Opinionated: A jittery Javed Akhtar

Lyricist frowns upon vulgarity in film music, today’s youth and social issues addressed in movies

NEW DELHI: The loss of films is the loss of the whole nation, poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar said on Thursday, referring to the inferior content of cinematic texts and lyrical music. He added that the problem does not lie with the film-makers but with audiences who appreciate inappropriate film music and obscenity in scenes.

“Films have a heavy impact on the masses and thus if film music is vulgar, the whole nation is affected. Hence, the loss of films is inevitably the loss of the country” Akhtar said.  “You can’t blame the writer for that. The problem is not with the music makers, but it is with the masses who appreciate such songs and make them a hit. Why don’t audiences reject such songs? They only protest when their religious sentiments are hurt but there are no protests against vulgarity in the lyrics.”

Akhtar was speaking at the launch of Sahir Samagra, an exhaustive collection of Sahir Ludhianvi’s writings published by Rajkamal Prakashan and edited by novelist Aasha Prabhat. Stating that the value of words has deteriorated, Akhtar added, “Songs are written on situations. Stories and music has changed. The value of words has deteriorated as our language is becoming thin. The young generation is never heard using proverbs.”

He feels the youth of today doesn’t know poetry, language, literature, folk songs and tradition. “It is completely understandable that English is crucial in the 21st century but we need to have bilingual kids,” he added.

Akhtar mentioned he writes to reach the masses and the idea is never to use difficult vocabularies to make an impression. “It’s easy to write in a difficult language but it’s difficult to write in an easy language. The reader or the listener would only be impressed by the simple poetry if its content is substantial. Use of difficult words helps the writer camouflage the inadequacy of ideas and thoughts.”

Talking about social issues being addressed in films today, he said, “Cinema has changed and nowadays films seldom address social issues. These days movies are made on the ruling class while old films targeted the working class. It is because the middle class today is rich and disinterested in knowing the poor man’s issues.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2016.

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