Recently, a friend’s child celebrated her 10th birthday. My friend’s timeline was flooded with videos of a large gathering of children in flouncy, frilly frocks gyrating to popular item numbers like Chikni Chameli and Sheila ki Jawaani, at South Delhi’s Pizza Hut outlet. The children pouted and shook their waists suggestively – as the enthusiastic guardians clicked selfies – probably wondering if their progeny could make it to the next audition of Dance India Dance, Lil Champs. Perhaps, they did not realise that the kids knew the complete lyrics of all the songs, and may fortunately not understand the tacit sexual undertones. All this in a country where approximately every 20 minutes a woman is sexually mutilated.
Is Bollywood perpetuating those very stereotypes that need to be broken. Now. Is the objectification of women not obvious to women and mothers in this country – or has sexual violence made us immune, passive to the perverse commodification of our own sex? Are we not offended by lewd lyrics? Why aren’t top-notch heroines like Katrina Kaif and Kareena Kapoor Khan making orgasmic expressions, in low-waist lehengas thinking twice before accepting such choreography? Why are there no male item numbers?
The Guardian in a recent piece on item girls in B-town titled ‘Bollywood’s ‘item girls’: from the prurient to the powerful,’defines an item girl as a female actor with a cameo in a Bollywood movie, generally scantily clad, massively made-up and wheeled out for the songs, a trope apparently unique to the genre. The piece further adds that ‘item girls are seen as eye candy: an opportunity for the audience to ogle more flesh than Bollywood’s official leading ladies would be happy to reveal. The word “item” is unambiguously an objectification – and carries connotations of promiscuity. But for female performers without obvious acting chops eager to make a name for themselves, the opportunity and exposure (sorry) that these roles often prove a real pull, despite the uneasy politics. However, a case can be made for item girls being far more subversive than their critics make out. At their best, they can symbolise feminine power in its most beautiful – and even enfranchised form. And if it is in these interludes that explicit mentions of sex are at their most intense, then the item girl should be championed for helping to restore to cinema as an important part of India’s neglected cultural heritage.’
What isn’t clear is how raunchy lyrics and vulgar dance moves qualify as ‘feminine power,’ and exactly what part of our ‘neglected cultural heritage,’ resurrects a woman from lowest common denominator? How is the overt sexual suggestiveness of present day item songs in any way a flashback to our erotic sexual lineage, which was more open about a woman’s body and her innate sensuality. It is clearly now replaced with a lustful male gaze – the villain most often depicted as watching a cabaret, or his band of lecherous, whistling goons trying to touch the slithering item girl, who in some cases is the heroine herself. Today, with every film vying for an entry into the 100-crore club, item songs have massive budgets. They are sometimes released months before the film premieres – so that they become something of a youth anthem – played everywhere from discos, to weddings to baby showers.
With most big-budget Hindi films still centering around male protagonists – and heroes often recommending leading ladies to their producers, with the film industry overwhelmingly endorsing masculine and capitalist values, audiences too are consuming and (subconsciously) craving narratives and a social order that routinely endorses gender inequalities. Does it come as any surprise then, that female stars are paid less than their male counterparts, even globally. For example, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were paid US$10 and US$20 million respectively for their roles in Mr.& Mrs. Smith. Even, Warner Bros. claimed in 2007 that it would not produce movies with women in lead roles since woman-centered movies failed to generate profits. Does the discriminatory treatment faced by actresses make them desperate? Enough to mouth objectionable lyrics in a country ridden with gory, sexual crimes and honour killings?
Many popular Hindi film songs have always glorified harassment and stalking. DevAnand serenaded Nalini Jaywant in Munimji (in the song jeevan ke safar mein rahi), while pawing and pestering her. Raj Kapoor in Sangam sang “Mere man ki Ganga, aur teri mann ki Yamuna ka bol Radha bol sangam hoga ke nahin,” while harassing a young Vyjayanthimala, who was bathing in a river. As a possible justification for this uncouthness, he stuck a feather in his hair and played the bagpiper, probably to recreate the mental image of Lord Krishna who was also known to harass bathing gopis. Amitabh Bachchan’song in Hum demanded a kiss from Kimi Katkar-the hit song “Jumma chumma de de,” accompanied by 300 leering men, as extras.
In the song, Katkar seemed unrelenting, and then the male leerers insist and douse her ‘hotness’ with a hosepipe. Ultimately, after several refusals, the song ends with Bachchan finally getting his kiss, emerging grinning from the crowd, with lipstick smeared across his face.
Is it any wonder that consent is easily confused in this country? In fact, a UN-sponsored study recently ranked Indian films high in sexualisation and stereotyping of women. Conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in media, the study examined “the visibility and nature of female depictions,” in popular films across Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the UK and the US.
Not only did India fare abysmally when it came to the percentage of female characters in movies and the prevalence of movies with women in the lead or co-lead roles, it also rated high in the stereotyping of women evaluated in terms of sexually revealing clothing, nudity and attractiveness of women characters.
Are films a reflection of the latent misogyny that plagues the nation that ironically prostrates itself before the Mother Goddess? I mean even a film like Lunchbox that supposedly broke the stereotype, ended with the middle-class, bored, unhappy housewife lacking the moral courage to break free from the shackles of a dead marriage, returning timidly to her home and hearth. Her love notes to her virtual lover, a distant, fleeting memory…
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