Raj Kapoor

Raj Kapoor is a prominent figure of twentieth century Indian popular cinema. His movies and characters he employed were groundbreaking for Indian cinema style which still generates discussions and which inspires today’s Bollywood and non-Western films. Kapoor’s Awaara (1951), Boot Polish (1954) and Shree 420 (1955) have become popular movies, not only in India, but also in the West. Today, Kapoor’s influence trigerred contemporary Indian popular cinema and its criticisms.
In this article, I will try to examine how Awaara had an effect upon the representation of the Eastern figure of ordinary people in relation to orientalist and colonialist discourse, considering the fact that Awaara was adapted by (and to) many of the Eastern countries and was welcomed warmly by Turkey, Soviet Republic and China, especially. I seek to reveal the coordinates of the Awaara from the point of subaltern criticism. In addition to this, I will discuss Raj Kapoor’s subaltern personality that can be defined as a tramp, a vagabond, which obscurely constitutes an ambigious transitivity from Western discourse to Eastern one, and vice versa.

The significance of a film song, presented in a way suitable to the storyline of a specific audio-visual arrangement and digital media technology plays a vital part in the emotional expression of a lyricist. In harmony with all of these, famous lyricist Shailendra wrote several songs for Hindi films. Along with he wrote many folk songs which are still popular in Indian society. Songs written by him are now available on social media platforms as well. This study seeks to understand what does today's generation think while listening to Shailendra's songs considering the current political and social scenario. Also he traces his idea about the post independence India through the eyes of common man of our country and its engagement with issues of nationalism, class, religion and social justice. This qualitative study aims to analyze how Indian youth understands contemporary India through shailendra’s one of the very famous song, Mera Joota Hain Japani (Movie: Shri 420, 1955).  Da...

The significance of a film song, presented in a way suitable to the storyline of a specific audiovisual arrangement and digital media technology plays a vital part in the emotional expression of a lyricist. In harmony with all of these, famous lyricist Shailendra wrote several songs for Hindi films. Along with he wrote many folk songs which are still popular in Indian society. Songs written by him are now available on social media platforms as well. This study seeks to understand what does today's generation think while listening to Shailendra's songs considering the current political and social scenario. Also he traces his idea about the post independence India through the eyes of common man of our country and its engagement with issues of nationalism, class, religion and social justice. This qualitative study aims to analyze how Indian youth understands contemporary India through shailendra's one of the very famous song, Mera Joota Hain Japani (Movie: Shri 420, 1955). Data was collected from the youth (n=100) of Mumbai region. The Study shows that, most of the youth are aware about shalendra's songs but not aware about Shailendra, they are very much sensitized about the concept of nationalism but they are not familiar with the concept of nationalism which shailendra tries to convey though his lyrics.

Khan filmlerinin temalarının ortak vurgularından “hoşgörü”, ülkede var olan çatışmaları gölgelemesi itibariyle ince bir zar hüviyetindedir. Bu, Hindistan’ın, Müslüman nüfusu Hint topraklarında tutabilme, sisteme eklemleme çabasının bir neticesi olarak da okunabilir. Khan’ın filmlerinde altı çizilen eğitsel değerler daha çok seküler öneriler getirir, dini kimlikler tartışmasını ise ortak zeminde devlet lehine çözme temayülü dikkat çeker.