Dr. Salman Akhtar: Bollywood and the Indian Unconsciousness Part-1
By kamla bhatt • Sep 25th, 2008Category: Bollywood, Books and Authors, Diaspora, Entertainment, Featured, India, People
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Dr. Salman Akhtar talks about Bollywood and the Indian unconsciousness. What are the unconscious undercurrents of Indian society and culture that are reflected in Hindi cinema or Bollywood as it has come to be known? Dr. Akhtar provides a framework of sorts to understand the history and evolution of Indian cinema. Recently Dr. Akhtar edited a book titled Freud on the Ganges, which has a chapter on Bollywood and the Indian unconsciousness.
In Part-I Dr. Akhtar talks about Bollywood and Indian consciousness. He questions how is that such a sophisticated civilization and a deeply cultured people love and enjoy the loud and kitschy Bollywood films? It is this contradiction that he explores in Part-I of our conversation.Dr. Akhtar explains the history and evolution of Indian cinema by looking at the political and social underpinnings and landscape of India. According to Dr. Akhtar Hindi films in many ways reflects Indian society at any given period and Hindi films depict and satisfy a cultural hunger and individual and psychological dilemmas at any given period of time.
Dr. Salman Akhtar comes from a family of poets and his father Jaan Nissar Akhtar, a well-known poet and lyricist who was a contemporary of Kaifi Azmi. His mother Safiya was a professor and the sister of Majaz, another well-known poet.
Dr. Akhtar grew up in Lucknow and later on migrated to the US where he currently lives and works.
This is Part-1 of a 5-part interview with Dr. Akhtar.
This interview was originally uploaded in June 2006.
Kamla Bhatt is the host and producer of an Internet Radio show where listeners can find stories about the new and emerging India and the global Indian community. As a pioneer of 'internet radio' format in India Kamla started her first show News about India, followed by TalkNewsIndia in 2005. In 2006 she premiered her new show: The Kamla Bhatt Show: Life, People and Ideas. 
[...] The mood and kinds of film made in the 1960s is best captured and explained by Dr. Salman Akhtar, brother of Javed Akhtar, in this podcast interview. A hallmark of films made during this period (1950s and 1960s) is the the male sexuality anxiety theme that dominated the films points out Dr. Akhtar. Women were divided into two groups: good and bad woman. The heroines were always the good women, who did not wear revealing clothes or have a sexual dimension to their personality. The role of the bad woman, or the vamp, was played by actress like Kukoo, Helen and others. [...]
[...] case you missed, you might want to listen to Part-1 of the [...]