Beloved Bollywood and Rape Culture of India

The passion for Bollywood is perhaps the invisible chord that joins every single Indian heart. It can aptly be described as one of those things which one may love or hate but definitely can’t ignore. In the lives of most Indian people, Bollywood is everywhere. Be it the morning newspaper, the billboards on the bypass, the small tea stalls on the sidewalk or the autos on the roads – Bollywood is omnipresent.

To blame the rape culture of India on Bollywood is indeed a very alluring idea, however it is inaccurate. Bollywood neither causes nor encourages rape. However Bollywood does contribute to the wider culture of misogyny and gender violence, which forms the base of the rape culture of our society. Of course I’ll elaborate:

1. Let’s start from the very beginning - the men. The male protagonists of any Bollywood movie are probably the closest thing that the gentlemen of India have as role models. Our male leads almost always happen to be violent and hyper masculine. No, they are not violent to women (mostly) because they have villains to fight. Our everyday young men on the other hand do not get to show off their strengths due to lack of such “filmy” villains and instead end up becoming those very villains. Rape is not about sex. I mean obviously there is forced sex involved, but more than that, rape is about establishing the supremacy of the power of masculinity. By proving their physical strength on women, rapists get the “high” that probably the heroes in our films get by slaying the villains.
   
2. Eve-teasing is totally fine if the teaser is the protagonist. Our Bollywood heroes are charismatic superhuman who fights villains and social evils. They do not hurt women; on the contrary they protect them. However lots of their love stories do start with simple acts of eve-teasing. Bollywood has made it clear that roadside Romeos, who ogle at women and relentlessly pursue them leaving no stone of desperation unturned, eventually get the girl. Be it Shiva of Rowdy Rathore, Radhe of Wanted, Rajkumar of R...Rajkumar or Kundan of Raanjhanaa, they all have this trait in common – they take fancy to a pretty woman and then heckles her till she responds in the affirmative and all this is called romance by Bollywood.
   
3. Blame the Audience. With films like Masti and Kya Cool Hai Hum, perverted double meaning jokes get a new identity. The crew members of the films defended themselves by saying that their movie was meant for “matured” audience. Films like these thrive on audience “misunderstanding” what the film is all about. For example, there was an instance in a film’s trailer where one of the characters says, “Main apna macho dunga” which means I’ll give my best. But of course the other character as well as our hapless audience confuses it with “Main apna ma chodunga” which mean’s I’ll fuck my mother. In another instance a very busty girl when asked by a guy what she does, tells him that she has two huge milk factories and she’ll give him a tour of those if he’s interested. Still blame the audience?
   
4. Objectifying women. Well there probably is no film industry on earth which doesn’t objectify women, but Bollywood takes it to a different level. There are very few instances where men are seen part by part as the camera zooms in on their bodies which happens usually just at the beginning. But women, the camera zooms in on their waistlines, cleavage, bare thighs, and lips all the time! One could say that this happens all around the world. But India is different from the rest; India recently criminalized consensual union of a certain kind. Sex education has been prohibited and banned in most parts of India. Parents do not have the bird-and-bees talk with their children here. In a country where sex itself is a taboo, movies like these definitely do not help the cause.
   
5. Item songs. This is probably the point I’ve been itching to come to. Except for a few movies, most Bollywood films have a couple of raunchy dance routines which have absolutely no relation to the context of the movie. Since in Indian TV sex can’t be shown without being censored, they are replaced by these item numbers which have expletive lyrics and scantily clad “item girls” gyrating and thrusting their pelvic region and shaking their hips inches away from the faces of innumerable men. Indian men who consider themselves the movie heroes probably expect everyday girls like us to be so inviting and horny. The item numbers look like orgies where the item girl have just enough clothing to hide their nether regions and nipples while they invite total strangers to come and have their way with her.
   
6. The censors, producers and directors. It’s shameful how most of our contemporary producers and directors depend on skin show and objectification of women to make their movies successful. They do not want to gain respect or recognition. All they care about is a quickie at the box office collections. It is clear that sex sells. Hence if you cannot a take a scene into a bedroom, do it in the open in a form where you can keep the content same without having to get censored. It’s unbelievable how cheap senseless films get permission to run as U/A whereas good films with even slight sexual content is dismissed. I personally found it hypocritical that the same people who went crazy for Deepika Padukone in Mit Jaaye Gham and Lovely thought My Choice was wrong and should be banned.
   

Bollywood claims that it does not inspire people but mimics them. To a certain extent this might be true but it’s more like the chicken and egg controversy, as to which came first. Good films are a rarity these days. Filmmakers try to be bold and fail miserably. There are very few movies with strong female characters; either that or they get sidelined by the tom foolery that is put up. As a true Indian I love Bollywood. All I can do is hope that the industry will grow up and try to rectify its mistakes to get out of its pathetic stagnant state.