Teachers in Hindi-Urdu Cinema
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Bollywood’s tryst with teachers
Teachers are finally getting a realistic portrayal in Bollywood – and our heroes don’t mind playing one either The Times of India, Sep 5, 2011
If it was school, it had to be cool. For ages, Bollywood’s portrayal of the teacher hadn’t moved beyond the hot teacher that left students smitten (Simi Garewal in “Mera Naam Joker”, Sushmita Sen in her sexy sarees in “Main Hoon Na”), or a teacher who did everything but teach, (aka Shah Rukh Khan in “Mohabbatein”, who was more interested in finding girlfriends for his students) – in short, the profession has mostly had a cheesy portrayal on the silver screen.
It took an offbeat flick like “Rockford” or the critically acclaimed “Black” to provide the deviation from the norm, or if you want to look really far back in time for a mainstream example, there was, well, the Naseeruddin Shah starrer “Sir” in 1993.
But slowly, somewhere, the teaching bug bit Bollywood’s A-listers, and films started providing a non filmi, non naach-gaana-mohabbatbutt-of-jokes portrayal of the classroom and the teacher. Where “Taare Zameen Par” had Aamir take on a dyslexic child and “Stanley Ka Dabba” (which, incidentally, was directed by Amole Gupte, the guy who walked out of “TZP” and made a film on the classroom again) left audiences in tears, “3 Idiots”, a laughter-cum-tears riot, made students throughout the country think that this was the story of their college days (with Boman Irani playing the classic college professor),
Amitabh Bachchan took a hard hitting look at the morals and ethics of the teaching profession in “Aarakshan” – never mind that the film became ‘a controversy’ even before it released. But it looks like this subject’s finally working for Bollywood. Happy Teachers’ Day!
With inputs from Radhika Bhirani/IANS
BOLLYWOOD’S TRYST WITH TEACHERS THROUGH THE DECADES
MERA NAAM JOKER, 1970
SIR, 1993
ROCKFORD, 1999
MOHABBATEIN, 2000
MAIN HOON NA, 2004
BLACK, 2005
IQBAL, 2006
TAARE ZAMEEN PAR, 2007
3 IDIOTS, 2009
STANLEY KA DABBA, 2011
AARAKSHAN, 2011
