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INTERVIEWER: Hindi films tell us about the Indian psyche. SUBJECT: There are two basic elements which are part of the Indian psyche in relation to the film. One is that we have a group culture.

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And the group culture begins with the family. Where the family is identified by the language, food, and customs, the whole rituals, which are different from the other groups.

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So the clan, the group, the caste, each define the quality of a group. So as a group, when we come together, then there are differences between my language, my food,

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and yours. What the Hindi film does is it picks the common patterns of this group culture and portrays it. So it has stereotypes.

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It has certain fixed elements and a very predictable movement. So the narrative is not the way beginning, middle, and end narrative normally is.

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But the narrative can go on. And suddenly, you can have a film of dance which has no relationship to the story. So it has an idea of moving from one story

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within another story, which appeals to the group mentality because the group mentality needs a pattern which is consistent. And the predictability gives the security.

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The uncertainty is not liked. So no film should have an end which is uncertain. It has to be a known fixed end. So you begin with love.

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Then you have differences of love, misunderstandings. Then you have violence. Then you have your villain. And then you have a method of resolving this differences.

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So if you take the old classic of Devdas, which is based on a myth, myth of how suffering gives you freedom. And suffering has so many myths that you stand on one leg

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and punish yourself. Or different versions of being ascetic gives you a benefit. So those mythological [? power behind, ?] bring it to a film like Devdas and say

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that love, which is true love, is unattainable. So how do you do it? And that whole sequence, even today, when people come to me and talk, there is an assumption that true love will never

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be satisfied. It will always be unfulfilled. And it's so many people come and talk like that. Plus the one who loses out gets masochistic.

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And the whole pain of masochism and that pleasure in that pain or that whole seesaw between being sadistic and masochistic, where sterility is the heart of the matter is transformed as if it's the virtue.

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So sterile emotions become virtue. And that also gives you predictability because if you really look at love as a vulnerable openness, then it will never be Predictable

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INTERVIEWER: But tell me something, why is it that, for example, when love is portrayed in Hindi films, it's always got to be young love.

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Now, what's your feeling about this repetition of showing young love? SUBJECT: Well, young love has a feeling of freshness. That the audience, if it is love of the middle age,

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does not give a feeling of a new discovery of what love is. Because there are two facets in family. That when you go to college in a city, you can fall in love without parents' knowledge.

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But that love cannot result in marriage. So if marriage is what the family wants. So many of these people say, we fall in love, we have a good time.

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Then we give that up and get married. So that split can only be enhanced if the films show young in love because it's a fantasy which goes on.

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You meet at a bus stop, you meet when there is rain and there is one umbrella or one taxi. And then they come together. If there is old love, then the young and the old

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both feel it's a tired old love. It has no future. This one has no future. But it has a future in fantasies.

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You come out of a film, which is love film, and see the fantasies on the faces of the audience. It's quite extraordinary. See [HINDI].

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That film has one element, which it begins with. That when you feel love, how do you are in love? And that eternal question is very answered in a very simple way, [HINDI]

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And the sound and all the elements, which combined together, makes you feel that this is what I have felt. The whole audience feels that.

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When they feel that way, they all identify. All ages can identify with the young. The young me of the 20s can talk to the 50-year-old guy. And the 50-year-old guy can talk to the 20-year-old.

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And that dialogue is the requirement for young love. INTERVIEWER: Just stop. Just cut it. [INAUDIBLE]

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We were talking about young love. Just tell me a little bit about this young love and this fantasy of it, is it anything to do with the fact that young people feel that their marriages will

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be arranged anyway. So is that the appeal of the young love on the screen? SUBJECT: The appeal of young love is one, that the family will decide

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who will get married to whom. So the young has no desire which can be expressed. But they can express the desire before they get married. They can express the desire in fantasies.

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Same with the parental generation. Their parents-- these are the kids' parents-- have gone through the same ritual of unable to marry or unable to decide who they want to marry

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or who they want to love. So this lack of fulfilment of desires, or shall we say in another way, whose desire am I fulfilling? Parents' or mine?

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That question is not asked. That unresolved debate, the film makes-- creates a fantasy around this. And the commonness is that each generation

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has suffered this problem. So the romantic fantasy the film creates invites grandmothers, grandfathers to young kids. Everybody will enjoy.

