‘Disappointed’ with Bollywood songs demeaning women: Prasoon Joshi

Acclaimed lyricist, screenwriter and ad guru Prasoon Joshi is “disappointed” with both Bollywood songs demeaning women as well as the common people who enjoy them and urged bad work be rejected so good work can come up.

Noting that the moral imbalances one can sometimes see in advertising are also a prominent feature of Bollywood, he said he was “disappointed”‘ with the Bollywood songs that demean women and equally disappointed with ordinary people normalising these songs by dancing to them or singing them. “The audience has to reject bad work so that good work can be promoted,” said Prasoon in a session titledIdeate: Freedom to Dream on the penultimate day of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2017 on Sunday.

Prasoon, whose songs in pathbreaking films like Black and Taare Zameen Par have garnered much acclaim, revealed that not all the responses have been positive. For Maa in Taare Zameen Par, which garnered him the Filmfare Best Lyricist Award, he said he got a “lot of hate mail from men”. Clarifying that he was not against fathers but was for mothers, he added he did not like the social norm of imposing the burden of child-rearing on women only and that fathers must take equal responsibility.

Ascribing his success in the ad world to his poetry-writing, he, however, noted that “what gives meaning to life can’t be peddled as a product”. But as moderator, Yuva Ekta Foundation trustee Puneeta Roy, enquired what that said about his advertising career, Prasoon said, “There is a transparency to advertising: it never tries to hide its intent. But look at the media instead, that in the name of news, prints paid things.”

On the other reasons for his success, he said that it was important to give people “give an emotional connection to something that is very physical”. “You draw a picture in the mind of the consumer that this is not merely a product but an emotion. Nobody consumes a product alone,” he maintained.

Reciting a few lines of Haan Maine Chookar Dekha Hai from Black, he emphasised the importance of finding beauty in the mundane. “Loudspeakers should be removed, for the sound of a flute dies in the noise of a loudspeaker,” he said.