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Women's lib and bollywood belles By
Leon D'souza
On September 7, 1968, Americans witnessed a rebellion they had least expected. Young women in the civil rights and anti-war movements, and within the left and liberal movements, organized a protest where they knew the television cameras would be - the Atlantic City Miss America pageant. These women were fed up of being bombarded with sexist media imagery, and were increasingly conscious of its effects on their self-concept and male perceptions of them. They had grown weary of the "degrading mindless boob-girlie symbol" perpetuated by the Miss America pageant, and had decided to speak out in public against what they believed was the greatest icon of female oppression. The Atlantic City Boardwalk protest was a defining moment in the history of the women's movement. For the first time, Americans became conscious of the social and political ferment taking place among women. Mass media coverage of the demonstration announced to the world that a women's liberation movement existed. Despite their best efforts since then, women continue to be degraded by the chauvinistic male-dominated global media machine which portrays them as mere sex objects meant simply to be admired or abused, not heard. The rude indifference with which women are treated in society is a direct consequence of the media's bigoted portrayal of them. Indian Feminism While radical women's movements in the West have been fairly successful in raising awareness and combating age-old stereotypes perpetuated by the media, women in other countries, such as my home country, India, continue to writhe. The women's movement here has not been as aggressive as the one that rocked 1970s America. Indeed, there has never been much to write about. The Indian feminist movement has, for years, been a scattered and fragmented effort lacking the single cohesive character of other movements. It is a movement riddled with contradictions. Even during the 18 years of Indira Gandhi's incumbency, the country saw increasing incidents of violence and discrimination against women. A woman Prime Minister could not deter old-fashioned male dominance. Today, women may have found acceptance in erstwhile male bastions, like science and engineering, however newspapers remind us of the ground reality of continuing violence against women in Indian society - of rape, sexual harassment, even murder. Bollywood Babes and the Cologne Craze Like its counterpart in the West, the Indian media business has done much to advance distorted images of true femininity. According to a United Nations Working Group report, images of women in the Indian media ten years ago are still common currency. Hindi movies feature women as housewives, mothers, girlfriends, decorative objects, sex objects, and victims of male violence. Modern feminism has not had much impact on standard Bollywood fare. (For the uninitiated, Bollywood is Bombay's answer to Hollywood, and is home to the world's largest film industry). A few days ago, I was invited by some friends to watch one of Bollywood's better productions, the 1994 blockbuster Mohra. The film features popular stars Akshay Kumar (as Amar Saxena), Raveena Tandon (as Roma Singh), Sunil Shetty (as Vishal Agnihotri) and Naseeruddin Shah (as Mr Jindal). The plot is clichéd. Vishal, a Bombay beau ideal, is imprisoned in a jail where Roma's father is the superintendent. Roma, a journalist, visits her father's jail in order to write about prison life. There, in true Indian cinematic tradition, a few of the prisoners try to rape her. Vishal rescues her from them (just in time, of course). Roma finds out that Vishal is imprisoned for murder. On probing, she learns that Vishal had been married, and his wife's sister had been raped and killed by some boys in her college who were under the influence of narcotics. Due to the efforts of a corrupt prosecutor, the boys got away with the murder and returned to their ugly ways. They tried to rape Vishal's wife. Like all good Bollywood wives, she stabbed herself before they could violate her dignity. An angry Vishal killed all four scofflaws and got imprisoned for it. Roma, with the help of Mr. Jindal, the blind owner of the paper she works for, arranges a second hearing for Vishal in which his case is reviewed, and he is released. Mr. Jindal convinces Vishal that he should become a vigilante and kill the real culprits behind his wife and sister-in-law's deaths - the drug dealers. Amar Saxena is a police officer who is wrapped up in busting the city's leading drug dealers, the evocatively named Tyson and Gibran. Vishal starts killing off their henchmen but Amar gets on his trail. Despite that, Vishal finishes almost all of them off. Jindal now tells him to kill the Commissioner of Police, who according to him is corrupt. Vishal smells a setup and confronts Jindal. It turns out that Jindal is not blind. He is actually an evil mastermind who wanted Tyson and Gibran out of the way so that he could become the undisputed king of crime. Jindal kidnaps Roma, who is now engaged to Amar, and is about to escape with her when Amar and Vishal, together now, foil his plans in the expected way. The film is peppered with sexually explicit song and dance routines. One song sequence, "Tip Tip barsa pani" (literally, the rain is falling) is perhaps one of the most explicit of such performances ever to make it past the Indian Central Board for Film Certification. These song sequences have relentlessly undermined female characters in contemporary commercial Hindi cinema. Feminist writer Amitabha Bagchi explains the significance of these song sequences. "Often popular songs have caused otherwise mediocre movies, like Mohra, to achieve Super Hit status. Mohra packed the theaters because of one of its songs, `` Tu cheez badi hai mast mast" (you are a very intoxicating thing). Months before the actual release of the film, this song was at the top of various weekly countdowns which have become an integral part of TV and radio programming in India. Millions of Indians saw fragments of this song every week. A regular exposure to these fragments before they saw the film established Raveena Tandon (the actress, as distinct from Roma Singh the character) as the point of reference for this film. She was seen cavorting on TV screens months before the relevance of this cavorting in the narrative scheme of the film was established for the people who saw it. This was a process existing outside the framework of the film, but it went a long way in making two associations for the viewing audience. The first was that the character that Raveena Tandon plays in Mohra is an intoxicating thing. The second, that the female lead in the film is a mohra (literally pawn, or piece on a chessboard)." According to Bagchi, it was the security of this knowledge, gained before entering the theater, that allowed the male component of the audience to accept Roma's sexuality, and even revel in it. Divested of all politically unsettling responsibilities, Roma could relax into the traditional exhibitionist role in which women are simultaneously looked at and displayed. Throughout the film, Roma's professional achievements are due to the intervention of her powerful employer, Mr.Jindal. Roma's own competency is never allowed to be established. In fact, she is shown to be incompetent and even naive. Her limited success is due to her sexual allure. Jindal's eventual confession of his lust for Roma undercuts any notion that we could have had of her being a journalistic force to reckon with. Bagchi castigates the film as a second-rate endeavor to balance modern feminism with traditional portrayals of women in Indian cinema. Mohra typifies the malevolent depictions of women in Bollywood productions. Advertising is the other delinquent. Most ads for colognes and after-shaves feature women in erotic or suggestive poses meant to herald the sexual potency of the brand. Women seem to have no ambition other than to appear attractive to the demigods of the mass media - men. Last Words In my opinion, a single cohesive women's movement is the need of the hour. Indian women must organize politically and challenge the perverted media system that continues to propagate distasteful and chauvinistic images of femaleness. This is by no means an easy task. In India, women's political participation is still relatively low. Politically progressive men must advocate a greater role for women in affairs of governance, and must join women in their struggle against various social injustices embedded in Indian society and trivialized by the media. The Indian media must be reminded of the need to respect and honor women for their past and continuing contributions to humanity. Only when the degrading images and representations of women in the Indian media become a thing of the past will this country move a step closer to achieving the long elusive ideal of gender equality.
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