Portrayal of Women and Violence in Indian Cinema

Bollywood possesses a history of making male centric movies deeply rooted with misogyny. This wealthy and influential film industry has been dominated by male actors who became the superstars and megastars of Indian Cinema. Now be it in the pay gap or the time on screen, the Bollywood of the 20th century gave female actors a secondary role as compared to its male counterparts.

In an interview with NDTV, Bollywood actor Aamir Khan gave an interesting answer when the interviewer expressed her concern on the difference in pay gap between male and female actors. “It’s actually not how hard you work, because the actor, the actress and the cameraman all work very hard, but who gets paid more? What depends on the market forces is who is able to fill the seats in the theatre more, who the people want to watch more…”. Aamir’s fitting response was also agreed upon by the co-stars of his then upcoming movie “Talash”, Kareena Kapoor and Rani Mukherji, who were also present in the interview.

Now if we lay emphasis on this statement by Khan, we can give rise to a lot of questions but the one I want to focus on is why is it only that male actors attract masses and are favored by market forces? Is it the deep-rooted misogyny of Indian society that doesn’t want to watch a movie starring a woman or is it the demarcation of women within the film industry that doesn’t value their work in the first place. I would say it’s both.

Movies in which women star in the lead role possess the blend of giving a message. Critically acclaimed movies who are appreciated for their story, direction and acting do not do so well in the box office, exceptions excluded. Alia Bhatt’s 2014 romance/adventure “Highway” becomes a leading example. It is safe to say if such a story just had the opposite sex playing the lead, it would have been a commercial success.

In Bollywood

Bollywood, ever since its inception, has made women adherent to certain roles which come in line with their gender roles in a social setup. Nirupa Roy projected the core figure of an Indian mother in Manmohan Desai’s ‘Mard’ and ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’. The projection of an Indian mother being caring but in vain for her lost or dead son deeply portrays the helplessness of conflict worn women.

In relation to action films, Bollywood has evolved when it comes to this genre, in a way it has. Women being the weakness of the hero, as when she gets kidnapped by the villain and it brings the former into a state of losing control was the main concept of most violence-oriented films from the 1970s to early 2000s. In movies like Baaghi and Tiger Zinda hai, the female actors are able fighters but yet again their role involves being trapped by a man and rescued by the hero. While the way of projecting Machismo and Femininity may have evolved, its result remains the same where the latter is again shown as weak and dependent.

The Irony of these action-oriented movies is the core misogyny within the scripts when the central idea is labelled as the craze towards their ‘Beloved woman’. Sandeep Reddy Wangha’s, ‘Animal’ and ‘Kabir Singh’ are two examples of that. While Aamir Khan’s statement may be agreed upon by many, filmmakers have found alternatives to endorse female actors to market forces. The introduction of “Item Songs” has been a huge commercial success for filmmakers and increased huge interest among masses to watch female centered content.

The innovation has also diverted attention from promoting good female actors and giving them their flowers for playing exceptional roles. Instead, commercial filmmakers find their peace and revenue in mainstreaming semi-nudity, vulgar language and objectification of female models and actors who apparently play the ‘Item’ in the song. Action and violent movies, featuring stoic masculine Hero and Villain have become incomplete without item songs where the model sings on her fantasy of the protagonist.

In regional cinema

Regional cinema adds a blend of culture to its movies and the difference in representation of women can be visible too. Telugu cinema, much like the ‘National’ Hindi cinema has commercialized women’s bodies, represent women as mere bodies that are passive, docile, incapable, and worthless, devalue women as targets of violence, aggression, domination etc.

In her paper on representation of women in early Telugu cinema, K. Suneetha Rani states that, “Most of the early Telugu movies are women-centred. However, they present women in docile, conforming, and reformed roles, thus mainstreaming the woman in terms of the location of her character and moulding the character regressively.

Let us quickly examine the titles of the Women centred movies. Some of them are as follows: Malapilla (the Mala girl), Vandemataram or Mangalasutram (Vandemataram or the sacred marital thread), Malli Pelli (Re-marriage), and Sumangali (married woman whose husband is alive)”. According to Rani, the social and the reform in these movies are closely connected.

She then quotes Partha Chatterjee (Political scientist) on how colonialism, nationalism and women, or rather centred colonialism and nationalism around women, led to the dichotomy of the material-spiritual, home-world, and feminine-masculine.