CRISIS IN BOLLYWOOD
Amid the furor over rape, India’s film industry is under fire for its sexist portrayal of women, writes ROBIN PAGNAMENTA.
With India in an uproar over the country’s problem with rape, attention turns to the cultural role played by its beloved film industry.
For the world’s most famous film star, it was a startlingly candid remark. On Dec. 29, just hours after Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, had died in Singapore of internal injuries sustained during a gang rape on a Delhi bus, Bollywood’s biggest and most bankable star, Shahrukh Khan, tweeted his reaction.
“Rape embodies sexuality as our culture and society has defined it,” said Khan, who is reported to have more fans globally than Tom Cruise, to his 3.9 million followers. “I am so sorry that I am a part of this society and culture. I am so sorry that I am a man. I promise I will fight with your voice.”
Khan’s response, tinged with its unsettling sense of personal guilt, reflected an intense bout of soul-searching in Bollywood — an industry not often known for its sense of introspection. He was not alone in expressing his contrition.
A few days later, writing in the magazine India Today, director Farhan Akhtar wrote: “As a filmmaker, I must also look inward to see if the industry that I belong to could be partially responsible in propagating this kind of mindset. And I must say, sadly so, the answer is yes.”
As Bollywood prepares to celebrate its 100th birthday next month, by most measures India’s film business is in rude health. Last year, Indians purchased 3.3 billion cinema tickets — more than any other country — and with many of India’s estimated 1,000 films a year finding new audiences in the Middle and Far East, Russia and South America, the industry is expected to generate around $5 billion in earnings next year, nearly double its size in 2010.
For Bollywood megastars such as Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan there should be plenty to celebrate. But, despite its runaway commercial success, the anniversary falls as India’s film industry, which includes not just Hindi language films made in Bombay but regional films shot in Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Malayalam, has found itself at the sharp end of some awkward questions.
With a string of horrific gang rapes throwing the spotlight on the treatment of women in India, including the deadly Delhi bus attack and the gang rape of a Swiss cyclist in Madhya Pradesh, many are asking if Bollywood, with its formulaic, some would say lazy, blend of gender stereotypes, macho plot lines and casual depictions of women as marriageable sex objects, somehow shares part of the blame.
And is Bollywood really doing enough to address the reality of life for women in India — or is it simply reinforcing a deeply embedded culture of Indian misogyny?
For Urvashi Butalia, a Delhibased author who has written extensively on the subject, Bollywood movies starring the likes of Khan, which have delighted billions of Indians for decades, have much to answer for. “In Bollywood, no does not mean no,” she says. “If you keep chasing the woman then eventually you will get your way.”
Pinky Anand, a feminist lawyer, agrees: “Bollywood plays a very important role in Indian society. Anything that Bollywood does will be emulated down the line.”
They point to a long Bollywood tradition of rape scenes and violence against women, which they believe has compounded the difficulties facing women in India, still a highly conservative society which was ranked last year by Trust Law as the worst G20 country in which to be female — below Saudi Arabia. For several decades starting in the 1970s, rape scenes — apparently for audience titillation rather than to encourage introspection — were part and parcel of the Bollywood formula. Arch villains of the era, from Ranjeet to Shakti Kapoor, repeatedly played rapists in films such as Uljhan (1975) and Mera Jawab (1985) sometimes as a tool of revenge and as a way to subjugate women.
“The villain always had to get to rape some lady or the other — it was a fad,” recalls Nazir Hossein, a second generation cinema owner in Mumbai who remembers how audiences in the 1970s and 1980s were “enthralled” by such scenes, often cheering wildly from the stalls of the Liberty Cinema, the Art Deco jewel box his father built in the 1940s. It opened some decades after Bollywood’s official birth — on May 3, 1913, when Raja Harishchandra, a silent adaptation based on the Hindu epic Mahabharata, became India’s first feature film when it was screened at the now defunct Coronation cinema a few streets away.
Although the rape trend tapered off in the 1990s, such scenes have been replaced by new forms of misogyny, claims Shabana Azmi, a veteran actress and social activist. Reacting on Twitter to the Delhi gang rape, she argues: “Crass lyrics, voyeuristic camera angles, fragmented images of heaving breasts, swivelling navels, swinging hips rob women of autonomy ... So much easier to blame than to reflect and share part of the blame. All sections of society including films need to analyze how we are part culpable.”
