Recently India witnessed some defining moments. It’s not hard to guess whether Bollywood was part of this. Bollywood is part of everything in India. Starting right from the birth and continuing to the moment of departure from this world, very few lives in this country remain untouched from Bollywood. Why should it not be! It is the biggest film industry of the world, producing maximum number of films than any film industry of World, it boasts of fielding its actors and actresses on varying field right from the intellectual panels to high profile political campaigns and then to powerful political posts itself. All this said, obviously with all these privileges, Bollywood cannot be just a commercial platform for churning thousands of crores, and it cannot absolve itself from the social distresses this country is going through right now. Here we will discuss the role model Bollywood presents through the movies it produces.
Bollywood has miserably failed to project woman more than an object to spice the glam content of the movie. How many movies do we remember where we have heroine as a meaningful part of the whole story leave aside as the lead character? Increasing trend of item dance in the movie shall be questioned by every sane woman activist. These songs add no art value to the movies but are solely kept to attract the viewers. At one hand when Bollywood pats its own back on being the crusader of woman rights, how can it support something like this. No wonder Indian heroine career spans hardly above 35 years of age. Very few heroines can boast of doing movies above 35 where they played a meaningful role.
While this would have not been any problem for a personal business. But this is not the case here. Bollywood has influenced India and will keeping doing so in time to come. When we with our young minds go to cinema and they see that heroine only role was to dance and wear the most revealing dress on screen without any purpose they are somewhere unconsciously hardwiring it in their mind. They are shown this repeatedly and frequently and no wonder this feeling of woman character only for dancing and body showcasing sits in their mind deep. We can’t deny that parental guidance and their home ambience has no role in countering or promoting these emotions but not all minds are lucky enough to get the right guidance. Results are devastating. These minds grow up with a picture where whistling at the girl in college campus is not wrong because the top Heroes of Bollywood do so repeatedly in the movie. In their view touching hand of girl or hugging her or for that matter kissing her against her wishes is not wrong because in the end he is going to win over her heart because his role model super Heroes do so in the movies.
There is no want of intellectual in Bollywood industry. But it remains a fact to wonder that how these storylines and narrative has been left untouched and unopposed over the decades starting from 70s. How the woman-cause champions heroines which are frequent storm creator on twitter and other social media platform does not come forward, calls spade a spade, and simply come together to refuse to accept the story lines where woman is used for item dance, low cut blouse and for being teased.
Audience can be blamed too, but this is uncontrollable factor. One can simply ask why people don’t boycott such movies? But this is no topic to pass the bucket. Other than that a whole industry works to attract people towards these movies, and people storm to it. It must be stopped at the source. Bollywood having abundant of talent, intellect and capacity to do it, shall come forward and set an example which will showcase not to other Indian film industry but whole world that it must start at home first. Walk the talk Bollywood, win the hearts, win the glory.
Selective intellectuality shall be called out. You can’t hide behind the shell of entertainment and art while agreeing to play roles which downgrade the woman stature. You cant agree to treat woman as a show piece in the movie, no matter how much commercially viable that is , you can not agree to live dual life once inside the cinema and one outside the cinema.
Come on, call it out. Give up the projects, object on the story line, be vocal and present a model which shall be not only commercially viable for your pockets but also healer to the wounds of women of Indian society which in one way or other have suffered for ages. Its time to change, and who better than Bollywood can inspire India to do so.
