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| How dominant is the reactionary and patriarchal thinking in Bollywood even today? |
India's film industry, Bollywood, is known as the 'Man's World' due to its male dominance. This is a fact that has been voiced for a long time, but a new study has proved how low the ratio of gender equality in Bollywood is not only on screen but also off-screen.
India's film industry produces hundreds of films worth about two billion dollars annually and has a huge fan base not only within the country but also globally who love these films.
The influence that Bollywood films and their stars have on the hearts, minds, and imaginations of their fans cannot be ignored, despite the rise of misogyny, gender bias, and regression in recent years. Many Bollywood films have faced criticism due to their popularity.
So why is this gender bias on the rise in the last major film industry?
To know this, the researchers of TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) in Mumbai tried to estimate how much patriarchal thinking is dominant in Hindi cinema.
In a first-of-its-kind study, the researchers selected the 25 biggest box-office hits of 2019 (before the coronavirus pandemic), as well as ten films between 2012 and 2019 that dealt with women's lives. He was walking around.
The reason for choosing this period was actually to know that the tough new laws introduced to deal with crimes against women after the 2012 gang-rape of a student on a bus in Delhi had affected women. Changed thoughts and narratives.
The list of selected hits of 2019 included Waar, Kabir Singh, Mission Mangal, Dabangg 3, Housefull 4, and Article 15, while films based on the theme of women's lives included Raazi, Queen, Lipstick Under My Burqa. and margaritas with a straw, among others.
"The audience will not like the character of a strong woman."
People are queuing up outside the cinema
The researchers studied nearly 2,000 characters in movies. He also studied the professions of characters in films as well as sexual behavior, consensual sex, and harassment scenes in film scenes.
They also included information on how many women worked in these films in addition to the actors, and how many of the characters were gay.
The study found that while films centered around women are welcome, the majority of films ruling the box office are sexist, regressive, and underrepresented in women and the LGBT community.
For example, 72 percent of the films analyzed were played by men, 26 percent by women, and two percent by LGBTQ-plus actors.
Professor Lakshmi Lingam, who led the research, says that there is money in Bollywood in films with male actors and filmmakers say that "a strong female role will not appeal to the audience."
"There's very little effort to do something different because in people's minds, patriarchal attitudes color the story and they believe that's what's going to make them money," he told the BBC.
So, she says, filmmakers stick to this 'formula'.
Which profession is the female character shown to be associated with?
He said that in films, the hero should be male and of high caste. The heroine should be slim and beautiful. She has to be friendly and give her consent not with words but with gestures while wearing sexy semi-naked clothing. She also has to show a new age to show that she is having a relationship with a man before marriage.
On-screen work is also viewed from a gender perspective. Professor Lingam said that although 42 percent of women play lead roles in films, they are shown to be attached to stereotypical professions.
He said, 'Nine out of ten male roles were associated with power, such as military officers, police officers, politicians, and criminal ringleaders, while women were mostly seen playing the roles of doctors, nurses, teachers, and journalists. One in ten women got a powerful role.
The research also found that the representation of characters associated with the LGBTQ+ community is very troubling. They are never shown in powerful professions and are often subjected to sexual jokes. Additionally, 0.5 percent of the characters are disabled and are used for sympathy or humor.
Professor Lingam says that the filmmakers say they are showing the truth. But there are even more facts that they do not show. They oscillate between fact and fiction to justify their views.
She adds that the portrayal of women and gays in the industry should change because what we see in cinema affects real life as well.
He said that in countries like India, where there is little sex education and information about consensual sex in schools, people are influenced by books and movies. So it is a matter of concern when the protagonist in a film like Kabir Singh stalks and harasses the heroine to woo her.
Such films, she says, "normalize toxic masculinity." So when a woman is on the road if someone is stalked or harassed, everyone says it's normal. And rarely does anyone stand against it.
She says the plots of some films are out of the ordinary. For example, in Mission Mangal, Vidya Balan plays a rocket scientist and her husband criticizes her for focusing more on work and less on the children at home, so she turns around and asks him out. That children are not his responsibility.
Queen and Lipstick Under My Burqa were among the handful of films in which mercurial roles were played by female actors and whose stories revolved around strong female characters. But the number of such films is still very few.
Professor Lingam says films can bring new narratives but change will not happen overnight, it will take time.
She says that Corona and lockdown have shown us the way of the future. “Society has changed and people are showing it through different types of content. There is a lot of interesting content on the OTT platform that is doing well.