Although the kind of fare served up in the Bollywood “item numbers” that she describes — the song and dance routines in which skimpily dressed ladies dance raunchily while exposing their midriffs — are fairly tame by the standards of Western pop videos, many Indians do believe they have played a role in undermining women, especially in the context of a society that remains highly conservative in terms of female codes of dress and behaviour.
On Twitter, actor Rahul Bose says they are “indicative of systemic disrespect for women.” But although it’s easy to portray Bollywood as a male-dominated monolith, churning out misogynistic fantasies that are harmful to women, to do so would be simplistic. Like other areas of Indian life, the industry is in the throes of social changes some of which are highly progressive and reflect the growing assertiveness of young Indian women, who are better educated, more ambitious and eager to discuss these issues publicly than ever before.
“Bollywood is in a state of flux,” says Shubhra Gupta, a female film critic with The Indian Express.
As Khan’s remarks showed, the Delhi gang rape did trigger an unprecedented outpouring of anguish from some of Bollywood’s leading figures over an apparently rising tide of appalling violence against women in India, a country where crime figures show a woman is raped every 20 minutes. The true figure is probably higher as so many rapes go unreported.
Critics may label such remarks superficial. But for Butalia they represent a watershed moment. “It was very unusual,” she says. “This is the first time that Bollywood actors have come out and taken a position on women’s issues. Normally they are not interested in anything apart from their own careers and making money.”
There are other signs of change too. For decades, the standard Bollywood Masala recipe, with its boy meets girl plot line served up with plenty of song and dance routines, has proved a durable commercial formula that few have willingly tinkered with. But with more women breaking into the industry, and Indians exposed to growing influence from overseas, this recipe is evolving. “There are mainstream directors who are starting to push the boundaries,” Gupta says.
Among the Bollywood films that have started to experiment with themes of violence against women and female empowerment are No One Killed Jessica, a 2011 thriller based on the true story of Jessica Lall, a Delhi model and barmaid who was shot dead 12 years earlier. Although her killer’s identity was widely known, it took nearly seven years to get a conviction because of his political connections. Another film, English Vinglish, a comedy released last year and directed by young female director Gauri Shinde, addressed female empowerment and changing attitudes toward women’s education. Gupta admits that such films are only a start, the old Masala formula still dominates and that “it’s not happening fast enough.” But with more women breaking into Bollywood than ever before — as directors, producers and writers — as well as actresses, it does look like the start of a trend.
The filmmaker Miriam Chandy says: “One has a fair share of very regressive films which objectify women or stereotype them into self-sacrificing mothers and wives and sisters ... But I do see a trend where women are being given more feisty roles and are mistresses of their own destiny.”
More encouraging is the fact that there are signs some male Bollywood stars are also now pushing for social change. Foremost among these has been Aamir Khan, who has used his fame as a platform to launch a hard-hitting talk show, Satyamev Jayte, which has addressed social issues that until recently have been largely taboo in India’s mass media. Since it was first aired in May 2012, the show has addressed female feticide, child sex abuse, dowries, honour killings and domestic violence — an agenda that led him to make the cover of Time magazine’s Asian edition with the headline Khan’s Quest. “He is breaking the Bollywood mould by tackling India’s social evils. Can an actor change a nation?” the magazine asked.
The jury is still out, of course. And many observers believe that it would be wrong to blame Bollywood for India’s social ills, arguing that its imagery is simply a reflection of Indian values — for good or ill — not a shaper of them.
For Hossein, rising violence against women in India is not the fault of Bollywood but is symptomatic of a wider cultural decline. He cites rapid urbanization which has led to the creation of a huge class of relatively rootless and uneducated young men, often with few opportunities, and the growing disparity in male and female birthrates, prompted by increased levels of female feticide in India.
“If you start messing with nature then you are in trouble,” he says, leaning back in his chair as he prepares to screen another premiere.
Butalia is more optimistic. “Change in India really is possible,” she says. “It is time Bollywood woke up to that.”