Ananya S Guha
Recently a film director made the pugnacious statement that the Hindi film’s image of the woman has always been that of the ‘harassed’ individual subject to lewd approaches by the hero of the movie, and finally she succumbs to his charms. The idea is that the male is projected with a macho image, and the woman initially resisting to his overtures finally giving in and capitulating. This is a fresh salvo fired by a maker of Hindi movies himself. The Times Of India initiated a debate on this, and one of the respondents found the statement self contradictory, as the man who made this castigation, himself directs such movies. Moreover the writer went on to give examples as to how untrue this was, as many of the films projected the heroine herself making advances!
In whichever way you see it both these projections of the heroine, one harassed and the other playing the pivotal role to run after the man, portray a denigrating world view of women. I am sorry to say, but this is true that the Hindi film has shown women as objects of desire, where the macho driven hero continually persists to tease and torment his ‘ lover ‘ till she gives in to his egocentric love. And this has been the narrative since the sixties. The woman is surrounded by her cohorts, mostly bad looking, and our hero finally chooses the best looking, titilating her into his erogeneous zone. Once the Film Censors Board made a stricture on ”kissing” in films, and sought to ban it as vulgarity. The irony was that many more suggestible scenes of sexual affront were not censored, but kissing was made out to be a vulgar extravaganza! This was not only strange; it made a travesty of doing away with obscenity in films. Kissing as an honest statement of a relationship was seen as a perversity, but the male dominated world playing around with the curvaceous body of his bikini clad heroine, with tremulous fingers was not seen as something coarse or vulgar. In the process many suggestive scenes aroused the curiosity of a suppressed thinking of ‘conservative’ societies.
This has led to a totally amoral view of sex, and the Indian male point of view happens to be gratification and sexist in this context, polemical as this might sound. Similarly the idiot box, living up to its name has been churning out serials and reality shows, of the most vulgar kind, where things such as extra marital sex are shown with alacrity. This can have the most unsalutary effect especially on young minds, leading to the downfall of the culture of reading good books.
There is nothing to feel flustered by what the Director has said, he has made an honest statement, and subconsciously may even be pleading guilty! We need to anatomize culture effect of such films, where male tastes are prurient and used to subjugate the women they desire.
The box is not idiot; it is we who have converted it into idiocy, leading to a denigration of values and palpable crimes such as rape.
The stereotype is that the woman is always subjugating to the man’s mercy. The Times Of India initiated a debate on this, wherein one respondent said that this is not true, as many films have shown the woman virtually running after the man.
I wonder what such debates get us to – only running around in circles like the movie itself. The film director has pithily summed up the vulgarity and lewdness of many films which have shown the woman as an object of desire, titilating the woman into erogenous zones. It is this ‘hidden’ crudity of such films that can evoke lust in people. Long years back the film censorship Board in India wanted ”kissing” to be banned in films. But more than mere ”kissing” was suggested in scenes, where the curvacious woman bikini clad, was a prey to the man randomly straying his fingers on her body! To show promiscuity in films as a matter of fact is one thing, but to suggest it through indirect and crassly sensual manners is a kind of suppression which needs to be released, especially in supposedly orthodox circles.
After events such as rape people are talking animatedly about a change in mindset. The mindset cannot be changed, reality shows, TV serials, movies are all showing things in a manner as if to say that they are happening, can happen and will happen.
Thus such movies are vindicated and take their rightful place in society. The young are especially impressionable to such crassness. They are the ones to take to watching television, like a fish taking to water, hence they become vulnerable. The male macho as superior to the woman’s angst is what has been circulating in our films since the sixties. The hero was and still is the agressor. The woman is the one who is hesitant initially and then succumbs to the overures, and capitualtes to the deceitful amour. This message has been cleverly employed over the years, notwithstanding the red herring created regarding the debate on ”kissing”. This was hypocrisy at its height because, there was nothing subtile that these films were showing, when it came to man woman relationship. There was no analysis, no ideas which examined human relationships, but only lustful gain, and then the winning over of the initially intransigent lady. If stuff like this have been perpetrated over the years through Bollywood erotica, it is not surprising that we have created a male dominated, sex starved society with prurient tastes.