A bit on gender in cinema... just a bit!

Every intelligent Indian movie goer finds himself/ herself at cross roads once in a while. This is one of mine – gender stereotyping in cinema. True that I could consider all mass media in this respect, but for now, I prefer just commercial movies. The main reason for such a consideration is that movies have a wider outreach than other forms of entertainment.

Here am going to dissect the stereotyping language wise, since I am familiar with Malayalam, Hindi and Tamil films and the stereotyping differs in its modus operandi as we continue across the spectrum. So for the first part, let us consider Malayalam. You would think that a group as enlightened as the Malayalees would actually be averse to stereotyping. Well, it is not the case. Apparently, here, education has nothing to do with the level of hypocrisy. Or rather, I have found that it follows a y=mx+c plot; constantly increasing. In a typical Malayalam movie, there are always sneak peeks at the heroine’s belly button since a proper glance is deemed too vulgar. Sometimes, my blood boils when the extremely masculine hero points at a female character and bellows that he is not going to hurt her because, just because she is a woman, and she should always remember that.  The question that obviously arises is the nature of message that a simple dialogue, the characterization of an individualistic woman as ‘over smart’ or the demarcation of gender territories through the hero conquering the female lead, conveys.  When there is clear importance to the female lead, it often portrays the faithful mother or wife trying to overcome domestic hurdles and revolves around family. At this point, we jump the fence and tip toe to the neighbour.

Tamilians have always celebrated cinema. With genres typical of them, they worship their heroes and heroines. But what a flimsy layer of saree hides in Malayalam is bared through bright colours accentuating the ‘jerk’ of the hips. (Jerk is a term used in roller coaster design. It is the time rate of change of acceleration. I do hope you get my drift.) The actress is revered for not only her acting talent, but for every part of her body. Like Simran’s waist was famous and Rambha’s thighs delicious, each part is further classified, de-personifying the individual and giving rise to abject sexual objectification. The Tamilians need their heroes to be ultra masculine and their female leads ultra feminine. One thing I have noted is the colour discrimination. The fair, slender female has to fall in love with the hero having relatively conspicuous Dravidian features.  Here again, we find the male ‘conquering’ the female. Makes me wonder though, if we haven’t moved past such images through social evolution.  Speaking of social evolution let us dive into the Bollywood pool, shall we?

I find Hindi female leads pretty boring. Whether it be the tall, beautiful, petite figures prancing around in miniskirts or the new variety of characters that the directors try to spin out of the hip-independent-modern woman era. It is as if there is a universal set of certain attributes, which are permuted, combined and selected from within themselves, leaving no space for an extraneous variable. There is a lack of gumption in the brand ambassadors of Indian glamour industry. The machinery keeps getting stuck when it comes to women. There is no novelty in the way that bollywood female characters contribute to the story. But this is not just the crux of a particular language.

Cinema as a medium always caters to the trend of the moment. But what most film makers forget is that they also reinforce strongly the stereotypes existing in the society. It is almost like the butterfly effect. For every small change in the system, ripples are created, which as time moves forward becomes a massive ripple. Now the problem here is that, we cannot simply stop this process. Rather, new set of conditions are to be added to it so that it follows a new path. I strongly believe that every artist should act as a variable. It becomes the moral obligation of the artist as the tool of the director to necessarily malfunction in case there is a dissonance between their belief system and the script’s requisite. They cannot go on embedding this ritualisation of primordial gender conceptualization in the vast populace. Especially in the illiterate or the semi literate people, over whom cinema has a great emotional control. This cycle has to stop somehow. But I do wonder how. However, I look at it, there are no concrete measures. Every small factor negates or adds to another social factor, creating a symphony, which desperately needs to be broken.

Remembering a conversation from Alice in Wonderland,

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?"
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where,” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you walk.”

Majority of Indian cinema viewers are like Alice. They have no direction. But, the destination always alters the direction. We should decide what our destination should be.