in
46:53
1973, which features him
46:56
as a young cop who is very
46:58
angry and looking for his parents' murderer.
47:02
And from that point, he dominates the
47:04
70s and the 80s. He's
47:07
often, he's called the angry young man
47:09
and he plays these roles of this
47:11
wronged child who grows up into a
47:14
man looking for justice. So
47:16
in the hugely successful Dawn, 1978,
47:19
he plays opposite Zeenat
47:22
Aman and plays a man who gets
47:24
employed by the police to impersonate a
47:26
murdered crime boss to bring down a
47:28
criminal gang. And there's
47:30
a whole spate of these. But what's really fascinating
47:32
is in 1982, while
47:35
filming a scene for the film Cooley,
47:37
in which his character
47:39
is a porter at a train station and
47:41
is meant to die at the end, he
47:44
had a near fatal injury to his
47:46
spleen and was incredibly ill for months
47:48
in hospital. And there was such a
47:51
huge, vast public response to it
47:53
with lines of well-wishers waiting outside
47:55
the hospital, prayers being offered
47:58
across the country in all ways. across
48:00
all religions, mosques, temples, everything.
48:04
There was such a huge emotional outpouring
48:06
that they rewrote the movie to make
48:08
sure that his character survived. That's
48:11
a lovely get well soon presence. We're
48:13
not going to kill you. Either that or it's avoiding a lawsuit.
48:15
I don't know how he got injured, but maybe there's a... You
48:17
know, he actually, they froze the moment
48:20
where he was actually injured
48:22
in the film. So you can actually, it
48:24
freezes and says, this is where he was
48:26
injured. Oh, wow. And then at the end,
48:28
he shows up on the balcony of the
48:30
hospital where he had recovered. Oh, wow. To
48:33
address this onscreen crowd and thank
48:36
his wonderful fans. Okay, so that's the
48:38
sort of, the star is in the movie
48:40
saying, I'm fine. Thank you. And thank you
48:43
for your while. Thank you for your follow.
48:45
I mean, that's incredible, Poppy. Yeah, that's kind
48:47
of mental, isn't it? Imagine if you
48:49
could do that on the Shawshank Redemption. Yeah.
48:51
We don't have the power to do that
48:53
in Holly. I don't think that that sort
48:55
of direct line that Bollywood fans have with
48:57
Indian cinema in the way that
48:59
they could change. You know, I'm not saying how I'm not
49:02
obviously an expert, but like the fact that that could happen.
49:04
Another major, major star would be Shahrukh
49:07
Khan, who is like... Heartthrob. I mean,
49:09
he's King Khan, right? He's known as
49:11
SRK King Khan. He's huge too. And
49:13
he's, you know, that's a whole other
49:16
sort of mega level of stardom, isn't it? It
49:18
is an absolutely mad level
49:20
of stardom. So Shahrukh Khan's
49:23
first success comes in early
49:25
90s, and he
49:27
starts with playing the anti-hero,
49:29
the slightly psychopathic, stalker-y lover.
49:31
Yeah. But in 1995, he
49:33
switches to a completely different persona, playing the
49:35
good son, the father, the brother, the
49:39
sort of the just ruler, if you want to call
49:41
it that way. He establishes in somewhat,
49:43
I think, possibly some of the biggest top-grossing
49:45
films of the 1990s, 2000s. There's
49:48
DDLJ, we talked about earlier, 1995, Delta
49:52
Pagala, 1997, Kush Kush Hota, Mahabharata...
49:56
He took a brief
49:58
break roundabout. 2017
50:01
and he's come back to the screens
50:03
in 2023 with action
50:05
blockbusters, baton and Javan. So,
50:07
King Khan is Muslim, a
50:10
fact that has become especially relevant with
50:12
the rise of Hindu nationalist politics. He
50:14
has spoken out against the growing intolerance for
50:17
Muslims in India. He's been told
50:19
to go to Pakistan by some BJP politicians
50:21
as a result. And worse, his
50:24
wife is Hindu and he's spoken very
50:26
openly about raising their children in a
50:29
multi-phase household. Also, in
50:31
2021, his eldest son, Aryan,
50:33
was arrested on drug charges.