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That's the power of the unfulfilled fantasies, unfulfilled desires. INTERVIEWER: That's quite true because in fact, the parent generation, they still accept these stories completely.

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They think it's family entertainment, actually, romantic films. Yet they are-- it's opposite of what happens in reality. SUBJECT: Yes, because it's a fantasy,

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it always gets resolved the way the family believes how. Parents decide. Even in [HINDI],, the idea was that the guy gets-- girl gets married.

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Only difference from the old films was there is no villain to interfere. Here, the girl herself gives up and does not express her love, which is the typical old pattern

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of non-expression. Later, when the two meet, the guy who she's supposed to get married says you love this guy, go to him.

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Now, that's the change. Old days, there would be a conflict and violence. Now here, the conflict is resolved by the second guy realising, OK, let her marry love.

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That's the change in the film. The end is a different end. And that change, you can see now in happening in the city. In Bombay, we can see how there is

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a small movement around people get married out of love. Even divorces take place because the marriage has not worked. Both men and women ask for divorce. The small percentage of change is also

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reflected in the ending of the film. Normally, the film will end with violence or something happening. Here, the guy gives up.

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And of course, he has to become traditional. He's about to get married. The girl is coming down. And then the guy gives up.

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So that is still traditional. So the whole family feels comfortable. INTERVIEWER: OK, so then what kind of impact do you think Hindi films have on the audience?

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SUBJECT: The impact on the audience is actually quite deep because in the images of the film, the characters of the film, the plot, the music, the dance, the way of dressing all have an impact, not only on the mind

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but also on the construction of fantasies. So the meaning of who I am. Who am I in relation to the life? Also comes from these films, bits of films.

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And you can actually see a tiny bit of a film in somebody's life. A man told me that he was in love with a girl he met somewhere.

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And in Bhopal Lake, Bhopal Lake, he was rowing with this girl. And he went to the middle of the lake, stopped there, and burst into a song, and then proposed to her. When he said it, I was laughing.

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He was serious. He said that's the best way to do it. So he could take initiative based on the film fantasy. INTERVIEWER: It gave him that courage.

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SUBJECT: That courage. INTERVIEWER: Gave him a method. SUBJECT: Gave him a method, gave him the courage. Gave him a very certain approach.

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You do this, this, and it can work. INTERVIEWER: Yes, it's kind of a guide to romanticism. SUBJECT: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Tell me a little bit

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about the impact of mythological stories on the characterization of the hero and heroine. SUBJECT: Since many, many mythological stories come together and get sort condensed into a hero.

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Say the hero is seen as vulnerable, but powerful. So you can have [HINDI],, you can have [HINDI].. You can have combination of Krishna. Now, you combine all these characters into one,

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then you find the hero. He's supposed to be good looking, tall, slim, with voice which arouses sexuality, which arouses sensuousness, and a bit of a mystery, which

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are all stuff of fantasies. You bring all this together and you have a ready-made fantasy for the audience. Simultaneously, it evokes the stories from childhood.

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That the strength, valour, attention, learning, wiliness form in which the guy is always invincible. He has a way out. He has a method to deal with any situation.

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These are mythological figures from all these characters. Now, you juxtapose them with the villain. The villain will be in sort of dark colours. And the dark colours always remind Indians of rakshas,

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the evil, the manipulative hatred. So the hatred can be personified in that character, totally diverse from good, loving emotions. And that distance is the power of the film.

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If they merge together, it's going to be a problem. So either you hate and be consistent in hate and love, it will work. But you can't be mix of both.

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INTERVIEWER: And tell me, how do you think these mythological stories or characters have kind of informed the kind of heroines we have in India? SUBJECT: Now, in the heroines, they

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have to be one type, which is self-sacrificing and expressive. That contradiction works because if they were only self-sacrificing, it won't work.

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They're self-sacrificing. They invite sexuality. They invite sensuousness. Plus, they are passive at the right point in time.

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And if they are passive appropriately, it works. If they get too active, it doesn't work. Like [HINDI],, the girl who was active in sports was not sensuous.

