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Women and the Bollywood Masala typecasting
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By:
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shantanudutta
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Category:
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Entertainment
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Date:
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Mar 08, 2007
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Views:
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1118
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Comments:
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2
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Depiction of women in the Bollywood Masala leave the audience wondering about a woman's stand in our society.
I enjoy watching Bollywood masala movies now and then — not always the arty types — which have embedded in them overt and covert social and political messages. Recently, I saw a typical Bollywood movie with songs, dances, action and all the fireworks and found myself wondering what picture of society was being painted. The movie had a typical storyline with a hero and a heroine — the hero played the son of a humble taxi driver and the heroine played the part of the only daughter of an under world don. As usually happens, once when the heroine alone, some goons come and try and molesting her at which point of course, the hero steps in and rescues and the girl changes her affiliation in the only independent decision I observed he making in the entire movie. After that throughout the whole movie, the girl was no more than a chess piece pawn between the father and father-in-law to be, the husband to be and the brother, all of whom are connected through underworld business ties and want to cement it through a marriage of convenience. Although, the whole of society is not criminal as the characters in this movie are, large segment of agrarian, and rural India are feudal and mainstream Bollywood movies of the pre multiplex era reflect that ethos and spirit. In fact, though I have not studied the phenomena seriously, I think that it is possible to distinguish between movies made in the multiplex era (the multiplex audience is more urbane, more accepting, if not also more forgiving) and those made before. In the masala movies, I just watched, made at least a decade-and-a-half ago, the heroine is less than a plaything. The older men around her decide whom she will marry, when she will marry, what clothes she will wear, the kind of society she should come from, what kind of language should speak her views on any thing are of little concern, they are of no concern at all. The few times, she tries to express any opinion, regarding her preferences in so far as marriage goes, she is bluntly told to shut up. The setting of the movie is in a college and the hero and heroine are in college, in fact classmates. But it is not clear why they are in college at all, unless it is to give credibility to the fact that they are young. While the hero as the taxi driver’s son displays middle class ambitions of upward mobility, and it is talked about that he will eventually get a job in a tea estate after graduation, it is not clear at all as to why the girl should be in college at all, unless it is to train her as some kind of a hostess for underworld parties. If Tagore’s “Where the Mind is without Fear…” is the ideal, there is a long way to go for the heroine of this movie and her mind. At another level, the Producer, the Director and the voluptuous heroine ensure that there are lots to see in terms of the actress being a pleasing eye candy. But these images may be on their way out. As the revenue streams of the multiplexes dictate what Bollywood produces, the days of the cat calling frontbenchers may be waning. Not because men (or women) have changed but perhaps today’s generation may prefer the bold and the unconventional women of Salaam Namaste or KANK than simply dumb candy floss.
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