50:35
And although he was later
50:38
cleared of these charges, to
50:40
be very clear, it has been alleged
50:42
that the officers were trying to blackmail the
50:44
family or potentially the charges
50:46
were politically motivated. He is incredible.
50:48
I mean, I knew he was
50:50
of a Muslim background. I actually
50:52
didn't know that he was speaking
50:55
out against the BJP's very
50:57
hyper-nationalistic sort of narratives. So I
50:59
have even more respect for him actually. His
51:02
essay inside the Khanate is extraordinary.
51:04
It's very, very... The Khanate. What's
51:06
the Khanate? The Khan, the Empire.
51:09
The Khanate, yes. Oh, clever. So,
51:11
yeah. And you get
51:13
into trouble when you speak out against
51:15
Modi. He did. And you get into
51:17
harassment and no one within
51:19
the industry comes to support you. It's
51:22
not like, you know, when Hollywood had
51:24
its Me Too moment, everyone
51:26
came out rallying and supporting
51:28
those actors. I don't feel
51:31
like it's like that as much. I think it's gone
51:33
back and forth. I think there was a great deal
51:35
of intimidation. I think when his son
51:37
was arrested, I think you saw a switch
51:39
happening as to who spoke and who didn't.
51:42
And a lot of people started to that point
51:44
of speak. I mean, very quickly, just to
51:47
sum up, but, you know, Bollywood is an enormous industry.
51:49
I can't explain how big it is. What is it
51:51
worth, actually, in terms of its billions? It's more
51:54
than Hollywood, isn't it? No.
51:56
I think the finance side is possibly the
51:58
only place where Hollywood... They have
52:00
got way bigger budgets. Okay. But
52:03
in terms of reach, it's 3.6 billion
52:05
people worldwide watch Bollywood movies. Okay,
52:07
1.4 are Indians. But,
52:09
come on, give us a shot. That
52:11
counts, right? But same reach. But half
52:14
the world's population, which is pretty big. And
52:16
yes, granted, a third of that is just
52:18
Indians. Same reach as Hollywood. I want to
52:20
ask, Poppy, growing up, was
52:23
Bollywood something that you had to explain to people? And
52:25
now, can you talk about these films with people and
52:27
they know what you're talking about? When I
52:29
was growing up, Bollywood, as
52:31
an experience, as a sort
52:33
of Indian cinema, it
52:35
was a very insular thing. You
52:37
shared it with your brown friends,
52:40
cousins, aunties, uncles, mum, dad. You
52:43
wouldn't tell your black friends or white
52:45
friends or non-Asian friends about Bollywood. But
52:48
certainly in the last 10, 15 years,
52:50
it needs no introduction. And also, you've
52:52
now, what I was seeing in
52:54
the early 2000s, the crossover, you know, Chopra,
52:57
Shah Rukh Khan is recognised worldwide
52:59
in terms of the hierarchy Hollywood was at
53:02
the top. But now, yeah, you need
53:04
no introduction. Everyone knows what Bollywood is. Yeah. It's
53:07
been quite the history. We went back 2,200 years. 2,000
53:09
years, yeah. So, yeah, it's been a while on the
53:11
old run-up. But yeah, it's amazing. The Nuance Window! Well,
53:13
it's time now for the Nuance Window. This
53:20
is the part of the show where Poppy
53:22
and I act like background extras for two
53:24
minutes, while Professor Sunny takes centre stage to
53:26
sing us something we need to know about
53:28
Bollywood. Well, talk if you want. That's fine.