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The other girl was sensuous, but not active in sports. This divide works. And that's why bits of mythological stories come. And they come from so many sources.

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Like Sita is one obvious one. Then you have many mother goddesses who have performed the role of nurturing, and sharing, and knowing what is right and wrong.

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Now, that clarity works from mother India, where the mother was personified as all love. All obstacles, she can overcome. But if the son became abandoned, she will never forgive him.

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While poverty, struggle, she would tolerate. So there is a deep sense of belief that mother goddess protects. And love implies acceptance of any relationship

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which enters the mother. INTERVIEWER: What typifies these goddesses? What are their strengths? What are the characteristics of these?

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SUBJECT: Strengths? Giving, bountiful. Then there is an idea that if the goddess-- say mother goddess is one who can protect you

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from illnesses, from disasters. So that power to protect you is the basis. So the hero always runs to the mother in different ways for protection.

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He gets the protection, then goes out. So it's like he borrows an armour from her and goes for a fight. INTERVIEWER: And tell me a little bit about the sexuality

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of the heroine. How can that be expressed? SUBJECT: In the films, they are expressed through dance and the movement of the body, which--

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and the water on the clothes, from days of Raj Kapoor. That image, I find is the best masturbatory image one can think of. Because you don't see the full picture.

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You have a mystery. You have the outlines. And you have everything wet. And you can utilise that image for a long time.

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There was a man who told me that he went to see a film 25 times because he was hoping that a bit of a cleavage will drop below the point it was in the film.

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And he was hoping it will move. So I wondered did he actually believed the film is interactive between his fantasy and what has been shown?

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And this he told me in '60s Now, maybe he can actually have an interactive cinema where he can strip her. But that non-stripping is the sexualness, dance movement,

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which all remind you of sexual intercourse without ever being touched. Then when they touch, they will have the same sequence of not unclothing, not kissing.

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So that restraint and the erotic movements, or the vulgar movements which become-- which is supposed to be erotic, that balance creates the fantasy, and the tempo of the music.

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And more the fantasy, more the audience's response, all the catcalls which you then hear in the audience, greater the success of the film. Even in 1947, there are catcalls when this girl Aya has

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a moment where there is more explicit sexual act than in other films. And there are so many catcalls about her sensuousness and her evoking sexuality.

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So all the successful heroines have a way of evoking in the audience active sexual fantasies. And the more the fantasies, greater her success. I always feel it's a construction where

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there is awareness. And there are few elements of surprise of how the interaction will occur eventually. But there is a clear idea that this activity

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will do it because there is a repetition of the same idea. It cannot be unconscious. Maybe the first time they stumbled upon it, then it becomes a good formula.

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And so many of them use it. INTERVIEWER: You mean wet sari look? SUBJECT: Wet sari look is very common. The gyrations are very common.

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They repeat it. And the eyes, the use of the eyes, the use of the lips, all suggest that. And some of the people want to dress like those women, some

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of the youngsters, or middle-aged women want to actually imitate those dresses. So there are tailors who say, I can give you this film's dress costumes if you come to me.

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INTERVIEWER: I'm just wondering which is that film he was talking about that 25 times that he saw in the '60s. Do you remember what film it was?

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SUBJECT: Yeah, no, see I'm confused about the name. That's why I didn't take the name to you. INTERVIEWER: And do you think that if, for example, censorship allowed more overt sexuality on the screen,

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would it work better for audiences? Or actually, is this kind of leaving it to the imagination more powerful? SUBJECT: The way us as culture is

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the way we have split ourselves between leaving to private imagination and more explicit social contact of a film. It would become a problem for what

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they call family entertainment because the family can hear, say there is no kiss, so there is no sex. One can ignore it. And then if it's very explicit, you can't ignore it,

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then the family, parents have to then say, this is not good film. And this is a bad film. So I don't think they want that divide.

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They lose an audience there on one hand. Other hand, they can make films like that, which is not a family entertainment, but an entertainment where open, frank vulgarity is shown.

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That is very difficult for the political leaders to allow. So they all are interwoven. It's very difficult to move from there. There is nothing like that.

