Mansi Upadhyay, Week 12

Does Bollywood have a women problem?

- Our media and our entertainment industry is totally dependent on society for content and society gets affected by the media, so it's very codependent on each other.

Yes, it most definitely does. The article talks about how the movie Badlapur is problematic. It was written in 2018 since then many more misogynistic, patriarchal films have been released, the epitome of which is Kabir Singh. There have been numerous articles on how deeply problematic Kabir Singh is as it promotes harassment, physical violence, and toxic masculinity, one doesn’t need to comment further on this movie.

It is worth noting that after the film was released, it gained a lot of adulation and acceptance among the general public. Some teenagers, influenced by this movie, even tried to kill their girlfriends for cheating or leaving them. There is no doubt that whatever people see on screens influence their daily behavior.

Another outcome of these movies is how young adults and even older people have a distorted sense of what love is. They get inspired by ‘classics’ like DDLJ and think to win over people they love; they have to continually harass and stalk and eve tease a woman to fall in love with them eventually. What’s even more problematic is that men think no is a maybe. The concept of consent seems indecipherable to them because, after all, if the beautiful actress on the screen said no and secretly wanted the hero, then why wouldn’t this average girl?

Eve teasing is seen as a sign of appreciating a woman’s beauty instead of what it actually is. It doesn't just enforce problematic behavior in men but also young girls who are told that this is what love entails and looks like, the bad boy is shown to be what a woman should desire and how she’s supposed to fix him. She’s repeatedly taught that this behavior is normal and toxic relationships are what she should look forward to. As the article points out, “They have confused romance with eve-teasing, which is extremely dangerous because that's what young kids are growing up seeing.”

Even though the MeToo movement started some discussion on the deeply problematic industry, it was conveniently thwarted and stifled as quickly. With actresses like Kareena Kapoor opining that  they aren’t feminists but rather believe in equality, one starts to wonder whether anyone in this industry even truly understands what feminism is? The article suggests that the problem could be solved if women were given more representation behind the screens and wrote the female characters, but with the prevalent ignorance about the F word in the industry, it isn’t enough. The answer lies in a thorough sexual education provided at a young age.