53:31
My self-watch is ready. You have two minutes. So
53:33
please take it away, Professor Sunny. I think
53:35
two things. One, the Indian film
53:37
audience is extremely sophisticated
53:39
and has a very profound sense
53:42
of getting their money's worth, what
53:44
we call Pasavasool. So
53:46
that means an average of 700 commercial films
53:48
are made every year in India, and
53:50
only a few dozen are popular with
53:53
the audiences, and even fewer become box
53:55
office hits. But I think
53:57
one of the Things we need to really do is to make sure
53:59
that we have a very. Really remind ourselves about
54:01
that. They have been some really
54:03
great blockbusters in the past year.
54:06
These a very old school. And
54:08
in certain ways very modern in
54:11
many technology, special effects, but they
54:13
really have been claiming or reclaiming
54:15
the values of Bollywood. the multiplicity
54:18
of identities, the ability to get
54:20
along with neighbors inside and outside,
54:22
and of course all the different
54:24
bits of politics wed, linguistic, chauvinism,
54:27
gender class, all of these and
54:29
I think one of the best
54:31
ways to think about it is
54:33
the of On which is this
54:36
king com shot upon me. The.
54:38
Great stars, Huge number of
54:41
brilliant action sequences, lots of
54:43
great music, and it's also
54:45
explicitly political. It. Has
54:47
a strong longstreet to camera
54:49
monologue by it's main star
54:51
a king com himself by
54:53
the need for holding elected
54:55
leaders. To accounts. Thank you Sony as
54:58
soon as he poppy Any final thoughts
55:00
Blown Love some the still reeling from
55:02
asked to sunny see minute monologue this
55:04
is holding her family on. And
55:06
I think ending it on them
55:09
holding people to accounts and think
55:11
it's. Never. More truer
55:13
than what we're going through now, especially
55:16
in Indian. Cinema To hold someone who
55:18
can be brave enough to do it
55:20
is selling to. Be. Celebrated. So what are
55:22
you know? I'm
55:29
now for the quiz else and as a
55:31
somebody you know now where we could poppy
55:33
through the wringer. My see has my memory
55:36
of you have been making a million called
55:38
notes or you've got an essay. I. Scribble
55:41
things down and I don't. I can't
55:43
read my writings on stuff. Outside
55:46
account we got same question for you and
55:48
of yeah see how much suits humans to
55:50
read of your own notes so send questions
55:52
him again Christian One one of the name
55:54
of the ancient some script text that lays
55:57
out many principals of indie performance in six
55:59
thousand versus. The not three star.
56:01
That's right, A necessity? Yes, well
56:03
done. Question seems a more decade
56:06
did filmmaking a rise in India?
56:08
Eighty nine, Six percent, Three, Nineteen
56:10
Thirteen for the Release of Russia
56:12
Has sandra what was important, the
56:14
falsehoods. Of the first feature film
56:17
by does Self K, the director you're
56:19
getting directs. The names and everything through the
56:21
know taking his words were on really. Moron enough
56:23
away learning from this are. Some
56:25
from memory of four hours long.
56:27
How many songs when I loved
56:29
that ass off at every day?
56:31
See, that's the film In for
56:33
supper of seventy one songs specify
56:35
what fashion trends that Sixty Stars
56:37
soda or popularized the to either.
56:40
Yes, Question Six: What was an
56:42
item number in a Bollywood film?
56:44
Ah, an item number. Usually this big set
56:46
piece as as a song it's an easy
56:48
call into dance. Number is a big star.
56:50
unrelated to the story and plotline will often
56:53
make an appearance to drive sales. Absolutely
56:55
Question seven: How did filmmakers
56:57
sneak in political messages post
57:00
colonial era senses? Through the
57:02
music yes yes, who the song oh
57:04
and the printed and and lyrics books
57:06
Yeah, miracles to add. Books
57:08
Server good Question Eight which start
57:10
our fame in the nineteen seventies
57:13
playing an angry young man on
57:15
a budget office's Question Nine in
57:17
the nineteen thirties. Indian film like
57:19
is often collaborated with industry experts
57:21
from which European country. Germany
57:24
was tim the this for a
57:26
perfect ten. What nickname is Bollywood?