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So then they say we don't have to talk about it. So every time there is a sort of moral judgments against so-called vulgarity, but the real vulgar activities in these films are seen as no problems, no censorship,

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nothing ever occurs. But if you have a camera which lingers on the shoulders, and there is a bit of wetness in the shoulders, and there's nice music, and a nice tree,

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and you linger for a long time, the censors will say, no, you can't show this film. It happened to Kumar Shahani's film, [INAUDIBLE].. And they cut it.

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A man told me that he does not sleep with his wife. But he said if I was not married to her, I can sleep with her. Now he will enjoy all voyeuristic fantasies. And Bombay is full of it, films, we

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will look out through the window, you look into another flat. And he will work sit and do that. He will sit in his window and look at others through that

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at a great distance. And then he can get aroused, but not in the intimate world. So these films also create a damage. The damage is they don't allow genuine intimacy to occur.

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And then one creates a value. Where is the Indian intimacy of the family? If you don't allow this kind of relationships to explore. So films explore to a point, and then they don't.

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So where is that genuine sense of intimacy? INTERVIEWER: Can you see that, actually, there is sexuality, but as you said very rightly, there's no intimacy which means intimacy meaning

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a greater, better relationship. If you don't have intimacy, how do you have a relationship? SUBJECT: You can't. So without intimacy, there is no relationship.

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And intimacy implies trust and expression of individuality. Here, the family does not allow individuality to be expressive. So if they don't do that, then they also don't want intimacy to go beyond a point.

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So there is a restriction. Same idea of restriction is in the filmmakers. So the filmmakers and the families at large meet together.

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And there is a commonness of the group, which is that when the group comes together, there are common stories, common myths, and common images, which is a pool which binds the group together.

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So you go to a temple and millions of people worship a particular God. Now, those millions have a common pool of images, myths, and stories regarding this particular God.

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Then you replace the God and the temple by a film, actors, actresses, characters, types, they become the people whom you now worship with a new convention of myths and stories.

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And those myths and conventions of stories bind the group together. So in a way, it unifies the country through this medium. Through this particular form of making films,

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you change this method, and it won't work. It has to be this method of everything going on, all the time, unresolved, undifferentiated mass. INTERVIEWER: Now that's quite true,

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when, for example, the characters then become, through metaphor or allegory, they take on forms of the mythological heroes and heroines.

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What happens in the mythological field, when you actually have the gods on screen? What kind of impact do you think that has on audiences? SUBJECT: When that the people who have grown up

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without the television or who have read mythological stories from childhood or heard, where they used to come with that box and unfold the story on the [HINDI],, the characters you had to imagine and construct.

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Now, it's all ready made. And when they are given, they have so much of gold on them and so much of ornaments. And the speech is so stylized in the sense of life.

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That the reference is to a reverence of the seniors. All those qualities construct a inhibition of-- inhibition of imagination. In that sense, it deprives.

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On the other level, without imagining, you get the real stuff, as it were, on the image of the film. But they are not that powerful all across the country. In certain areas, it gets great power.

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So it has to be done not all the time, but once in a while. Then it works. INTERVIEWER: That means you say you're saying that the mythological film isn't

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powerful for everyone. SUBJECT: All the time. If you keep on showing mythological film every year, it won't work.

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You show it for a while, disappear, then come back. INTERVIEWER: And why is that? SUBJECT: Because it's known. While the city life creates conflicts and patterns

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which are not so much incorporated in the old myths. So you need the experience of today for fantasies to also develop. As well as once in a while, old fantasies

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can revive and develop with the old myths. INTERVIEWER: Can you tell us, as a psychotherapist, how you solve this relationship in Hindi films and mother and son. SUBJECT: Over the years working as a psychotherapist,

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mother-son is a very complex and interesting relationship because on one hand, the mother provides with attentiveness which is love and understanding. So that son, the child feels the warmth, the security

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of being understood. The problem comes in the family. That there is a difference between the son and the daughter.

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And that divide hurts the entire family, which we don't acknowledge that much. So if you look at it as, say, the children, the babies growing up, from that time onwards,

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there is an observation that father has priority over the mother. Then between the children, the son has a priority over sisters or the daughters.

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So what does the child who is a sister feel about her brother? That he has an automatic power. He is an automatic hero. Sense of justice gets blurred.

