Opinion The bawdy politic
Is The Dirty Picture empowering or demeaning?
Alt Entertainments upcoming film,The Dirty Picture,poses an interesting gender conundrum because it claims to be dirty and not-so-dirty at once. On the one hand,it challenges audiences to reassess old sexual attitudes that demean women by reducing them to nothing more than objects of the male gaze. On the other,the promos show the protagonist heaving her bosom,jiggling her belly,and making amorous eyes at the camera not only to portray a character but also to draw into cinema halls those that the film seeks to reform. The promos then seem to say this is the story of a bold woman who exercised her sexual power instead of becoming exploited for it. But is that true? The fear is that the woman at the centre of the story is being exploited all over again,only this time it is couched in postmodern obfuscations.
In defence,proponents would say The Dirty Picture is significant as it dares to subvert stereotypes when there is a flood of South Indian movie remakes in Hindi that are not only retrograde in plot but also regressive in thought. In these remade films,both the actress and her character serve primarily as gyrating,pouting objects of sexual gratification,rather than as creatures with active intellectual,emotional,and physical needs. The womans hyper-sexualised physical appearance and her eager willingness to submit to male sexual fantasies,both on and off screen,trump any real reference to the strength of her character or the complexity of her body and mind.
Therefore,supporters would say,as some feminists have long said,the difference is that the heaving and jiggling in The Dirty Picture are a mark of female empowerment,not debasement. After all,the actress supposedly playing a yesteryear actress is not a victim of circumstances but one who does what she does by choice,to celebrate her sexuality,and to create space and acceptance for a body type that is neither size-zero nor fair,light-eyed and Barbiesque. Thus,they would invite us also to review our opinion of the woman whose story they tell. She was a victor not a victim,they would say,even as they acknowledge that she was also the product of a socio-economic milieu that offers almost no substantive opportunities to women of a certain class and background and,thereby,forces them to commodify their bodies,then and now.
Its a nice argument. But,like a lot of faux postmodern theories,its incomplete. The hope is that the movie will correct this and show not only the tragedy behind the protagonists sexual bravado but also a way out of it. Because the real postmodern problem with the promos is that they oversimplify both the celebration of sexuality as well as the empowerment of women.
Celebrating sexuality is not simply a matter of overturning semantics,or even of individual choice. Nor is it simply a matter of the body redefining itself a text re-writing itself in isolation. Womens empowerment requires a context: a social and political environment that offers women the opportunity and safety to enjoy their body and beauty. But today if women in India want to exercise the choice to be sexy on their own terms,they must first fight for the right to do so because the context does not exist. As things stand,
Indian women cannot take their sexual freedom,equality or safety for granted.
Look at what happened earlier this month in Mumbai. Keenan Santos and Reuben Fernandez were murdered not only because they tried to protect their women friends from men who think a little sexual harassment is all right because women who are out after sunset are simply asking for it,but also because a crowd of onlookers did nothing to help them not only out of fear of retaliation but also the patriarchal belief that boys will be boys,so girls must be careful about how to dress and behave.
Changing Indias attitudes and behaviour towards women require not playful semantics but at least an entire generation of men and women who will fight age-old gender inequalities by offering progressive interpretations of male-female dynamics. What it needs,among other things,is the Indian onscreen equivalents of,say,Erin Brockovich or Julia Child or Amelia Earhart who are strong women because they do not use sex as the currency to success. What it also needs,then,are more confident actresses off-screen who will challenge the disparity of power between them and their male counterparts,and wrest agency by not only acting in roles that truly empower women but also using their clout to produce mainstream,popular films that do so.
As long as a majority of women are denied not only voice but also their right to basic education and healthcare,as long as laws protecting the rights of women are not fully enforced,India will continue to produce women,on and off screen,who are in the service of men and not their own selves.
Patel is a Mumbai-based writer
express@expressindia.com
Share
