Abhijeet Shrivastava, Week 12

Shafik Mandhai and Vibhav Gautam mention some of the many ways in which the Indian film-industry normalizes and celebrates unsavoury and dangerous patriarchal notions within an idea of romance that objectifies women. To confirm their assertions, one may also watch this playlist of comic reviews by Biswa & Kanan Gill where they often call out movies with problematic depictions concerning consent and flawed romance. Information-consumption is a vicious cycle that both reinforces and creates cultural expectations. With the idolization of actors, the audience is bound to be influenced by them in their own lives. Let's take, for instance, Aman from Kal Ho Na Ho - a classic movie that inspires nostalgia in the minds of most. The "6 Din Ladki In" (6 Days, Chick's in) formula that our "farishta" (angel) protagonist suggests to another character includes manipulating a woman in the most toxic ways. The woman, or more accurately, the trophy in question finds out about this deceit and believes she deserves better - yet SRK convinces her that this was Saif's expression of true love - a scene where most of the gullible audience may have even wept. Indeed, Kal Ho Na Ho tells us that patriarchy is not the only unjust structure the industry normalizes, as the movie also celebrates humour riddled with homophobia and transphobia. Unfortunately, there is a 5-10 minute scene where Saif is sexually harassed by a woman, which with its laugh-tracks and dialogue arouses amusement in the audience. This points to another dangerous idea propagated by Bollywood - that men's consent may be taken for granted since who wouldn't want to hop in at the first opportunity of intercourse? The difficulty moreover is that most of the artists playing these characters often assume the garb of social activism for publicity, further diluting the lines between what's appropriate behaviour and what's not, since the audience hardly separates actors from their characters (think of Salman Khan). On that note, the music that accompanies these movies too is replete with patriarchy - objectifying women to the fullest extent possible, with no regard to active consent whatsoever. Mandhai and Gautam are on point in their claim that eve-teasing and similar regularities one finds in Bollywood movies, such as violence, are almost reified by the industry. For the industry to change, there has to be social uproar to hold it accountable. Similarly, since the propagation of ideas is a vicious cycle, the industry needs to take responsibility for the flawed content that it represents and profits off of.