57:28
Hawthorne? Shah Rukh Khan? Known. By
57:30
can I get to guess is is
57:33
S R K. Is all kink
57:35
on? Set
57:37
out at Cern, He
57:41
really did what we do for the
57:44
ringer. you a stud? Ah, you're excellent
57:46
teacher Professor. That has reverted.
57:48
Fascinating think is what I learned lots as well.
57:50
I'm really very grateful for your knowledge. Sunny it's
57:52
it's been a joy and listener is Also today's
57:54
episode you are more about Indian history. With
57:57
on episodes on the Mughal Empire and
57:59
the Ain't. In Civilization. both of those
58:01
a really fun for more film history
58:03
mixed in politics. He got one on
58:05
pull ropes and much I loved doing
58:07
and remember if enjoyed the podcast. Please leave
58:09
review share the show your friends scribes.
58:11
you're dead to me on Bbc Sound
58:13
so you never miss an episode by Sled
58:16
to say he's thank you to our
58:18
guests in History corner we had the sensational
58:20
professor funny thing from London Metropolitan University.
58:22
Thank you Sunny Thing is great! Was
58:25
great fun and comedy corner! We had a
58:27
fantastic Poppy J Thank you Poppy! Thank you
58:29
So. Much for having me and listen to puppies
58:32
focused on Bbc Sounds is called Brown. Go through
58:34
it to It's very, very funny. Quite northeast but
58:36
you know, quite notice. Yeah, maybe not the kids
58:38
in the car. Let. It let me know if
58:40
kids and because I've tried to. the fact that
58:42
I've not been able to swear during this entire
58:44
hour energy. Level of America, Asia and yelling. And
58:48
you love the listener, join me next time if
58:50
we load another historical ethic into argued that to
58:52
me film projector. But for now I'm off to
58:54
the Swiss Alps, the serenade, my love of and
58:56
seventy one songs Oregon A sound card came in.
59:03
This episode of your that the Me with research
59:05
by Madeline breaks the could was written by enrolled
59:07
quite good fellow M indicates and made the or
59:09
the a producer for Steve Hanky and our production
59:11
coordinator with has been produced by any Rose has
59:13
good fellow to me and senior producer M and
59:15
a goose and are executive editor with Chris Let
59:17
off. On
59:31
this couture line from Bbc Radio
59:33
Four, leading artists and performers reveal
59:35
their creative inspiration. saw something that
59:37
was so beyond what I was
59:39
being taught school discuss the best
59:41
them work I. Do. Get messages all
59:43
the time saying this is our
59:46
lives. The handmade Tail is already
59:48
here. And reflect on their own
59:50
cultural lives. Rock stars need to
59:52
be simply drawn. I can't be
59:54
too complex to meet John Wilson
59:56
and my guests including Nick Cave,
59:58
Stephen Fry mobile. Howard Atwood, Florence Pugh,
1:00:01
Paul McCartney and Whoopi Goldberg. I always
1:00:03
knew I was going to be a
1:00:05
character actor. I never thought I was
1:00:07
going to be a famous movie person.
1:00:09
This Culture Alive. Listen on BBC Sounds.
1:00:16
Hi, I'm Danny Pellegrino from the
1:00:19
Everything Iconic podcast. And who doesn't
1:00:21
love a classic burger from McDonald's?
1:00:23
That's right, McDonald's classic burgers are
1:00:25
hotter, juicier and tastier than ever.
1:00:27
The patties are cooked to juicy
1:00:30
perfection. I love the cheese perfectly
1:00:32
melted on top. I love the
1:00:34
Big Mac that has special sauce
1:00:36
in every bite. I love the
1:00:38
pillowy soft golden bun. So in
1:00:41
the words of the hamburger, which
1:00:43
I believe means grab McDonald's best
1:00:45
burgers ever before hamburgers does at
1:00:47
a McDonald's near you.
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