Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Can Bollywood look beyond hollow depictions of love?
No one makes passes at girls in glasses. This is an old sexist line that should have been deep-sixed long back. In Bollywood,it is alive and kicking. The film that has rocketed to the top of the box office chart this summer,Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani,brings it roaring back. Scholllar Naina,says the smart-alec hero rolling his ls,to the exasperated bespectacled girl. In two or three supposedly witty sentences,we are brought up to speed with her: in school,she was the one who was constantly swotting in a corner; in her nascent jawaani,she still has her head buried in books shes studying to be a doctor,see,her thick glasses firmly on the bridge of her shapely nose.
Will glasses ever be deemed sexy in Bollywood? Dim view,right? I can see you are as sceptical as I am. Strike one for age-old stereotyping.
A bunch of heavily stereotyped characters in recent films make you wonder whether there have been any forward moves at all. These are new-age filmmakers making movies for the young of today,and the easiest crutches they can find are the characters their parents and grandparents were used to watching in the movies of their time. That mainstream cinema has no place for nuance is something we get,but such broad brush-strokes can only be the laziest,crummiest way of getting by.
Behold Dhanush,who has made me very happy by cutting through the colour and regional barriers that Bollywood has made no move to dismantle all these years. The fact that he has played the lover boy in Raanjhanaa,a shiny big-budget vehicle,is a great thing. But that doesnt hold true for what he is made to do,which is to stalk the girl he loves. Is stalking,even if it is done with the sort of cheer that Dhanushs Kundan exhibits,acceptable as a way to express your feelings? Rickshewale,paise mat lena,bhabhi hai tumhari,he yells out. We smile when we hear the bhabhi,because we are conditioned to. Because all those half-grown men have instantly made the girls they like their best friends bhabhis,as a way of preventing them from lusting over what is considered their property.
All lovers know and thrill to the joy of being pursued. If you are not gone after, what is the point? How will we know if he or she really means it? But the thin line between pursuing and stalking is blurred in most Bollywood renderings of romance. Stalking and slitting wrists is of a piece. It is not that it is not done still,in this age of instant hook-ups and break-ups,but the twinning of these in a film,not once but several times,makes it a legitimate way of wooing,bypassing all truly grown-up ways of doing it. Are small-town boys not capable of depth?
Urban boys are also equally guilty. The fact that we still have boys and girls flipping for each other at first glance is as much a stereotype as it used to be back in the 60s when a girl had only to look directly at you for you to know that she was the one. A Fukrey another four-slackers-in-Delhi film which has done well at the box office boy says to a girl abhi maine tujhe I love you toh nahin bola na. Basically what that means is that all the eyeing and mild flirting that has been going on will only come to fruition when that I love you is blurted out. Is that how you develop a real,lasting,steady relationship? Or in your hurry to say that this is how Dilli boys do it,particularly a Dilli boy who is a lower middle-class no-gooder,you are simply ending up cementing that stereotype?
Piling clichés upon clichés. Creating characters with mouldy outlines. Building upon sketchy motivations. There is more to young love than this. How about a film in which a guy and a girl take their time in getting to know each other,and then be drawn to each other,and then explore what life can have in store for them?
We can call that one Baaton Baaton Mein Dobara.
