Originally recorded for the South Asian Film Festival of America by Product of Culture, in this episode Shabnum & Rajiv take a magnifying glass to Bollywood films throughout time. With an almost academic fervor, they explore the relationship between the Hindi film industry and the Indian government while applying that lens to the tropes we've seen in Bollywood through the 70's - 2010s. They'll talk through the way India's relationship with the USSR impacted the type of Bollywood hero we saw in the 70s-80s, the way high rates of unemployment at the time landed us with iconic characters such as the ones in Sholay, and the role of globalization going into the 90s impacting much of what we saw in films like DDLJ. They'll also talk through the way body perceptions have changed across time, and when we started seeing the objectification of the male body just as much as the female body in the late 2010's. Don't miss this episode if you're remotely interested in films!
Exec Producer & Host: Shabnum Gulati
Guest: Rajiv Menon
Art: Nainah Hussain
Music: AnAkkiN on SoundCloud
Special thank you to Product of Culture