Dear Bollywood, You Need a Reality Check On Misogyny!
Updated: Jun 25, 2020
|By- Sanika Ghag|
The outcry of misogyny has always focused on the portrayal of essential feminism in fiction and fantasy works one which is deeply rooted in Bollywood stereotypes. The need to make the male lead or the “hero” the knight in shining armour is so fundamental and deep-seated that the female is almost always a damsel in distress or simply the “decorative” element of the film. She parades around wearing fancy clothes, fan-girling over the hero letting out screams of distress for him to ultimately come and save her. Her roles hyper sexualised and bodies often objectified.
Where do I even begin to elucidate the glorifying sado-masochism and passive aggressive misogyny that underlines almost every mainstream Bollywood film? “Inko na koi khush nahi rakh sakta, a happy women is a myth”, “Pyaar se de rhe hair rakh lo, warna thappad maar ke bhi de sakte hai”, “Akeli ladki khuli tijori ke samaan hoti hai”, “When you can’t change the girl, change the girl”, “Melodrama is duniya ki saari auroton me hai”, “Che din ladki in”, “Ladki kya karegi sapne dekh ke” are enough for people to find humour in these chauvinist dialogues from famous Bollywood films.
The creative liberty of a film maker to twist films in such fashion as to produce subsequent results is not unbeknownst to me yet somehow using women in objectifying roles only for the male lead to shine through, irks me. To say that the culture of our deeply instilled patriarchy has given birth to this misogyny won’t be wrong.
The whole debate regarding this and the efforts of women to make men realise the sorry state of patriarchy or even the men getting tired of the same rant again and again is not lost on me. Yet the patriarchy is such that every time a women shares her story of assault or indictment, the response at all times is “even men go through harassment”.
It took women years of battle through oppression and the culture of victim blaming to put sexual predators like Harvey Weinstein behind bars and a whole movement on social media platforms to out many like Sajid Khan, Anu Malik, Alok Nath, Nana Patekar amongst others. Speaking out about sexual harassment comes at a cost. Is this what we call the “patriarchy”? When men cant handle a woman sharing her story of strength and empowerment through assault she has faced? Or is this ignorance to the fact that the society we are creating isn’t protecting women rather controlling them.
So the next time, Kartik Aaryan makes a joke on casually marital rape as he did in Pati, Patni aur Woh or when you whistle away to Munni Badnaam Hui or Fevicol Se or when you hoot your way as Kabir Singh asks a girl to undress at knifepoint, we need to understand that glorification of these acts in films isn’t nearly as same in real life. But let’s be honest, what else do we expect from a crowd of people who applaud these acts of blatant sexism and male chauvinism?
This series of objectionable behaviour has somehow always been neglected by us as a society and this needs to stop. So if there is one thing to learn from the rising number of rapes happening in our country, or the ever piling stories of sexual assault against women or something even just as recent as the “#boislockerroom” scandal, it is that Bollywood stereotypes may make all this seem very superficial without a touch of social realism. In fact, these movies and scenes are just examples of what we consume as youth day by day, year by year. Maybe it’s finally time to prelude movies of neo-realism that is not based on insulting or objectifying any gender.
So Bollywood, be more responsible. But first, learn to be accountable.
Thank You.
Not Yours,
Ideal Woman.
Loved this one!