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Sense of what is ethically correct gets also blurred. And it becomes a moral pressure that the son is more important. And that cultural entity distorts the relationships for life.

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And that is a real damage, which we don't acknowledge. So who are the second class citizens? The mother and the future mother, the young sister. And who are the first class?

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The sons and the father. Now, in this divide, there is also like the caste. There is a divide that women are second. Untouchables are last.

00:29:21.170 - 00:29:40.820

So there is unspeakable, untouchable contact in the family. No one in the family ever talks why this exists. So one-- so this power of idealisation of the male

00:29:40.820 - 00:29:55.420

has two main reactions. One, that the mother, who is second class in relation to the father, also wants her power hierarchically. So she does activities to get that power.

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The son maintains the power through the father. The daughters want, like the mother, try to get the power. How? So one who is superior hierarchically, the male,

00:30:08.800 - 00:30:20.630

has the power of yes and no. So the mother also wants the power of yes and no over her son. And she does manage through a sense of guilt.

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And that complicates the relationship the son has with the rest of the world. So when he marries and he has a wife, the wife can't bring the culture of her family

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officially into the house. But of course, her culture has to come because that's how life is. So that's why they are very conscious that marriage

00:30:42.830 - 00:30:56.420

must be between similar culture, similar caste. So that such differences don't come in. City is trying to break that. So there is a conflict between the city

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life and the traditional role. Now, the women have begun to work. So as they work and as they earn money, there is a self-assertion, self-expression

00:31:09.800 - 00:31:25.380

in women and confidence. So when that develops, there is two levels of conflict now, the old traditional value and the new ones. One very Orthodox man put it quite interestingly.

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He said we are halfway house. We have old values and we have new values coming. So I ask each woman in my family, you choose one or the other.

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And for your security, you better choose the old one. INTERVIEWER: What do you feel about in Hindi films, there's a lot of big stars who will have a scene in a film in which they dress up as a woman,

00:31:47.140 - 00:32:01.140

as a kind of a cross dressing. How come do you think that the audience accept this so happily and never question it? Like you take a Amitabh Bachchan in Lawaaris and then--

00:32:01.140 - 00:32:09.060

he dresses up as a woman. And he does a whole dance thing. And then Aman does the same. And very often since the '70s, I don't know many examples

00:32:09.060 - 00:32:20.910

earlier. SUBJECT: Johnny Walker and others would dress as women, the sidekicks, not the main guys. I have not thought about it.

00:32:20.910 - 00:32:36.710

But if I right now speculate, that what is the transition of a male hero wearing a women's clothes, the ease with which audience will accept, let me speculate, because I don't--

00:32:36.710 - 00:32:51.020

I've never thought about it. It is-- there is an acceptance. If you have a field of relationship, then there is an acceptance that identity is made up

00:32:51.020 - 00:33:03.290

of both-- idea of male trans becoming a woman for a dance or a song sequence, I never thought about it. But I'm going to speculate.

00:33:03.290 - 00:33:26.850

That there is an acceptance in this culture of bisexuality, of emotional bisexuality, not bisexuality in action, no, but as an idea that I can, for a particular role, I can wear. And it comes from Holi festival.

00:33:26.850 - 00:33:41.610

In Holi, reversal of role occurs. And everything is acceptable. A woman will abuse freely on that day without a problem. So that irreverence in that Holi festival

00:33:41.610 - 00:33:55.830

may also allow all of us to have this transient relation. And if it's a, say, dance and say a song, hero will sing a song as a woman, then they don't see this as a real hero.

00:33:55.830 - 00:34:09.510

They can see this as a dream in the film. So in the dream, you can be anything and is acceptable. But he may not do that if it's not a dance, or a film music, or singing.

00:34:09.510 - 00:34:24.570

If it's a bit of the film which is narrative, then he won't change. But because all song sequences, in a way, come at a time when the linear logic is dropped and given up.

00:34:24.570 - 00:34:33.780

So what logic comes is a dream logic, where things can move, go in time, go condense from place to place. It can be in the mountains.

00:34:33.780 - 00:34:47.340

And next minute, at a [? colony ?] in Bombay, third minute on the street. All movements within two or three minutes of that sequence. So that permits the-- it's a dream form.

00:34:47.340 - 00:34:58.290

Maybe that's why they can accept-- the audience accepts it. INTERVIEWER: And perhaps also the fact of actors have been-- there's a tradition of performance, male dressing up

00:34:58.290 - 00:35:04.080

as women. So they're performing. So there's a performance within the performance kind of thing. SUBJECT: That idea of performance

00:35:04.080 - 00:35:16.350

within a performance is valid. Because there is a whole tradition. There was a great Gujarati actor who acted in [? Ahmedabad ?] during the '30s, '20s, I think.

00:35:16.350 - 00:35:29.360

And he actually created for women a way of designing jewellery, the colour of the saris, the designing of the costumes were influenced by the way, what he wore.

00:35:29.360 - 00:35:48.230

And recently, [? Bhupen ?] Khakhar, the painter, painted the entire curtain for this play, which was performed in Bombay. And the curtain he painted, so that the whole performance

00:35:48.230 - 00:36:00.380

of the old actor was looked-- everyone knew he's a man. But they all loved it. So maybe what you're saying is valid. That performance within a performance is acceptable.

00:36:00.380 - 00:36:07.340

INTERVIEWER: And therefore, then men can dress up as women in that moment. SUBJECT: In that moment, in that dream sequence. INTERVIEWER: So our last question.

00:36:07.340 - 00:36:25.960

What is most irritating to you about Hindi cinema? SUBJECT: What is most irritating is predictability and same patterns being churned out film after film.

00:36:25.960 - 00:36:38.680

Either you go towards violence or you go towards love. Both are predictable. Except once in a while, they begin with an area, like say, [? Satya, ?] it begins with a angle of looking

00:36:38.680 - 00:36:53.230

at the Bombay as it is, the underworld, the underbelly of Bombay. But very soon, he has to fall in love. And very soon, he has to go back to that girl and then he dies.

00:36:53.230 - 00:37:09.580

That becomes very same, predictable thing. Plus the vulgarity does create irritation in me. And the violence which it permits under the guise of entertainment.

00:37:09.580 - 00:37:21.160

It, in a way, creates a lot of mindlessness and meaninglessness, which is addictive because one loves to become like that. So it also irritates.

00:37:23.680 - 00:37:31.330

INTERVIEWER: And the people who have come to see you and so on, have they really-- do they believe in these films? I mean, is there a sense that they really mean something

00:37:31.330 - 00:37:41.800

to people, other than the romantic question you talked about being on the boat and so on? SUBJECT: They believe in the power of the actor, the strength.

00:37:41.800 - 00:37:56.810

They do get drawn to the actors and actresses. And some of them want to imitate the lifestyle, the way they look and hairstyles. All that does come in.

00:37:56.810 - 00:38:15.430

And it also constructs, through the film, a particular way of fantasising life is also done. So that's where I feel the harm is done by the film because it makes them construct life in that particular order.

00:38:15.430 - 00:38:27.330

And then they believe it. All believers go to the temple. All believers go to the cinema. So there is a link between the two, which hurts.

00:38:27.330 - 00:38:36.380

INTERVIEWER: And is it, do you think-- what [INAUDIBLE] is this kind of design of a world that is unreal or where things are too fantasised for you

00:38:36.380 - 00:38:47.420

SUBJECT: Design of a world where thought is not permitted to exist. So they can bring a conflict. But if they allow the audience to think,

00:38:47.420 - 00:39:02.270

the way the film is constructed, there is no possibility for the audience to think and look at life. So that capacity for reflecting life, films don't provide,

00:39:02.270 - 00:39:18.320

these Bollywood films. And that's what is, let's say, destroys a whole capacity for thinking. Otherwise, they can have a wonderful impact

00:39:18.320 - 00:39:28.820

on this country. [INAUDIBLE] Like say the old, old prejudices against women exists in the cinema.

00:39:28.820 - 00:39:42.230

Prejudice against Hindu Muslims exists in the cinema in unseen ways. Caste exists because heroine will never marry the villain. So there is a caste of that kind.

00:39:44.700 - 00:39:47.690

INTERVIEWER: Thank you. Thank you very much.